Sermon September 8 2024  James 2:1-17  No Conditions           Rev. Betsy Hogan

Do you know the story of the Prodigal Son? Many of you will, but for those who don’t, it's a parable – a teaching story -- of Jesus, that’s found in the Bible in the gospel of Luke. And it’s the third of a series of parables that Jesus tells his followers so that they'll understand – so that WE'LL understand – not just the depth and breadth of God's love for ALL of us –

but ESPECIALLY God's particular yearning for and reaching for those whom the world of the well-behaved might think of as "lost" – those who’ve wandered off track, spiralled into trouble, gone bad. 

In the story of the Prodigal Son, he sort of does all three. First, he demands his inheritance from his father before his father's even dead, which is just plain rude...

And then he turns his back on his family and takes off to the city to pretty much just have fun being prodigal. Wasteful in the extreme. Partying all that cash away in an orgy of drunken debauchery until every penny's gone. 

At which point, homeless and hungry, mucking out pigs to stay alive, it occurs to him that the pigs are living better than he is. And the farmhands back at his father's house are living better still. 

And he knows he's behaved badly and can't be treated like a member of the family anymore, but he thinks that maybe if he goes back, he could at least be one of those farmhands. So back home he goes. He's filled with regret, he's spilling out his apologies before his father's even had a chance to say a word – 

But his father stops him anyway. Because all the father cares about is that he's home. Lost, rude, uncaring, prodigal, wandered off track, spiralled into trouble, just gone bad – none of it matters. The father's love is un-lose-able. 

It's an epic parable. The emotional pinnacle of that trio of parables of Jesus about God’s rejoicing when that which is lost gets found again. 

First a coin that goes missing – dramatic, certainly, for the woman who needs it to eat – 
Then a sheep who wanders off – and the emotion's definitely heightened, considering the probable fate of any poor little innocent sheep off alone without protection –

And then of course, the ultimate emotion of a child gone beyond reach on purpose. But NO, Jesus says in these parables: there is NO ‘beyond reach’ to God. God yearns and searches and reaches for and God always welcomes back into embrace. 

They’re great parables. They’re the heart of the gospel. It's Jesus' message writ large: love one another as I have loved you, as God loves you. With this unchangeable un-lose-able love. It's love your neighbour like you KNOW – that no one is ever lost to God. That everyone matters.

It’s a beautiful set of parables. That when I looked at the passage from the letter of James that we heard earlier, that was assigned in the lectionary cycle of readings for this Sunday, I found myself thinking about. And then I found myself getting a little frustrated. 

The thing about this passage from the letter of James – the thing about the whole letter, in fact – is its absolute unrelenting simplicity.

Because there's no 'nuance' in James. No caveats, no conditions – the gift of the letter of James to the scriptures and to people of faith is how straightforwardly he distills the life of faithfulness into essential principles.

Kind of the basics, in effect. Which makes a lot of sense. James is the brother of Jesus. After the resurrection he’s one of the first and one of the key leaders of the earliest Christian community that arose in Jerusalem itself, in the heart of where the events take place and in those earliest days.

So he's not the Apostle Paul, twenty years later, building Christian community within the alien context of the Greek islands. Or the Apostle Thomas, travelling toward south Asia. Or the Apostle Philip, moving into north-east Africa. These men are building from the ground up – introducing the message and Way of Jesus into places where it's meeting completely different traditions and ways of faithfulness. 

James isn't. He's in Jerusalem. Where he has the benefit of listeners and early Christians who have the same roots that Jesus does, in the essential principles of the Torah, the books of Moses, the Hebrew Scriptures – what we might call the Older Testament.

James has the benefit of that, in his spreading of the good news. He can speak to these essential principles knowing that they're already THERE in his community. They're real, they're understood, they're fundamental, they're solid roots he can build on. So he does. 

And he doesn't have to explain them, he doesn't have to contend with questions or wonderings or challenges – there aren't any "but what abouts" that keep arising, leading to caveats or conditions or nuance –

The essential principles can just be the essential principles. And so for James they are. And that's what we get throughout this letter – the simple straightforwardness of how to live grounded in the essential principles at the heart of Jesus’ teaching.

Like this one: no one is ever lost to God. No one is outside the circle of the beloved. 

“So,” James asks his congregation, asks us, in the piece of his letter that John read for us this morning "Do you find you're showing favouritism? Caring more about some people’s well-being than others? Maybe because they’re better dressed and less sketchy? Then just don't. Just stop. We have an essential principle,” James says to his congregation and to us. “No one is outside the circle of God’s beloved.” 

“So, someone's ragged and dirty and unpredictable and makes you nervous?” he says, “They matter. Their well-being matters. Just as much as anyone else’s.” No conditions, no caveats, no favouritism. For James, proclaiming the way of Jesus, it's an essential principle.

But here’s the thing. It’s also really hard. And what I found myself getting frustrated about, as I considered it and the lost coin and lost sheep and prodigal son kept coming into my mind –

Is that as spectacular as those parables are – and they are -- in conveying God’s absolute incapacity to stop loving ANY of us, no matter how lost or wandering or prodigal we are –

They also have a subtext we might not even be aware of, that we kind of carry around, like it hovers. And I don’t think they make what James wants from us in this passage any easier.

Because if it’s meant to surprise us, it DOESN’T surprise us, that the lost coin matters and the lost sheep matters. Because we know -- the coin certainly didn’t MEAN to get lost and the poor little sheep probably didn’t either. And as for the son, if it’s meant to surprise us, it DOESN’T surprise us, that the prodigal son matters. Because even if he very much WAS to blame for all the being prodigal and hitting rock bottom, there he is on his knees and he’s repenting and he’s ready to make a new start.

It all kind of hovers.We know the essential principle – love of neighbour means love of neighbour without favouritism. Poor is poor is poor. Desperate is desperate is desperate. Sketchy lives matter, no caveats, no conditions. 

But they all kind of hover, the coin that did nothing wrong, the poor little innocent sheep that didn’t deserve to be left in danger, the son who manifestly CHOSE his plight but now he’s on his knees and he’s repentent and he wants to fly right.

They all kind of hover, and we fall so easily as a result into caveats and conditions. Love our neighbour and sketchy lives matter, yes – but it’s so much easier when they’ve landed where they are even though they did nothing wrong. It’s so much easier when they’re desperate but it isn’t their fault. It’s so much easier when even if there WERE bad choices, they’re repenting and ready to change. 

No one should be living in a tent. But it’s so much easier to be outraged when it’s a renovicted couple in their 70s and 80s. When it’s someone who has a job, but there’s nowhere they can rent they can afford. 

No one should be living in a tent. But it’s so much easier to care about their well-being and want to help them when they’re not kneedeep in addiction. When they look and sound repentent, when they say they’re ready to change. 

James is fierce in this letter to his congregation, to us. He’s uncompromising and it is not fun. Love of neighbour means love of neighbour without favouritism. In the circle of God’s beloved who ALL deserve food and shelter and safety and well-being, our call to care isn’t contingent on “they did nothing wrong” or “they’ve repented” – it’s just a call to care. Having to live in a tent isn’t acceptable for anyone. 

But it’s really hard, to let go of hovering caveats and conditions. It’s easier to care extra for the innocent little sheep and the broken but repentent son.

But if James in his fierceness has no patience for that, I think Jesus did and does. Because we heard a second passage this morning, from Mark’s gospel. A mother, a foreigner, who begs Jesus for his help to heal her daughter. 

And his first reaction is just to dismiss her. His care has caveats, his care has conditions – his ministry is to the children of his own people Israel, and does she expect him to take the food for children and throw it to the foreigner dogs? 

Ya, she does. “Even the dogs,” she says to him, “eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.” It’s a straight-up rebuke. And it’s in the gospel, making Jesus look bad, because Jesus knew it mattered. 

He HAD to get challenged. It’s so easy to draw lines around who we have to care about, who God loves, whose lives matter. It’s so easy that even Jesus did it. Even Jesus had to be shaken out of it. 

It’s funny -- in the story of the prodigal son, his brother has a lot of opinions. James, the brother of Jesus, maybe he’s not so different. 

Because James won't let us look away from that essential principle. He knows it’s hard. He knows it was hard even for Jesus. But who is my neighbour? Everyone. No conditions, no caveats, but God being our helper. Amen.