SUNDAY SERMON: Where everybody is somebody
By Rev. Stephen Baldwin,
OLD TESTAMENT: Proverbs 22.1-2, 8-9
NEW TESTAMENT: James 2.1-10, 14-17
The other night I was flipping channels, and “Cheers” came on. Do you remember Sam, the bartender? Cliff, the postman. Frasier and Lilian, psychiatrists who got their own show. Woody, the other bartender. Rebecca, the manager. And my favorite, Norm, the cranky customer. It was a wonderful show!
“Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot. Wouldn’t you like to get away? Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same. You wanna be where everybody knows Your name. You wanna go where people know, people are all the same. You wanna go where everybody knows your name.”
Remember that song? Cheers is about a bar in Boston, but I think it could be about the church. Should be about the church. The way the church should work.
Where everybody knows your name. Where people know that people are all the same. Where they’re always glad you came.
Let’s look at James and I’ll tell you what I mean. James cares about real people in real life. He’s a religious leader, but he’s not like the rest. He could care less about grand theological debates and ecumenical relations. James is a practical man, and he proclaims a real religion for real people in their real lives.
But there was a problem. It was a wall bigger than the Great Wall of China. It was made not of stone, but of an idea. This wall was the divide between rich and poor. I cannot adequately enough emphasize the extent to which people’s pocketbooks affected the looks people gave them in James’ day and age. The rich stayed amongst the rich, and the poor stayed amongst the poor. Economic segregation was a way of life. Even the church was segregated. Only certain people could go certain places. Is that the way the church should be?
“Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.”
The problem was partiality. Some people were treated better than other people. Do you know what that’s like? One day I was standing in line to pay the bill at Cracker Barrel. It was a very long line, and I’d been waiting a very long time. I finally got up to the front of the line, and the cashier took the person behind me. Who had come a long time after I had. I said, “Ma’am, I was here first.” She said, “I know,” and she kept on checking them out and ignoring me. Partiality. That’s the kind of behavior that upset James. Because it has no place in Cracker Barrel, or in the church.
“Wouldn’t you like to get away? Sometimes you want to go Where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.”
James used an example in today’s Scripture of two people coming to church and being treated completely differently. He wasn’t making that up! That was reality. The rich were afforded seats while the poor sat in the floor. That’s the way it was. People welcomed the banker with open arms and used their arms in another way when the chronically poor came through the door.
James, the brother of Jesus, saw this happen with his own eyes. And being a practical man who wanted religion to be real, James asked those early Christians, “Did my brother not teach us to love our neighbors? To treat others the way we want to be treated? To forgive seventy times seven times?”
James was tired. Tired of people wishing the hungry well, but not feeding them. Tired of people praying for school shooting victims but not doing anything to make school kids safer. That’s when he said, “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
In context, that makes sense. James wanted the church to be a place where everybody was the same, no one person better or more worthy than any other. But over time, his words have become a lightning rod for controversy.
People today read them and ask, “Does that mean God judges us based on our works? Is that how we get to heaven?” A natural question, isn’t it? But that’s not what James is talking about.
James is talking to people in the church. People who have professed their faith. People who love God and know God loves them. To the church, James says, “Faith without works is dead.” He’s not talking about salvation. He’s talking about walking the talk. He’s talking to real people about real problems, and he gives them some real advice: Don’t just call yourself a Christian; act like one!
“You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same You wanna be where everybody knows Your name. You wanna go where people know, people are all the same, You wanna go where everybody knows your name.”
As I studied James this week, my thoughts went back to the show I’d stumbled on surfing channels, Cheers. That great show from the 1980s with Ted Danson and Kelsey Grammar and Rhea Perlman and Kirstie Alley. (Funny sidenote: My uncle Hutton tried out for the bartender’s part played eventually by Woody Harrelson.) We all know the theme song.
“Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot. Wouldn’t you like to get away? Sometimes you want to go..Where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same You wanna be where everybody knows Your name. You wanna go where people know, people are all the same, You wanna go where everybody knows your name.”
That’s precisely the kind of church James wanted to lead. A church where everybody was treated the same. Where everybody knows your name. Where everybody is somebody. A church where the banker and the homeless can sit side by side in the pew. Where everybody is glad you came.
I am glad you came today. You are an important member of this community. God loves you, and so do we. Just as you are. In this place you can be yourself. You will not be judged; you will he loved. That is the Gospel according to Cheers, but more importantly, it’s the gospel according to James. Amen.
