Sermons - Pastor Mark Williams
“Mercy triumphs over judgment”
9 / 7 / 03
James 2:1-17
Church growth gurus have a formula for building a mega-church. There are several factors that go into "growing" a church, but the first and perhaps most important factor is this: start the church with beautiful people. Place attractive people in positions of leadership. Start with an attractive, likeable man as your senior pastor. The majority of churchgoers are women, so they say having a good-looking man as your preacher is a must, apparently assuming that all women must be attracted to attractive men. Then the church growth gurus tell us to surround that attractive male pastor with more attractive people in visible leadership positions. This is key to building a mega-church, they say, because people are attracted to attractive people. Those who're looking for a church are more likely go where there are beautiful people in leadership. Studies have shown that in our society, we tend to trust attractive people. We tend to associate being attractive with being successful. We gravitate toward beautiful people. So if you want people to gravitate toward your church, make sure beautiful people are in visible leadership roles. Build the church with beautiful people, and they will come. Whenever I see an advertisement for a church with the photo of their young, attractive pastor, I wonder if they hope to attract members because their pastor is attractive. When I hear pastors talking about "growing" their churches, when I hear parishioners talk longingly of packing the pews like they do in the giant suburban mega-churches, it often gives me pause. Do we grow the church by appealing to the prejudice and snap judgments of popular culture? That's one successful formula for growing a church. Or do we reject the easy, superficial gimmicks, and instead appeal to faith that's deeper and harder to sell to the masses?

The letter of James in the Bible warns us to carefully consider our motivations and our actions. Faith is a two-sided coin, James insists. We must have faith in our hearts and faith in our actions. We must behave in a manner consistent with the faith that we profess. James warns us not to be hypocrites, but to conform our actions to the faith inside our souls. Hypocrisy is one of the loudest charges leveled against the church today. A survey of men who don’t have a faith community asked why these men don’t go to church. The second most common answer among them was that they perceive the church to be full of hypocrites. The church says it’s committed to the poor, but our pews are mostly filled with the rich. The church says it stands for love, but most people observe that the church spends more time raising money than acting lovingly. We don’t practice what we preach, many people tell us. And our actions reveal that our faith is dead. James warns that it’s not enough to just say what you believe in. It’s not enough to just believe. Your faith and your actions must be consistent in order to truly do the will of God. Christian faith calls us to something deeper than just saying pretty words and following attractive people. We're called to the more difficult task of putting our words of faith into action.

The first Sunday in March this year we had picketers outside of our church. They came with signs of hatred. They shouted words of hatred. They condemned this congregation because we welcome people regardless of sexual orientation. These picketers said that they believed in the same Bible that we read and study every week. But I’m sure that the picketers must have missed this passage from James that tells us, unequivocally: "mercy triumphs over judgment." They missed these words of the Bible that instruct us to “so speak and act as those are to be judged by the law of liberty.” Christian bigots of this world seem to overlook the commandment of Jesus, echoed here in James, demanding of us that “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you show partiality,” James tells us, “you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” Christians who shout hatred and condemnation have failed to do what Jesus said was the second most important thing of all: Love our neighbor as yourself. Show favoritism only for the poor, James explained. If you have to pick sides, be on the side with those who're marginalized. Don't just gravitate toward the attractive and successful looking people. If you must decide which side of the street you're going to stand on, stand on the side with the despised. When the picketers showed up in March, we welcomed about one hundred visitors in worship that day. One of those visitors explained as he came in the door that he didn't really consider himself a Christian. But when he found out about the picketers, he decided that he had to stand on the side of the street with those who showed love and offered hospitality. When faced with the choice, he said, he couldn't just stay at home as if it didn't matter to him that people were shouting words of hatred at his neighbors. He needed to be with those neighbors, among them, intentionally on their side of the street. This man may not consider himself a Christian, but I believe that he articulated that day exactly what James taught is at the heart of vital Christian faith. When faced with a choice, choose to love your neighbor. When presented with the option, stand with those who're despised and rejected. Anything else is to choose judgment over mercy. Anything else is to fail to live the commandments that Jesus said were the heart of all Scripture: Love God, and love your neighbor.

Our actions and our faith usually don’t stand in such stark contrast as those of the picketers who were here last March. Most of us are less blatant in our prejudices and bigotry. In fact, we may even take comfort in being able to point at the homophobes and racists and classists out there and feel a little better about ourselves in here. But we must not allow ourselves to dismiss them so quickly that we fail recognize that we also can be self-righteous and prejudiced, quick to judge and slow to show mercy. As different as we may be from more blatant haters, we all have the same tendency to choose judgment over mercy. James tells us not to let ourselves off the hook so quickly. We allow prejudice to sway our decisions and affect our judgment of others. We play favorites based on what our culture tells us is beautiful and desirable. We tend to fall in line behind the dictates of what society tells us is right and morally straight. Who do we invite to church? Now I'm not asking who do we list in our statement of inclusion. Our statement of inclusion is bold, but it's passive. Who we welcome in church is different from who we invite to come to church with us. We're like most churches in this country. We tend to look alike, have similar resources, have similar interests and backgrounds. It isn't by accident that Sunday morning worship has been referred to as the most segregated hour in the week in this country. We tend to associate with those who're like us. We don't tend to reach out across the walls of race, class, and income. We don't often actively invite to church many of the people we promise to welcome once they get here. Our statement of inclusion is wonderful and bold, but we show our commitment to diversity not by whom we welcome, but whom we invite. We put our "money where our mouth is," so to speak, by stretching across the socially constructed walls of prejudice and judgement, to invite people who are different than us into our church, into our homes, and into our lives. We're called to a faith that doesn't just move our mouths, but moves our bodies as well. Bodies matter. What we do with our bodies, where we go, how we extend a loving hand in friendship, and whom we embrace matter as people of faith. Bodies matter. When we encounter bodies that are hungry or homeless or beaten or rejected, it matters how we care for them in body and in soul. Bodies matter when we profess to believe in Christ who healed the sick, ate with sinners, and stood on the side of those despised by others.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is the one that immediately follows the lectionary reading from James today. Just after today's reading from James is this wonderful statement: "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith." I love that verse because it sets a whole new standard for testing Christian orthodoxy. Faith isn't getting the words right. Faith isn't believing in the right theology or reciting the correct creed. Faith isn't about what happened two-thousand years ago, nearly as much as it's about what's happening right now, in our lives, by our actions. Faith isn't about right teaching or attractive teachers or being part of the in-crowd. Faith is about showing mercy, caring for the poor, standing with those who're despised, at the risk of being despised as well. Mercy and compassion and love for neighbor will always triumph over judgmentalism, prejudice and hateful bigotry. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what's the good of that?… Show me your faith, apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” Be not hearers who forget, but doers who act. So be it. Amen.
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