How Comfortable Are We?

Text: James 2:1-14

Focus: Prejudice

Function: To help people overcome prejudice

Form: Expository

Intro: How comfortable are we with the word Sin?

What about the word Evil?

What about acceptable prejudices?

Let those questions sit in the back of your mind

And let me begin the answer to those questions with a couple of verses that really shocked me!

In 3^rd Greek, we had to translate the book of James. It is a little more difficult that 1 John, but a heck of a lot easier than Hebrews.

And I have to tell you, verses 10-12 really shocked me when I read what I was actually reading. Let me re-read them:

¹⁰Whoever breaks one commandment is guilty of breaking them all. ¹¹For the same one who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not commit murder.” Even if you do not commit adultery, you have become a lawbreaker if you commit murder.

Listen to those words in context and see if you don't hear it as well.

James is saying: “You do well to not commit adultery to prove that you are pure Christians, but let me expose your hypocrisy in this, get ready, even though you are sexually pure, by the rules, what about your murders?

Does anybody else find this shocking? It is worded as if murder was common, and acceptable as long as they were sexually pure.

Let me make an obvious metaphor here. I believe in sexual purity. I am glad to be a one woman man. But, I am not proud of it. What I am happy about is God's grace in spite of me.

But, having said I believe in that moral purity that he is talking about, the respect for my wife, my marriage covenant, the promise to “cling only to her” and her pledge to “cling only to me” has given my life a central pillar to which I am grounded.

God gave me to the Church, and God gave her to me.

And, I absolutely love the way you respect that boundary. Thank you!

I don't know if murder was more common in whatever circumstance that James is writing in. That is really hard to believe. Unless he is including all warfare, self-defense, all hatred, unforgiveness, bitterness, envy and strife. Maybe he is. But I doubt it.

Either way. The context is clear, you can't hide behind the cloak of sexual purity and high moral standards and use that to get away with ignoring the basic command, and it is right here in the text, it is the reason why James is a liberating and freeing book. Because in the book, James is explaining exactly what Jesus meant when Jesus said, “a New Command I give you, `LOVE ONE ANOTHER.'”

Can I get a witness? AMEN!

Here is what matters to God, loving each other in very practical, actionable ways.

Period. We love God by loving others. Jesus said it, “Do you love me? Love others.” Literally, He said: “Obey Me.” But again, He made only one commandment primary, the new commandment and James is setting us free from all the old code of the law with this one simple phrase. He states it two ways: the “Law that sets us free,” (Verse 12), and “The Royal Law, or The Law of the Kingdom,” (Verse 8). I like the NRSV “Royal law.”

So, to say “love me by loving others,” is probably the easiest way for me to sum up the whole command of scripture. And James makes it pretty easy.

And remember, the obvious metaphor is real obedience and love for God isn't merely adhering to a code of sexuality as proof of your true witness for Christ when one uses that as an excuse to ignore the much more weightier command to love one another.

Those who use that excuse to break the command of loving others, according to James, place themselves out of grace and a works oriented salvation.

So, I can see Martin Luther's problem with this book being a works oriented book. It would be much easier to have to obey a simple list of don't's in order to be saved. Lists of rules, especially -if we think we can pick and choose which ones- take us out of grace (but not God's love. Hear both of those phrases again.

Lists of rules keep us out of grace. But, hear this part, Nothing takes us out of God's love.

Now, in a sense it is indeed shocking, but nothing like the images that so many of us saw this week on Media and Social Media.

A little boy Aylan Kurdi, was found by Turkish police washed up dead on the shore. The man from Human Rights Watch, who first posted the picture online said this: “I dress my child every morning. When I put my Child's tennis shoes on him every morning, he knows that he is loved. It is a symbol of love and care. That parent dressed his child that morning with the same love for him.”

And yet, an acceptable prejudice in our culture are immigrants and refugees who are demonized as those who are taking our jobs and destroying our way of life.

Don't worry, I am not going to lay that child on our shoulders this morning. I know that we care and we cannot change what happened there. All we can do is brighten the corner where we are. And we do. Hope Church does that.

And, there is nothing at all comfortable in our hearts about the plights of refugees across the world.

We can't save the world entire.

But we can save the one next door.

Here is another problem for me. This passage, if taken to its extreme, could legitimatize the demonization of the rich by us, or Christians.

Riches are not evil. Making an idol of riches is wrong.

But that isn't our problem.

And praise God it isn't!

I started out with the question, how comfortable are we with the word sin?

And we aren't.

And we aren't for a good reason.

Sin could mean shame.

Most often it does imply shame.

And Jesus has set us free from shame.

And we are set free with the simple command, “love one another.”

We can't change the world entire.

But we can hope for the world entire.

We can love the world entire.

And we can love God by loving the ones that God has given to us to love.

I want to help Syrian refugees. I will never call any immigrant anything other than the one word that Jesus gave us for them, and that is “neighbor.”

Here we are God, willing to love everyone else.