Listen, Love, Share, Repeat - Father Dave's Blog

“But you have dishonoured the poor person. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?” (James 2:6-7).

You could be forgiven for thinking this was a line from Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”. James, the brother of our Lord, is the Apostolic father of egalitarianism. He believed in equality. Whether or not he initiated the practice of the early church in Jerusalem where everyone “sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need” (Acts 2:45), he certainly would have approved of it.

This passage begins with a rather bizarre illustration. James 2:3-4 reads:

“If a person with gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here in a good place, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”

I wonder if James is being tongue-in-cheek. Did this ever really happen? How many members of the early church even had gold rings? The first Christians that we know of all seem to be very working class, with the exception of the former tax-collectors. Even there, we can’t imagine someone like Zaccheus telling some shabbily dressed brother or sister to sit at his feet because he didn’t like rubbing elbows with them.

In today’s church context it’s even harder to imagine this scene. That’s not because there are no rich people in the church. There are no poor people. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that poor people who visit the church today tend to be there for welfare assistance. They are rarely a part of the worshipping community.

I’m not speaking speculatively here. I pastored a church for more than 30 years, and our parish was initially a very poor area. In the early 90’s, none of our local teenagers would dare walk the streets alone at night. There were gangs out there that somehow managed to mobilise almost instantly, armed with baseball bats, and this was in the era before mobile phones! We worked with those people, and with the heroin-users whom we’d find slumped in bus shelters. We went out to them and talked to them. We did our best to support these people. Even so, almost none of them joined our church community.

I don’t think it was lack of openness on the part of our people. It was just that our congregation of around forty people was then primarily made up of older women. It was difficult for the young (mainly male) people we were working with to connect.

Things changed over the years. The area gentrified and the congregation became larger and younger. Even so, by that stage most homeless and addicted people had left the area. They’d shifted further out west where they could afford to live, and where the churches, once again I suspect, were largely composed of older women.

I’m not sure what advice the Apostle, James, would give at this point. I suspect he would urge us to restructure our community along the lines of the early church in Jerusalem – selling our possessions, pooling our resources, and sharing with everyone in need. That would indeed break down the barriers between rich and poor. It would pull everyone into the centre of the community. Even so, that’s never going to happen. At least, I can’t see any way that could happen today.

Has James got anything to say to us in our communities today? I believe he has. Indeed, in chapter two, verse six, I believe James gives us a succinct diagnosis of exactly what is wrong with our world:

“Is it not the rich who oppress you?” (James 2:6)

I think the ‘Occupy Movement’ got it right. When protestors Occupied Wall Street in November 2011, they blamed the world’s ills on economic inequality, corporate greed, big finance, and money in politics. They could have used James 2:6 as their battle-cry. Perhaps if the Book of James had been their handbook, they might have pulled in more members of the church. We might still be fighting!

Interestingly, 2011 was also the year Robin DiAngelo coined the term “white fragility”, and the ensuing wave of critical social justice theories helped to dilute the critique of the Occupy Movement. It wasn’t the rich and powerful who were the problem. It was white people, or it was straight people, or thin people, etc. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that a lot of rich and powerful people gave financial backing to these new critical theories. They are weapons of mass distraction.

Of course, we don’t need to launch a new Occupy Movement in order to be faithful to the teachings of James. The Apostle recommends some very straightforward ways of exercising our faith that don’t require us to take on global ideologies.

“If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that” (James 2:15-16)

Perhaps simple acts of sharing do challenge the toxic ideologies at work in our world. It’s certainly a good starting-point: Listen, Love, Share, Repeat.

Our Sunday Eucharist

We celebrated another wonderful Eucharist last Sunday. A big thank you to David Baldwin and Robert Gilland for joining me on the panel. As is my practice, I’ve extracted some ‘shorts’ from our Bible Banter that are featured below. To see more, visit my YouTube channel or join our Sunday Eucharist Instagram page.

This coming Sunday I’ll have Rob Gilland back with me, along with Father Mark Battison. I’ve also asked a rather special friend to contribute a pre-recorded reflection on the passage from James. I won’t mention this person’s name as I’m not sure they are going to be able to do it, but it will be a special surprise if it happens.

Find out this Sunday from noon at TheSundayEucharist.com and on YouTube, Facebook , Twitter or LinkedIn.

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What’s On?

Sunday, Sept 8 – Our Eucharist from midday @ thesundayeucharist.com
(or through Facebook , YouTube, Twitter or LinkedIn).
Thursday, Sept 12– Boxing at The Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm.
Saturday, Sept 14– Boxing at Fadi’s Boxing Gym in Fivedock from 8.30 am

The calendar of events this week is predictably light as I am in the middle of a one-week break. I’m currently on the Central Coast with Joy. On Monday I head down to Melbourne to spend a few days with my beloved daughter, Imogen. Her birthday is on the 10^th. The chaos will no doubt return when I get back home as I set about trying to reach no.1 in the MBA rankings in boxing (click on pic for details). If you want to assist me in my efforts, please share this link to the short of my last fights.

Before closing today, I want to thank everybody who responded to the plea for help that I put out this week. I emailed a number of you to ask for help with my book-keeping as I’m having trouble managing the accountancy fees. The response was overwhelming! Many of you offered assistance in one way or another, and those who know no more about accountancy than I do, offered prayers and emotional support.

It is a great privilege to be a part of such a supportive community. It sustains me. It gives me the why to keep going, even when it’s not obvious how that can happen.❤️

Keep praying for our broken world, and especially for the people of Gaza. Keep praying for me too please, as I do for you.

Your brother in the Good Fight,