Sermon
One thing I can't abide, is being judged. I don't mind the being wrong part, or the needing to improve part, or the making a mistake part. It's just that being judged is so often one-sided. No one likes being judged. It makes us feel defensive. As soon as the “defensive” switch gets flipped on, our ears usually stop working. I don't want to BE judgmental either. I don't even like my Meyers-Briggs assessment if INFJ because the J stands for judging. I want to change my assessment to INFD – D for discerning. I guess I don't even want to be judged for judging, even though I know that that's not what the J in Meyers-Briggs means!
So when James says in our text today, “Mercy triumphs over judgement.” I take note.
James is speaking about the judgement we make about people when we try to decide how close we will let them be. Kids on a playground do the same thing. One of my flute students is in a new grade and new school this year. At her lesson last week she said, “I have a new friend, sort of, I think.” She wants the new friend but is noticing things about the girl that strike her in a new way. “I think she might be a little rough,” she said. My student is doing on a sixth grade level, what we all do when life hands us new things, and new people. I did the same thing when I went on my retreat, hoping to be on my own, only to discover 18 of us in a room being assigned to the spiritual director we would work with for the week. I made a judgement based on nothing, and chose in my mind, which person I wanted to be assigned to. That doesn't even make any sense, but we do it all the time. In the grocery store, when we're driving, taking a walk, in church, at a party, or anywhere where we are in community.
Remember James was writing instructions about how to live a life in community, throughout the entire letter. A few weeks ago, we talked about living wisely. Last week we talked about wearing the whole armor of God in order to be unstained by the world. Today, James warns his readers that by judging people by their trappings, their finery, their wealth for good; and by their dirty clothes as less than, they were not living the life according to the one whose “excellent name was invoked over you.” By dishonoring the poor they were showing partiality and preference for one over the other. This is not how to live in community, says James.
Today's text is one of only two places in the book of James where the name of Jesus is mentioned. But the message of Jesus is all throughout the book. James says that the partiality they are showing goes against one of Jesus' strongest commands to love your neighbor. As a matter of fact, says James, loving your neighbor is the fulfilment of the law. This is a law that was important enough to the gospel writers that all three of the synoptic gospels tells the story of the greatest commandment.
In Mark 12:28-31 we read, “One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.”
In Matthew 22:34-40, we read, “When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
And lastly, in Luke 10:25-29 we read, “Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
It's this last telling of the story, from Luke, that gets at what James wants to curtail. Because the lawyer in Luke wanted to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” If you have to ask, you are already deciding who you will love in Jesus' name, and who you will leave out. Who is my neighbor? Do I have to help everyone? Do I have to help the poor, the unhoused, the prisoner, the gay and straight, the people who smell, the know-it-all lady down the “street, the one who thinks unlike me, the one who is a threat to my power and my way of life?
Who is my neighbor? Does “neighbor” only refer to those on close physical proximity? Does neighbor only refer to someone in close intellectual proximity? What about social proximity? How about financial proximity? What criteria defines neighbor to you? Can my neighbor be someone I have known forever, and yet I don't really know them? And likewise, maybe someone I've known forever doesn't really know me. My friend Laura, for example, I know everything about her. But I've recently discovered that she is a geology nut, and always has been. What?!
James letter reminds us that when it comes to being a community being partial, giving one more value than another goes against everything Jesus taught. In the context for todays reading, the conversation is particularly about the poor. We all have many ways however, that we distinguish ourselves from one another. We are partial all the time with good reason – we vote, we have preferences, etc. But if we divide ourselves against one another for those reasons, then we are an unhealthy community. If we judge based on those divisions, we are an unhealthy community. Religious communities have forever come together, broken apart, repaired and come together again, and broken again, and repaired and come together again. Each time coming together the repaired body is changed. This is being human. Humans are complex social creatures. Being different isn't the problem. It's when we judge and hinder belonging that it becomes a problem.
There is no entrance exam nor are there minimum requirements for anyone to come to church. Staying at a church however, is a result of any number of things. For those of us on the inside of a particular church, when we think about welcoming neighbors we think of us being here and others being there. We would like those over there to come to us over here. That makes perfect sense. We want to bring people in here and we help them to enjoy what we have and who we are. But that's only half of the whole issue of loving neighbors. What if we got the same results by asking the question differently. Instead of “what do we have that others will want” we could ask “what are we gaining from others who come to us?” Instead of “Come to my church, you'll really like us,” we could say “Come to my church, they'll really love you.” When a new person comes to Bethany, which direction does the gift go? Is it them who are happier because they have us? One possibility is that they are a gift to us, and we are changed because of them. We are closer to becoming what God wants us to be because they came here.
Whatever benefit that can come from community will only come to fruition if mercy triumphs over judgement. With God, mercy always triumphs. We are invited to be more merciful than judgmental. Judging, yes, judgmental, no. We would all prefer to be treated with more mercy and judged less. If we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves, and James tells us that that is the fulfilment of the law, then showing others more mercy and less judgment is loving our neighbor as we should.
As we move through this next phase of the pandemic, our neighbors need us. Our neighbors are just as anxious, angry, frightened, and confused as we are. Our neighbors are looking for a place to be anchored. A place to feel grounded. This, the church can be. Being the church, welcoming the stranger, loving the neighbor is not founded on belief in anything more than love. One of Bethany's strengths is in asking “Where can we help?” “What can we do?” Right now, the best way we can help is by being open, helping people find us, modeling the openness of our faith as we live as followers of Christ here on our little spot of earth.
Let's pray…