“Mutuality” based on James 2:1-10, 14-17

People often think I am a “bleeding heart liberal,” a “tree-hugging hippie,” or – to get to the point – an “everything goes progressive.” I do not deny the bleeding heart nor the tree-hugging, but actually I don’t think “everything goes.” James speaks the language of my faith, and in doing so makes clear why I find it so challenging to live out my faith the way I want to.

Both in Biblical times, and today, the culture is permeated with the premise that deference should be given to wealthy and powerful people. The work of Christians to treat everyone as beloveds of God is profoundly countercultural. James even suggests preferential treatment for the poor, although I can’t tell if this is because it is necessary to counteract the brokenness of the world, because most of the early Christians were poor, or because people living in poverty really do have a better grasp on faith. Maybe all of them.

To make his point, James sets up a believable story about two people gathering with the community of believers. One is a rich man, a senator or nobleman based on his ring, likely running for office. This rich man has some powerful quid pro quos to offer the fragile and vulnerable faith community. He could be a useful protector for them.

At the same time, another man enters the community of believers. He is poor, his clothes are old, ratty, and dirty.

The faith community responds with the world’s standards, James says. They give the rich and powerful man the best seat in the house while telling the poor man that he can either sit in a place of dishonor or stand out of the way.

James is a wisdom teacher. He speaks clearly through the ages. I can easily believe this was an actual experience in plenty of early Christian gatherings, and I know for certain it still is today. The world’s standards infiltrate the church. While Galatians 3:28 says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” That is a RADICAL claim of equity within the Church. All of the distinctions of humanity are erased by being followers of Christ. All are one. All are equal. All are equally important.

But that is easier said that done. The unconscious bias

gets carried into the church, even when people don’t want it to. And they do great damage. James says, “Siblings, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our Lord Jesus Christ?” I always worry that when we say or hear “Lord Jesus Christ” we hear it with the hierarchy of the English Nobility, a system rife with patriarchy, sexism, and economic exploitation. Which, pretty clearly, isn’t what James is saying here. For the early Christians, calling Jesus “Lord” was the utmost subversion, because it claimed that if Jesus was Lord, Caesar was not.1

By ALL of the worldly standards, Caesar WAS Lord. He was Emperor of the largest empire known to that part of the world, he was wealthy beyond imagination, he had the power of the best armies behind him, he had systems of nobility and administration under him, he could execute as he pleased, change laws when he wished, and of course his FACE was on all the money. He had titles galore, including “Lord and God,” and those were the OFFICIAL declarations of the empire, to claim otherwise was to risk death.

In the face of that reality, the early Jesus followers chose another way. A “narrower” way, a more dangerous way, a way that subverted the understanding of power, and choose nonviolence over the power of violence. They claimed Jesus, a peasant from the backwater Galilee, a rabble rouser of the small but ancient Jewish faith, a man executed by the violent power of the Empire as a the leader of a violent rebellion (even when it wasn’t true)… they claimed JESUS as Lord.

And when JESUS is Lord like THAT, to favoritism to those who hold power and sway in the Roman Empire could reasonably make James question if they actually believe in Jesus or not. Are they following the narrow way, or are they slowing just making the way wider? Are they about the radical equality of all people in the eyes of God, or about making it easier to be a follower of Jesus? Are they overturning assumptions about who matters, or are they just replicating the ways of the world.

And, of course, the crux of this series of questions: are we?

I can see some evidence that we are committed to inverting the world’s values:

• Our Community Breakfast is an abundance of good food, offered with grace and respect, that anyone would be pleased to eat. We are not only interested in feeding God’s beloveds, we are interested in feeding people AS God’s beloveds.
• Both the long-running Sustain Ministry Program and Community Breakfast have welcomed and kept volunteers who are also recipients of the ministry’s gifts. This suggest to me that we have been interested in re-distributing God’s gifts of abundance RATHER THAN just in giving gifts to ease guilt or unconsciously hold power over others.
• Our stewardship pledge sheets ask about all of the membership vows: prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness in order to remind us all that no one way of giving is more important than another, and that all of us are stronger in the ability to give in one way than another.
• The church has long advocated for living wages, and puts its money where its mouth is, paying its own employees as it believes the world should.
• Before the pandemic, some church groups offered luncheons with (nonobligatory) free will offerings, making genuine space for everyone to be fed and together regardless of income.
• Many of the trips we take as a church – hiking, baseball games, canoeing and kayaking trips – are free or affordable to people across a wide income spectrum.
• Our community is profoundly diverse, especially in socioeconomic status and income. Beloved members are rich, beloved members are poor, beloved members are in between.

And yet truth be told, I see evidence of the values of the world creeping in too though:

• Before the pandemic, often parts of the church celebrated or connected by going out to lunch or dinner, or offering support by sending a communal gift, which assumes that everyone has the discretionary money to participate.
• I sometimes hear people living in poverty referred to as “them,” such as in the context, “how can we help them?” which forgets that people living in poverty are part of us. The questions might be, “How can we ease the pain of poverty?” and “How can we transform society to end poverty?”
• There is a great value on education in this community, one that isn’t always held in enough tension with the reality that in the US access to education has more to do with pre-existant privilege than intelligence.
• Our primary worship style speaks to people’s heads at least as much as their hearts or souls, which historically fits the values of the upper class.
• Among some of our members, there is still a sense of discomfort with the struggles of people in poverty. While discomfort is itself neutral, lack of facing it has resulted in people who live in poverty perceiving that they’re welcome to eat at our Breakfast, but not join us for Worship. The perception of a two tiered system, I fear, is not entirely incorrect.

Given these two lists, I think James still has plenty to teach us, even if we’ve been trying to learn along the way.

In order to build God’s Kindom at FUMC, it may mean we have to look deeply at our discomfort. Although discomfort is natural, a willingness to change it is sometimes harder.

To live into the values of Jesus and James requires soaking up God’s grace, and a constant awareness of the ways that the world tries to separate people into worthy and unworthy categories. To be a church that lives out the “Lordship of Jesus Christ” requires us to notice class, notice classism, and actively work to change it – in ourselves and in our community. It means that those of us who do not live in poverty need to listen to people who do live in poverty, and learn from them. Our actions to disrupt the status quo and move the world toward the kindom must be based in mutuality. We can’t serve in the name of Christ if we see those we serve as “others” rather than as a part of “us.” And we can’t claim anyone as part of “us” unless they claim “us” too.

I hope and pray that God will help us take the lessons James offers to heart. Amen

1 Marcus Borg, Jesus: The Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, (HarperCollins) 2015, p. 279.

September 12, 2021

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady