22 OT B: Show no partiality to others or to ourselves

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

For some reason, during the heart of the pandemic, I watched a filmed version of a concert called American Utopia by a man named David Byrne. Now, this is definitely not a concert for everyone. In fact, I would bet most of you would shut it off in the middle of the first song. I know a person who refuses to even get that far because the performers don’t wear shoes or socks and you can see their bare feet. It’s politically liberal and there are some really weird songs in it. Still, I started watching it and was prepared to hate it but there was something kinda captivating, kind of beautiful, about it. If the name David Byrne sounds familiar, it may be because he was in an 80’s rock band called Talking Heads. And, sure enough, at one point in the concert, David Byrne grabbed his guitar and started singing Once in a Lifetime, one Talking Heads biggest hits. As a kid, when I would hear this song, I had no context to what Byrne was singing. But, as I prayed over the second reading for today, I found the words to this song sort of floating through my head…

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself in another part of the world

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"  

St. James begins chapter 2 of his letter by saying that, if we have the faith of Jesus Christ, we should not show partiality toward a rich or poor person. What’s interesting is that he goes on basically to say that we should show partiality to the poor. The next two verses say, “But you dishonored the poor person. Are not the rich oppressing you? And do they themselves not haul you off to court? Is it not they who blaspheme the noble name that was invoked over you?” So, what is James really saying? I think it’s easy to want to associate with rich people. We see them driving a nice car or living in a nice house, maybe inviting us to come to the vacation house they own. They’re attractive people with nice clothes, nice faces, and nice personalities. Then we look over at poor people who are asking for financial help or asking for a ride because their old beater of a car is broken. They aren’t beautiful, of course. I think that’s why St. James says that we probably should favor the poor: because we naturally want to be around the rich. They have better stuff. 

St. James offers two reasons why we should be aware of this unconscious bias, if you’ll allow me to insert a phrase he doesn’t use. First, because the rich have power, they can haul you off to court. If you can be seduced into favoring rich people, so can the police and the government. A rich person can build walls to protect the outside world from knowing they’re fighting but a poor person is exposed. And, hopefully, the rich have fewer things to fight about because they have a large automobile, with a beautiful house and a beautiful spouse. This is, in many ways, a pragmatic reason to not show partiality: because the rich are powerful and they can use that power against you so don’t get too close or too far from them. 

But the second thing St. James says, which I think poses the greater challenge from a faith perspective, is that, if we are going to have the heart of Jesus, we have to operate under the law of freedom. Now, what exactly is the law of freedom? We can’t be so attached to our possessions or the things of the earth that we lose sight of our true home in heaven. The truth is that both the rich and the poor can lose sight of this. I know people who are very poor who do nothing but lament that they lost something, some store has closed or some building was torn down. I know part of this has to do with struggles to deal with historical change but I think there can also be a kind of idolatry that happens when people can’t imagine something needing to change. I’m reminded of some groups on social media where all people do is look at old, dilapidated buildings and click their tongues at how sad it is or claim that someone should buy it and make it into a home.

St. James, therefore, wants to make sure that, when people come to a Christian gathering, we show no partiality to who they are or what they have because we don’t don’t want them to show partiality to us simply because of who we are or what we have. Even if we’re rich, there is someone richer with a larger automobile, a more beautiful house, or a more beautiful wife or husband for that matter. 

In the past few weeks, we’ve been taking a few extra collections to help people in need. I heard someone remark that they were visiting with someone who complained about how we’re always asking for money for yet another group. I tend to smirk at these comments because it’s not like someone is forcing you to donate. I often wonder if the comment is really a sign of guilt that the person hasn’t donated more to Haiti or the victims of hurricanes or for the unborn. But I also wonder if, perhaps, the person has a misplaced sense of charity. They see their donation to their church as a gift to a charity and say that donation should be enough. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad people donate to their parish. We couldn’t keep this place open without it. However, I hope we can also see that there’s at least a level of selfishness if that is our only gift to a charity. St. James sees the law of freedom tied to mercy. He says, “For the judgment is merciless to one who has not shown mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”

I’m guessing we’ve all found ourselves, at one point or another, asking “how did I get here?” How did my priority become keeping a large automobile or a beautiful house with a beautiful spouse. The question St. James wants us to ask ourselves is: do all these things get in the way of our care for each other and, if so, how can we put our priorities back where they should be?

22 OT B Be doers of the word not hearers only

 Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    One summer in seminary, I went to a bar with a group of seminary students from various denominations who were all studying hospital chaplaincy. We were all involved in a summer program called CPE, or Clinical Pastoral Education, and were at a wrap-up conference processing what we had all learned. In general it was not a great use of time so we decided to unwind and complain a little at a local watering hole in the town that was hosting us, Grinell. I remember feeling a little out of place as we walked in, wearing a dress shirt and pants in what most people would call a dive bar. After a couple of drinks, I was about ready to head for the door when I felt this hand on my shoulder and heard a voice from someone standing behind me say something like “I’ve been listening to what ya’ll have been talking about and I want to let you know I think it’s terrible that you’re here and that you’re all going to hell.” Somewhat stunned, I started to turn around but I knew already that the person was a forty or fifty year old woman who had been playing pool with two men nearby. Some women sitting with me who were training to be ministers in other denominations started to engage her by asking her questions about herself and she calmed down a bit and admitted she didn’t practice her religion anymore because she felt she was just too sinful. She said, in fact, that anyone who would hang out in a bar was just too sinful to go to church. I listened for a while and, when there was a lul in the intervention, I said to her that it was possible to come in and have one or two beers and then leave. Unfortunately, either because I was a man or because I was Roman Catholic I’m not sure, that must have triggered her because she got angry again and told me that was impossible. You only go to a bar to get drunk and do sinful things and we were all sinners for being there. I had had enough at that point so I decided to leave. The next day, when I talked to some of the people that stuck around, they said they tried to continue to engage her because she was so broken but it was futile. She was unwilling to admit the possibility of anyone entering that bar and entering the kingdom of heaven. The pastor she had growing up had taught her that and there was no changing her mind. Still, there are times when I’ve wondered if more of my time was spent in the local bar getting known and trusted by the people there, if there would be more conversions than by just sitting in the confessional hoping people would show up. But if I did that, what would you all assume about me?

We begin this week with the book of James, a book that could be summed up with the phrase “Be doers of God’s word and not merely hearers.” This book is often invoked by Catholics to answer the protestations of our Lutheran friends who will misquote St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians by saying “We are saved by faith alone”. The trouble is that each letter had its own purpose. Whereas St. Paul was worried about people believing that they could be saved without faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, St. James is worried that some believe that salvation means you don’t need what is classically referred to as “charity” or love. If you get a chance today or tomorrow to sit and read the entire first chapter of James, you may be struck by two things. First, like our Lord in the gospel today, St. James believes that evil comes from the inside of a person not from someone else’s influence. St. James would not be in favor of the excuse that the devil made me do it. Second, St. James believes that faith is a free gift offered to us by God but that, if we don’t put that free gift to use, it will be wasted. He says it’s like a person who looks at himself or herself in the mirror and, when the person walks away, she or he forgets what she or he looks like. That used to sound impossible to me until I lost my hair and, yet, still have dreams where I do have hair. I wake up and quickly realize that it was a dream because I had hair and, therefore, I’m not going to be late for my final exam in biology. Somewhere in my subconscious mind, I’ve forgotten what I look. 

So what’s the solution? St. James concludes this chapter with the same two suggestions we hear at the end in the second reading; “To care for widows and orphans in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained in the world.” So, care for those who have no one else to care for them and, yet, remain holy and unstained by the world in the process. It is possible to do both. We can care for people who may be rough around the edges or who are sinners, while also keeping our lives focused on holiness. The truth is that a lot of people who walk into bars do so because they intend to sin, to drink to excess or hook up with someone or get into a fight with someone. And you probably should be concerned if your priest was spending a lot of time down at the bar claiming to be doing so to get converts. Priests can be alcoholics too. Still, I think it’s too easy and too comfortable to use concerns about contact with some place or someone as reasons why we don’t treat someone with love. Keeping ourselves undefiled has more to do with what is happening in our heart, than it does with where we are at or to whom we are talking. Are we seeing the image and likeness of God in every person we meet and the God who is always with us even in the dark valley and the shadow of death or are we too worried about seeing the devil to be doers of the word and not merely hearers?