Living Faith

Sermon

What if no one lived in poverty? That’s the question that kept floating to the front of my brain this week as I studied the text from James.

As I said in last Sunday’s sermon, the letter of James is bracing and direct. James does not mince words when it comes to teaching how the followers of Jesus are to live. The whole letter can be summed up in the last words from today’s lesson: faith without works is dead.

At first glance, this week’s lesson appears to be about hospitality, about how we welcome people into worship. As followers of Jesus, we are to welcome everyone into our worship, no matter their station in life; no matter the color of their eyes, hair, or skin; no matter their appearance. None of that matters: welcoming all equally is important.

But James wants us to go a little deeper. Hospitality is just the first layer of the onion – an important layer. But that’s not all there is. Go a little deeper and James starts talking about partiality. Partiality might be considered the antithesis of welcome; partiality says that some people deserve more attention than others. Partiality puts conditions on hospitality and welcome.

In the situation James writes about, the condition of poverty or wealth creates partiality within the congregation. That makes our stomachs churn a little bit, doesn’t it? The thought that a person would walk into a sanctuary, of all places, and be treated as though they were a lesser human being – it’s against everything that Jesus taught.

But then once again, James prods us to go a little deeper. He reminds us that partiality is more than just a personal response –there are bigger forces at play that create these boundaries and barriers.

In the culture in which James wrote, poverty was not simply a matter of the situation in which a person was born. Certain cultural norms kept some people in poverty and kept some people in wealth. More than that, it was understood, in first century Palestine, that there was only so much wealth to go around. If wealth were a pie, and there were eight people, everyone should get 1/8^th of the pie. If someone got more pie, someone else got less. The person who got more pie was considered dishonest for having taken more than their fair share.

Add to that the system of taxation by Rome, and issues around the taxation of those who worked the land of their wealthy patron, and you have a lot of people who are poor because they are in terrible debt. If a person couldn’t pay off their debt, they might be put in prison, and their relatives would liquidate whatever assets the person had to buy their way out of prison.

In other words, the system was set up in such a way that the poor got poorer, the wealthy always got what they wanted, and there was no hope.

So now, picture that rich person in their fine clothes and gold rings walking into the sanctuary and being treated with honor – it makes it even worse, no? In few words, James lifts up the systems that perpetuate poverty in his culture.

And yet – James invites us to go just a little deeper. All of his words – last week’s admonitions to be doers of the word and not merely hearers, this week’s words about hospitality and partiality and systemic poverty – all of them grow from what is at the core of faith. James calls it the royal law, words from Hebrew scriptures and from Jesus. They are words that challenge us every day, and challenge us to do the work of dismantling unjust systems, to put aside all partiality, to show true hospitality. Four simple words, so impossible to live. Love your neighbor as yourself.

In addition to wondering all week what it would be like if no one lived in poverty, this week I have also been thinking about Westminster’s friend Aaron Gray. Those of you who remember the olden days, when a couple hundred of us would worship together here in the sanctuary, you might recall Aaron.

The first time Gregg and I remember Aaron was our first communion service here. We were greeting people at the end of the service, and one of the deacons pointed to the communion table and asked if we knew the fellow who had helped himself to the chalice of juice.

Gregg had nurtured a relationship with Aaron, who often came to the church office seeking help. Sometimes he needed a little money, but always, he needed someone to talk to. That person was Gregg.

So one Sunday Aaron and his girlfriend came to worship, both very drunk, and they started fighting. Long story short, they were asked to leave until they could stop yelling and swearing. A few weeks later, Gregg let Aaron know that he was always welcome but not if he was swearing loudly in the sanctuary during the service.

Over the years we were not surprised when Aaron showed up. Sometimes he would come in through the sacristy and down the steps by the pulpit. Often he would sit in the front pew or in the transept – never in the middle, never in the back. Often he was drunk, and often he would fall asleep. But the thing about Aaron was this: he was intentional about coming to church. You may or may not have noticed, but he would wear a sportscoat when he came in, often with a flower he had plucked from someone’s garden stuck in the buttonhole on his lapel.

I have two favorite stories about Aaron. One is about the Sunday he came in during the prayer of confession and sat down in the back pew in the west transept. As the service went on, I didn’t see him and thought maybe he had left. The choir had a big ol’ offertory that day, and when it ended, we heard some loud “hallelujahs” and saw a pair of hands above the pew, clapping away.

The other story is from Easter of 2016. The pastors were just about to enter the sanctuary. Gregg turned around and said, “Aaron is here.” At first I thought he’d said, “Karen is here,” which I already knew. I must have had a weird look on my face because he said again, “Aaron is here.” And I knew that our second Easter service of the day would now be up for grabs.

After we told the Easter story using the dyed Easter eggs, Aaron asked Gregg if he could have an egg, which he could. He promptly ate it. Aaron gave me a few chuckles and a few amens during the sermon, and during the prayers he waved his stocking cap at the joys and moaned “mercy, mercy” during the concerns. Gregg sat with him during the service. When the offering plate came by, Gregg noticed that Aaron dug deep into his pockets and dropped into the plate what little he had – a crumpled bill, some loose change. Westminster was his home.

As the years went by and we got used to seeing Aaron, I noticed that some of our members made a point of saying hello and making him feel welcome and sitting with him. So both Gregg and I were a bit shattered last December when Aaron’s old girlfriend called to let us know that Aaron had been hit by a car and killed on Christmas Eve. Gregg had seen him earlier that day. It was awful.

I’ve wondered what James would say to us about Aaron and Westminster. I think he would be glad that we finally recognized him as one of our own. He might say that we showed Aaron partiality in the right way.

But James would also ask us to try to understand all the forces at play in Aaron’s life that led to his being mostly homeless, an addict, his own worst enemy, and someone who so desperately needed a place where he would be welcomed.

People far smarter than I have studied the root causes of poverty and homelessness and addiction, and those cause are complex, more than just “this person has made bad choices.” That’s part of it, but maybe none of the choices before the person are good.

Maybe getting arrested and thrown in jail means a few weeks of sobriety but not support to continue sobriety once out. Maybe families are so broken and wounded that the dysfunction cannot help but be passed on to the next generation. Maybe lack of systemic mental health care means people who live with emotional and mental pain choose self-medication in the form of alcohol and methamphetamines.

But really, what James would say to us is this: Did you love Aaron as you love yourself?

That is the crux of this all.

Love is one of those words that quickly loses its meaning. From watching Ted Lasso, I learned the term “semantic satiation,” which is what happens when you say a word over and over again until it sounds like utter nonsense. I feel that sometimes when we talk about love in church, we start to experience semantic satiation.

That is hard, because love is at the core of everything when it comes to God and Jesus. It’s not about living perfectly. It’s not about believing every jot and tittle of doctrine. It’s not about being better. It may not even be about helping. It is about love.

But this love, the Hebrew prophets would tell us, Jesus would tell us, James would tell us, is utterly demanding. In order to love our neighbor, we must love ourselves – that gives us the grounding and the strength we need.

To love our neighbors is to want abundantly joyful lives for them. It is to want grace for them. It is to share with them. It is to advocate with them. It is to call out injustice with them.

Right now, loving our neighbors as ourselves means wearing a mask in public situations, so they don’t get sick and we don’t get sick and we don’t overload the already stressed hospital staffs.

This week the Session made a hard decision for us to go to livestreaming only for the month of September. We take seriously the viciousness of the Delta variant, and in order to love each other and keep each other healthy, in order to love each other and offer the same worship experience to all, we are livestreaming only.

I’m glad that Westminster showed Aaron love. I’m not sure how much love he had ever received in his life. I think Aaron showed us love too, by joining us for worship and cleaning up a little, wearing a sportscoat and a flower. We never “fixed” Aaron – he never got sober, he kept landing in jail, he had very few people he hadn’t ticked off in one way or another.

James would remind us that there are more Aarons out there, and some day when all of us are able to be in worship again, they might wander in, looking bedraggled, or out of it, or high as a kite. Then again, on any given Sunday, you or I might come into worship looking fine but feeling wretched – anxious, grieving, angry, scared, alone.

To all: you are welcome.

To all: we love you and will work with you.

To all: peace be with you.

Amen.