I.What do you think of my asking every one
to move to a different pew?
A.
Does it bother you? Do you think, Well, that
is just one more thing the interim pastor did that we will
not have to worry about doing again? I hope some of you will
take advantage of the situation to share a new worship
encounter with the people next to you?
1.
The point is to get you to think
intentionally about where you always sit.
2.
Does it add or distract from your worship if
you come into the sanctuary and some other people are
sitting in your place?
3.
When you visit a church out of town, if there
are no ushers to show you to a pew, how do you make up your
mind where you are going to sit?
4.
On the final day of my third trip to New
Zealand, on a Sunday morning, I asked Ned and Ruth the
friends I was staying with, Take me by the Presbyterian
Church there in Henderson. Just leave me here; I will walk
home. As I entered the church, an usher at the door greeted
me warmly and asked me to sign the guest register. As I
came into the sanctuary, I met the guest minister. I found
an empty row of chairs to sit in. A few minutes later, an
elder came by, “I noticed that you are sitting by yourself.
We do not like for anyone to worship alone in our church.
May I sit beside you this morning?” I replied that I would
enjoy that.
At the start of worship, the minister
greeted the 3 other visitors by name whose names, but he did
not mention my name. However, when he got to the start of
his sermon, the visiting pastor announced, “Last year I was
interested in arranging a pulpit trade with a Presbyterian
pastor in America. There were 3 in the USA listed in our
denominational exchange list. The first two were
unavailable. I telephoned the third name on the list. He
continued: “That person I called a year ago is in our midst
this morning. He has just completed a 3 month trade with a
pastor down south in Plimmerton Parish. I would like
you to meet Pastor Dave Schneider from New Mexico,
USA.”
After church, while we were having a cup of
tea, another member asked me if I needed a ride home, or
needed to go anywhere in town. I thanked her and said, “No
thank you; I was quite familiar with Henderson and also the
metro area of Auckland. “There is one thing you might do
for me. That hymn we sang this morning: ‘He Came Singing
Love,’– I would love to have a copy to take home with
me.” “I will put the sheet music in your host family’s mail
box by 2:00 this afternoon,” she promised me.
The following Wednesday evening, back in
Alamogordo, New Mexico, I went in to the choir practice with
the sheet of music. I told our choir about this wonderful
hymn by Colin Gibson, and I shared my visit to the
church in Henderson. At that point the choir director drew
my attention to a banner on the choir room wall. I had never
paid much attention to that banner. It had on it the words
to “He Came Singing Love.”
B.
There are certain places in the church that
are sacred to us; they hold special memories. There are
other places we scarcely notice.
1.
These important spaces often are associated
with our family’s long-time presence in the church.
a.
Others may have deeply spiritual meanings,
places where we have been touched by the Holy Spirit.
2.
It is important to honor and recognize these
holy places in our lives.
a.
Carl Dudley, a church sociologist, in his
book “Making the Small Church Effective,” tells about
a widow who returned to worship in a time of personal grief.
She arrived late in order to avoid too many friends. Her
husband of 40 years had died two months earlier. To her
angish she found “her pew” had been taken over by a young
couple who had begun to attend in her absence. The following
Saturday she came to visit her young pastor, Carl Dudley. As
a widow she wanted help with what she called her “sin of
idolatry.” This widow ministered to the pastor and the
young couple with their squirming child. She invited them
all to sit in the pew with her.
“For 38 years I shared that pew with my
husband. I know it is idolatrous, pastor, but I feel God is
closer to me there than any where else.” The young couple
took up “residence” in a pew nearby. They became very close
to the older woman.
II.In the Letter of James, this pastor in his
introduction says he is writing to “the 12 tribes in the
dispersion,” pre-dominantly these are the scattered Jewish
Christian community, for whom the “Torah,” the Jewish Law,
so familiar to
Jesus,
was their directory for worship.
A. But now
there are some new people coming in to this small church
gathering. The new folks are mixing in with this intimate
congregation.
1.
James provides a few hints about what is
going on in the worship service,
a.
There are one or two hot topics of
conversation among the members as they wait there and talk
noisily before worship.
2.
Apparently there are worshipers coming in
from the extremes of society...
a.
the chrysoclactylios, or the “gold-
fingered” folks, who wear gold rings and are of the
equestrian rank, the upper crust of society: the
money-lenders and tax-gatherers in the city. If they would
join, they could establish the financial security of this
fledgling church.
(1)
Quite a few of these are Gentiles, of Greek
backgrounds.
b.
Also, there are blue-collar people who come
in their dirty work clothes, and likewise the poor who are
there because they are totally dependant on alms. Will the
church give them a hand-out?
(1)
When I was a kid growing up in northern Iran,
I remember going to the down-town church The beggars would
greedily stick their fingers through the gate in the wall
around the church and plead for 2 or 5-rial coins (a nickel
or a dime). My father always had his coin purse with a few
coins he would distribute to these people.
3.
Please notice something really important
here!
James is not criticizing those who are coming in to worship
from the outside. He is going after the ones who belong in
the church, their ushers, those he calls their
judges:
a.
They have forgotten their Jewish-Christian
standards of morality;
they
have adopted the ways of the worldly society around
them.
b.
These ushers and church judges go after the
gold-ringed, well-dressed folks and say, “Sit here please,
in these special chairs, which we have reserved for our
guests.”
(1)
Chairs or benches were uncommon in the first
century society. if there were any, they were only for the
socialites, the Roman aristocrats.
c.
And to the working class or the beggars– also
allowed to come in– the church ushers tell them, “You must
stand over here,” or, “You shall sit at my feet.”
d.
Allison Ryder and a few friends are in Greece
for 3 weeks. If she enters an Orthodox Church today, she
will be standing for the entire
2-3 hour
“Divine Liturgy.” Only the priests, the choir, have seats.
There might be one or two rows of chairs for a few others.
[pause]
4.
James uses rather strong language here,
the diatribe.
a.
Such talk would certainly not be welcome in
our worship service!
b.
He says: you all are under the law of freedom in
Christ’s glory, but that same law of freedom you are using to
show partiality, to play favorites.
(1)
This is the second time James mentions the name
of Jesus.
c.
In the Old Covenant Law, you were under the
law of neighborly love, and you are obviously not
demonstrating that here!
d.
If you ignore the poor –the ones toward
whom Jesus showed partiality – then God will use that same law
of freedom to judge all of you harshly!
5.
One first century document written at the same
time as James, “The Testament of Zebulun,” (5:1-3),
promises that the Lord returns to you the mercy you show to
others.
a.
Mercy, says James, is another way of fulfilling
the law of love.
6.
Dr. Pheme Perkins in his commentary observes that
this section in chapter 2 focuses on specific relations between
Christians in the church, but it seeks to draw on all venues of
life and experience, and to eliminate a second set of completely
different attitudes toward outsiders.
a.
Practice your inclusive love of everyone inside
your church family. Only then will you be ready to take it
outside your church walls.
b.
A person from the first century A.D. School of
Cynics, criticizes in writing a fellow philosopher for his
love of luxury
c.
“But
if you were to ask the very man who is straining his lungs and
bawling and accusing everybody else: ‘How about yourself and
what do you really do, and what in Heaven’s name do you
contribute to the world?’ he would say, if he were willing to
say what was right and true: ...’I shout, go dirty, take cold
baths, walk about barefoot in winter, and...carp at everything
others do. If some rich man or other has made an extravagant
outlay on a dinner or keeps a mistress, I make it my affair and
get hot about it; but if one of my friends or associates is ill
abed and needs relief and attendance, I ignore it.’”
d. Those
Cynics from early Greek society detached themselves from
normal social relationships. They flet no moral concern, but
then they would butt into everyone’s affairs. Early Christians
went beyond the language of helping others. They would speak of
one another as “my brother” and my sister.” They
obligated themselves to one another in Christ. These Christians
shared all things in common (Acts 2). They became family with no
distinctions, and that is how the first church grew so
miraculously. Their spaces and their time were holy because
their lives touched each other closely.
III.
How would
you or I identify holy space?
A.
Most theologians , I think, will agree with CarlDudley:
1. It is where you “have
a sense of God in a place that is precious” to you,
a. where God’s
time in the Risen Christ has intersected your time and space at
a specific moment,
b. there has
been some kind of spiritual transformation. (page 3)
c. We call
that a XAIROS (kai-ros) event or moment;
2. You want to share
this place physically and spiritually with others--you need
to share it, not keep it private. Holy spaces are for sharing.
3. It is where there has been healing,
love;
a. It touches
those who care, helps them becoming caring persons,
b . It fills us
with hope.
c. A poor
beggar, a blue collar worker, someone who wanders in, a judge,
an elected official, can touch your life and for a few moments
you truly feel as one–one church, one Lord, one faith.
4. Dudley has written
another book that I love, with a timely title, “Where Have
All the People Gone?”
a. I think
some people leave a church because there has not been a holy
place for them. Maybe we have not gifted them with such an
experience.
5. Carl Dudley quotes
Dr. Paul Tournier, a Swiss psychiatrist and Christian
therapist from a half-century ago, “The giving of a place to
those who have none seems to me to be one way of defining our
vocation as healers of persons... one becomes a person only if
one has a place.”
6. Paul Tournier also
observes that the giving of a holy place, a home where a
Christian belongs, is essential for meaningful life, and is a
gift we may share or give to others, especially the poor and
hungry.
a. To belong
is something today’s generation says they genuinely want.
b. It also has
meaning for those in a women’s shelter, for John Coleman’s
Street Kids, for those traveling across the country looking
for home
and family from which they have become alienated.
b. We may
invite them to join us inour worship and at the Communion table.
We may invite them to sit down at a Tuesday night meal.
That person may be an angel in disguise bringing
healing to us, or mercy, and not even know it.
c. Would a
homeless person ever be able, want to belong to our church?
7. If you did move to a
new pew today, after the service talk with your “new
neighbors.” At the coffee hour find a friend; is there a
sacred place for you here in this building you feel comfortable
talking about? Would you be willing to invite your neighbor to
share its story with you, how it has changed you..?
a. By so
doing, each one of you will be enriched.
b. For a few
this may be a way to find closure or healing.
B. In James such a place must
always be within the context of the law of love of neighbor, as
you both become doers of the Word.
1. When we come into Christ’s house, let
remember how we chose our space. a. Where we sit affirms and
honors others as fellow children of God.
b. If we
exclude another, we in fact may be excluding ourselves.
2. And remember that religion which is
pure and undefiled is to welcome and to care for the widow and
the orphan and to ask them to sit in the best places. We will
not change their status in God’s eyes, but we might just change
how God views you and me.
a. (By the
way, Vicki Kiehl offered to trade place with me, but I said,
”No.” (I would not dare touch a single key on our fine organ!"
...Now
may all of God’s beautiful people say, “Amen.”