Rags or Riches

There is a book which I think came out in the 70s and the book is called Out of the Salt Shaker by a person by the name of Rebecca Manley Pippet. It's a bit like a modern classic in some ways, and in the book, she tells the story of a bright agnostic student called Sue who was interested in Christianity but had lots and lots of questions. And the advice she was given, the advice she gave to Sue was: you may not believe in God, you may not believe in Jesus, but why don't you just talk to the four walls if that's what you think you're doing. Just talk to the four walls and say to the four walls this: "If Jesus is truly God, please show me." And then read some of the gospel, the gospels in the New Testament and then try and put them into practice. That's the advice that she gave to Sue. So Sue thought, "Okay, I'll do that, I'll give it a try." And one day she prayed the prayer, she read a little bit from Matthew's gospel from the sermon on the mount, and it said this: "If someone steals your coat, don't let him have only that but offer your cloak as well."

And she thought, "I'm not quite sure what to do with that," but she kind of forgot what she had to do and she went into her week and she went off to the library to work on her thesis. And as she sat down, this guy came up to her and started yelling at her and saying to her how the school, the university had not given him a desk and he was now going to take her desk. And they had a bit of a heated argument until he said to her, "If you don't give it to me I'm going to steal it from you." And she groaned and thought, "I can't believe this is happening, is there, is there some other way I could discover God rather than go through this particular process?" She couldn't escape the fact that she had read that verse the very morning, that very morning, and so she said to the guy, "Okay, you can have the desk but don't push your luck." Now on one occasion Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples and you'll know the truth.".

Can I just read that to you again because it's so important? He said, "If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples and you will know the truth." We tend to think, "Show me this is true and then I'll do it." But Jesus says, "Do it and you'll know it's true." If this morning you find yourself here as a seeker, you might call yourself a seeker, not the, you know, not the musical seekers, the people who are seeking after God, or maybe you find yourself an agnostic, you're saying, "I, I just really don't know," I find myself here for, for whatever reason, or you might call yourself a doubter—take, take the risk and try the method. Just try it and see. Read a bit, try and put it into practice and just see what happens—a noble experiment if you like. Do it and you'll know it's true. Now James in his letter is saying something fairly similar: he's saying you cannot know without doing. You cannot know without doing. Now I want to suggest to you that this is very pertinent to our tribe and our group.

The letter of James is very pertinent to us because we know a lot. We have heard lots of sermons. The people in this particular building have heard lots and lots of sermons. You have probably read lots and lots of Bible. You might have been going to Bible studies for years. Our challenge is not knowing what to do—that's not our problem. Do we do what we know? That's the question. And that is why Bible colleges and theological colleges are such dangerous places, because you go to this place and you get to know so much more than you can actually do. It's almost like you, you know, you know all this stuff and you've got a whole lifetime to do it, but it's a dangerous place to be because you're going to learn so many things that you can't actually, you won't have time to put into practice just the enormity of them. And there are some things you can't just know from books; some things you have to learn by doing. You know, apprenticeships and, you know, being an electrician or a carpenter, you've got to learn it by doing.

You can't just really learn it from a book. I mean books are important, but you've got to learn by doing it. Surgery, I believe you can't learn it from a book; in fact, you'd be quite worried wouldn't you if your surgeon said, "Oh yeah I learned it from a book." No, you want him to have done it or she to have done it beforehand. Apparently the great masters, the great painters, they would have apprentices or disciples if you like, and the disciples would do bits and pieces of the work. They might work on an area of the painting which was not all that important or they might mix the paints or they would have these little jobs to do and slowly but surely they would learn by doing. Now this is not boy scout Christianity, you know, it's just about helping people across the road. It's not that kind of thing that James is talking about here, but he's saying it's possible just to talk a good game, not actually do it. And you can talk a good faith, but you need to do what you should and you need to do what you could.

So practically, chapter 2 verse one, which is the passage we're looking at today. Practically he says my brothers and sisters, 2:1 page 1196, my brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Believers in the glorious Lord Jesus Christ don't show favoritism. The word that's translated there for favoritism is literally receiving the face, like paying attention to the face or the presentation of the person. And the example he gives, the particular example he gives is rich and poor. I want to try and show you that this is an example he's giving here: rich and poor. Verse two: "Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say 'Here is a good seat for you' but say to the poor man 'You stand over here' or 'sit on the floor by my feet,' have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?".

Now it's likely the man that James is using as an example is a particularly rich Roman, a member of Roman aristocracy. He's got the bright colored clothing, he has the gold ring, he is someone who is, let's say he's in the in-group. And then there is the poor person, perhaps in shabby clothing, maybe he's not, you know, not that presentable, and he's in the out-group. And James says, "Give one the, if you give one the place of honor and one the place of dishonor, have you not discriminated against them?" Now a couple of things here to, to take note. First of all, it's not talking about respect for dignitaries. It's not advocating some sort of, you know, proletarian rejection of the bourgeoisie, low-level anarchy, French Revolution, overthrow the upper class—he's not talking about that. It's not that sort of thing. He's just saying don't be sycophantic to them. Could be the, could be the wealthy, could be the beautiful, the powerful, it could be a number of different types of people.

The people who, who occupy the places of, of power and prestige in society, don't fawn over them and be sycophantic towards them. You can be respectful to people in office, that's fine. There's nothing wrong at all with when you go into a courtroom bowing to the judge; that is just showing the right level of deference to a dignitary. It's not about not attending black-tie fundraising dinners, all of that, all of that's fine. But how do you treat those who can't give you much? How do you treat the easy people and the difficult people? How do you treat the people who give you energy and make you feel good and the people who drain you? How do you treat the pleasant and the unpleasant? Are there some people who just become invisible to us? James is saying be ready to be kind to anybody, anybody. Now lots of people say that our church, Christ Church Lavender Bay, is a friendly church. Good. It's good that it's a friendly church. James is talking about something different here.

What he's wanting us to do is to see people as God sees them, because God, God doesn't really pay any attention at all to the outside. God doesn't pay any attention to particular social status. God sees the heart. You know, you come to church with very important people, very important people. In fact, you will not sit next to a more important person than you are sitting next to right now. And James says, "Don't despise the humble." There is part of us when we read this, we, we kind of say to ourselves, well it's sort of noble to say what he's talking about. We, we, we sort of feel like it is noble to promote the humble. There's something we feel like is inherently right about this. I want to suggest to you that's because we've had 2,000 years of Jesus' teaching and we instinctively think, yes, it's kind of right to be this way. In the ancient world it wasn't that way. In the ancient world humility was disdained. It was all about the face you could produce, the face you could show where you stood, your prestige.

These sorts of verses here I think also sit kind of well for us Australians with our egalitarian values. But where did our egalitarian values come from? Did they come from our convict past? Well that was quite a long time ago and most of us are immigrants since then. I want to suggest to you that that is the, our egalitarian values have also come from the teachings of Jesus, Christianity. And we Australians try and turn it around, don't we? We, we say, "Well the tall poppies need to be cut down." You know, Australians are very fair people, we treat every, everyone with disrespect. But that's not what James is talking about; he's talking about treat everyone with respect. See people through God's eyes. There is a rich history of Christians caring for the poor, caring for the disabled, caring for widows, caring for lepers, sex workers, outcasts. Some of you are, are familiar with the work of Andrew Browning, who's an Australian who works as a surgeon in the fistula hospital, one of the fistula hospitals, a group of them in Ethiopia.

And you may know, for example, that sometimes in that particular country, during childbirth, women develop—I won't go into the details, but they can develop injuries which cause fistulas. And it's not just a, a medical or a physical problem; it becomes a social problem as, as well. They're thought of as outcasts. And so he's an example, and his hospitals are examples of Christians working with people who are on the outer. But it's not so much the economic differences here of rich and poor; the real difference that is God's concern is deeper. The real concern is faith in Christ. So look at verse one: "my brothers as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ." It's faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that's the, that's what's being spoken about here. And then in verse five he talks about, "listen my dear brothers and sisters." Look at verses five and six: "has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?".

"But you dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are, are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?" So here, here the issue is faith in Jesus, and he's saying the poor in this situation have got their faith in Jesus but the rich don't because you see they're blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong. This is James's example. But the depth of it, but deep down he's talking about faith in Christ, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the issue here is not so much rich and poor because Jesus talked often about the poor in spirit—the spiritually poor. Jesus said, Sermon on the Mount, "blessed are the poor in spirit." God did look after the economically poor, but the emphasis all the way through the Bible is on spiritual poverty. So faith in Christ is for the down and out and for the up and out, for both people.

That's why Paris needs to hear the good news of Jesus and so does Peru. This year we have supported missionaries in wealthy Taiwan and in poor East Africa. We support missionaries in southwest Sydney which is urban and multicultural, and we support missionaries in southwest New South Wales which, which is rural and monocultural. So we need to do, we need to support everyone. We need the gospel to go to all sorts of people. There was a man in the previous century whose name was Eric Nash. He was, he was an Englishman. He worked for Scripture Union and he saw the goal, if you like, of trying to reach the leaders of tomorrow. And so he worked in the greater public schools Scripture Union. He was a quiet man, apparently fairly low-key sort of person, but his strategy was to kind of reach the young leaders. And as he spoke the gospel to them and encouraged them and supported them, they grew and went on and many became the great Christian leaders in the UK of the previous century—people like the Dick Lucas's and the John Stotts of this world.

And person after person in Christian ministry but also the leaders of, of that country. And if you want to summarize it all, James brings it all under the royal law. See verse 8: "If you really keep the royal law found in scripture, love your neighbor as yourself, you're doing right." That's the overarching, mantra if you like: "keep the royal law found in scripture, love your neighbors as yourself, you're doing right." Jesus summarized the commandments under that royal law: love of neighbor. Verse 9: "But if you show favoritism you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers." For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not commit murder." If you do commit adultery but don't commit murder, you've become a lawbreaker. "Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who's not been merciful.".

"Mercy triumphs over judgment." So these are James' examples. He uses adultery; he said you haven't committed adultery, great, but what if you commit murder? He may be very close to the Apostle Paul at this point where Paul in Romans and Galatians says, it's futile to be justified by the law; everyone's a lawbreaker. To say you've only broken a minor law is a problem. Jesus in the sermon on the mount says be a maximalist not a minimalist; don't do just enough. But in James, in 8 to 11, James is saying don't be uneven. Don't just pick and choose what you're going to do. Don't just pick and choose when you discriminate between one person or another. Don't just pick and choose. You know, you may know what it's like when you're traveling and I keep, I keep seeing these illustrations at the moment about traveling, but you, you might know what it's like and you, you, you, you stay at a hotel or an accommodation and you get breakfast as well. And sometimes the breakfast is amazing, too many things to choose from.

And you say, "Well I'll have this but I won't have this. I'll have the muesli but I don't like the bacon. I'll choose this part but not this part." And James is saying don't just pick and choose. Don't pick and choose what part of God's word you're going to listen to. Or if you're a Socceroo, imagine saying, "Sorry I don't play defense." Well it's better than nothing isn't it? At least I can attack well with the ball but I don't do defense. You're unlikely to get a place on the team, right? Or just say you find yourself tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon in a Qantas plane, QF5. Ladies and gentlemen this is the, this is the captain speaking. I want to welcome you to, Qantas Flight QF5 from Sydney flying to Rome. The weather in Rome is fine, 33 degrees. One of the engines is working fine; the other three, yeah not so good. I think I want all four engines working thank you before we take off. James is picking up the person here who says, "Well I've, I've done this thing but I haven't done this thing.".

Sure I lie a bit but I haven't killed anyone—that's got to be a positive hasn't it? Now James is saying don't be uneven in doing what God wants you to do. He's not saying you're accepted by God because of keeping the law, but now that you are, don't be uneven about it. How can you love your neighbor as yourself and show favoritism? The law of Christ sets people free. A couple of questions to finish: are you a merciful person? Do you show honor to everyone? Do you see people through the eyes that God, as God sees them? Are you even? Are you uneven? These are the signs of life. I, I don't know whether you've ever experienced this but as a teacher I had to do CPR training all the time, like every second year I think. I know it back to front. One of the things you do in CPR training, the very first thing you do they say to you is when you find an, an unconscious person you look for signs of life. They say hold them by the shoulders, shake them, yell at them, try and wake them up: hello.

Hello, are you okay? Check for a pulse, check for breathing. These are the signs of life. James says signs of life: do you do what you know? Let's pray. Heavenly Father we, we thank you for the words that we have, great treasures from your mouth, through your servants and people like, the Apostle James. But we pray that we would not just know them but we would do them and by doing them we would know their truth. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

‍