embrace the vulnerable

 

SERMON PREACHED AT ST PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN,

AND ST PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1^st, 2024

 

James 1:17-21

Psalm 26:1-8

Mark 7: 1-2, 6-6, 8

 

 Amongst my suitcase of theological heroes, one is extraordinarily ambivalent. Martin Luther, who I consider something of a lesser hero then Martin Luther King jr., was profound in his understanding of Pauline theology and the significance and achievement of God in Christ, the Incarnation. He was horrible in his anti-Semitism. Not of the kind that some people today refer to as anti-Semitism, that is to say speaking out against some of the atrocities perpetrated by the State of Israel, but of the more traditional, pre-1948 model, whereby anybody with Hebrew or Jewish DNA was somehow deficient or even evil. That is an abhorrent and evil worldview.

I mention this because Luther also gets a fail in my assessment when it comes to his attitude to cherry picking scripture. The most famous example of that is his diffident attitude to the epistle we call James. I tend incidentally to agree with those scholars such as Luke Timothy Johnson, who see no reason to suggest that the source of this epistle was not the brother of Jesus of Nazareth, the one we know as the Christ. Perhaps that’s a conversation for another day, but I put it out there anyway, if only to flag that I am unpersuaded by those methods of interpretation that decide that if tradition affirms something then it is clearly wrong.

I only partly digress because in this epistle and this reading in particular we find some deep and inconvenient wisdom. Martin Luther with his correct but obsessive and blinkered focus on God’s grace in the event of the cross found it necessary to describe the epistle of James as a “right strawy epistle” unworthy of his serious consideration. 

While I guess we all do it and always have done it, we can’t just shoulder aside biblical texts that don’t suit us. Luther doesn’t quite achieve that but he certainly comes close, and at best inadvertently gives us permission to do so.

James sees clearly the contrast between light- and life- and truth-bringing relationship to scripture and to God, on the one hand, and the playing of Antichrist games, or what I believe is the real meaning of using the Lord’s name in vain, distorting the gospel to suit racist or sexist or even homophobic bigotry, on the other. And of course the last of these is a highly complex minefield and not I think it is simple as waving an ideological wand.

Nevertheless in a year in which, if you have the misfortune to be like me deeply aware of and troubled by US politics, you’ll see there is an awful lot of what James warns us against: hanging out with the wrong crowd. And again, as I say in my notes, this does not refer to reaching out to and caring for those who are rough around the edges, which I hope has been a hallmark of my ministry for nearly 40 years. It does however mean avoiding hanging out with those who are cruel, those who are bullies, those who are exploiters of any form including sexual predators, those who disfigure and deny the lives of those around them, the underdogs, the broken, the emotionally, spiritually, psychologically or physically disfigured.

James challenges us to set such attitudes aside. As a litmus test I, not James, would say: where do we find the imago dei, image of God, that beautiful concept explored in the opening chapters of Genesis, in this person or that person with whom we are rubbing shoulders?

And if ever we wanted confirmation that James and Jesus were closely entwined in their thinking, it is in the records of Mark as he gives us Jesus’ interpretations of Torah, the Law. If this were a lecture not a sermon I would also go into the relationship between Mark and Paul, but for now let us simply say that James, of whom Paul was not always a fan, Mark, with whom Paul may have had a blistering falling out, and Jesus, all speak with one voice on this issue of integrity, of avoiding being soiled by the lack of integrity of others.

Jesus looks closely at those who play games with God, those whom he designates with telling accuracy as hypocrites. At those who use their religious sanctimoniousness as a weapon with which to bludgeon the vulnerable and the broken and the timid and the uncertain. I think immediately of those in our society who bludgeon those considering IVF or abortion, those wrestling with or rejoicing in sexuality which is alternate to mum dad and the kids behind a white picket fence, and those outside the Christian community for whatever reason. Jesus has no time for those who bludgeon the vulnerable with the sanctimonious use of biblical texts and self-serving, un-critiqued traditions.

And so all I can do is once again float the ideas that our passages present to us. Even the psalm, which can appear disturbingly self-righteous, is in context a recognition that any kind of righteousness can only be imparted by an ongoing desire to open ourselves up to and be formed by the love and the compassion and the justice of the God we cannot see,  the God who is revealed in our scriptures and in our liturgical practises.