“Getting To Know You”

“Getting To Know You”

Text: James 2:1-17

© September 10, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen

If you’ve ever been inside East Liberty Presbyterian Church, over in the East End of Pittsburgh, you know that it’s a magnificent place. It has a huge, cathedral-like sanctuary that can seat probably around 1,000 people – maybe more. And the intricately carved woodwork and the brilliant stained glass windows that are all around you are nothing short of awe-inspiring. But perhaps what is most striking to many people who visit that sanctuary is that as you walk from the back toward the front, over along the lefthand wall are two recessed areas, two alcoves, and in those alcoves are two massive marble sarcophaguses. Inside those two alcoves are two marble tombs containing the remains of Richard and Jennie Mellon.

You see, back around 1930 it was the Mellon family that gave the bulk of the money to build the East Liberty Presbyterian Church. And apparently one of the conditions of their gift was that when Richard and Jennie Mellon died, their bodies were to be laid to rest in tombs that were in plain view of the sanctuary. I guess they did that so that when people came to that church for generations to come, people would know whose money had made that building possible.

But at East Liberty Presbyterian Church, one of the things they do there is they run a homeless shelter for men. And I can’t help but wonder – if a homeless man were to die, and his family went to the church and said, “We’d like to have our loved buried in a sarcophagus in the sanctuary just like the Mellon’s” – how do you think the church would respond? My guess is that the church would probably smile, chuckle, and send that homeless man’s family on their way.

Why does that happen? Why does the church so often act just like the world around us, and end up treating rich people one way and poor people another? But that kind of preferential treatment is nothing new. In fact, as we see here in this reading from the Letter of James, it’s something that has been going on in churches from virtually the very beginning.

Apparently in the church that James was writing to back in the first century a situation something like this must have taken place: When the church was coming together for worship on a certain Sunday morning, a limousine stopped out front and out stepped a high-society woman, wearing a fur coat, a diamond necklace, and a brand new designer dress. And as people rushed up to greet her, they could tell right away that the perfume she had was a kind that cost at least $100 an ounce. And so a whole throng of people helped the woman into the church and escorted her to the finest seat in the sanctuary.

Well, on that same Sunday morning another visitor showed up. But he wasn’t a high-society type. No, he had the appearance of homeless person, a bum, a beggar. It was obvious that he hadn’t shaved in days, and from the look of clothes it appeared that they hadn’t been washed in weeks. And the odor he gave off was not the aroma of fine perfume, but the stench of dirt and sweat and filth. And so when he stepped through the front door of the church, the ushers weren’t entirely sure what to do with him. But finally one of them pointed and said to the man, “Why don’t you sit over there, in the back, on the floor, in the corner, and just keep your distance from everyone else.”

“How can you do that?” James asked the church. Is that the way that Jesus wants us to act? Is that kind of unequal treatment the Christian thing to do?

You see, whether we like to admit it or not, we often operate under the assumption that, generally speaking, if someone is rich, it’s because they have been blessed by God with that wealth. And if God has looked with favor on someone and made it so they’ve become rich, there must be a reason that God has done that. And so we figure that if someone is rich, it’s God’s way of rewarding them for being a good, faithful person. And so we often end up assuming that if people are rich because it’s God’s way of looking with favor on them, it’s only appropriate for us then to look with favor and give preference to the rich as well.

And so the flip side of that kind of thinking is that if someone is poor it must be a sign that God is punishing them. And if God is punishing them, we figure, it must mean it’s because they’re sinners, because they’re bad people. And so we figure that if people are poor because God disapproves of them, it’s only appropriate for us to look down on poor people as well.

If you don’t think that’s true, consider this. Last year after hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, two pictures appeared in the newspapers. The pictures were almost identical. Both pictures showed families carrying armloads of groceries out of a store that obviously wasn’t open for business. But the caption for the one picture described the scene as a family finding food in order to survive. And the caption for the other picture said it was a family looting a local store.

If the pictures were almost identical, why did they end up with such different captions? Well, the difference was that the family that was said to be “looting” was a black family. And around New Orleans, generally speaking, if you’re black, you’re poor. And if you’re poor, it’s obvious that you can’t be up to anything good. And so they were described as looting that store.

But in the other picture, the family coming out of that store with food in their arms was white. And around New Orleans, generally speaking, if you’re white, you have money, you’re not poor. And so we assume that people who have money don’t do bad things like stealing or looting. No, in a time of crisis, rich people go out and “find” food.[1]

But then Jesus comes along and challenges that whole way of thinking. Maybe you recall that in the Gospel of Luke, shortly after Jesus was baptized around the age of 30, right as he was about to begin his ministry, he went back to Nazareth, the town that he had grown up in, and he gave what you might call his inaugural address. When a president begins his term of office, he’ll give an inaugural address as a way of saying what he plans to do while he’s in office, what his priorities are. Well, that’s what Jesus did in Nazareth. In his inaugural address, in his inaugural sermon, he spelled out what he thought his main mission was.

And do you recall what Jesus put at the very top of his list? He didn’t say that his main mission was to tell people what they needed to believe so that they could get into heaven. He didn’t say that his main mission was to give people a list of things that they should and shouldn’t do so that they could keep out of hell. No, right at the top of his list, Jesus said that his top priority was “to proclaim good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). And if that wasn’t clear enough, a little later in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus goes on to add these shocking words: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God….But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” (Luke 6:20,24).

Those are shocking words for us to hear. Especially because here in the United States we’ve pretty much come to assume that the great American dream is to get rich, that the number one goal that we’re supposed to have in life is to become wealthy so that we can buy all the stuff we want. Isn’t that what most Americans think life is all about?

Back when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, he was asked, if he could, what one book he would give to the Communist people in the Soviet Union to show them why the United States is such a special land. What book do you think he chose? He didn’t pick the Bible. He didn’t pick some book about our Constitution or our form of government. No, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that if he could put one book into the hands of all the Soviet people to show them what makes America so great, it would be the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog.[2] In other words, if you want to know why America is so great, look at all the stuff we can buy!

And if we look in our closets and our attics and our basements and our garages and look at all the overflowing boxes we’ve stashed away there, we know it’s true. We know that getting more and more stuff is an addiction that we have. And we don’t want to give it away. We don’t want to share it. Because it’s our stuff.

And so that’s why we kind of tense up when we listen to what John the Baptist has to say in the Gospel of Luke. Because John the Baptist comes along and says, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise” (Luke 3:11). I don’t know about you, but I’m not so sure if I want to hear that message. I think I have five or six coats and jackets hanging up at home. And I have a few dozen jars and cans of food in my cupboard.

You see, I think we often look for a loophole in what John says to us. And the loophole, we tell ourselves, is that we’re willing to do what John says, in that we’re willing to share our clothes and food with people we see who are in need. And so what do people who have money quite often do? They live together in areas with other people who have money, and they arrange their lives so that they don’t ever have to go to areas where people are really in need and see poor people.

For instance, a couple weeks ago one of our church members, Henrietta Mims, passed away. And at her daughter’s request, I conducted the funeral service at the church that the daughter attends, the Bethesda Presbyterian Church in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh. Before that day, I’m not sure I had ever been to Homewood. But I drove out the Parkway East and got off at the Swissvale exit and started down Braddock Avenue through part of Swissvale, and Swissvale doesn’t look all that different from Crafton. And then after a while Braddock Avenue leads into Regent Square – again, the houses and businesses looked a lot like what we’re used to seeing around here. And after a bit the neighborhood becomes Point Breeze – and again, it’s a community not all that different from Crafton. But then Braddock Avenue takes this dip and you go through this underpass, and a sign there says, “Welcome to Homewood-Brushton.”

But when you come up on the other side of that underpass, it’s like you’re entering a whole other world. I think my jaw dropped when I started looking around and seeing what an incredibly impoverished, poor area Homewood is. I always knew that some of the areas of the city weren’t as nice as some of the others, but at that moment when I came through that underpass, I became aware of poor people in Pittsburgh like I had never been aware of before. And I have to be honest – I’m not sure I wanted to see that.

Well, what are we supposed to do? When it comes to poor people, are we supposed to feel guilty that we have stuff and they don’t? That doesn’t seem to do too much good. Should we be willing to take up a collection and send a donation somewhere? That certainly seems to be closer to what James had in mind when he says that it doesn’t do a hungry person any good for him to know that you feel bad that he’s hungry – no, what a hungry person needs is for you to give him something to eat.

But when it comes to the poor, I think that beyond feeling guilty, and beyond making out donation checks, Jesus calls us to enter in to relationship with the poor. Instead of looking at poverty as a problem that needs to be solved, I believe Jesus calls us to enter in to relationship with poor people and to see them as human beings, people just like you and me, people who God loves, and people who God commands us to love. And when you think about it, it’s kind of hard to love someone if you never meet them face to face. It’s kind of hard to love someone if you’ve never seen them, if you don’t even know what their name is.

At a conference I attended earlier this summer, something one of the speakers said really stuck with me. He said, “What marks you as a Christian is not who you will feed, but who you will eat with.”[3] What marks you as a Christian is not who you will fed, but who you will eat with. It’s one thing to put a can of soup on a poor person’s front porch, ring the door bell, and run off. But it’s another thing to take the time and make the effort to stop and get to know that person, or to get to know that family, and to help them to see that they are loved by God.

For instance, in our presbytery there are partnerships being developed between some of the more affluent congregations and some of the poorer churches. One of those partnerships involves the John McMillan Presbyterian Church out in Bethel Park, a somewhat affluent congregation, which has formed a relationship with the Presbyterian church in Duquesne, a very poor community that has made the newspapers in recent months because they don’t have enough money to operate their own schools anymore. But the John McMillan church and the Duquesne church have entered in to a relationship with each other, which involves not just the rich church sending financial aid to the poor church. Instead it’s a relationship where people from John McMillan go to Duquesne to help them with their children’s ministry, and in turn, from time to time people from Duquesne go to John McMillan to sing at their worship service and take part in other church activities.

And that’s made me wonder: what would it be like if we were to do something like that? No, we’re not the most affluent church in the world. But over the years we’ve developed a connection with the Northside Common Ministries’ homeless shelter. Six times a year we take dinner over there. We’ve had members donate clothes and furniture. Our youth group collected food for their food pantry. And those are all really good things. But for the most part, we go in, do our thing, and we’re gone. We do nice things, but what we aren’t doing is developing a relationship with the people we’re trying to show God’s love to. What would it take for us to do that? What would it take for us to enter in to a relationship with the poor people who live just a few miles away on the North Side?

Or even right here in our community – every month we distribute groceries to more than 50 families that are struggling to put enough food on the table. But are we building relationships with those people? Or there are many other people in the area who we provide help and assistance to, but are we doing a really good job at getting to know those people and helping them to see the love that God has for them?

I recently came across a story that Tony Campolo told. Tony was a professor at a Christian college in the eastern part of the state, and he’s someone who travels widely and speaks at all kinds of conventions and seminars. One night it seems he was on the road and in a different time zone than he was used to, and so he had a hard time falling asleep. So he got up and walked down the street where his hotel was and came across an all-night donut shop. As he sat there at a table eating his donut, all of a sudden a group of prostitutes walked in, apparently finished with their work for the night. And so Tony sat there and sort of listened in on their conversation.

The one woman, a woman named Agnes, said, “Guess what? Tomorrow’s my birthday. Tomorrow I’ll be 39.” But one of the other women snapped back, “So what? Do you want me to go out and get you a birthday cake? Do you want me to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you?” But the Agnes replied, “Why do you have to be so mean? I’m just saying that tomorrow is my birthday. I don’t want anything from you. I mean, why should I have a birthday party? I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?”

When the women left, Tony went up to the donut shop owner and asked him if those women came into his shop every night. He said yes, they did. So Tony got together with that donut shop owner and they began to plan out a surprise birthday party for that prostitute. So the next night when Agnes walked in, everyone yelled, “Surprise,” and she couldn’t believe it. She got so choked up, in fact, she had a hard time blowing out the candles on her cake. And when the time came to cut the cake, Agnes asked if they wouldn’t mind if they didn’t cut it. Since it was the first birthday cake she had ever been given, she wanted to keep it for a while and treasure it.

As the party was about to break up, Tony asked if he could say a prayer. The donut shop owner looked at him and said, “I didn’t know you were a minister. What kind of church do you belong to?” Tony said, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.” The shop owner said, “No you don’t. There aren’t any churches like that. But if there was, I’d join it. Yeah, I’d join a church like that.”[4]

Is that the kind of church we want to be? Do we want to be a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning? That story really made me think. At first it made me think that what Tony Campolo did was wrong. After all, if he was a real minister, shouldn’t he have told those women that what they were doing was wrong? Instead of serving up cake and ice cream being so chummy with them, shouldn’t he have denounced what those women were doing with their lives?

But when you read the gospels, you find that Tony Campolo did just what Jesus did. Because there in the gospels, we are told that Jesus associated with prostitutes, that Jesus associated with thieves and all kinds of sinners. But instead of starting out by wagging his finger at them and condemning them, more often than not Jesus started out by having them over for dinner and throwing a party for them. He did that to help them see that they are people who God loves.

It seems to me that a lot of churches nowadays have gotten rather good at condemning people, at denouncing people. It seems to me that a lot of churches nowadays have gotten rather good at making pronouncements about who it is that God disapproves us.

But in our ministry with those who are poor, if we are to follow Jesus as our guide, it seems that where we really should start is by throwing a party and showing God’s love to people. Yes, on down the line, there may very well be occasions when it will be right and appropriate to talk about what kinds of changes need to be made in their lives. But instead of starting with that, instead of starting with the bad news, Jesus calls us to begin with the good news, the good news that God loves you, that God really loves you. That’s the message that so many people are just waiting to hear.