The lectionary, for obscure reasons, picks 6 distinct proverbs. Pick any 6, really! Of most interest here is the saying in verse 2, easily preachable. What do the rich and poor have in common? “The Lord made them both.” Notice the text does not say the Lord made the rich rich, and the poor poor. Foolish theology suggests that God has arranged things as they are; the God who is “in control” “makes no mistakes.” But wealth and poverty happen for myriad reasons, and if Acts 2-4 is any indication, God would prefer a redistribution of wealth instead of pridefulness in the wealthy and shame in the poor.
James 2:1-17. I am
fond of the likelihood that the author of James was the brother of our Lord. How powerful is his witness - one who knew him on the playground and around the house! I may riff on his growing up with Jesus, on how he understood he was in a curious way his mother's favorite, what he felt as Jesus became famous, and what it was like for him to watch his brother die (thinking of the Santayana line "With you, a part of me has passed away... and I am grown much older in a day") - and then to carry his message, his being out into the world. All this moves me.
In
this week’s text, James echoes the beatitudes (Matt. 5), and cites Leviticus 19,
just as his brother did. In chapter 2, James gives us more on what “authentic
religion” is – which might appeal to our culture, especially younger
generations, for whom authenticity is the rage. How we treat, think about, and
act around the rich, and the poor, is a test of authenticity. Most churches,
and Christians flunk this test miserably.
The good works James lifts up amount to generosity, especially to the poor. Another virtue we don’t attend to as we should, except as we’re meeting the budget (or not). Generosity is a fruit of the Spirit (if you translate Galatians 5 with the great F.F. Bruce). In Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful novel, Gilead, a man boasts that his grandfather “never kept anything that was worth giving away, or let us keep it either… He would take laundry right off the line. I believe he was a saint of some kind. When he left us, we all felt his absence bitterly. There was an innocence in him. He lacked patience for anything but the plainest interpretations of the starkest commandments, ‘To him who asks, give,’ in particular.”
Generosity does not ask tough questions about the recipients of the generosity. Jesus simply said, “To him who asks, give” (Matt 5:42). Mother Teresa cared for the poorest, and insisted repeatedly that we do not need to know all about why they are poor; we simply love them, and we thus love Jesus by loving them – and there is the joy, not in demanding explanations or assigning blame. God loves the cheerful giver, not the giver who insists on measured results. Generosity is “an unmeasured willingness to give. It is a warm, delightful, instinctive self-spending for God and others. It is the uncalculated response to all that is asked” (Evelyn Underhill).
How might we conceive of our offerings for those in need? “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord” (Prov 19:17). They not only lend to the Lord. They provide credible witness to the Church’s worth and blessing to the world around us. I wish, before we took up the offering each week, I could remind my people about the complaint the Roman emperor Julian, the one who reversed the Christianizing of the empire and tried to make it pagan, lodged against the Christians he was trying to discredit: “Those impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well.” Were we more generous with the offering, skeptics who scoff at the church would be exasperated by all the good we’d be doing right in their faces. {these past 3 paragraphs are excerpted from the chapter on The Offering in my book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week.}
Churches, of course, are deeply
segregated – not just by race, but by class. We might gripe about preferential
treatment for wealthy, well-placed people – but if we find ourselves in the
company of someone famous or wealthy, we get all chipper, so very polite and
interested, preening, proud of ourselves for just being there. Tell a local story - or some experience of your own? If a well-dressed man comes in…? In my formal church people would say Welcome! In an informal, dress-down church people would raise eyebrows! James is after our fawning and deference – even in the privacy of our minds – toward the rich. I pastor a church with many wealthy people. I have to encourage my new staff, none of whom come from wealth, to work on how you feel about wealth, so we don’t despise, or envy, or mock, or fawn. St. Francis enacted what unfolds when he gave away his finery, took on the garb of the meekest, and got sued by his own dad. {On Francis, check out my favorite of my books, Conversations with St. Francis}
All this is normal in our culture.
But Christianity is a peculiar movement. Luke Timothy
Johnson puts it well: “The assembly gathered by faith, says
James, must act on the basis of another set of values. Those whom the world
most despises are to be regarded, in faith, as heirs of the kingdom and
therefore honored by the specific hospitality of the community: its greetings,
its body language, its space. It is by this measure that the community is to be
judged. Woe to the church that does not meet this measure of mercy, for it will
face merciless judgment.” The preacher can hold up this text to ask, gently but
clearly, some questions about our space, our body language… Yes, there’s
pressure on wealthier churches (like mine), but no church can dodge the
inquiry.
How we fawn over the wealthy poses
a spiritual crisis – and our doting on them might only be via gawking at the TV
or gazing far down at the people with the choice seats at an event. Johnson
reads James (rightly!) as suggesting that we wind up divided not only among
ourselves but also within ourselves; the one who sees and lives into, even
enviously, division is divided in soul.
James’s text fascinates, in that
it seems to allude to those who have been oppressed themselves suddenly
becoming oppressors of others! Pheme
Perkins explains this phenomenon pointedly: “They have learned from their
oppressors, not from God! The tendency of the oppressed to adopt the behavior
of their oppressors frequently emerges in revolutionary movements. The lowly
may prefer the limited power they can exercise against others to the exaltation
that comes from God.”
The contrast of fake, thin,
inauthentic religion with the real thing is nowhere better exposed than in this
poetic piece I’ve heard over the years, with no idea of its origin: “I was hungry, and
you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger. I was imprisoned, and you
crept off to your chapel and prayed for my release. I was naked, and in your mind you debate the morality of my appearance. I was sick, and you
knelt and thanked God for your health. I was homeless, and you preached to me
of the spiritual shelter of the love of God. I was lonely, and you left me
alone to pray for me. You seem so holy, so close to God – but I am still very
hungry, and lonely, and cold.”
The litmus test of authentic
Christianity is how we live with the poor – not, as Sam Well has pointed out so
eloquently in A Nazareth Manifesto, what we do for
them. We foolishly think Jesus is tickled when we, the haves, offer to solve their problems
for them, because they are (in our usually unarticulated view) incapable.
Every encounter then reinforces their humiliation. Christians don’t send stuff
to the poor. They are with them; they befriend them. Some quotables from Sam: “Altruism
is not the goal.” “Our purpose, our calling is to be with God and with
one another.” “There is no goal beyond restored relationship; being with
is not a means to an end.” “We do not sit and have coffee with a homeless
person because we are trying to solve their problem.” “Continue to see the face of Jesus in the despised
and rejected of the world. You are not their benefactor. You are
not the answer to their prayer. They are the answer to yours. You
are searching for a salvation that only they can bring.”
Again, a local story of being with the poor, of how all benefit when such friendships arise, is illustrative in the greatest sense of the word.
A curious enactment of James’s
principle is found in our Gospel, Mark 7:24-37, when his brother encounters the
Syro-Phoenician woman – and frankly treats her quite rudely, shockingly to us.
There must be some rationalization – right? Floyd Filson, in his 1960
commentary on Matthew, suggested that he winked at her when he spoke these
words, implying insider status for this one. Or was it a clever ploy on Jesus’
part to evoke deeper faith in her, or those watching?
Sarah Ruden’s new translation (The Gospels) quite rightly renders kunarion as “little doggies,” instead of “dog.” Try it. Better. More pitiful, more dismissive. Dogs, we might recall, did not enjoy warm relationships with humans back in Bible times.
Morna Hooker, noting how
Jesus confined his attention to the Jews, suggested that “the Gentile woman
requests a cure outside the context of Jesus’ call to Israel; she seems to be
asking for a cure which is detached from the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, merely
taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the presence of a miracle
worker. This is perhaps the reason for Jesus’ stern answer; his healings are
part of something greater and cannot be torn out of that context.”
Joel Marcus is mindful of the
history of bad blood between Tyrians and Galileans – and how the farm produce
of Galilee so often wound up in Tyre, while the peasants in Galilee went
hungry. So Jesus’ words make a bit of compassionate sense. Or should we
suggest, as many have, that Jesus had a growing moment, a learning experience,
a maturation in himself? Mistakenly, he turned her away – and her persistence
cracked open a bit of hardness in Jesus’ Jewishness to leave space for a
desperate Gentile? Depending on the height of your view of Jesus’ humanity,
this may or may not work.
Martin Luther examined this text
and thought of the ways Christians are to persist in trusting God, even when
God seems to turn his back on them. They must learn to see the ‘yes’ hidden in
his ‘no.’ Much wisdom here – although the
preacher dare not resort to trifling ideas such as those articulated in Garth
Brooks’s crooning “Unanswered
Prayers.”
The Syro-Phoenician woman’s
persistence has recently been likened to the persistence of women right
insisting on their place in the church. “Nevertheless, She Persisted” became a
popular slogan, t-shirt and hashtag this year. Persistence of all kinds is a
biblical thing, falsifying the absurd notion of God’s will being associated
with “the door was open.” Many open doors we most surely should not walk
through. And many closed and bolted doors should be knocked down.
I am fond of Sheila
Nelson-McJilton’s probing sermon, “Crumbs” – cited in Leonora Tubbs Tisdale’s
great book, Prophetic Preaching. “Crumbs.
That’s all they are looking for. Crumbs. Not the whole life. Not even a slice.
Just crumbs. You and I want the whole loaf…” – and then she speaks of our
wealth, access, all the poor lack. But then she presses further: “Crumbs. They
want more than crumbs because deep in their souls, they know they deserve more.
And yet they often do not know who to ask or how to ask…”
The second half of the Mark
reading has its own possibilities – with its echo of Isaiah, and the inspired
music of Handel. The
Aramaic word, miraculously preserved, ephatha,
has been used in many baptismal liturgies. The priest touches the ear of the
infant and asks that it be opened. We should redo such a prayer for ourselves
daily – so we might hear God. The “prayer for illumination” before the sermon:
open our ears, O Lord (and do we pray before the sermon? or before the
Scripture reading? or at the very opening of the service?).
My new book is OUT!!! Everywhere Is Jerusalem is available - and there's a Study Guide and an accompanying DVD (unsure about this, as not many have DVD players!!), much of it shot on location in Israel. Check it out! Great for group study - and sermon preparation!
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