Keeping Faith Alive

James 2:1-17

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please’, while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’, or, ‘Sit at my feet’, have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonoured the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the one who said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’, also said, ‘You shall not murder.’ Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgement will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgement.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

There are a lot of things from the Bible that we take for granted as common, as blasé, as nothing special. And I think one of those things is the exhortation that James, Paul, Jesus, and so many other New Testament figures use— “Brothers and sisters.” Early Christians call one another siblings, whether or not they’re actually blood-related all over the New Testament; and we hear it all the time today too—at political rallies, at protests, in churches. But this is one of many things that seems the norm that was actually very radical for its day.

You see, in these ancient times, the only kind of relationship that wasn’t inherently conditional or transactional, was the family unit. Everything else in this ancient society was cutthroat, no relationship outside of family was unconditionally kind or giving or loving. Remember Jesus flipping the tables in the temple— he did that because the religious authorities were making even worship a transactional experience, extorting and scamming those coming to pray. So calling those who aren’t actually related to you, whether by blood or marriage, family was a big deal. It meant that they looked at one another as equals. It meant that no one was above anyone else within that community. It meant that no one got any special treatment; no one was lifted up more than anyone else. Favoritism was called out quite often in the Old Testament, but going so far as to refer to all people as siblings was a whole new level—truly, a brand new thing.

Now, being an open and affirming congregation, we accept everyone unconditionally, right? Open and affirming was to officially state that we accept, marry and love queer folks simply for being who they are, but it goes beyond that. It’s really a statement that we accept and welcome any and all people who walk into this congregation. And I think we do, I think we, generally, live by that standard we’ve set for ourselves. We would never turn anyone away, barring someone’s safety being threatened.

But I want us to really challenge ourselves to think about how this church works, how we survive. Maybe this is at the forefront of my mind, because though it won’t be starting for another couple weeks on September 29th, stewardship season is coming up—our favorite time of year, when we talk about money. When we talk about giving what we can to stay afloat, to keep doing the work we need to be doing in the community, and for one another. Just because  nature of how this world works, and needing money to function, and asking you all for money—are we unintentionally favoring those who are able to give more? Are we unintentionally making those who aren’t able to give as much feel less-than, feel guilty for something out of their control?

Now, I’ve told this story before to folks, so apologies for repeating myself, but when I was living in Boston in grad school, I was church-hopping. I went to Old South Church in Boston once—that’s that huge, gorgeous church in Copley Square, right at the Boston Marathon finish line. I happened to go there during stewardship season, and they were talking about money in a way that, as a grad student living on loans and some measly work-study money, I could not comprehend. It was truly alienating. I did not go back.

And so now that I’m in this position, now that I’m the one behind the pulpit, I’m asking myself these tough questions—are we really living according to our Christian values of being open and affirming, of not favoring anyone, for any reason, but maybe especially money. And I have to work really hard at answering these questions, because full disclosure, I find myself thinking very cynically about this sometimes. When people talk about needing more young people in the church, I sometimes immediately think, ‘Sure, but you know what young people don’t have? Money. Time.” I don’t want to think this way—I hate thinking this way! But this is the world we live in.

All this is to say— we need to start thinking a little differently. We need to start thinking more creatively about how to live out our values while also staying relevant and staying afloat. We need to find ways to really foster community and bring resources in in new ways that won’t put anyone out, or make anyone feel like they’re not doing enough just because they don’t have a lot of extra money to give right now.

Now, is this going to happen this year? No, It’s not. In a couple weeks we’re still going to beg you all for money to pledge as much as you can because it’s a slow process, figuring out how to be the church in this strange new world we’re living in.

Last week I talked about James asking us to strive for perfection. I talked about how on the surface that can seem arrogant and blasphemous, until we start to think about the kind of perfection we should be working towards—one in which we live for others above ourselves. James continues this thread in today’s scripture when he talks about the “royal law,” what he called the “perfect law” in the last chapter, which we talked about last week—the law of compassion, the golden rule— you must love your neighbor as yourself. This is how we achieve perfection. We live for others. And we live for others by not just praying for others, not just wish others well, but by actually doing the work.

“If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” James writes. How is a naked, starving person supposed to keep warm and eat without clothes and food? How cruel to tell a destitute person to stay warm and eat without doing anything about it. Well a couple millennia later, Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”

And so I wonder, in this faith community, when we ask the congregation for money, I wonder about unintentionally alienating people, the way I felt alienated at Old South Church in Boston. I worry about making people feel like they’re not enough if they can’t give money or time, just because of the nature of this broken world; because we live under a broken economic system that doesn’t allow us enough money or enough time.  

If we want people to contribute to society, if we want people to contribute to us as a faith community, we need to work. Faith without works is dead. Church without works is dead. Democracy without works is dead. Love without works is dead.

This country had beaten a lot of people into submission. So many are expected to work themselves to the bone and for what? Upward mobility seems to be a thing of the past for so many people. The systems is rigged so that there are millions of people who make too much to be eligible for social services, but not nearly enough money to survive. And so people remain in poverty, out of necessity in this weird and twisted way. And then they are judged for it. Told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they can’t afford boots; told to get warm and eat their fill when they can’t afford warm clothes or food.

And so… yeah, I’m gonna be asking you all to pledge amounts of money in a couple weeks, as we always do, because right now that’s how we have to survive. But I want us to start thinking different— really different. I want us to start thinking about how we can create a more sustainable ecosystem here, one that is able to give and receive in equal measure, one that doesn’t put anyone out, one that doesn’t alienate, ignore, or disregard anyone, even unintentionally.

I’m going to embarrass Darryl right now—he is an absolutely incredible example of thinking creatively in a way that holds true to our Christian values and also helps us more easily survive so we can continue doing good works in this world. Now we’re still at the very beginning stages of this, but his idea is to explore installing solar paneling on our roof—of course this helps the environment, it helps our finances… but the big deal about this idea is that any power left over would go to community members in need. I would be given, no strings attached, to folks struggling to pay their utility bills. A caveat here, while this is very exciting, this is an idea that’s in its infancy here, so we would ask that you don’t bombard Darryl or me (especially me, I am not the engineer) with questions yet; but Church, I cannot tell you how excited this makes me. It’s a way to do good works to, keep our faith alive by sustaining ourselves while also sustaining others, and sustaining the earth! And more than any of that—it’s a recognition that all human beings on this planet are our siblings. It’s a recognition that all people on this planet deserve to have their needs met, and it’s our small but tangible way of working to make that happen.

Just as we cannot pick and choose which laws to follow and which laws to break, which commandments to adhere to, and which ones to ignore, so we also cannot pick and choose whom of our fellow humans are our siblings and whom are not. “Mercy triumphs over judgement,” James writes, and it seems that this is applicable to both us and God. We meet our fellow humans with mercy— with understanding, with kindness, with compassion, and of course with Love. This is how God meets us. God’s mercy will always triumph over judgement, and so we are obligated to meet our siblings on this earth with that same perfect mercy. We are gifted the grace of God so that though we may make mistakes and we may stumble, we are always beloved, and we pass forward that grace we are gifted to others— not only with prayer or kind words, but with good works.

“…Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” I believe these are words to live by, Church. In a world in which judgement reigns supreme over mercy, a world in which those in power fight to take away things like free school meals for children, fight to make it near impossible for folks to get out of the cycle of poverty, we must make it our purpose to show that mercy will always triumph over judgement by doing good works in new and creative ways. And in a world run by money and those who have it, we need to work extra hard to be truly open and affirming—to welcome and include all those who walk through these doors—we need to make sure all who walk through those doors feel that unconditional welcome and mercy regardless of what they can or cannot give.

You might remember that last week I talked about how Martin Luther didn’t like the book of James because he felt that he contradicted the apostle Paul’s belief in salvation by faith alone—but James is actually perfectly in line with so much of what Paul (and Jesus, of course,) taught—that in that we are all one body; we are all parts of one body and (from 1 Corinthians 12), “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

When each one of us truly loves our neighbor as ourself, we are perfect. So let’s strive for that perfection together, church. We will lift one another up with that perfect combination of faith and good works. And with that perfection combination, we will truly live. Amen.