“1 My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
5 Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him? 6 But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong?
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During seminary I was part of a church which dated from the colonial era. You are now looking at a picture of a plaque on one of their pews. More specifically, you are looking at a plaque on the pew which belonged to the William Brown family of the First Hamilton Congregational Church in Massachusetts. It was a common English practice, and therefore a common New England practice, to sell pew reservations to subsidize the cost of a new church building. This pew was Brown’s private property. He paid $100 in 1843 for it; that’s about $3,200 today.
Now you are looking at the plaque marking the pew shared by the Goodhue and Patch families. Together they paid $20 in 1843; that’s $630 today. It seems they had to borrow money for it because you see the interest tacked on below.
Which of these two pews do you think had a better view of the pulpit? Which pew do you think afforded better acoustics? Which pew do you imagine appeared more prominent to the rest of the congregation?
You are now looking at the $15 pew reserved for the parish. If you couldn’t afford your own pew, this is where you would sit. These pews, of course, were the least attractive seats. This system of selling pews was devised to help raise funds, but it wound up communicating influence. It wound up discriminating.
I imagine this system ruffles your feathers. We Americans tend to be incredibly egalitarian at this point in history. We think everyone should be equal. This system smacks of old-world hierarchy.
Those New England Christians saw nothing wrong with this practice even though they knew the book of James said, “If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘you stand there’ or ‘sit on the floor by my feet,’ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”
They saw nothing wrong with this practice. We do because we are a few steps removed from their culture.
Are there any practices in our church culture that are wrong but yet don’t seem wrong to us because we are too close to them? Do any of our church practices discriminate? Do we act like judges with evil thoughts without knowing it?
Looking back and scoffing at the errors of the past will only puff us up. Looking within and seeing what we need to change has the potential to build this church up. The church has no business discriminating because this is Christ’s church and he doesn’t discriminate.
The follower of Jesus Christ cannot discriminate lest he exclude Christ from the church. That is the claim of this sermon: the follower of Jesus Christ cannot discriminate lest he exclude Christ from the church.
We will study this in two points. First: favoritism forbidden. Second: blessed are the poor. First, in verses 1-4, we will see that favoritism is forbidden. Second, in verses 5-7, we will see that the godly poor, as well as the godly rich, are the blessed ones.
First: favoritism forbidden. James has been teaching us about genuine religion. Genuine religion pulls away from the sin of the world and moves towards people in need. Genuine religion keeps itself unstained by the world –it pulls away from sin. Genuine religion cares for those in distress –it moves towards need.
You might find one of those two directions more natural for you than the other. You might find yourself quick to grieve over your sin but rather blind towards the needs around you. Or the idea of working with an at-risk youth might appeal to you but the idea that a Christian shouldn’t watch certain movies chafes you. James calls you to pursue both holiness and compassion. You are to run towards need and away from sin. Which direction seems less pleasurable to you? Behold Jesus and his joy in both.
Jesus cared for those in need. We need to be told to care for those in need because by nature we humans won’t. By nature, we show favoritism to the rich. That’s why James needed to say, “My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism.” James needed to say that because we will be tempted to show favoritism.
Imagine that Dennis Albaugh joined this congregation. Albaugh owns Albaugh LLC, a fertilizer and pesticide company. He is the wealthiest man in Iowa with personal holdings valued at $1.4 billion. If he joined this church, the Holy Spirit would urge you not to show him favoritism. Yes, he could easily pay our annual budget with only a fraction of his tithe, but you are commanded to give him no preferential treatment. His money wouldn’t excuse him from submitting to the authority of this church as the profession of faith form says. His money wouldn’t excuse him from his responsibilities as a church member. His money would make him no different from you or me.
Showing partiality to the rich is so natural to us that I must ask the question, how could you not? Wouldn’t you be a bit nervous to invite a man worth $1.4 billion over for supper? Wouldn’t you as a church leader be a bit nervous about doing anything that might provoke that man? How could you treat him like everyone else?
James says that you avoid favoritism by focusing on the glorious Lord Jesus Christ. “My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism.”
Jesus Christ is far more glorious than Dennis Albaugh. Jesus Christ is far more glorious than anyone in this church who might intimidate you. When the apostle John saw Jesus in a vision, he fell down as if he were dead. That outstrips the frenzy of Beatlemania at its most intense. Jesus is more impressive than any of the rich and famous. Jesus gave John that vision of himself to encourage John in his suffering. He wanted John to see that he, and not the world, was intimidating. James wants you to see that Jesus and not the rich are impressive.
Dennis Albaugh, with his $1.4 billion, is a sinner who needs the exact same grace as you. He is as dependent on God as you are. What Isaiah said about all of us is as true for Albaugh as it is for you. “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.” Don’t show partiality to Dennis Albaugh.
Don’t be intimidated by Dennis Albaugh. If you are intimidated by anyone in this congregation, you need to stop that because you will show that person sinful favoritism. What we are doing right now helps you stop that. In this sanctuary we revere God –Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and we leave with a renewed center of gravity. ‘God is big. People are small. Jesus is glorious. Humans are dust and ashes.’
If you don’t see that people are small, you will play favorites. You will see one person as more important than another person and you will treat them accordingly.
The Jewish Christians to whom James wrote were playing favorites. They were favoring the rich over the poor. This was and is far more common than we would like to think. It was common in the past. Remember those church pews? It is common today. GK Chesterton was right, “The rules of a club are occasionally in favor of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favor of the rich one.”
Churches are far more prone to favor the rich than the poor. They are far more prone to worry about offending a wealthy contributor than they are about offending a single woman on the margins of the church.
James gave a hypothetical example of this in verse 2, “Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘here’s a good seat for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘you stand there’ or ‘sit on the floor by my feet,’ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”
I can’t imagine our ushers seating people this way. That’s not where the rubber hits the road for us, but the rubber does hit the road for us somewhere as a church.
In my previous congregation, the rubber hit the road for us in our international ministry. We leaders had to check ourselves to make sure that the desires of the internationals didn’t carry less weight than the desires of the English-speaking congregation. We had to check ourselves to see if we practiced the same care for souls among the Lao, Anuaks, Oromo, and Liberians as we did for the rest of the church who paid the lion’s share of the budget. The drift was never in favor of the internationals. It was always in favor of the people who paid the bills. “The rules of a club are occasionally in favor of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favor of the rich one.”
That was one of the threats of favoritism in Worthington. What are the threats of favoritism here? Inwood isn’t immune from the need to hear verse 1, “My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism.” Are there any ways that we as a church celebrate the well off and inadvertently humiliate the poorer members among us? I have no idea. I’m new here. I’ve seen a lot of generosity and offers of practical help to those in need, but favoritism is subtle, and it can show up in unexpected ways in any church.
Let’s narrow the questions down to you. Do you favor the well to do? Do you have friends who make significantly less than you do? Are you favoring an economic class without even knowing it?
This is humility for our proud age. As one movie put it, we Americans, “buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” We want to be seen as well off even if we aren’t. We do that because we think being well off somehow means that we are worthwhile.
James says that is judgmental and evil way to think. He says that valuing others or yourself by money rather than by God’s metrics turns you into a judge with evil thoughts. How do you value people? Do you value them by their attractiveness? Do you value them by their income? Do you value them by their usefulness to you? Do you value them differently according to ethnicity? Stop. You are acting like a judge with evil thoughts.
Remember Jesus. He chose to fellowship with you. He, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God to be a reason for preferential treatment but instead he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, and he served you.
You can’t take the Christmas story seriously and then discriminate based on wealth. Jesus was born in a barn. You can’t take the life of Christ seriously and then discriminate based on wealth. “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man had no place to lay his head.” You can’t take the cross seriously and then discriminate based on wealth. Jesus died naked as guards gambled for his clothes.
Would you discriminate against Jesus? Would we as a church discriminate against Jesus? Bonhoeffer is right. “The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ. In the poor, brother Christ is knocking at the door.”
The birth, teaching, and example of Jesus show us that the poor are blessed. That’s our second point: blessed are the poor.
James has told us that favoring the rich over the poor makes us judges with evil thoughts. He now proves it by contrasting our carnal, worldly judgments with God’s thoughts. Verse 5, “Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?”
By favoring the rich, these first century Christians were making the opposite choice from God. By and large it was the poor who had come to faith in Jesus Christ at this point in church history.
Now God doesn’t exclusively prefer the poor, plain, and weak the way we tend to exclusively prefer the rich, attractive, and powerful. James was urging these Christians to notice the bulk of the people whom God called into the church. By and large the rich had rejected the call into the church. Christ said that they would. “How hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
God’s choice of the poor humbles the rich. As Paul told the Corinthians, “Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” God doesn’t need the rich, intelligent, and beautiful to display His mercy. The poor, uneducated, and plain can do anything God values just as well.
The Jewish Christians to whom James wrote were favoring the rich and James saw a certain irony in that. These Christians were economically persecuted by the surrounding Jewish community. Jews were refusing to do business with them because of their newfound faith in Jesus as the Messiah. James wanted them to see that they were bending over backwards to impress the wealthy Jews and yet it was these wealthy people who were discriminating against them. That’s verse 6, “Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong?”
It is a strange impulse to crave the respect of your persecutors. That was true then and that’s true today. The church embarrasses itself by fawning over the rich and powerful. We trim the words of Jesus to try to appeal to the elites. We dishonor Jesus in our desire for respect and approval from a culture whose values have more to do with Babylon in the book of Revelation than they have to do with the Beatitudes of Jesus of Nazareth.
Now, you need to be careful here because some Christians take these words of James as an excuse to villainize every rich man and lionize every poor man. Listening to some church leaders, you would think that every poor man is inherently holy and that every rich man is being sucked down to hell under the weight of his gold.
Calvin was far wiser. Commenting on this verse, he wrote, “If you read [these verses to say], ‘you sin if you respect the rich,’ that would be absurd; but if [you read it to say], ‘you sin if you honor the rich alone and despise the poor and treat him with contempt,’ [that would] be a pious and true doctrine.”
You must do this by focusing not on the poor, nor on the rich, but on Jesus. “My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism.” You don’t honor the poor because you are better than those who neglect the poor. You don’t honor the poor because you are more enlightened than the selfish. That’s acting like a judge with evil thoughts.
You honor the poor because you have been given far more than you will ever give. You honor the poor because you are an object of divine charity. “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus. Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, that you might become rich.”
Jesus identified himself with the poor. You see that at Christmas. You see that on the cross. You will see that at the final judgment. ‘“Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and help you?” “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.”’
If you dishonor the poor, you would have dishonored Jesus had you met him on the streets of Galilee. If you prefer the rich, you could have missed Jesus. If you prefer the rich, you might be missing him right now. Jesus isn’t an idea. He is a person. Don’t discriminate against him. Amen.