Humility and Judgment: James 4: 1-12
I have been racking my brain this week to try and come up with a sermon that encompasses: dealing with racism, COVID-19 fear, economic havoc, distress from sheltering in place, supporting peaceful protest while condemning violence and destruction all the while providing hope and wisdom then wrapping up in about 15-18 minutes. As someone recently said to me, “I don’t envy any preachers trying to write sermons these days.” So, when in doubt, talk about food, right?
There are two dishes which no one likes to eat. One is incredibly bitter; the other one is extremely sour. But at some time or another we all need to eat a little bit of both. One you may know as humble pie. The other one is eating crow, or as I’m fond of saying, “How do you like to eat your crow—fried or grilled?” However, I believe in our modern society, we’ve been unwilling to eat enough of either one. But unfortunately, those two dishes are the only ones James puts on the menu for us today.
Nobody likes humble pie. It’s bitter, embarrassing, and leaves a bad taste in your mouth for some time. Yet James serves it up in droves here in chapter four, round about verse 7, “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you.” Older translations say this as, “Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord.” Humility is a characteristic we seem to have forgotten or found too distasteful to practice these days.
James led the church in a similarly difficult time. There was confusion and clamor over whether the church should follow historic Jewish rituals, or not. and whether they should admit Gentiles, or not. In fact, this book is written similarly in time to a Great Debate in Acts over who to admit to the church. Should the Gentiles be welcomed as well, and if so, under what conditions? Peter, Paul, James and others could not agree, and at times the debates got heated. James was likely not the powerful preacher Peter was, nor was he the heavyweight debater Paul could be. But James went home and cooked up some humble pie and crow.
He writes, “What is causing the quarrels and fights among you. Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, so you wage war to take it way from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.” Much of our time as humans is spent fighting over power. We like to be privileged, to be in charge, to be right about things. The need for power and control almost always brings quarrels and fights.
We live in a world where racism and prejudice are real. We live in a country where wealthy and white citizens have had advantages our poor and our black communities have not. And the truth is, you can still love your country and be a patriot while continuing to grow and change and find better ways of living and being. But at the same time, we must also say the violence and death in order to achieve power comes from evil motives and must be condemned whether that violence is from police, politicians, or rioters. Intentionally harming other people is wrong in all ways. And the best counter to such things is a bit of humble pie.
James writes to us, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” I think, that is our starting point. If we live in humility before our Sovereign God, we will find that all the clamor, all the power, all the need to be right is just not that important. For what is important is our relationship to the One who created us. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. That’s, ultimately, where our greatest concern should lie.
But James also cooks up another dish which is just as naggingly difficult as humble pie, and that is when he offers for us to eat crow. “Don’t speak evil against one another dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law.” This is James much more educated way of saying, “Every one be quiet and go to your room.” The first step is to find in ourselves a bit of humility—to perhaps say there are endemic problem in our hearts and in our society where we need to protect and look out for vulnerable people, while at the same time striving for peace in our lives.
But we must also realize that in humility we must not judge others. There are some who are staunch Conservative Republicans who disagree with liberals and Democrat ideas. There are some who are staunch Liberal Democrats who disagree with Republicans and their ideas. There are some who staunchly support President Trump, and there are some who strongly oppose. The problem is we’ve allowed this politicization of our society to infect our hearts and our faith. James teaches us, “God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. God alone has the power to save or destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?” We are told in other scripture, to judge not, lest we too are judged.
The church is designed to stand on God’s Word, for the truth the Bible teaches us, for the love of Christ, and for grace and peace for all humankind on the earth. That should not be a political issue. Loving our neighbor should not be politicized. We need to go back and remember to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. But at the same time, we are called to stand for God’s justice and to follow, obediently, God’s word. At times that will teach us to pray for wisdom and safety from our houses during a pandemic. Other times God’s Word will call us to venture out and be willing to risk ourselves for the faith.
Sometimes, we will be called to peacefully stand against injustice and suffering for what is right. The beauty of faith is that each one of you has a Bible, your faith, your mind, and the Holy Spirit to guide you. It is not our job to speak for God, because through those tools God can speak on his own to you and me, and to lead us in our calling and mission on this Earth.
The beauty of faith is that we don’t have to all agree, vote the same way, look the same, or have the same background. One of my favorite beliefs of the Disciples of Christ is this: “In essentials, Unity; in non-essentials, Liberty; and in all things, Charity.” But at the end of the day, we must all covenant to work together in Christ’s love and for the good of God’s people. Each and every person was created in God’s image, and each and every person should know of Christ’s loving welcome. At the end of the day, that is our calling, to share the Good News, to stand for what is right as God leads us, and to love God and our neighbors. Nobody likes to eat crow or receive a slice of humble pie. Yet, that is exactly what James serves us today. If we are to be the church we must focus on those essentials: love God, love our neighbor, and share the Good News of grace without preference or favor, for, as we are told, God so loved the whole world.