by the Rev. Dr. W. Maynard Pittendreigh
Sunrise Presbyterian Church
Miami Florida
September, 2000
When I was in college, there was a restaurant that we loved to go to. It was an all you could eat type of place, which explains why I look the way I look today.
We would go and stand in line in the buffet and pick all those things we wanted to eat -- shrimp, crab, clams, hushpuppies, French fries. And we would ignore those things we didn’t want on our plate -- broccoli, spinach.
We loved that place and ate there at least once every week.
What was the basis for what we ate and what we didn’t? Whether it appealed to us. Not whether it was good for us. Not whether or not it made a balanced meal. Just, what did it taste like?
Sometimes I think we try to grow in our faith as if it were an all you can eat buffet.
We go through life picking out this doctrine, but ignoring the others. We select some ethics, but reject others.
What is the basis for what we believe and don’t believe? Whether it appeals to us. Not whether it is true. Not whether it is right. Just whether or not we like it.
Our faith, our beliefs and our ethics have become like an all you can eat buffet. We pick and chose.
We are continuing our study of the Book of James, and today we look at the opening verses of the second chapter. Two questions are raised here:
What people do you choose to love?
What ethics do you choose to obey?
For the people James was addressing, there was a great problem with people being very discriminating about whom they would love, based on wealth or poverty.
James puts it this way in his book...
1 My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism.
2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in.
3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here’s a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet,"
4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
These are two good questions James raises here, and the first one is -- Whom do you choose to love?
The Bible tells us repeatedly to love other people.
But the question we are always asking is, "whom do we REALLY have to love?"
Let’s take a look at the buffet.
For James, he talks about two selections -- the rich and the poor.
But we have a buffet filled with every kind of person.
The rich. The poor.
The people you work for and the people you work with.
The people who can help you in your job. And people who actually hurt you in your work just by being around them.
There are beautiful people. And ugly people.
There are the smart and there are the dumb.
There are people who speak "our" language and people who speak languages we haven’t learned.
There are people with skin like ours, and people with skin that is different.
There are people who are entertaining and fun to be around. And there are dull.
Who do you love?
Most of us pick and choose. We are very selective in deciding whom we love.
But God calls us to love all people, and not to be selective about it.
The Apostle John wrote in his first letter in the New Testament, (I Jn 4:7-8), "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." The Apostle adds (I Jn 4:20), "If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen."
It is so easy for us to pick and choose whom we are to love.
For the people James was writing to, it was centered around financial power. But whatever the criteria, it is important for us to love all people, for this is what God commands. As James put it, "don’t show favoritism."
Imagine -- what would happen if God had shown favoritism. What would it had been like if God were to say to the world -- I love you, but not you over there.
Or I love people with your skin color, but not you folks over there.
The most beloved passage of Scripture does not say, "for God so love parts of the world that he gave his only Son..."
John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes in him would not perish but would have eternal life."
And now James tells us to go and do likewise. Love all people. As James put it, "don’t show favoritism."
When James wrote that, he talked first about not showing favoritism toward others, and loving all and treating all equally, but then he goes onto talk about not showing favoritism toward the laws of God. Obeying some, and not obeying others.
In this portion of his book, James says, "But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker."
Someone told me recently that he and his wife divorced because of his wife’s favorite movie.
"Favorite movie? How can that cause a divorce," I asked.
"Simple," my friend said. "My wife’s favorite movie is the ’Nine Commandments.’"
We live our faith as if it were a buffet. We take a little of this, but we leave behind some of that.
We listen to the Ten Commandments, and we agree with ’most’ of them.
The problem with showing such favoritism toward God’s law and being so selective is that we end up with such an unbalanced faith.
I was watching television earlier this week and there was a show about the real events of a man who broke out of prison several years ago. He trained for his escape, working out in the prison jail yard. He jogged daily around the small confines of the prison yard. Finally, one night he broke out of the prison and started running. He literally ran all night, but he had no compass and the skies became cloudy so he couldn’t navigate. He had no idea where he was headed, so he just ran and ran -- all night long.
Finally, as the sun was coming up, he collapsed on the ground. Suddenly he heard a siren. It was the alarm of the prison he’d just escaped from. After running all night long, he had ended up less than 1000 yards from the prison.
We need a moral compass. We need something to guide us besides our own feelings.
The reason is that our feelings are so clouded with our own sinful desires that if we just pick and choose our ethics, we will never grow in faith.
If we were to look at a buffet of laws and ethics, what would we choose?
We would choose those things that are easy to obey.
"Thou shalt not kill." Fine. We’ll take that. Haven’t killed anyone this week, so we’ll live by that.
"Thou shalt not covet." Too hard. We’ll leave that out. Too confining.
But James doesn’t describe the laws of God as confining. Instead, he describes them as (2:12) "the law that gives freedom."
That is an interesting way of describing the laws of God.
Look at the buffet selections of the laws of God and most of us would see a lot of "Thou shalt nots."
But James looks at them and sees freedom.
I was reading an interview with the singer and film star Kris Kristofferson. A man of many gifts, with broken marriages and lots of pain in his background, but now he has found peace in a happy marriage and five children. Here is domestic bliss sitting on a figure who has always played the tough loner, the loser, the world-weary drifter. His early songs used to be about ’freedom’ - that is, freedom from taking responsibility for yourself, and freedom from keeping your marriage vows, freedom from keeping sober and in your right mind, and freedom from self-control. Lots of things were promised to give freedom which brought in fact bondage. He looks back over those days now and he quotes one of songs, in which he sang, ’Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’ In the name of ’freedom’ men lose wives, homes, children, health and liberty. Then he adds, "I got plenty to lose today. But I am also free today of a lot of things I wasn’t free of before. Loneliness. Depression. Anxiety." (The Sunday Telegraph, October 4, 1998).
Kris Kistofferson is learning about freedom but it is in God’s law that true freedom is found. Freedom from a life enslaved to idols, freedom from living for your work seven days a week, freedom from broken homes, freedom from estranged parents and rebellious children, freedom from hurting others, freedom from guilty affairs, freedom from greed, freedom from lying. Freedom to be content in whatever state you are in. Freedom to enjoy the peace of God that passes all understanding.
But you find that peace and that freedom, only by accepting the whole of the law of God not by treating God s law as if it were a buffet from which you could select a little of this, and leave behind that.
You know, I loved that All-You-Could-Eat Seafood Buffet when I was in college. But even more than that, I love the family dinners I would enjoy whenever I would go home. During those home visits, there was never any question about what I would eat EVERYTHING.
Whatever my mother put on the table, she expected us to take a serving of each and everything. Nothing was to be left untouched. That was, in fact, the definition of a feast. Don t just eat all you want, eat all there is.
With God, life is a feast. We don’t pick and choose whom to love or what laws to obey. We leave no person unloved. We leave none of God’s commands ignored.
