Everybody Welcome

James 2.1-13
26 September 2010
Introduction

Those of us who attend church regularly might like to think that it is an

easy place in which to feel at home. That isn’t necessarily the case as we
have been discovering these last few weeks….

Mr Bean

Why are we running this series?

o To help those of us who are members of St Cuthbert’s think about the

welcome we give to our visitors

o To consider what it means to be church and explore some of the bible’s

teaching that is pertinent to this theme.

Both theory and practice

Why is it important?

o Because wrongly or rightly we will be judged on the welcome we give

or do not give

Service is important and it is very easy to put people off with a single bad
experience

c.f. Amazon

As I said the other week and re-iterate now, this isn’t the sole answer to the
church’s problems, but it does tackle one part of them – the back door

o Because the church, if it is to be the church as God wants it to be,

needs to be constantly re-assessing and re-contextualising its approach
to ministry

The 1887 building

The 1960 building
The 2005 building

Very significant changes in the fifteen or so years that I have attended this
church.

c.f. my first ever Church Committee meeting and the decision about
coffee!

o Because the church has a very important role to play in society, a role
that perhaps, like Avondale Leisure Centre, people only notice when it
is not present.
And so, the first week we looked at the role the church is called to play as
the point of connection between a world of people who need God and a
God who longs for the world to know, love and obey Him.

Mention Alpha

Then last week we thought about some of the challenges we face in

making the church truly accessible to all comers c.f. EVERYBODY
Welcome. We also considered Jesus’ teaching that welcoming or not
welcoming others provides a litmus test of how much we welcome or not
welcome Him, hence the topic’s seriousness.

This week we are going to look at part of the letter of James which has
relevance for our theme. James was one of Jesus’ brothers who became an
important leader in the early church and wrote a very practical letter to
Jewish Christians about thirty or so years after Jesus’ death and
resurrection. James is very concerned that people truly live out their faith
in a challenging environment in which many Christians (c.f. James 1.22
Doers of the word KJV)

In particular, in the passage we read, James tackles the issue of favouritism

– literally ‘receiving or respecting face’, judging people on the externals -
for the church to whom he writes were showing an undue deference to the
rich and a distinct lack of concern for the poor. This prejudice was
evidenced by their treatment of visitors to their services.

By examining what James had to say about this issue we can get an angle
on what God wishes to say to us today. This is how Christians believe
scripture works….
 I. Identity
1
My brothers, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show
favouritism

The expression ‘our glorious Lord Jesus Christ’ is an unusual one over
which the commentators labour – literally our Lord Jesus Christ who is the
Glory. It is one that James likely chose to emphasise Jesus’ centrality as
the One whom Christians both past and present nust look for their identity.

And what sort of glory did Jesus possess? Not the sort of glory which
stands afar off, but the sort of glory that draws near. As Pauls puts it
elsewhere
9
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for
your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
2 Corinthians 8.9

Jesus’ life and ministry were one long exercise in drawing near or, we
might say, welcome

o touching the untouchables that they might feel God’s love from which
they had been denied

o healing the sick and disturbed that they might be brought back into the
community from which they had been excluded

o teaching those whose believed themselves to be of no significance that

in God’s eyes they were of unique and infinite significance

o hosting meals which symbolised the welcome that was there in God’s
Kingdom for all who desired to enter it.

Those meals are worth a sermon in themselves for they tell us so much
about the outworking of the Gospel

c.f. Homer’s Last Supper

This Jesus then is or should be inspirational for those who look to him for
their identity

He whose eye is filled with Christ never sees what kind of coat a man has on
Joseph Parker

Quote Alec Motyer p.86

 II. Equality
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?

Extending his argument against favouritism, James reminds his readers of

God’s attitude to the poor as shown throughout the bible. God has a
concern for the weak and vulnerable – a ‘bias to the Poor’ as Bishop David
Sheppard once put it. Not that He favours them above everyone else – a
bias against the rich - but He does treat everybody equally which means, at
times, going out of His way to balance things up.
Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favouritism to the great,
but judge your neighbour fairly. Leviticus 19.15

James’ point then is this. If God Himself shows an equal concern for the
poor who are so often marginalised, what on earth are Christians doing
discriminating against them by refusing them a decent welcome into their
meetings?

. 3 If you show special attention to the one wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a
good seat for you," but say to the one who is poor, "You stand there" or "Sit on the
floor by my feet," 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges
with evil thoughts?

This is precisely the truth Jesus taught in his most famous sermon, the
Sermon on the Mount echoes of which are present throughout James’
letter, including this section (‘Blessed are the poor’)
43
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour [h] and hate your enemy.' 44
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you
may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and
the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those
who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?
47
And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do
not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5.43-48

I know that in the diverse culture in which we operate it is unlikely that we

would be as crass as those James’ addresses…. Nevertheless, one can
easily imagine circumstances in which our welcome would be tested.

o those who are mentally ill

o those who are morally questionable
o those whose appearance is unlike ours
o the young
o the old
o the disabled
o those of a different class, culture, race, religion, sexuality
o those who differ from us theologically
o anyone, quite frankly, who is going to be hard work
 III. Consistency
8
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbour as
yourself," you are doing right. 9 But if you show favouritism, 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." [c] If you do not commit
adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

Next James moves on to the bible’s law or instruction concerning the way
we should live our lives, the bible for want of a better word, which for
James and the recipients of his letter was the OT.

Interestingly, James calls it the law of love for neighbour the ‘royal law’,
the King’s law, which may well be an allusion to the decisive exposition
that it has received in the life and words of Jesus Christ and / or the fact
that it should characterise the King’s people.

That love for both God and neighbour provide a summary of God’s
demands upon us – the two greatest commandments – is a truth that we
regularly visit in church and one that we need to, for it is so easy, on the
one hand, for us to concern ourselves with faith in God to the exclusion of
compassion for those in need or, on the other hand, to concern ourselves
with compassion to the exclusion of faith in God. As James will argue in
the next section of his letter (2.14f) we must concern ourselves with both –
faith expresses itself through deeds.

So to truly love God we must love others as we love ourselves (v.8) And
how do we love ourselves? When we look at ourselves we don’t
necessarily like what we see…

c.f. my video

But, unless we are depressed or suicidal, we accept and put up with

ourselves and get on with life. In the same way, we might not like what
we see in others – appearance, accent, education, background, colour of
skin, age etc. but we do at least accommodate other people to the extent
that we accommodate ourselves.
(c.f. ordering of commandments)

Grudges and foriegners….!

18
" 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but
love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD.
33
" 'When foreigners reside among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The
foreigners residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as
yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
 IV. Humanity
12
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom

James had already spoken of God’s law or instruction in very positive

terms (1.25)

But those who look intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continue in it
—not forgetting what they have heard but doing it—they will be blessed in what they
do.

He continues that thought here in v.12. There is, of course, a ‘dark side’ to
the law as one day it will provide the standard by which we are judged –
more on that in a moment – but that does not mean that its role is
essentially negative. Quite the opposite. God’s law is designed to bring
freedom. It is a charter of right living for both the individual and society
the point being that God knows us better than we know ourselves and so
that, to use the old cliché, it is always best to follow the Maker’s
instructions.

I’ll be saying more about this next time, so let me simply state the point.
The bible teaches that the church is God’s new society, the place where his
will is most clearly lived out. Not perfectly, but visibly and practically.
The church, then, should be place where people are able to taste and feel
what God’s kingdom is actually like. This means far more than a
comfortable seat or a cup of fairly traded coffee. It means, amongst other
things, that we should be a real family, the family of God

c.f. brothers and sisters v.1

(c.f. the issue of translation)

It this family that Olivia and Yvie have today, symbolically, joined.
 V. Humility
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.

Finally, what is James saying here? If we show mercy to others then

mercy will be shown to us. If we do not show mercy to others mercy will
not be shown to us.

c.f. Lord’s Prayer

Therefore judge others in the way that you would like God to judge you.
This, in a way, compliments my earlier point about consistency. It is not
just that God calls us to love others as we love Him. We are called to love
others in the same way that as He has loved us. This lifts the bar even
higher! The only way to clear it is to be constantly wondering at God’s
grace to us. Which takes us to the Cross where God’s mercy triumphed
over His judgement.