Dear Faith Family,
"My brothers and sisters, not with receiving the face hold the faith the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory." (James 2:1)
What is your favorite ice cream? How about sports team? Where is your favorite vacation destination? Which one of your kids (or someone else's!) is your favorite?
We all have favorites: things, places, even people we prefer over others. Most of our "faves" are harmless proclivities shaped by our taste buds, positive experiences, and even traditions: like always choosing to grab the tub of Texas Two Step out of the grocer's freezer, celebrating three Super Bowl victories in four years, or the sure, joyous, and yearly relief from the summer heat via a cool Rocky Mountain evening.
There is no harm in such unique, particular inclinations. I doubt the tub of Strawberry feels left out when passed over, nor the Rangers or Mavs slighted in their rankings, and I know the beach doesn't miss this pale skin. However, when our preferences shift from objects to persons, our predilection for people carries weightier implications.
Did the last question in the sequence above make you a little uncomfortable? Even if you do not have children, you know better than to ask someone who their favorite child is. Why is that?
There seems to be an almost instinctual knowledge that having favorites within the family never leads to the good: whether of the favored, the one favoring, or the family as a whole. Perhaps because we know that it is difficult (if not impossible) not to treat the preferred differently from the others. That, especially with people, favorites lead — even unwittingly — to favoritism.
Favoritism, or partiality, as Chaz helped us see on Sunday, is a failure to see beyond "the face" of the persons we encounter. It is to "receive the face" only, to see persons only through our preferences, and so misjudge and miss out on who they truly are. With such blurry vision, we cannot help but miss the mark. No wonder James says that "if you show partiality you are committing sin" (2:9).
So, if we are going to "be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (1:4), as James encourages, we have to see the world and people differently. Mature individuals are parts and participants in a complete collective. Each part seen and honored for its intrinsic good, and recognizing and honoring the same in the other parts. In other words, we have to see "the glory" of the other.
Seeing the "glory," that God-present-and-approved-goodness, of the other is a work of faith. This is why James, after exhorting us to respond to "the word of truth... implanted" in us, to participate in faith at work within us, says in 2:1, "show no partiality" or "Don't play favorites..."
But how? How do we get past our personal preferences and conditioned biases and see the glory of the other? Well, says James, we remember how "the Lord of glory" judges, or rightly sees, us:
"So speak and act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment." (2:12-13)
James says that faith at work changes the way we see and treat the other, maybe most explicitly the not-so-favored; whoever that might be for you and me. So, will you join me in participating in the work of faith this week? Here is how:
Read James 2:1-13
(Re)Listen or Watch(!) the Sermon
Reflect & Share
First with the Lord and then with your GC or a faith-filled friend:
Do I see only the face, or the divine Glory in the other?Has the mercy I've received become visible in my judgment?
Does the other see it?
May we see as we are seen, and judge as we are judged.
Love you, faith family. God bless.