Faith Venture

“My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” (Letter of James chapter 2)

James, brother of Jesus, writing to the new congregations of people striving to figure out what it means to follow Jesus, looks into the soul of those groups and finds a problem. Favoritism. Divisiveness. One group of people is “in” and another is “out”.

Even to this day, we have churches who hold that women are to be segregated out into “women’s roles” and not leadership. Even to this day, we have congregations that cling to racial homogeneity rather than inclusiveness. We have congregations that segregate out homosexual people holding them in a second-class status (attend in order to be “saved” but never leadership).

How many other ways to we differentiate and divide people? Is this what Jesus taught by word and example?

James says later that those who judge people so will themselves face harsh judgement.

I was shown a better way by God. It’s called accepting the common humanity of all people, recognizing and rejoicing in differences, and open to all to partake of the fruit of the spirit and find their unique service in the spirit.

Like Jesus said about Mary (Martha’s sister), choose the better way. Live in the kingdom of God.

This entry was posted on March 6, 2020 at 6:26 am and is filed under Disciplines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.