Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Go to iTunes or SoundCloud for Audio Podcast
Original Manuscript:
A friend of mine growing up, we'll call her Liz, once conducted a bold Science Fair project. She did a project to study human behavior. She went to the mall, and asked others for directions. Sometimes she would go and dress as she normally would, but sometimes she would change her appearance. She would change her hair, her make-up, and her clothes. She added a fake nose ring for additional affect.
What Liz found is what many of us would expect, that when she dressed up in her fake nose ring and other clothes, people we a lot less inclined to help her. They perceived her as not worth of their time.
The writer of James noticed a similar trend among his congregation. He noticed that there was a trend of favoritism towards those who dressed well, who showed signs of having money, while those who came in wearing dirty rags were not so well received.
James rightly chastises these Christians as not following the vast amount of Holy writings from early times to their day. God favors the needy, the widow and orphan, and the one who cannot help himself, as we heard in James last week and as we read in the Psalm this morning. He does not favor the rich and powerful. In fact, our Psalm this morning warns us against the rulers of the world and instead calls on us to follow God and God alone.
What we are called to do is to treat all as equal, for we are all equal under the eyes of God. We are all in dire need of God's Grace, and God offers that grace to all.
As I told some of the students at Southern Academy recently, God is not tribal. He loves us all. Yes, He centered His ministry as Jesus in Israel. Yes, Jesus tells the Syrophoenican woman that she is not part of the tribe of Israel, God's chosen people. But when she shows Him irrefutably that she has faith, He does not hesitate to help her just as we see later in our reading from Mark that He helps His own people.
God loves us all. And He asks us to love all too.
We all have prejudices that creep in from time to time. We all have wrongly judged someone by how that person looked. The only defense from doing so again is to realize that, yes, we have prejudices, that those prejudices are wrong, and that we can work hard to try not to let our prejudices control us and take us over. As Paul says in Philippians, we must keep striving to make our faith, the very faith James speaks of, our own, because Christ Jesus made us His own.
We must never forget that our God is a God who loved us so much, that He was willing to come down and die for us to bring us back to Him and to make us whole once again.
At St. Paul's, I have seen tremendous examples of reaching out to those who are different. I have seen newcomers welcomed. I've seen the practices of others accepted and not scorned. I have seen us bring in new members, I have seen us support them in their growth. There have even seen visitors and new members who others hear have helped invite in.
Our question now is how can we keep moving forward? How can we keep being better? The only way to do that is to invite the stranger in and to invite those who are not like us to worship with us. As I have said before, I can only do so much here. My invitation is often seen of the nice little minister who has to be inviting. But you, your invitation means so much more.
Get out there. Open your heart. Who might God be asking you to invite in? How might God want you to take that extra step to not show favoritism, but to show the same compassion and love that Jesus showed us?