Carers

James 2:1-10    Common English Bible (CEB)

2 My brothers and sisters, when you show favoritism you deny the faithfulness of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has been resurrected in glory. 2 Imagine two people coming into your meeting. One has a gold ring and fine clothes, while the other is poor, dressed in filthy rags. 3 Then suppose that you were to take special notice of the one wearing fine clothes, saying, “Here’s an excellent place. Sit here.” But to the poor person you say, “Stand over there”; or, “Here, sit at my feet.” 4 Wouldn’t you have shown favoritism among yourselves and become evil-minded judges?

5 My dear brothers and sisters, listen! Hasn’t God chosen those who are poor by worldly standards to be rich in terms of faith? Hasn’t God chosen the poor as heirs of the kingdom he has promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Don’t the wealthy make life difficult for you? Aren’t they the ones who drag you into court? 7 Aren’t they the ones who insult the good name spoken over you at your baptism?

8 You do well when you really fulfill the royal law found in scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself.  9 But when you show favoritism, you are committing a sin, and by that same law you are exposed as a lawbreaker. 10 Anyone who tries to keep all of the Law but fails at one point is guilty of failing to keep all of it. 

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Have I mentioned that I really like James?   He spoke to individuals, rather than congregations.  He said, “this is how you should live, as a person and as a Christ follower,” whereas Paul spoke primarily to congregations, telling folks how to be church together.  In this passage James is asking the listener to pretend for a moment that they are the greeter.   If you make a big fuss over the person who drove up in a Mercedes and has all the stuff, and you put them in the very best seat, but you tell the homeless lady that she has to sit in the narthex where no one will be bothered by her odor, then according to James you have sinned.  You have shown favoritism based in socio-economic status, or class, which in his time was pretty much the main distinction between people.  There were nations, but you couldn’t necessarily tell someone’s nation by looking at them.  You could, however, determine class pretty easily - certain types and colors of clothing were restricted to the upper classes, for example.  Slaves wore particular items of clothing that free persons did not.   In the first century, and indeed for many centuries thereafter, race as a distinction between persons didn’t exist.  Your skin color really didn’t matter.  Class and gender, on the other hand, did.  So when James spoke of favoritism, he spoke in terms of wealthy versus poor.  However, as much fun as it always is to say bad things about rich people, I’m not going to do that today.  I’m not going to talk about the rich and the poor today.  

In the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) we have a strong Anti-racism/Pro-reconciliation imperative.  All ordained ministers are required to take anti-racism training periodically - in this region where we live it’s every year.  Today and next week we take a collection that benefits our Reconciliation Ministries, which helps pay for our anti-racism trainers to be trained, and for literature to help us all learn how to love one another better.   And it’s kind of funny in a “how did God manage this?” kind of way, that I accidentally skipped this reading at the beginning of the month, where it appears in the lectionary, and had to fit it in here - today - on the day when we look closely at our Anti-Racism/Pro-Reconciliation emphasis, because how much better could this passage fit the day?  Yay, God!  

James said, My brothers and sisters, when you show favoritism you deny the faithfulness of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has been resurrected in glory.. . 8 You do well when you really fulfill the royal law found in scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself.  9 But when you show favoritism, you are committing a sin, and by that same law you are exposed as a lawbreaker. 

A well dressed African American woman walked into a high end boutique and asked to see a purse that was in a locked case.  The salesclerk told her it was much too expensive for her and wouldn’t take it out of the case, but did suggest she look at other, cheaper purses.  Even though she asked to see the purse several times, the sales clerk was quite insistent on steering her to much less expensive items.   Oprah Winfrey finally left the shop, without the purse.    The owner of the boutique later said it had nothing to do with Oprah’s race . . . .   

But this happens to Persons of Color all the time.  If Oprah had been with a well dressed White friend, I suspect the purse would have come out of the case with no hesitation.   Because somehow having a White person along makes that Person of Color “acceptable” for the moment.   I can tell you from my own experience, from 25 years of marriage to a Navajo, that there was a huge difference in how he was treated when he was alone and when I was with him.  We even sometimes would go into a place separately, so that I could watch and see what happened and learn what White privilege looks like.   In restaurants, small shops, big box stores, even government agencies like the DMV . . .  it didn’t matter what type of place we entered, there was always a difference in the way we were treated.   Store security would follow him around, but not me, and not us when we went into the place as a couple.  He was always asked for his ID when using a credit card.  I rarely was.  Clerks and such would often speak to me when he was the one with the issue, assuming he didn’t understand English.  And have I told you the church story?   When we visited a church in another city one Sunday everyone was happy to welcome us, asked us to stay for coffee, and invite us to come back.  When he went back by himself a few months later none of that happened.   They turned their backs on him.  It was like he was invisible.  

I get catalogs in the mail.  I imagine some of you do, too. This company sends them weekly, I think.  If you are a White person going through your catalog and you can find yourself, but you can’t find your friend from First Friendship Baptist Church or the Korean Church or the Haitian Church or the Truk Island, Samoan, Philipino, Native American or  Hispanic Church - that is privilege in action.  In this particular catalog there is one model who might maybe be Hispanic.

If you are White you may never have noticed, but it’s there. It’s insidious, because, if you are White you don’t notice it unless you are specifically looking for it.   I look for it.  But I only look for it because I spent 25 years married to a Person of Color.  And I still don’t always see it.  But I promise you, a Person of Color notices.   If you are White, you benefit from the fact that the color of your skin is considered the norm in this country.  If you go to buy flesh colored bandaids, no problem.  But until 2015, a person of color could not find bandaids to match her skin tone.   Even now, they’re not easy to find.  Bandaids are a small thing, but they are symptomatic of privilege.  Privilege does not mean your life is easy just because you are White.  But it does mean it could be a lot harder.  

Privilege isn’t something we can do much of anything about, besides simply recognizing it exists as a fact of life in this country.  Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.   Racism, on the other hand, is something we can change.   

Racism is an evil that afflicts our nation and many others.   Racism is a choice we make to treat other people differently based on the color of their skin.  That clerk in the expensive purse store may have said she wasn’t judging Oprah on her race, but she was.  The store security officers who followed Ton’Ee around the store, but not me, were making a judgement about who was likely to be a thief based solely on skin color.  I benefited from White privilege.  Ton’Ee dealt with racism.  The people in that church - totally racist.  And that’s the one that hurts most of all.  Because - they’ll know we are Christians by our love??  

You do well when you really fulfill the royal law found in scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself.  9 But when you show favoritism, you are committing a sin, and by that same law you are exposed as a lawbreaker. 10 Anyone who tries to keep all of the Law but fails at one point is guilty of failing to keep all of it. 

When you show favoritism, you are committing a sin.  And what is racism but favoritism?   A particularly terrible, potentially deadly sort of favoritism.   Racism is a sin that strikes at the very heart of the love commandment - and the love commandment is what all the law depends on.  For remember, when Jesus was asked “which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 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.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  (Mt. 22:36-40)    Breaking this one commandment then, is as if we are breaking all the commandments.  

It is important to understand that not all White people are racist - but that all White people do benefit from privilege.  It is also important to understand that racism can be insidious.  We may not even realize that what we are seeing, hearing, even thinking or saying, is racist.  We can open our eyes to see racism where we maybe didn’t notice it before.  We can use our privilege to point out racism when we do see it.   And by our example we can teach others what it really means to love our neighbors - all of our neighbors, regardless of skin color, ethnicity or national origin.   

Maybe we, as individuals, can’t do much to change the systemic racism that is deeply rooted in our society, but we can, as individuals, change our own behaviors and beliefs.  We can come to understand that maybe things we have believed are true about other people based on their race or country of origin, aren’t.  And we can work at changing the beliefs of others.  And as each person is changed, as each person comes to love their neighbor as they love themselves, racism and all the other isms, can be eradicated.

My brothers and sisters, if we would live in God’s beloved community, in God’s kingdom on earth, then we must indeed, love one another as God loves us, as we love ourselves.  When we leave this place today, let us go out filled with the knowledge of God’s greatness, so that God’s love can overflow from our hearts in the hearts and souls of all we encounter, today and all days.