Church fails, Mercy Triumphs! ~ James 2:1-13 (series on James)

2 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. ² 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. 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 and sisters: 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 dishonored 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 blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong? ⁸ If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. ⁹ But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. ¹⁰ For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. ¹¹ For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker. ¹² Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, ¹³ because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

This week, James will continue his discussion of the church, sin and Bible reading that we began last week – James 1:18-27.

          1.    Jesus, we have a problem. Actually, we have two.

Problem one: The church community, the people of God, “brothers and sisters,” “believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ”, are playing favorites, acting as law breakers, dishonoring the poor, discriminating amongst themselves, and are about to be judged. Problem two: They don’t appear to recognize it (notice the questions from vss. 6-7, which aim to provide recognition of that fact). They are not “listening,” not slowing down to bother acknowledging and change their behavior. James is continuing with the metaphor of looking into the mirror so that one is not self-deceived (James 1:23-25). Unfortunately, however, discrimination and self-deception were two of the original sins of the church (Acts 6:1) easy to forget and they have plagued us ever since.

This past week I had an enlightening experience. I have a Prius Prime plug-in hybrid. It has a charging port where the 

electric plug-in goes and you simply have to push it for it to close and push it again to have it open. One night I came out to plug it in and pushed the charging port door only to have it open half way not fully. No matter how many times I pushed it, it simply wouldn’t open and I became frustrated and began to curse all that was Toyota and technological. As I my frustration began to rise I found myself reaching in with my fingers, tempted to wrench the door open with my bare hands. Thankfully, I caught myself and finally had the presence of mind to look up the problem in the manual. So I grabbed the book, read it, and discovered that it wasn’t

opening because I didn’t have the keys on me. “I” was the problem and didn’t know it just like last week we heard the Bible story of David cursing the man who harmed a poor shepherd only to hear the prophet Nathan say, “You are the man!” (2^nd Samuel 12:1-7) You see I hadn’t read the book and therefore understood the problem to be something else. All my curses were misplaced and outrageous.

The problem of our world, according to the Bible, is not secularism (which didn’t exists but does now), or even paganism (which existed in greater fashion then but now not so much) but a self-deceiving church (1:22) - a church that fails to recognize that it has a problem – in this case, failing to love our neighbors as ourselves. It’s an odd Biblical reality that the real problem is not the wickedness of those outside the church but the wickedness of the church itself, a church which fails the gospel and its Lord by showing favoritism. We need to rely upon the Word, implanted in us by the Holy Spirit, to show us our sinfulness. In our passage this week, James extends the lesson of the mirror and says, “You think I’m talking about others. I’m talking about you. Look into the mirror again, and again, and again!” And it’s not so much a church of sinners that harms the gospel. It’s a church that forgets they are sinners, that forgets they need to repent. Are we as a church willing to interrogate ourselves as James does his – not defending bad behavior but honestly and authentically repenting of our sins?

It’s why we practice confession in our worship. This should mean that our posture is not to defend ourselves, run away from criticisms of Christianity and the church. No, we must be the first to acknowledge that we are sinners. We must bear witness, often over and over again, of our failure, our repentance and God’s mercy.

          2.    We have a “royal” problem.

James follows Jesus who summed up the law with Leviticus 19:18 and the orientation toward love of neighbor. The law at its heart, Jesus revealed is not a moral treatise but relational one that aims to be life affirming and love focused. Likewise James accuses the church of failing the “royal law found in Scripture” (James 2:8). They have failed the law because of favoritism which is a failure to understand and live into God’s love without distinction. Sin is an act against relational love and mercy, particularly against the weak. It favors one and demeans another.

Sin, according to James in vs. 4, is “discrimination,” or “special attention” (vs. 3) which divides people arguing that some are better than others. Friends, this is also a place of sin for the

church. We have not always done well in honoring all whom God loves. We have not always been on the right side when powers and principalities have slandered and harmed the marginal and the poor. We have courted the wrong people.

In this country, there is a growing resurgence of such discrimination from the highest office of the land – women of

color, minorities and refugees are being spoken of hatefully and treated poorly. There is a favoritism that is being reasserted – “Here you sit here because you are worthy. You are best so you can stay. But you are poor or foreign so sit at my feet or go back to where you come from.” I’m not making a partisan political statement. We must bear witness as the church to the “royal law” of Jesus. That is what all of us are called to. It's our primary loyalty. That is what should critique your politics. That is what should inform you, brothers and sisters, on how to treat people of color or those from another country.

Are you a Republican? – follow Jesus and live out the royal law. 

Are you a Democrat? – follow Jesus and live out the royal law. 

And if you imagine that being either one of those identities takes first priority or automatically means you are following Jesus or that Jesus is a member of your party, you are mistaken. You are actually imagining that God favors one over the other. If your Christian beliefs never challenge your politics beliefs, you are in danger of being a law breaker no matter how moral you claim to be. You can’t say, “I don’t murder or commit adultery” but will not care for immigrants or listen to the pain of people of color. To break the royal law, James tells us, is to break all of the law (vs. 10). 

How do we keep ourselves from playing favorites? How do we locate whether the poor are marginal are among us? We ask ourselves questions (vss. 6-7).   

Who is being harmed or exploited? (vs. 6)

Who doesn’t have legal power? (vs. 6) 

Who are the victims of those misusing the name of Jesus for purposes which harm? (vs. 7) 

Are those victims with us?  

We must know who they are so that we can practice Proverbs 31:8-9: Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. ⁹ Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy. And if you discover that those who are being harmed are not in the church, not a part of the fellowship, that’s a dangerous sign of favoritism.

So, what unites us? We must bear witness that it is to believe in the glorious Lord Jesus Christ (vs. 1), those who love him (vs. 5), and who commit to loving our neighbors as ourselves (vs. 8). That is non-negotiable center which should reveal a diversity within the community. We should be a group that is economically, ethnically, and politically, diverse yet united under one “noble name” (vs. 7). To understand this unity in diversity, I often ask believers to consider the definition of a mammal. These are animals that are warm blooded, give birth to live young, have hair, and a backbone or spinal column. While the definition is certainly exclusive, knocking out a whole range of creatures, it, nevertheless, maintains an amazing inclusivity that would describe a tiger and a dolphin. That’s the beauty of God’s kingdom – A delightfully diverse family centered on Jesus Christ.

          3.    You will be judged by love so practice it. (12-13)

The failure of the church is to imagine that how we conduct ourselves has no bearing on the final victory. If mercy is our end, then mercy is how we get there. When I am talking to married couples I remind them that they will fight; sometimes over important reasons. The key, however, is to fight well and to do that you need to fight with the end in mind. What are you after? What

do you wish to accomplish? If it’s love and fidelity then calling your spouse an idiotic moron is probably not going to get you where you want to go. The word “triumph” in vs. 13, comes from the gladiatorial arena. You cannot end with mercy, James tells us, if you’re wielding hate and anger. You cannot end with mercy if you say the rich are better or that your morals are the yardstick for God’s love.

Do you want to win? Love others as yourself. Do you want to escape judgment? Love others as yourself. Why? Because Mercy triumphs. Let that inform you. Let that be what you chant in the arena of your faith. Let the church repent of its favoritism, remember our failures, recommit to follow the royal law, and remember our winning is depicted by what we do now. Remembering mercy is why we do this, it’s because we so easily forget.

This week was the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, but I find Apollo 13 more interesting. In 1970, the Apollo 13 rocket aimed to take another crew of astronauts to the moon.  After leaving the earth’s orbit, however, the rocket experienced a catastrophic failure leaving them with little chance for survival. With minimal tools and the help of ground control thousands of miles away, they had to work together to find a way to get back home safely, which they did. In 1995 Ron Howard made a movie about the event. What's so amazing about the movie is that even though you know that the astronauts make it - you can't help but get drawn into the real drama and tension that they might not make it back.

A number of years ago I met someone whose father was one of the members of ground control fighting to bring the astronauts home. He told me that he took his father to see the movie and during the

scene when the astronauts are coming back into the atmosphere and incapable of communicating, his father began to cry and whisper, “O no! We killed them. My God, we killed them.” The story was so realistic that his dad was transported back to that moment of failure, which lingered on into the present. Friends, that's how we should read the Bible. Even though James' church existed thousands of years ago, we are meant to relive the challenge and criticism that we have failed - failed to love others, failed to practice loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Even though Jesus walked the earth thousands of years ago we are to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, to do this Jesus tells us “in remembrance of him,” to confess our sin and announce, “mercy triumphs!”