Midtown Presbyterian Church

The Great Con | Favoritism - James 1:27 - 2:7 - Clint Leavitt

Sermon Resources:

“Hostility isn’t integral to the definition of discrimination; you can treat people differently without being hostile to anyone. But it is important to understand how discrimination can occur both without hostility and without any intent to discriminate.” -Tony Greenwald, "Favoritism–Not Hostility–Causes Most Discrimination"
“This is God’s chosen lot. He had one opportunity only of living our life, and He chose to be born of parents too poor to present more than two doves at his presentation in the temple.” -F.B. Meyer
Stories on NY Church: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/02/carl-lentz-and-the-trouble-at-hillsong; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/us/carl-lentz-hillsong-pastor.html; https://pagesix.com/2020/12/28/hillsong-church-operated-like-a-nightclub
“How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God…Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. But brothers, have you found our king? There he is, honoring and kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep is the true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.” -George Macdonald, "Christ In Creation"

Duration:: 39m
Broadcast on:: 14 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[MUSIC PLAYING] You're listening to a sermon from Midtown Presbyterian Church in Phoenix, Arizona. If you'd like to learn more about Midtown and its ministry, please visit us at midtownprez.org, or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. He was a genius from a young age. Young Lewis was coming to a realization at that point that many of us, if we're paying attention, have probably noticed our own lives, we live in a world of prejudice. And just recently, I was reading one noteworthy way that prejudice has crept its way into our American culture, among many different ways, accents. Accents. According to recent research cited in the Wall Street Journal, accents play a primary role in the hiring and firing processes in the workplace. And the study found that people who had foreign-sounding accents were less likely than their native-sounding peers to get a job and would have to work harder for promotions. Not only that, people with foreign-sounding accents were also considered less trustworthy than people with native-sounding accents. And that's not just true for people who live in other countries. That's also true for accents that sound weird to us with in America. It was found that Americans with Southern accents were assumed to be less intelligent than other Americans, even when they shared the same credentials. There's an American author and theologian Harry Lee Poe, who talks about this in his own experience. He grew up in the southeastern US. So we had this thick Southern accent, but he got his master's degree and his PhD there, and then moved to Oxford to do his post-doctoral research and teaching and writing and the rest. And in Oxford, some people wanted to interview this guy. They were really interested in getting to him. And there was a question that one interviewer asked him that stuck with him ever since. The interviewer said this, "Did it feel awkward at Oxford to sound so ignorant?" Friends in our world, if someone sounds or looks or feels like they're not one of us, we suddenly become unsure and skeptical. And we prejudge folks based on our own categories. That's what the word prejudice means. To prejudge someone and then to sort them or treat them differently because of that prejudgment. And it's not just our accents. If we all do an honest audit of our own hearts, we'll see the same dynamics there. The biases that we see out there in the world are always extensions of our own inner lives. So what might it be for you? Think about it, for you. What sort of response arises when you see that person with the bumper sticker that says, "I stand with Trump" or that person with the bumper sticker that says, "My body, my choice," or that next door neighbor who never cleans up their yard to your liking, or that person who uses the word literally when they really mean figuratively. (audience laughs) I knew that wasn't just me. Or that co-worker who had another wild party story from their weekend, or that man or woman who shows a little too much skin in their wardrobe, or that dude driving the oversized truck with the lifted tires, or that person wearing a turban in the grocery store, or that person who practices that religion, or that person who went to that school, or that person who posted that on social media, the list goes on, and on, and on. Ethnic, or social, or behavioral, or criminal, or religious, all of us in our own lives have biases that cause us to treat people differently. But there's also a really subtle part to prejudice that we don't often talk about or realize. Prejudice isn't just about who we're hostile towards. Sometimes our praise reveals our prejudice as much as our put downs. For example, imagine, this morning, you arrive at church, you've got your coffee in hand, you've got your donut in hand, you sit down, the midtown lo-fi is playing pre-service, and you're just sitting in your chair. This is how everyone arrives to church on Sundays. Just boogie into the lo-fi music. Then you start to look around, see who's here, and then you look towards the entrance, and down the hallway, you find that Taylor Swift has arrived at church. Taylor has arrived, and she looks around, trying to find a place to sit, and then she comes and sits right next to Nora. (audience laughing) What's going on in Nora right now? She's getting butterflies in her stomach, right? Her tongue is probably tied, she's trying to figure out what to say to Taylor, she doesn't have anything for the sign, she wants to sign something, so she hands her her Bible, she says, "Sign this, sign something." (audience laughing) And then just after Taylor comes in, Oprah follows up. Oprah rolls in, and she comes and sits right next to Matthew Parker. (audience laughing) What happens when Oprah sits down next to Matthew Parker? We flock to her, right? We want to talk to her, we want to learn from her, we're inspired by her, we want to share what she's done in our lives and in the world. Now imagine one minute after Taylor and Oprah come in, my neighbor experiencing homelessness named Nick walks in. Nick goes and sits at the very corner over here. He's quiet, he's a little disheveled, he smells, he's been out in the Phoenix sun for weeks without a shower. Is anyone asking for his autograph? Is anyone giddy when he walks in? Is anyone rushing to meet him and smile at him and hear his story, reminding that he is beloved, that we're happy he's here with us? Friends, there's another pervasive form of prejudice, been hostility, it's favoritism, favoritism. It's the tendency we all have to extend preferential treatment or praise towards someone because they are esteemed and our eyes are in the eyes of the world and it is pervasive in our culture. Now for instance, studies show that we tend to elevate taller people over shorter people. I'm not intended. Elevate, taller people over shorter people. Each centimeter of height, according to the study, each centimeter of height is equal to approximately a 1.3% increase in annual salary in the US. We elevate wealthy people over poor people, we elevate doctors over plumbers, we elevate celebrities over teachers, we elevate younger people over more experienced people. Our whole culture functions that way. And the most sinister part of it is that it's often hidden. When we practice favoritism, we don't think we're being prejudiced because we aren't showing hostility. We're praising people, I couldn't show hostility, I'm not angry towards them. We don't think we're being prejudiced when we practice favoritism. But that's a lie, it's a con. There are a couple of psychologists at the University of Washington and Cow who recently teamed up to talk about this and write about this. In their work, they found that favoritism is more sinister oftentimes than outright hostility because it's harder to spot and it's harder to police against. And they claimed that if we want to be people of true hospitality and justice and love, we have to look first at our habits of favoritism. They put it this way, hostility isn't integral or necessary to the definition of discrimination. You can treat people differently without being hostile to anyone. But it is important to understand how discrimination can occur both without hostility and without any intent to discriminate. Just look in your own heart, guys. If it wouldn't be T-Swift or Oprah walking in, who would it be that would spark favoritism in you? An athlete, a politician, a girl or a guy you think is attractive, a Kardashian, I don't know what it is for you. Guys, here's the truth, the people you praise, the people you welcome, the people you move towards, the people you highlight, the people you elevate, they're the ones who reveal your true character. We're continuing in the teaching series here at Midtown. We're calling the Great Khan. We're looking at the book of James together in all the different ways that our culture gives us lies, cons, about what it means to be human and who God is and how we should show up in the world. And how James responds to every one of those and says, guys, no, that's not wisdom, that's not true. You need to be reoriented, you need something that can identify the Khan that you've believed in some way and then provide a pathway through it. And today, he's dealing with the Khan of favoritism. We find that it's not a new evil, that it's been around for a long, long time. And James manages to expose that sickness in us, but also point us towards the cure. He shows us the pathway to life, a life that is free of prejudice and full of Christ-like love. So friends, if you have a Bible, open it with me. To the book of James, this is near the backs of your Bibles in the New Testament. We're gonna be starting in James chapter one, the very last verse of chapter one, verse 27, and then reading through chapter two, verse seven. You can also follow along here on the screen. We'll have the words up there. James one, starting in verse 27. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this, to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world. My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious, Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly and if a person in dirty clothes, who was poor, also comes in. And if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say have a seat here, please. Well to the one who was poor, you say stand there or sit at my feet, have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters, it has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith, to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love them. But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you in the court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? This is the word Lord, thanks be to God. Kindness, compassion, justice. For many of us, those words in our culture are ubiquitous. We love those words. I've never met anyone who's like eh, kindness, whatever. Compassion, justice, that's for the birds. We all love those words, we all love those ideas, but for as much as we talk about them and love them, our culture doesn't really give us a good handle on how to live out justice or compassion or kindness. We're a culture that universally praises those things, but then we go through our lives largely unchanged. We're still incredibly divisive. We're still quick to anger. We shoot one another. The people who are supposed to have guns and the people who aren't. We're still judgmental and condemning. And it's left me oftentimes, I know many of you in this room because I've had a conversation with you, asking a question, how do we actually live like this? How do we become people who really are changed in the people of kindness and compassion and justice and who don't just talk about it? Because a lot of people in our culture talk about it. That's the main question that James is concerned with in his letter here. All through the letter he's giving us this indication of what it looks like to become these sorts of really transformed people. And in chapter one, where we spent the last couple weeks, he lays down a principle. And this principle is the starting point for James throughout the whole of his letter. We need to keep this in view and it'll keep returning to it over and over. He mentions the starting point in the verses before what we just read. In verses 25 and 26, he compares the scriptures, the word of God, to a mirror. A mirror. It was a mirror do, right? A mirror shows us who we are. A mirror reflects our identity back to us. What James is saying is that the person who struggles to embody God's character in the world, the person who struggles to be a person of kindness and compassion and justice. The reason they struggle is because they've looked in the mirror, they've seen who they are and they've left it behind. They've forgotten who they are and they are living out of a false identity. But the person who lives a life of kindness and compassion and justice, they're the person who looks intently into the mirror, into the word of God, into the scriptures and sees quite clearly who they are. And their life is an extension of who they are. In short, when we go to the Bible, before it ever tells us what's to do, it shows us who we are. Before it ever tells us what to do, it shows us who we are. And the truth is we often read the Bible in the opposite direction. Even those of us who have been in the church for a long time, we read the Bible and we hear it say things like do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God, right? And then we realize we haven't done that well and we're like, I just gotta try harder, I just gotta work harder, I just gotta do it better. We hear things like don't have fear, don't have anxiety and we think, I've just gotta weed this out by my own effort. I've gotta work my way up and try harder to get rid of those things. We suddenly make the Bible into a Nike slogan, we say just do it. And over the course of years, that approach, that approach to faith, that approach to the Bible, will destroy us. I can't count how many people I've interacted with who have lived with that view of the Bible and eventually results in one of two things, either on the first hand. It results in a life that is completely burned out by trying harder and feeling like you're never quite enough. There's a minister I was reading a few weeks ago who told a story about a woman in his church. She was always on the periphery, but who came to church faithfully for 30 years. She was serving, she prayed, she read, she was part of all these different groups. And now she was kind of nearing the end of life. And so he was paying her a visit on her deathbed in the last few weeks of her life. And he had a lot of questions for, as a minister would. He wanted to hear, hey, how do you think God views you? How are you with God right now? How have you reflected on your life in the ways that God has showed up? How's your relationship with God? And she had a phrase, she responded to him with it, haunted him. She said, I'm not sure if I've done enough. I'm not sure if I've done enough. Her whole life she had lived as if God would only be satisfied with her if she had done enough. And it led her to shame and weariness to the end of her life. And if the just do it to mentality with the Bible doesn't lead us there, it will lead us to become cynical people who want to lead this whole religious thing behind. Many people in my generation have experienced the church that way, they've experienced legalism, they've experienced Bible thumpers, and they've just said, you know what, I gotta leave that behind. Makes us cynical about faith. So here's the problem, friends. Knowing what to do does not actually give us the power to do it. And anyone who's raised a toddler knows this to be true. Yeah? You can tell them what to do all day long. Doesn't mean they're gonna do it. Turns out we're kind of just big kids in our lives. Just do it has never been the message of the Bible. Nowhere does the Bible say, just try harder and you'll get there. James wants to be very clear on this. If we are having trouble embodying lives of integrity and honesty and kindness in the rest, it's because we've forgotten who we are. It's because we've walked away from the mirror of God's word that shows us who we are. Another way of putting it, it's been helpful for me. Our being always comes before our doing. Our being comes before our doing. It's not just do it, it's just be it. Christian stuff, doing Christian stuff isn't what makes you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is understanding who Christ is and who you are. And living freely out of that different identity. That's what faith in Jesus looks like. It means looking into the mirror of God's word intently until you've so internalized who he is and who you are that it shapes you're doing. And when we look in the Bible, it tells us of the gospel. It tells us that we are people who are at once deeply haunted and deeply holy. We are deeply haunted. Our hearts are such a tangled mess of weakness and brokenness and sin that nothing less than the Son of God arriving on earth to redeem us could resolve our identity problems. Our doing alone can never recover who we are. But the good news is that God has done that redeeming act. That in Jesus, God lived the life that we are made to live. Died the death that is the result of our dying lives. And rose again to give every single one of us a new identity, new life. And so every single person inside this room and outside of this room because of what Jesus has done is accepted and beloved and forgiven and redeemed children. That's who we are. Infinitely loved, infinitely valuable, infinitely welcomed, no matter what. That's the mirror we need to look into. And when we do that well, it will start to shape us into the sorts of people we're made to be. It will make us humble people because we know our weakness and we know our greatness in Christ. It will make us forgiving people because we know what Christ has forgiven us and we know what he's forgiven the whole of the world. It will make us merciful and compassionate because we know Christ came for all people to show mercy and compassion on all. And so we get to spend that love because we know we've experienced our own lives. And it will make us just people because we know there is no prejudice that can stand in the eyes of God. That's why in verse 27 here, James says the true faith, true religion is found at the intersection of the personal and the social. Did you catch that? He's bringing both of those in here. He's talking about being and doing. He says religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this, to care for the orphans and widows and their distress, social. And to keep oneself unstained by the world, personal. That is we need a deeply personal connection to the sight and view of God. We need a life unstained by the way that the world trains us to see others and to see God. And we need to see God clearly through the scriptures. We need right being. And that includes things like confession and forgiveness and repentance and prayer and devotion, all those things, personal piety. And when we learn to be well in this way, when we learn to spend time with God in this way and understand our identity in this way, when we remember our belovedness, then we can move to the world in profound ways because we know that if we're beloved, so are they. So we give our lives away to the oppressed, to the vulnerable, to the powerless. See this verse right here is what makes Christianity so radical in our culture because it critiques both the liberal and the conservative approach to doing and living. The liberal vision in our culture says just pursue social justice, just pursue right doing out there. And all of your personal life, your sexuality, your particular preferences, your spiritual practice, those things are less important. As long as you're living well out there, you're doing great. They focus on doing. The conservative vision often says, just pursue personal piety, just believe the right things. Have the right ideas in your head and all of the ways that you spend your money, the ways that you vote, the ways that you show up for the vulnerable, that doesn't really matter as much. Just have personal piety, it's just about being. Both of those are cons. If we only care about private individual religion, we have missed the truth, that the gospel is a kingdom pervading every corner of creation and bringing justice and peace and shalom to all people and particularly to the oppressed. And if we only care about social justice, then we've missed the truth of the gospels about personal transformation that remembers our identity in Christ and then reshapes us into his image. People were deeply connected abiding in the presence of God and our belovedness. We need a radical personal transformation, a way of being that leads us to a radical social transformation doing. That's what James has established here for us. And once he's established that, he's now in chapter two gonna shift to how this actually gets lived out. And he starts by talking about how we treat other people. He says, don't practice acts of favoritism, chapter two, verse one. That is, don't treat people differently. Don't assume that one person is more important or worthy of your time than anyone else. And notice he says, acts plural here. James means that in any situation, for any reason, don't practice this, because that's what the world does. The world divides people into different values, different castes, different importance levels because of their standards, which by the way, change throughout time, but not so with you Christians. Because you represent a different kingdom, a different reality where Christ has shaped every person's identity and calls every person beloved. And so should we. And then he gives a specific example to illustrate. He gives an example of a rich man and a poor man who both show up to the connect table at Midtown one morning. And the rich man shows up making sure he is revealing his importance and weightiness and power through what he wears. He's decked out in gold rings. He's reppin' a confenci sweater complimented by a Gucci handbag strapped across his chest. Black rock star jeans and the new Nike Air Force won lows in the university gold and silver colorways. And he smells terrific. Bruh is drippin'. Come on, Gen Z. All right, that's enough, that's enough. You can tell, you can tell just by looking at this rich guy who comes in. How important he is based on what he's wearing. He's got clout, he's got riz. He's got it all. Okay, don't have an uprising, it's just a couple words. Geez. Geez. That's the rich man showing up to church. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just got in the Gen Z loop in my head and couldn't stop. That's how the rich man showing up. Clout, responsibility, worth and significance. But the poor man shows up. And he's wearing things that clearly indicate he has less importance, less weightiness, less power. His hair is disheveled and greasy. His hoodie is old and tattered and stained. His jeans are faded with holes in the knees. The soles of his decade old shoes are worn through. You can smell the truth that he's been living on the streets for a long time. These men are in different places on the important scale in the eyes of the world. But what James is saying is this. If the church mirrors those distinctions in their midst, they have failed to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He does not mince words. That is, we have failed, we practice the sort of favoritism. We have failed to integrate the truth of who Christ is and what Christ has done into our lives and the way we treat others. You guys, this kind of favoritism is gonna happen everywhere else. Everywhere you go outside of this place here, it's gonna happen. There are certain people who wherever they go will get special treatment. And there are certain people who wherever they go will be neglected and othered and ostracized. But if they come to church and it's the same thing, then what we're really saying is that the gospel of Christ doesn't matter. What we're really saying is that the gospel of Christ does not create a radical new community of eternal worth for all people. What we're really saying is that the gospel of Christ is just religious plating, tacked onto brokenness and abuse and the rest. And if that's true, everything we're doing and saying and singing in here is utterly meaningless. Our faith is useless, trash, garbage in God's eyes. If we don't radically change the way we treat the poor, the powerless, the vulnerable, the ostracized, if we don't elevate them. That's why over and over in the Bible, in Exodus and Leviticus and Proverbs and Acts and Romans, God reminds us that he does not show partiality. The God of the universe does not show partiality and his people oughtn't either. It's what God says in Isaiah one, two, his prophet and through his prophet, that all of the religious practices of the people at that time, all their prayer, all their songs, all their piety, was lifting up to him like a stench, like a landfill because they did not care for the poor and the widow and the orphan. And it's why here in verse five, James reminds these Christians that when God came to reveal who he truly is and what his work really looks like, he became one who is poor and went primarily to the poor to proclaim this good news. You ever stop to think about that? God could have become any person in the world. He could have become a king, he could have become a politician, he could have become an athlete, he didn't. He became a poor man from a no-name town in Nazareth with parents who couldn't even present two doves at his presentation in the temple. They had nothing, that's where our Lord became, why? Because Jesus is illustrating where God's kingdom shows up to the poor. And all of the New Testament, the word poor, it's used in a couple of different ways. It certainly is used to talk about the economic poor, but it's also used to talk about a condition, a state of being like poor in spirit. Poor describes those who know their need, know their inadequacy, know they and recognize that they need God. Those are the people who can receive the kingdom, the outcasts, the others, the needy, and the vulnerable. The only ones who can receive the doctor are the ones who know they and the world are sick. And so when Jesus shows up, he flips the world's standards on their head in order to illustrate the true riches and true wealth comes in knowing and receiving God. I love how George McDonald put it, one of my favorite authors from the late 1800s. He said, "How terribly then have the theologians "misrepresented God? "Nearly all of them represent him as a great king "on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is. "Making it the business of his being "in the end of his universe to keep up his glory, "wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them "that take his name in vain. "But brothers, have you found our king? "There he is, honoring and kissing little children "and saying they're like God. "There he is at table with the head of a fisherman "lying on his bosom and somewhat heavy in heart "that even he, the beloved disciple, "cannot yet understand him well. "The simplest peasant who loves his children "and his sheep is the true type of our God "besides that monstrosity of a monarch." George, bring him a fire. But that's a truth, friends, in much of our American church that we've forgotten. Just a couple of years ago, there was a story that came out all over the news. It was about one of the most noteworthy and successful churches in the world. They had 150,000 members worldwide. They had an arts culture that had completely shaped the way Christians worshiped and pursued the arts. They had dynamic and powerful services, but in the midst of everything that looked and sounded and seemed impressive, it was all built on a sham. Because the church was structured around favoritism. As an example, for every service at their New York campus, they had special reserved seating closest to the stage for celebrities who might show up. And it worked, celebrities came. Kevin Durant, Chris Pratt, Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, obviously before she and JB's broke up. They were all regular service attendees, and they were all given VIP treatment, treatment ushered to the front in their special seating. One of the articles I read about this church, interviewed a volunteer who talked about this. The volunteer said this, "Every Sunday, they use their space like a VIP lounge "with reserved spots for celebrities, influencers, "and nightlife people in the know. "There were probably 100 seats reserved for notables, "while regular people would line up outside "to get their regular seats." People would have to show up an hour or two before the church opened, while celebrities would get ushered to the front whenever they wanted. They were treating the church with a nightclub mentality. But it didn't stop there. The church also routinely had special extravagant dinner parties where only the people who gave the most in the church were invited. And the people who served were the people who gave less at the church. The pastor of the church, when he showed up on Sundays, had a routine that reinforced this sort of culture at every level. Like a chauffeured car to the church's rear entrance, which led to a private elevator to a pre-service green room, where he would watch sports ahead of time, meet with celebrities and athletes who might have showed up. And then once it was time to start the service, he'd move to his VIP seat right near the front. He'd go up and lead his teaching. He'd sit back down and then he'd leave without ever interacting to anyone. With anyone. Friends, this was a church that everyone in our culture praised and loved. Adored, elevated. This is the example. And before we start to get on our own high horse and condemn them, we need to see the worst part, those same dynamics exist here as well. In more subtle ways. All of us exhibit favoritism when we show up to church. For example, when you show up, do you choose to only ever sit next to people you're already comfortable with? When you scan the room to think about who to connect with after service, do you only go to people who are in a similar age demographic, or ethnic demographic? When you work the connects table, are you just as excited to see the lonely person who's kind of wandering in as you are the family who you've known for years? When you see someone show up in our church who's troubled or beaten up or distressed or dishebled, do you go out of your way to make sure they're seen and loved? See, here's the problem, you guys. When we enter a room like this, and oftentimes when we enter other rooms in our lives as well, our initial instinct is to look out for us. We think that our comfort or our friends or our status or our benefit is the thing that we need to look for. And we aren't thinking primarily about how we can elevate or dignify or love others. We're here for us, much of the time, in subtle ways and in obvious ways. This community at Midtown is an outpost of the kingdom. It's a place where Christ's radical love shows itself in our elevation of the least and the last and the last. It's a place where we are reoriented towards the overwhelming mercy and grace of our Jesus. And so often we just make it about us. What we can get, what we can feel, what we can enjoy for ourselves. And I know that when I realize that, I've been thinking about it and convicted about it in my own life this week. But when I realize that there's an instinct that creeps in, the Nike instinct comes back. Just do better, just try harder. Be better at loving people, right? But remember, that's not how we really change. Rules themselves don't change people. If rules change people, then our culture would be the most hospitable and welcoming culture in history. We have more rules. We've done more over the last few decades to help limit discrimination as best as we can in laws than many countries throughout history. And we are still just as discriminatory, just as prejudiced, just as angry with one another. Rules can't change us. We need something else. We need a cure. Stop it and do better, won't do it. And a cure to the sickness of favoritism that James gives here is rooted in remembering the truth of who God is and who we are. He's rooted in being. He subtly hints at it in verse one. He uses a word to describe Jesus. He uses the word glory. He says our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, or your version might say Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, or Jesus Christ, who is the glory. And that's an interesting choice of word. He doesn't say our loving Jesus Christ. He doesn't say our hospitable Jesus Christ. Those things are both true about Jesus. He chooses glory, why? Why glory there? Well, to understand that, we've got to understand what glory means. Across the scriptures, the word glory, it's used to refer to the inherent worth or value of something. Quite literally the significance, the weightiness of something. So in the example he gives, when the rich man comes in, he's displaying his glory. He's illustrating how important and weighty and significant he is. And the poor man is doing the same in the other direction. His approach indicates his lack of glory. And both men are actually illustrating a part of our human condition. We are people who are all longing for glory. That is we all long to have worth and value, to matter, to have significance, to have weightiness. It's our deepest human need. There's a philosopher and anthropologist named Ernest Becker who wrote about this. He wrote a book called The Denial of Death. He said that none of us as humans are really able to accept the fact that we are temporary, that we don't last forever. We can't stand the idea that after a few generations we might be forgotten. And so we spend most of our lives grasping after glory. We build up wealth, and we build up power, and we build up success, and we step on each other, and we belittle each other, and we oppress each other, all because we need to convince ourselves that we will last, that we matter. That's what we're doing when we're showing favoritism. When we elevate someone, we're trying to get some of their glory into our lives, some of their worth, and kind of absorb it by osmosis into us. But why does that desire for glory in us? Why do we long to last? Animals don't have that desire. They're not obsessing over their worth, trying to last forever and prove their value. Why do we do that? And here's why. Because we all hear an echo of an original glory that we had and have lost. In the beginning, we were made in the image of God who was the ultimate source of glory, and worth, and weightiness, and significance. And because we were made in that image, we shared in God's glory. We were unified with God. We absorbed that glory into our own lives, and our souls were satisfied in the glory of God. But then we lost it. We got tarnished. And we decided, instead, to try to establish our glory and our worth and our significance by other means. And in doing so, we've lost touch with the source of glory in God. We've reduced our worth by our behaviors, which presents us with a problem when it comes to glory. We desire the glory of God. We desire to last eternally to have meaning and significance. But approaching the glory of God is also dangerous for us because we have deluded our glory. There's maybe no better example of this than in Exodus 33. Moses approaches God. He says, "God, I wanna see your glory. "I wanna experience all of your glory. "I wanna last and have this meaning and significance "overwhelm me." He has a hunger for the eternal weight of God. But God tells him, "You can't." Because my glory would overwhelm you. It'd be too much for you to fully comprehend and fully handle on too weighty for you. Because something of immeasurably greater glory and weight comes into contact with something of lesser glory, it overwhelms it. Easy example of this. Emily and I, when we got married, got these chairs that now sit around our dining room table. And over the last few years, we've used them a lot. And they started to wear down. There's one chair in particular a couple of years ago where the screw on the back started to get a little loose. And one day, I decided to sit down in the chair and my glory was too much for it. (congregation laughing) Couldn't handle my weight. (congregation laughing) Now, I don't think that's because I have too much glory, although I've added a little glory over the years. (congregation laughing) My weightiness, my significance, was beyond its ability to hold me. But the same is true for us when it comes to God. We are finite beings longing for the infinite. We are weak beings longing for strength. We are sinful beings longing for wholeness. We are fragile beings longing for glory. But here's what James says. The glory we are longing for has become ours. He is the glory of Jesus. He is the glory of God as the author of Hebrews puts it. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being. And look at how the glory of God shows up in Jesus' life. It goes to all of those who experience worthlessness, who experience the lack of glory. And he says, you have eternal glory. You are beloved in the sight of God. And not only that, not only is it go to the poor, but it also brings his glory and infuses it in to those who are willing to receive it. That's how Jesus shows us God's glory. He gives us God's glory in the midst of our poorness, in the midst of our lack. Paul puts it this way in Saint Corinthians. Though he was rich yet for your sakes, he became poor. So that by his poverty, you might become rich. Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again so that we could get caught up in God's glory. So that we could have eternal, infinite significance. He gave up his glory so that all of us longing for it could receive it. He took on the shame for a lack of glory so that we could all feel it. He did that for you. He did that for me. He did that for every person outside these walls and every person we ever interact with. And since that's true, since the infinite, eternal worth and significance of God has been infused into us when we receive Christ and is infused in every person already who just needs to receive it. Since that's true, no rich man's glory should ever dazzle us. That glory pales in comparison. No celebrity's glory should spark favoritism in you because you have received eternal glory. And every set of eyes that you look into has received eternal glory. Jesus has died for them so that they might be representatives and recipients of his glory. You go to every person recognizing that they're an eternal being. There are no such thing as ordinary people. You've only ever interacted with eternal people. You guys, if you want a life that is utterly unprejudiced, a life that is packed to the brim with kindness and compassion and justice, that's where it comes from. Understanding and receiving the glory of Christ. Seeing who we are, seeing who all people are by virtue of his glory. There's a great story I want to close with. This comes from the fifth century. I was a time in church history where because the Roman Empire had decided to make Christianity legal, it allowed a lot of Christians and encouraged a lot of Christians to become and get baptized and follow Jesus, well really because it was socially beneficial. And so the church started to get diluted and the church started to see a lot of ugliness creep in. And there was a group of people who said, you know what, we need to kind of form communities that are keeping the way of Jesus in the world that really isn't. And so they moved to the desert and they formed these different communities. And one of the people who formed those communities is a guy named Benedict. And Benedict had specific roles for people in his community. He's assigned those specific roles. And one of the roles he assigned was the role of a porter. And a porter's job was to sit, stand or sit, at the front gate of their community. And anytime anyone drew near at all, he was to greet him and welcome him and meet his needs right away. So if they were somebody who needed food, they'd feed him. If they needed prayer, they'd pray for them. If they needed wise counsel, they'd offer it. If they needed a place to sleep, they'd have a bed ready. And that community became known for the radical open-hearted hospitality to strangers, to sojourners, to spiritual wanderers and refugees in the poor, people flooded to this place because of the porters. And the porters had a phrase that I want all of you to remember. Every time they'd see someone approach, they'd say, "This look is Christ who approaches. "Look, it is Christ who approaches the glory of Christ. "Would we become a community of porters, friends? "A community who can look upon anyone and say, "Look, it is Christ who approaches." That sounds like more glory than the world has ever known. Let's pray. [BLANK_AUDIO]