Today's Scripture Reading (January 25, 2021): James 2
In
"Living, Loving, and Learning," Leo Buscaglia says, "Don't walk in my head with your dirty feet." I
understand the prohibition. I live in a world of division and partitions. It is a world that is filled with prejudices.
And what is even worse is that the world seems to want to convince me that
their biases are and God-approved. They want to walk around my head with their
dirty feet. And when you walk around with dirty feet, you always leave
footprints.
James lived in an era of prejudice,
and often they were prejudices that many believed were God-approved. It was an
era where prejudice was common and based on ethnicity, nationality, economic
class, and religious background. People were judged as being either a Jew or
Gentile, the free were separated from the slave, the rich removed themselves
from the presence of the poor, and the educated Greek culture looked down on
the uncivilized and primitive Barbarian. For many, these were the accusations the
people used against each other to prove that they were better and more worthy
of consideration than their opponents.
Jesus stepped into this era and
taught something different. He frequently ignored the barriers, calling the
tax-collector and the prostitute to follow him and showing his love and concern
for people that the culture had discarded. But in the days of Jesus, there are
indications that James, the little brother of the Rabbi, thought that his big
brother was mistaken. In those days, he held the teachings of Jesus with
contempt. It wasn't until after Jesus's resurrection that James began to realize
that his brother was the Messiah, and he began his journey to accept the
teachings of Jesus.
By the time that he writes his
letter, he agrees. The old prejudices that Jesus rejected now needed to be
rejected by the church and its leadership. Believers could not follow the
favoritisms of the past. It was time for a change. Later, Paul would expand on
James's teaching that "believers in … Jesus Christ must not
show favoritism." He would write to the Galatian church, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor
is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and
heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:28-29). And then, Paul
would expand again on this teaching in his letter to the church at Ephesus
For he himself is our peace, who has made
the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of
hostility, by setting
aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His
purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus
making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of
them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility
(Ephesians 2:14-16).
In
light of all of this, maybe it is time that we demand that those around us "stop
walking around our heads with their dirty feet."
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading:
James 3
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