WE ARE FORMED AGAINST FAVORITISM
Third Week in the Time of Seeking the Kingdom of God
We are in the third week of the sixth season of our spiritual year, the season we call “Kingdom Time.” This is the time we are called to look at how our families, our organizations and our communities are formed, how they are organized, so that we may realize what Jesus told his disciples: That the Kingdom of God is among you!” We read especially during this time from the Letter from James, the brother of the Lord. This letter was written to the communities that had been driven from Jerusalem and their homelands and had settled in cities throughout the Roman Empire. Like Latino communities today they formed a diaspora of communities and, also like today, many were not citizens of the Roman Empire, were illegal, disrespected and did not have even the right to buy and sell goods to make a living.
We also looked at the passage from the Gospel in which Jesus finds his disciples arguing among themselves about “who is the greatest.” Jesus points to a child and says, “whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.” What a message for the President in the White House who says “Make America Great Again” and then puts hundreds of children in cages at the border, who deports mothers and fathers in our neighborhoods leaving millions of children in fear of separation – or actually separated from their families!
Yes, it is a strong message of rebuke to Trump but it is also a message to us, a message about the formation of our communities. James gives the example of a place of worship where the best place is given a wealthy man while a poor man is sent to sit in the back of the church. James reminds them that “believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism…. if you say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”
The message from James is that while we are facing and fighting discrimination from the government and from the rich, we must also be careful to fight discrimination amongst us. The person who has trouble speaking may have the best idea – if we listen to her! The person who has few friends may teach us best about what friendship should be. Often, we want to be associated with the individuals who gain status and recognition and that separates and divides us from those who most feel the boot of oppression and injustice on their necks. The great law that tells us to “Love thy neighbor as yourself” instructs us to treat all people as equals and that means to pay equal attention and equal respect to those who are treated unequally by the world – and in fact, to pay special attention to their point of view and to what they are suffering.
Yet if we try, individually and personally, to adopt this attitude to those around us it is not enough. The blessing of feeling the Kingdom of God comes when we realize the Kingdom of God among us. That means we must pay special attention to the way we are formed, the way we organize ourselves.
In our church, we are formed in four churches, in the family of families we call Familia Latina Unida and in the organization of the next generation, La FuerZa Juventud and the Freedom Charter.
The ministry of our church reaches out especially to those families facing deportation and separation and to those people caught up in the wave of criminalization by the police and mass incarceration. We read for the wisdom of scripture to help these who are being pushed out and marginalized by the nation – and we believe that helps all of us to get the most from this wisdom.
We believe that a church can be a sanctuary – and we have demonstrated that to the whole nation. Yet we also believe that the ministry of a church has to reach deep into the community and not stay behind closed doors. That is why we have taken on the campaign for the right to family and put before the nation the injustice that six million U.S. citizen children, two million dreamers and two million spouses are threatened every day with the destruction of their families. That is why we organize people to defend against deportations in their neighborhoods and why we continue to help dreamers keep their DACA deferments – a right that we fought hard to win for them.
The politicians are debating now what is the best way for this nation to pay for health care. The US has the most expensive health care and also has some of the worst health results. In fact, the lifespan of people in this country is going down, growing shorter and more and more people are dying from treatable disease. It is good to pass laws that will make it possible for all people to pay for health care – but that alone won’t make our health care better. We have poor health because we don’t do well in preventing disease – but prevention requires a community effort. That is why we organized the youth health service corps and the Healthy Hood.
The community we are committed to build doesn’t just proclaim that health care is a right, it organizes the community to take care of each other, to bring to bear all the resources of the community to prevent disease and injury, to close the twenty year death gap from which our people suffer. We are organizing a community to resist favoritism in health care – favoritism in how long we live and how well we are when we are alive.
The families that have joined together to defend each other from the wickedness of deportation and family separation are persisting. Their faith and persistence is giving rise to a new generation. Many of those returning from prison, with a record still branded on their foreheads, have rejoined or reformed families to provide strength and direction and love for that new generation. We must be careful that this new generation does not show favoritism towards the rich and the recognized who oppressed their families but commits themselves to resisting favoritism everywhere. The organization we are building, the organization of Strong Youth, has the responsibility to form that new generation into a well-organized, disciplined, purposeful and effective army against favoritism – among themselves as well as in the world around them
We can do better! In fact, the scriptures give us a vision. We can organize communities that resist favoritism – both among themselves and in the world around them.
We know that politics is the art of compromise but the Kingdom of God, Kingdom communities, are based on the realization of the impossible. Jesus didn’t just provide a safe space for the blind, he healed the blindness! Jesus didn’t just advocate for a few privileges for the disabled, he straightened the legs of the crippled beggar and had him march into the Temple praising God!
Yes, we participate in elections and, for sure it is very important to defeat Donald Trump and the racist movement that he has used to come to power. Yet our participation in elections is an act of defense – and act of defense that will better permit the building of Kingdom communities. You cannot elect the Kingdom of God – you have to organize it from the ground up. You have to demonstrate it so the people can choose it!
Even as we work hard to register people to vote and to get them to the polls we have to ask the question: how could an election be fair when the undocumented and the millions of legal permanent residents are not allowed to vote? The undocumented pay taxes, get no benefits and have no say on how their tax money is used. The actions of the U.S. government and U.S. based multi-national corporations determine the future and present day realities of the nations of Latin America. The people coming from Honduras are coming here to survive because of what the U.S. did to Honduras. Yet the people of Honduras have no right to vote in the U.S. elections!
When someone finally becomes a citizen, they are asked to take an oath rejecting citizenship in any other country. Of course, that is a contradiction because it is legal for a person to be both a citizen of the U.S. and a citizen of Mexico. But more than that, our goal is to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God in which there is no favoritism about who can be and who cannot be a citizen!
The communities to which James, the Brother of the Lord, was writing lived together in different parts of the Roman empire – but they were not Roman citizens. James told them not to forget their history – and the way God had acted in their history. He told them to resist the favoritism that was everywhere around them. Yet Jesus also said that they were “to make disciples of all nations!”
There is great power in communities built on faith – and the uncompromising law of God. Listen to what James says to the communities: “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?” The only road to a just world is the road that eliminates favoritism for all people. James says, “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.” It is a Royal Law because it is a law of the Kingdom of God. If you form your families, your church, your communities and your movements according to this law then you set loose an atomic bomb of love and righteousness that reaches into the hearts of all that are open to it and strikes down all those who would resist it.
The ”favoritism”in this nation exists in a specific historical, social context. That is the context of white supremacy on which this nation was built. This morning we are reacting to two incidents of white nationalist terrorism. We know the most about the attack in El Paso because the shooter put on line his reasons for taking the lives of twenty people – including a child two years old. He said what President Trump said. He said there is an Hispanic invasion into this country. He went on to point out that Latinos were having more babies then white families. He said he was fighting the “replacement of white people in this nation by people of color.”
Racist violence has been a part of this nation since Europeans came to this continent. The communities that we are organizing must be organized to have a moral voice in this nation, a political voice – but we must also organize to defend ourselves. White nationalist violence has been increased by Donald Trump’s political movement – but it will not go away if Donald Trump is put out of office. WE need to be observant. WE need to be careful. And we need to be prepared. For all these things we need to organize our communities to be stronger, more unified and more prepared.
There are many that cannot see the new dawn that is rising now in the heavens. They see only the darkness of human cruelty and indifference, inequality and favoritism. Some see the new dawn and avert their eyes. They see the new majority arising in this country because God has made his chosen people to be fruitful and multiply - but choose to try to displace them and disempower them and disrespect them. God calls us today – as James once called the communities of the diaspora in the Roman Empire – to form ourselves in families, churches, communities and movements in which favoritism has no place, to raise up the oppressed according to the royal Law of Love, to spread the light of the new dawn for all to see. Darkness is not a solid rock, an immovable object. Darkness is only the absence of light. Let us be the bearers of the Light, of the Good News of a new Dawn on the continent of the Americas!
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES FOR THE THIRD WEEK IN THE TIME OF THE KINGDOM
Luke 9:46-48 Who Will Be the Greatest?
An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.”
James 2:1-4 Favoritism Forbidden (1)
My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 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,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
James 2:5-9 Favoritism Forbidden (2)
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong? If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.