Saints and Sinners: Lessons from James, Part 2
Saints and Sinners
A Sermon for Kenbridge Baptist Church
James 2:1-17, Matthew 15:21-28
Pentecost 14B: September 10, 2006
Introduction – Catching Up
Last week, we began a series on the book of James. I gave you a little bit of background on the book: That James was Jesus’ brother, that he was a leader in the Jerusalem church, that he was writing this book to Jews that were scattered across the ancient world because of persecution. I gave you a challenge – one I am going to continue. I challenge you to look more closely at the book of James, to read through the letter once each week. Look in that book and don’t just read it for information’s sake – FIND YOURSELF in that book, look intently at yourself and let God change you.
We talked briefly about the fact that many scholars place James and Paul on two different theological planes, but that I think James and Paul were both doctors treating two different diseases in thee Body of Christ. Paul, on the one hand, was combating the idea that Christians must live as slaves to every little law and command in order to be saved. James was fighting a different disease – one that is more relevant to our time and place, I think: The idea that we are saved by “believing” some certain doctrine, and that we don’t have to worry about what we do any more.
In the first chapter of James, he makes his thesis statement, what I think is the crucial point of his letter: That we must not just merely hear and believe the message of the Gospel, but that we must LIVE IT OUT. He gives us some examples, ones that he will elaborate on later – controlling our speech, and caring for the poor. James shows us that religion, faith and Gospel are nothing unless we let them seep into every area of our lives.
Letting the Gospel Seep In
I used “seep” intentionally – like water seeping into a boat. You’re all familiar with the story of the Titanic – the “unsinkable” boat that carried almost 2,000 people to the bottom of the North Atlantic in 1912. Well, the design that made boats like the Titanic “unsinkable” was a compartmentalized hull – a design that’s still in use in ships today. The idea is that the inside of a boat is blocked off into hundreds of compartments with watertight doors. If water starts coming in one area of the ship, you simply close all the doors around that area and keep the water in one place – the boat doesn’t sink, and you can get back to port to repair the damage.
I use this image with a reason – so often, we put “compartments” in our lives, areas that we won’t let the Gospel into. We’ll let it affect things in one certain area, but not in others. But Jesus doesn’t ask us to let the Gospel in a “little bit” – he says we have to let the WHOLE BOAT sink. We have to allow the Message to fill up our lives so that our old, human selves sink to the bottom and we are raised to new life in Christ.
And so much of James’ letter is working this idea out – in what areas do we show that we haven’t let the Gospel all the way in? In today’s passage, he addresses prejudice and the way we look at other people. He gives us a hypothetical situation: He describes a church meeting at which both a poor and rich person enter. If any preferential treatment is given to the rich man over the poor man, James says, then we are revealed to be showing favoritism – that is, that we look at people as being less equal than God does.
This hypothetical situation could be changed to any number of situations that fit us better. What if a successful, well-dressed white man walks in, and a Hispanic man in ratty, dirty clothes walks in? What if a straight-A, well-kempt high school student walked in and a dropout, drug-addict student walks in? We’ve talked about this before – each of us has an “other,” and I don’t think it would take long for us to figure out a situation in which we might show preference to one person over another.
Most of the commentators on this passage have pointed out that James is talking about taking care of the poor. I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think James is making a point about a certain kind of person – he talks later about taking care of the poor. Instead, I think he is making a point about the Gospel – “if we REALLY believe the Gospel,” he begins in verse 1, “if you’re REALLY let it sink in, how can you show favoritism? Can you not see with God’s eyes that these ‘sinners’ are just as much ‘saints’ as you are?”
Change in Perspective
James is a very instructive book, but what most people miss when they look at James is that instruction is not all that James is about. Jesus, Paul, John, James, Peter – all of them understood that just giving simple instructions is not the way to affect change. I knew that at one time, I had a bad habit of leaving the water running when you brush your teeth, but it wasn’t enough for someone to say, “stop leaving the water running.” That didn’t do it.
What I needed was a change in perspective. I couldn’t see clearly because I’d never looked clearly. Any of you who have been to the optometrist know that it’s like for things to come into perspective. You sit in the little chair with that strange contraption in front of you. The doctor asks you to look through it, and begins to click lenses in front of your eyes. One by one, each lens comes and goes, then comes again. And at last, with a few clicks, everything comes into focus.
The idea about a perspective coming into focus is that it will change the way we do things. When I walked out of that doctor’s office with my new glasses – my new perspective – I might realize that the reason I’ve been tripping on my front sidewalk is that there’s a rock there. Now that I can see it clearly, I do something about it – I move the rock, or I step around the rock. It would be silly to keep tripping over it now that I see clearly.
It’s the same way with our lives. When I finally got to go to places where water was scarce, I began to take running the water more carefully. I was in the Philippines one summer, and the people in that poor area of Manila don’t have a central plumbing system. You pay to have a truck come fill up the big tank on the roof of your house. When you run out of water, you may have to wait for a few days. When I took a shower, I stood in the tub with a bucket and a ladle and poured water over myself. It made me much more careful when I came home about wasting water. No one had to tell me, “Hey, stop wasting water.” I had seen differently – I had to act.
So what James does here to help us understand how we treat people is to change our perspective. He points out that we are all alike in God’s eyes. And to show it, he points out a common denominator. But it’s not the common denominator I would have chosen to look at. I would have chosen to say, “Look how much God loves every one of us.” Or maybe, “Look how we are all human beings on the same struggle of life.”
No, the common denominator James points out is JUDGMENT.
The Common Denominator: Judgment
If we show partiality, James explains, then we are guilty of sin. And if any of us have committed any sin at all – no matter how great or small – each of us is equal in the fact that we are in need of God’s mercy. None of us, rich or poor, can stand before God’s judgment and lift our eyes to meet God’s – all of us have “sinned and fallen short.” The same God who said, “do not murder,” James says, is the same God who said, “do not steal, do not lie, do not covet.” If we have broken any of these commands, we are as guilty – as much a dirty sinner in God’s eyes – as the world’s worst murderer.
If these statements by James tend to make us a little uncomfortable, there’s a reason. It would be one thing if James was talking to a group of unsaved people able judgment. But here, James is speaking directly to Believers about how God will judge them – “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty,” he says, “for judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy.” This are Christians we’re talking to, right?
Right. And one of the fundamental ideas that seems to run under all of James’ teaching is this – that as Christians, we are not excluded from the judgment of God. Can this be true? Can we really believe this? I thought judgment was just what God reserved for those people who didn’t accept him? Surely we’ll come before the Great Judge and he’ll call for the court clerk to look for our names in the Book of Life. Finding us there, he’ll say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” and we’ll walk free.
But the teachings of Jesus and the teaching of James, and really the teaching of all the Scriptures never seem to say this. Christians, just like everyone else, are called upon to live lives of purity and rightness, because Christians – just like everyone else – will be judged for the things we have done or failed to do. Just like non-Christians, we’ll stand before God’s judgment seat and our whole life will be reviewed, our decisions and our intentions discovered. Just like non-Christians, our motives and actions will be clearly seen for what they are, and they will be judged.
The difference – and James and Paul both allude to this – is that our judgment may even be harsher because WE KNEW what we were supposed to do. We KNEW the commands that some others did not. We’ve been shown mercy and grace and forgiveness, so how much worse will it be for us when we fail to show that same mercy, grace and forgiveness to others?
The Great Sofa of Judgment
I’ve been reading books about this judgment lately, and what it will be like. We think that we’re going to get off scot-free, but as I just said, I think it will actually be WORSE for us. Now we all had different kinds of punishment growing up – from those whose parents didn’t believe in physical punishment at all, to the ones whose daddies made us go out and pick a limb off the tree to be whipped with!
But all of us know – when we did something wrong, there were some things we could stand, and some not. If any of you knew me in school, you’d be amazed to hear this – I got a paddling when I was in 3rd grade. I’m still not entirely sure what all transpired, but I DO know that I was provoked by another little boy and I retaliated. Today, I still don’t think I deserved getting a paddling, but it was my word against his and the teacher wasn’t right there when it happened, so she just sent us both.
I remember two things very strongly from that day. I vaguely remember the wait outside the principal’s office. I really don’t remember anything at all that the principal said to us. I don’t even remember the paddling itself. But I DO remember what we had to do after we were paddled – we were made to stand in the hallway, obviously crying and upset, as other classes made their way down the hallway to the playground. I can still remember standing there and looking through my tears at that line of children going past. And I DO remember having to go home to my parents and explain everything to them again, and the very disappointed and hurt looks they had on their faces.
And I remember the way we always handled times when I’d done something I wasn’t supposed to do. We all sat down in the living room, my parents on one sofa, and me on the other across from them. Nothing in between, nowhere to hide. And I had to tell them what I’d done, and explain to them why it was wrong. To this day, I can’t remember a single spanking I got. But I remember those long, horrible silences staring at my feet while I slowly came to the realization that there was no talking my way out of this one.
That wasn’t punishment – that was a reckoning. And I can’t speak for you, but give me a switch or a paddle any day. I’ll take a good dose of corporal punishment in a heartbeat. But NOT the reckoning! Don’t sit me down and tell me that you’re disappointed in me. Don’t sit there with that hurt and disappointed look on your face. That is worse to me than anything else, because it makes me KNOW that my actions were wrong. It made me see that my mistake had consequences outside of just my own little world – my decision to fight back was a disappointment to my parents, who had taught me better than that. I KNEW better than to do what I did.
And this is how I am coming to imagine the judgment. It’s not the legal courtroom with the high and mighty judge glancing at me over the court briefs. It’s sitting on the sofa, across from Mom and Dad, who’re looking me in the eye and asking me, “Now what did you REALLY do?” It’s my eyes filling with tears as I realize that I DID know better than to do that. And it’s that hurt look in his eyes when they shows me – don’t even have to tell me – that they’re disappointed in me.
I know it’s less intimidating to call it “The Great Sofa of Judgment,” but for some reason that idea strikes more fear in me than any image of a courtroom. And this is what each and every one of us must face one day.
This is the perspective that we must continually train our eyes toward. If we look on the earthly perspective, we see that we are certainly better off than others, that we sin less openly than others. We may see some in rich clothing, with fine jewelry and garments (either literally or figuratively).
But when we put on God’s lenses for a moment, we see beyond the earthly perspective and into the eternal. Almost like x-ray glasses, we see that all of us are really the poor, miserable creatures who wander in need of grace and mercy. In the eternal perspective – the one that REALLY matters – all of us are on an equal playing field. There is no high ground or low ground. Each of us stands before a holy and righteous God who judges us – not just on his own standards, but on the standards that you and I know about ourselves. We know what we ought to do and we don’t do it. We know what we should not do, and yet we do it anyway. There is no high ground and low ground at the foot of God’s throne – we are all on level ground.
The Canaanite Woman’s Faith
The other lectionary passage this morning from Matthew’s Gospel is about how Jesus dealt with partiality and prejudice. Here, he teaches his disciples a powerful lesson about how they look at people. Jesus has left the comfortable areas of Galilee in favor of the northern Gentile territories. He is, in fact, in modern-day Lebanon when he encounters a woman who begs that Jesus would cast the demon out of her daughter.
She is the lowest of the low in the eyes of the Jew – she is a woman. She is a Gentile. And she comes begging for Jesus to do something. While the storyteller focuses on Jesus’ response, I think it’s more instructive for us to look at what the disciples did. “Make her go away, Jesus. She’s bothering us.”
That’s when Jesus does the unimaginable – both to us and to them. He knows his disciples are prejudiced against her, but instead of scolding them outright, he gives them a backdoor rebuke.
He begins by speaking to the woman in the way the disciples would have – tells her he hasn’t come for her. Calls her a “Gentile dog.” They were all used to this kind of rhetoric. This is how the Jews spoke of Gentiles all the time. You can almost see the disciples nudging each other and giggling at how he treats her.
Then she responds with faith and tenacity, and Jesus gives her the biggest compliment he could have given her – and the biggest insult he could have given his closest followers. “Woman, great is your faith.”
He’d never said that to his closest followers the disciples. The constantly heard, “Where is your faith?” and “Oh you of little faith!” But here, he tells the lowest of the low that she has “great faith.” It must have irked the disciples to no end! But it made the point – their prejudice had no place in the Kingdom of God. And to further make his point, he heals her daughter as well.
Concluding – Letting it Seep In
So James and Jesus have made our point this morning: if we understand this – if we have TRULY looked into God’s message and seen the truth – we must let it impact our actions. We must treat everyone as equal. That does not mean we rush to the poor man at the expense of the rich man. It doesn’t mean we run to the Hispanic man and leave the white guy wondering where we are.
It means we treat the both the poor and rich man, both the white and black and Asian and Hispanic – as all the same. All loved by God. All miserable creatures in need of mercy and forgiveness. All sons and daughters of God who will one day be called to reckon for the things we’ve done. We are called to treat them as if they were people just like us… as if they WERE us. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
May God grant us the vision, the change in perspective, to see ourselves and others as we truly are. May God, through the Spirit, allow the Gospel to sink into every area of our lives and sink these old human habits – so that the pure, holy life of Jesus may shine through.
