Midweek Musing- 10/16/24

One of the things I believe about leaders is that they should not ask those they lead/serve to do anything that they are not willing to do themselves.

This is not only my opinion, but research also backs up the idea that leaders lose the respect of those they lead when they only issue orders but don’t get in the trenches.

You see the great leader isn’t unwilling to do the dirty work to get the job done for the team. It doesn’t matter if it is sweeping floors, taking out garbage, moving tables and chairs, or cleaning bathrooms. Great leaders lead by example, or they know they lose their credibility and eventually following of those they are supposed to be leading.

Now this may seem a bit unusual to say but it is clear God knew this is how we humans see the world and thus our creator also does not ask us to act or believe or live in a way God isn’t also willing to do or experience as well.

Recently, I have been rereading the book of James. I even used some of its passages for recent sermon texts. Several weeks ago, I used James 2:1-10 for my homiletic text but my focus was on verse ten. However, the first nine verses of this chapter have stayed on my mind. I have read the text in my translations and interpretations. The one I’d like to share with you is Eugene Peterson modern version these verses.

James 2:1-9 (The Message)

My dear friends, don’t let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, Christ-originated faith. If a man enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags comes in right after him, and you say to the man in the suit, “Sit here, sir; this is the best seat in the house!” and either ignore the street person or say, “Better sit here in the back row,” haven’t you segregated God’s children and proved that you are judges who can’t be trusted?

Listen, dear friends. Isn’t it clear by now that God operates quite differently? He chose the world’s down-and-out as the kingdom’s first citizens, with full rights and privileges. This kingdom is promised to anyone who loves God. And here you are abusing these same citizens! Isn’t it the high and mighty who exploit you, who use the courts to rob you blind? Aren’t they the ones who scorn the new name — “Christian” — used in your baptisms?

You do well when you complete the Royal Rule of the Scriptures: “Love others as you love yourself.” But if you play up to these so-called important people, you go against the Rule and stand convicted by it.

As one scholar has written about theses verses James reminds us as followers of the way of Jesus Christ, we are not to show “favoritism or partiality.”

I like the old-fashioned term partiality that this scholar used to describe what we are not to do.

Now my computer dictionary tells me that partiality is “unfair bias in favor of one thing or person compared with another.”

For me that means we simply judge people and put them into categories which rank from best to worse or greatest to least or important to less than. Now we all wish we could say we don’t do such things, but the truth is we do.

For example, if I were the guest speaker at a big event held the Walker County Civic Center well there would still be plenty of seats. However, if it were Oprah Winfrey or Nick Saban, it would be a packed house. People would even buy tickets to attend.

Another example of this is that no one would pay to watch me drive my car even if it were on the crazy I-285 that circle Atlanta. But tens of thousands show up on Sundays and pay to watch folks with the last names of Logano, Elliott, Wallace, Hamlin, and Blaney make big left turns around the same track usually about 250 times.

Truth is we all have folks we put on pedestals be they musician, athletes, authors, actors, celebrities, rich, political figures, and the list goes.

Of course, most folks on this planet are just regular folks like me.

But also sadly, there are people which folks choose to view as “less than.” They put them into a caste below them based on whatever factor they can find.

We can name many of these reasons they use. Folks sinfully show partiality because of others physical appearance or mental acuity or disease or infirmity or race or gender or who they love or disability or family genealogy.

The hard truth is that favoritism and partiality are things we all sometimes participate in no matter how hard we try not to.

Now in that Sunday focusing on James 2:10, I noted that without really looking deeply into the text and context of the that verse 10 it seems an absurd statement.

FYI That verse says if you and I fail at one part of the law then you are guilty of all of it. That statement seems unreasonable and absurd until you realize that first it is talking about our needing to be sure we love others as we love ourselves being what is required and then also remembering the promise that when we fail (which we all do sometimes) that God’s grace covers all of our mistakes.

But another “absurd” thing that we discover from not only James 2:1-9 but from throughout the Biblical narrative is that God in asking us to be impartial declares that as our Creator and Lord that God is impartial as well.

If you really think of that it seems absurd.

Just think of it, God loves the person with private jets and Ferraris and Jaguars and gated homes on both coasts and one also a high-rise condo overlooking Central Park in New York City no more or less than the homeless lady who slept under a cardboard box in Central Park last night.

That God loves the gold medal winning world record breaking Olympian no more than the Special Olympian who is pushed down the track in a wheelchair.

That God loves the child in the AP and honors class with the same love God has for nonverbal intellectually challenged student trying to learn to use a fork and spoon.

That God loves the one who both tithes and then same as the one who can only offer prayers.

According to the world this is not the way things should be because there are winners and losers. But this is not how God see us. Over and over God declares we are all his children we are above everything else in creation very good.

God’s love is indeed beautiful and absurd and is given equally to all!

Thanks be to God for this gift of love. And thanks be to a God who loves each of us as if we are the only one to love.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Alleluia Amen.