Playing Favorites (The Danger of Preferential Treatment and Class Division)

         Our passage from James 2:1-9 today features James scolding various churches because they have been engaging in favoritism, they have been giving preferential treatment to the wealthy people in their churches, giving them the prime places to sit, and extra attention and care. I wonder, do we still have the same issue today? After all, in some ways we have made great strides toward class equality. For example, America has always had a very different culture than say England. When America was starting, England was still defined in many ways by this elaborate class system where one was entitled to much better treatment if they were a king or queen, a prince or an earl, a noble or a knight. Nor is America a place like how India used to be when it was divided into a strict, hierarchical caste system from the Brahmins down to the untouchables. In America, class distinctions seem much more leveled, though not nonexistent. In democracy, everyone’s vote counts, for example (though for a while you had to own land to get to vote, and for a while certain races or genders were restricted from voting).

But Americans nowadays, we often like to think of ourselves as a classless society. So much is this the case that nearly everyone self identifies as middle class. 90% of Americans believe themselves to be middle class. No one seems to want to think of themselves as lower class or upper class. However, studies say that our middle class is actually shrinking, and only 50% of Americans are actually middle class. Our society is getting more stratified economically than it has been in the past. And it is not too hard to see certain class distinctions in our society if you look very hard at all. Most towns, including our own, you can drive through them and find neighborhoods with huge wealth disparities. An important question to ask is: are these economic divisions affecting our churches?

Well, before we address if it is affecting our churches today, let us see if it was affecting our churches in the somewhat recent past. I think it was. You see, there was one fascinating historical practice that took places in churches in colonial America and continued in some places through the early 1900s. And this was what was known as pew renting. Basically, each year you would pay a certain amount to reserve a pew for you and your family for the whole year. The prime seats closer to the front cost considerably more, and it got less expensive as you got further back. There were likely a few rows in the back where it was free to sit for the lower income congregants. When we hear of that practice today it probably sounds to us more akin to buying seats for a concert or a football game than anything that should be taking place in how to select seats to sit in at church.

And let me joke that things are very different today; I doubt anyone is going to be paying big bucks to sit up front anymore. In most churches the first pews are often empty. Nowadays people often prefer to sit in the back. But back then, of course, there were no microphones. So, I’m sure one of the reasons that the front was popular is that you could hear what the preacher was saying so much more easily. And furthermore, the practice of pew renting was a way for prominent, wealthy families to have their church attendance be very visible. If they sat upfront, everyone who sat behind them could see that they were there each week. And to have the best seats in the house was a visible status symbol, a way to broadcast just how much money you were giving to support the church.

            This practice seemed to do exactly what James was condemning in James 2: letting the wealthier persons have the best seats, and forcing the poor to have the worst seats. Not to mention the fact that many churches in colonial America had separate seating sections in the back or the balcony for slaves. These churches did not live into James’ vision of a classless church where all were treated equally.

            Well, is anything like this still happening in our time? Pew renting is no longer practiced. Yet every once in a while there is a church that does reserve special seats for the rich and famous. Hillsong New York City, a prominent megachurch, for example, they made it a common practice to reserve some of the best seats in a VIP section for any famous celebrities who would happen to attend their services, people like Justin Bieber or Kevin Durant had sat there. They could skip past the lines of others waiting to get a good spot, and they could have some privacy to not be harassed by common people. The church’s rationale for doing this was likely that they thought it was a good evangelism tool for them if they were able to have famous people in their church. These were thus the most important people for them to cater to and try to attract. The idea was that of coolness by proxy. They wanted to show that if this church is cool enough for Justin Bieber to attend, it’s cool enough for you. In fact, if you attend, you can brag to your friends about how Justin Bieber attends your church. His coolness, makes you seem cooler. The only issue is, of course, that their differential treatment towards celebrity made coolness and popularity become just another way to engage in favoritism, another way to create social stratification and to treat one group of people better than another.

            I wonder if this is how favoritism shows up more in the modern church, less strictly along the lines of the rich receiving preferential treatment, but more so that celebrities are given preferential treatment. I really do think that if someone famous like Taylor Swift or LeBron James came into our church to worship one day that they would be treated far better than our normal visitors. They’d receive a lot more attention and love, and we’d bend over backwards to make them feel comfortable here. The temptation to give preferential treatment to some groups of people is a big one, and it’s one I struggle with at times too. I mean it’s LeBron James, how cool would that be!? And yet, God challenges us to see others as he sees them, to see each and every person as equally loved by God.

It’s interesting, God is described multiple times in the Bible as not being a respecter of persons. And yet too often we are exactly that, a respecter of persons. I actually found at least 7 verses that say that God shows no partiality and that God is no respecter of persons. Part of the reason God is able to not respect persons is because God is the perfect judge, able to judge fairly, able to look past all our outward facades and see who we are inwardly. But part of the reason, I think, is simply because in the presence of God all of our own social distinctions seem miniscule and unimportant. Compared to the greatness of our God we’re all humble nobodies. Take Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’s really, really strong. Cool! Guess what? God is a trillion times stronger. Bill Gates is really rich? Cool! Guess what? The entire universe, the heavens and the earth belong to God. Things that impress us just don’t impress God. And compared to God’s glory and greatness and righteousness, well no wonder we’re all equal at the foot of the cross. It’s kind of like the concept of how in math if you divide 1 by infinity it’s zero. And yet if you divide 100 by infinity it’s still zero, or divide a million by infinity, it’s still zero. Our distinctions are leveled by the infinite greatness of God.

But even though, like I said earlier, that I think our biggest issue with making distinctions among people in modern day America may be more related to things like celebrity and power and popularity than strictly money, nevertheless, money can certainly still get one preferential treatment or cause divisions. Those who are able to give more money to a church, for example, may expect more say in the decision making of the church than other faithful members who maybe can’t contribute as much. And I just think we’d have to admit if we went and attended a bunch of different churches in our town or other towns, that some churches would seem to be made up of primarily wealthy people and others would be made up of primarily lower income people. And I don’t know if this is necessarily even the result of people being intentionally rude or unwelcoming like is happening in James 2. I bet most of the wealthier churches would be welcoming of poor people, and most of the poorer churches would be welcoming of rich people. But unintentionally, people just find a way of congregating with those who are more similar to themselves.

Theologian Skye Jethani talks about how researchers discovered at one point that the fastest growing churches were those churches who were homogenous: churches that shared similar culture, values, economic status, race, political views, etc. Some megachurches sort of wickedly took this information and decided to intentionally pursue homogeneity in order to help their churches grow. This was called the homogenous unit principle of church growth. Now it’s very easy to criticize that and say how awful that is. But the thing is that many churches who are not intentionally seeking homogeneity are nonetheless finding that their churches are fairly homogenous, just because, again, people have a way of congregating towards those most similar to themselves. We feel most comfortable in groups of people just like us.

The issue of course is that God calls us into diverse community with a bunch of people who are nothing like us. Take as a model who Jesus chose to spend most of his time with: an unlikely group including tax collectors and prostitutes, lepers and blind men, fishermen and paralytics. But Jesus also hung out with people from greater means or status: with Pharisees, centurions, the three kingly wise men. Take God’s vision for the church that was laid out in Galatians 3:28: that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” The church must intentionally pursue people from across all the different boundary lines too often drawn in our world, not just rich and poor, but from every boundary: political boundaries, racial boundaries, cultural boundaries.

Parker Palmer once envisioned Christian community as a place unlike so many other communities in this world. For in other communities you picked your companions based on who you like or other often self-serving motives. He spoke of true Christian community as a place where our companions are chosen for us. Where people are placed in the pew next to us whom we had no control over picking that they would be there. He says that true community involves dealing with people “who will upset our settled view of self and world” and that true community could be defined as a place “where the person you least want to live with lives.”

The church must be a unique sanctuary away from all the social stratification of the world. It should be a place where boss and worker can come and worship alike as equals. The church should be a place where the pastor is no quicker to visit a billionaire in the hospital as they are anyone else. The church should be an upside down place where someone lowly could be a church elder and thus end up having some degree of authority over someone like a mayor, who typically would be held in higher regard. We Christians should be those who treat janitors and waitresses with as much love and respect as we do presidents and doctors.

Well, James has here in James chapter 2 some very strong and harsh words for those engaging in favoritism, he says, ‘You with your acts of favoritism, do you really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?’ He cannot fathom how those who claim to believe in Jesus are acting this way of treating some better than others because he’s thinking, if you really believed in Jesus, you’d be acting like he did, you’d be caring just as much for the poor and the powerless, the lost and the lonely as you do for anyone else. God doesn’t play favorites.

Well, James ends his pericope here by tying all that he was saying into one of our basic commands as Christians: to love our neighbors as ourselves. Everything he said about favoritism was really just commentary on this one command. Think about it: would you want to be treated any differently, any worse, if you had less money or prestige? No, of course not. And I love James’ title that he gives to this law to love our neighbors as ourselves. He calls it the royal law. I love that. We all know what the golden rule is: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Well, now we all know the royal law, that is just like it: to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Now, as I near the conclusion of the sermon I want you all to humor me with a pun here, a little joke and play on words that I hope will help you remember one of the main themes of this sermon. Here it is: If you’re not a classless church, you’re a classless church. If you’re not a classless church, you’re a classless church. As in, if your church isn’t classless, if it isn’t free from social stratification and divisions based on wealth or status or popularity, then you are a classless church, your church is the opposite of classy, it’s undignified, boorish, impolite. Let’s be classy by being classless.

            And now let me end with some good news: The good news today is that God loves you and cares for you as much as he does for the most famous and wealthy and powerful people in the world. As much as anyone else, as much as LeBron James or Taylor Swift, you are God’s beloved child. And in light of that good news, let us love others as God has loved us. Let our church be a place where the poor and the ordinary and the outcast are lifted up high and seen as people who are precious to God, and a place where the lowly are welcomed as honored guests whenever they step foot in this sanctuary.