Midweek Lent, 2025 + Love Does No Wrong to a Neighbor +
Week 4: Faith without loving action is dead
Vicar Natalie Wussler
Texts: James 2:1-17; Psalm 113:2-8; Luke 16:19-31
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Nothing says “partiality” quite like a school lunchroom.
The cool kids at one table, nerds at another, various cliques siloed off, and the sidelined many anxiously trying to find their place. Maybe you, like me, felt hopelessly alone sometimes because you didn’t fit in, and had bullies reminding you of it. Maybe you spent your school years frantically figuring out which group would finally accept you. Or maybe you’ve been part of a friend group and you’ve felt suffocated by the expectations of who you should be, and worried that if you go against the grain, you could end up on the outside–perhaps again. Maybe you’ve felt partialities creep up in your professional life or even in your family. And whatever your experience with partialities, it’s easy to see why James condemns them so passionately.
Partialities hurt.
They dictate who we should and shouldn’t care about and love. And it’s because of partialities that kids bully each other, that discrimination thrives, that oppression keeps people stranded on the margins, that wars erupt between nations, that hatred exists between people who don’t look the same or speak the same language or worship the same god, that the rich man either doesn’t notice Lazarus or decides Lazarus is not worth his time. This way of life alienates us from God’s beloved children, our siblings, and keeps us sitting in our prescribed places.
But Psalm 113 gives us another way.
The Psalmist tells us that in God’s reign the poor sit next to rulers, making space for each other, valuing each other. Sharing meals and sharing life. God knocks down the divisions between us and welcomes us to see each other as God sees us. In God’s reign, all people can sit together at a crowded table that has enough room for every person, where everyone is served, everyone is loved. Where we pull out chairs for each other and extend the table so everyone has a good seat. It’s a community where you and I are radically, unconditionally welcomed, where we can experience true belonging.
I’ve seen it, like in the youth group Jake and I led, where the homecoming queen and the president of the anime club became friends. In the world of school lunch tables, these students would basically be on different planets. But because God was present, they laid down the ways they’d been divided and made space for each other and built a home where everyone belonged. We see God breaking down barriers when people of all different races, genders, sexualities, and life experiences stand together advocating for a kinder world that values all people, even with the threat of backlash. And God is doing it here and in so many communities like this one, where all people who walk through our doors are treated with dignity, respect, and love.
And because we belong to God, and have a seat at this wide and crowded table, we also belong to each other and all people and they belong to us–and that’s the hard part, isn’t it? It’s the pulling out chairs and expanding for all people that gets in our way. God calls us to extend this unconditional, radical welcome to all people, and we don’t always want to do this because there are people out there that need a welcome to the table that are perpetuating evil. There are people out there that are inconvenient for us to invite. And there are people that we worry would affect our reputation if we extend a welcome to them. But we’re on the hook. If we trust in the Triune God to make space for us and all people, we have no option but to live this reality out. We cannot stay on the sidelines.
“Faith without works is dead” says James. Us Lutherans might cringe at this verse. But this isn’t a works-based theology of salvation that goes against our understanding of grace. But it is a call to us to let God’s love flow from us to all people because of our faith in the God that widens tables. Our faith cannot be stagnant, James says. It should move us toward seeing the work that needs to be done, and then doing it–like sitting with the person who’s alone, or having difficult conversations that lovingly confront our siblings who do evil, or doing the hard work of forgiving, or welcoming a stranger, actively loving the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the outcasts, or advocating for the basic human rights of the marginalized even in the face of major resistance. God’s love doesn’t just stay with us, it’s desperate to be shared with the whole world.
And it’s hard work.
Because as we start to widen God’s welcome, we see all these prejudices have become great chasms that are too wide to cross by ourselves, as Abraham tells the rich man. They’ve been formed and reinforced by years of neglect, like in the case of the rich man’s relationship with Lazarus. They’re influenced by fear and hatred that festers between people and strengthens the partialities that keep us apart. We can’t bridge these gaps by ourselves. Because when we do, we can become overwhelmed by the depths of division or get caught up in our own biases or fear backlash and resistance. And we grow tired and weary by ourselves, and we can lose hope in this chasm-crossing mission.
But God can do it.
God already crossed the chasm between Godself and us through life, death, and resurrection of Christ and broke down any barriers between us so much so that God’s Spirit dwells within us, and commissions us to continue building a world where chasms and prejudice turn into bridges and beloved communities. It’s hard and heavy work, but we can rely on the Holy Spirit, to expand our ability to love those we’d rather not, to give us patience, grace and mercy that sustains us when we feel like giving up. The Holy Spirit leads us to communities like this one, full of people committed to crossing chasms and breaking down barriers, where we become the Spirit’s nourishing to each other. We hear each other out on days it feels too difficult, on days when we lose hope that the barriers will ever be broken. And we encourage each other to keep going. We embrace each other with unconditional and radical belonging. We share stories of how our lives change after we were told we genuinely belong and are beloved. We help each other recognize we’re in this together. We remind each other why we do what we do. And, together, you and I are sent out, by the power of the Holy full of faith, to break down partialities and cross chasms, to invite all God’s children to the crowded table.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
