A friend, of the poor - God, by Georvin Joseph

Scripture  Portion: James 5: 1-6

As I tried to interpret this passage today I had to face two temptations. One is to view that the message of this passage would be best left, safely back in the first or second century, where it originated. Another is to use them as the basis for the revolutionary denunciation of everyone who happens to be well off. Without doubt this is a difficult passage, and we shall understand it properly only if we are aware of the kind of writing we are dealing with and of its setting.

James 5: 1-6 is one collection with basic content and its forms of expression intimately relating to a long history of theology and piety, according to which, the rich and powerful are per se, enemies of God and appointed to destruction, while the "poor and wretched" are considered as the innocent friends of the Lord of Hosts. Though the Old Testament by no means glorifies poverty as a good thing in itself, many strands of Israel's literature plainly depict God as unequivocally on the side of the poor. In Deuteronomy 15: 4-11 God wills that there should be no poor at all in Israel, and the prophets like Amos, repeatedly announce Yahweh's support for and the protection of the poor.

As the poor are "friends of God," so also are those who are concerned for them as recorded in Ps. 41:1; but the enemies of the poor are ipso facto, that is by the fact itself enemies of the Lord. Similarly, in the Wisdom literature riches are often the subject of warnings, while poverty is linked to humility and godliness.

Jesus and the first Christians ministered and taught in an atmosphere impregnated with such ways of seeing things, and the New Testament is profoundly influenced by it. Therefore, when Jesus spoke of the poor as heirs of the Kingdom and denounced the rich, or suggested that it would take a miracle for the rich to be saved, he not only had a ready audience but was in fact placing himself, in the midst of poverty based piety. It was not simply an accident in the history that, in the first decades of the church, Christians were drawn from the lower strata of the society. Nothing could be more evident than this in the whole of James and especially in the text with which we are dealing.

For James the Christian community is made up chiefly of poor people. This is as it should be, given the risks attached to wealth. As time passed by, however, persons of means are beginning to come in. One purpose of James’ writing, therefore, is to warn the church against the dangers of riches and worldliness going hand in hand, and to remind believers about poverty and righteousness which had a noble pedigree among them.

The prophetic genre is obvious in the first verse. We hear not an admonition to repent but a proclamation of judgment that is surely coming. Those "who have great possessions" are the rich in society who oppress the poor and, by implication, the church to whom James address also, by showing partiality to the rich is encouraging this oppression as we see in 2:6-7. He is not just exhorting members of a congregation but making a statement about God's view of things in the community at large. The wealthy power-brokers will weep and howl, their riches will rot, their fine clothes will become moth-eaten, and their money will rust. The silver and gold of the rich have tarnished because it has lain idle and not been used for the benefit of any. This neglect will now testify against the owners. Even in the last days the rich have gone on accumulating treasure. This they have done by defrauding their workers, and both the unpaid wages and the labourers themselves testify against them before the Lord like the blood of Abel crying out. The rich have existed "on earth" in luxury and self-indulgence, stuffing themselves on the "day of slaughter". The definition that the rich as the enemies of the poor is reiterated in the final verse. The downtrodden are both humble and pious offer no resistance to their destruction at the hands of the powerful, but their murder will not be forgotten in the judgment.

What then are we to make out of this fiery, tradition-laden diatribe that James has chosen to record an evaluation of wealth? Can it in fact be taken over as a text supporting an egalitarian revolution, as an unvarnished call for the abolition of wealth and the redistribution of earth's treasure?

Clearly there are enormous dangers in wealth. If we possess it, we must beware of it. The rich who remains to be rich can ‘un-inherit’ the Kingdom of God more easily than others, knowing what God truly values. If those who have great possessions are in the church, and the church herself, critique themselves. Let the poor ones in the church know where the trust is truly to be put. Let the powerful "outside," be reminded in no uncertain terms, of where God's concerns and commitments are focused. God's eye is on the poor and the wretched. Let everyone who has means, in the church or out of it, know that there is assuredly One who watches over the helpless, the alien, the orphan, and the mistreated toiler. There will be a reckoning in due course.

So if it is all that God in fact wills justice for the poor, are we not required to be imitators of God as far as we can be? In a day when we do not look for an imminent End to set things right, can we hear the Word spoken and yet do nothing, when we obviously could do a great deal? In our contexts the church is hardly a tiny, helpless minority who cannot envision and strive for such changes of overthrowing the established economic order. When we know where we are and who we are, and the plain meaning of James' portrayal of what God is up to in these matters, how can we in good conscience remain content to leave intact the crippling inequities with which so many of our sisters and brothers must daily compete? When we ourselves live gospel in the very existence of the here and now we just can’t remain content, but we ourselves become the change we envision.

Let the spirit of God guide us to walk this talk in our daily lives. Amen.

[Georvin Joseph, the preacher of this sermon, is a final Year Student of Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, Chennai, India.]