One Hundred Percent

James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

Imagine a high school lunchroom, on the first day of a new year.

Two new girls arrive. One is wearing an ordinary t-shirt and jeans; the other is wearing official US Olympic gear and a gymnastics gold medal.

What happens in the room?

That’s an easy one, right?
All the attention swooshes instantly to the gymnast. There’s a space for her at everybody’s table, a crowd forms – the rest of the students want to get to know her, to be friends. No one is really paying attention to the other new girl.  She’s on her own to find a place at the edge of the crowd.

When a celebrity walks into the room it doesn’t mean anything about what we think of the ordinary people, like the other new girl, right?  In fact, there’s a good chance the other new girl is just as excited to see McKayla or Jordan or Gabby at her school as anyone else in the room.  It’s a normal distinction between the exceptional and the ordinary.

But it’s exactly what James is talking about.

We heard rich man and poor man in James’ letter today, and it makes perfect sense that James would be mad at people showing favoritism to the rich in church.
We already know – we’re Christians, we pay attention – that God loves poor people just as much as rich people, maybe more, and we should follow Jesus’ example of loving everyone.  But our own first, unthinking, reaction would probably be different if the next two people to walk in to Calvary were one of our neighbors from PADS, and Brian Urlacher

James is talking to a community that would very reasonably assume that someone showing up in gold and fine clothes has earned all they have, is righteous and well-loved by God – in other words, the kind of people you’d like to have in your neighborhood.  And the belief that wealth demonstrates character and the question about how to respond to poor people in our world are alive and well in our own culture.  Any 15 minutes of election coverage will tell you that.

So it’s not as simple as it sounds.

James is pointing out that we make distinctions all the time.   We get excited about celebrities, read books and stories about the success of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, or get entertainment out of watching Donald Trump fire people. 

When we do these things, we judge others.

And James suggests that when we’re more impressed by fame, fortune, athletic awards and TV air time than by the simple image of God in our next door neighbor,

we’re failing that “love your neighbor as yourself” commandment.

Think about it:
How many of you are famous? – raise your hands.

How many are rich?

How many of you are in the top one percent of anything that you do?

If we pay more attention to the folks who are rich, and famous, and on the top of their field than we do to the next person we happen to meet, the people who are ordinary, like us, then we’re failing to love as God loves

and we’re not respecting ourselves enough.

Americans love the top one percent – not because of tax brackets, but because we love winners.  The ten out of thousands who make it to American Idol, the Olympics, or the top of the Fortune 500. Success – fame, fortune, and first prize – for any of us, maybe all of us – is the American Dream.

It’s a great dream. But it’s not the gospel.

The gospel is about the 99 percent.  Or better yet, the 100 percent.

Think about the story we just heard, when a foreign woman turns up and begs Jesus for a miracle for her daughter. And Jesus says, “You can’t take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

It’s exactly the insult it sounds like.  But Jesus is also expressing the reasonable priorities of someone who can’t do everything at once. He’s going to start with Israel, the people chosen to bear God’s word in the world, before taking on all comers.

Then the gospel is revealed when the nameless woman talks back. 

“Even the dogs eat the crumbs,” she argues.

There is already enough she says. 

Enough for the rest of us.  Enough for one hundred percent at the same time.

And she wins the argument.  Jesus gives credit to her logic and her words when he heals her daughter.  There’s enough.  Enough for one percent to be one hundred percent.

Then Jesus heads further out into Gentile territory, and starts healing and feeding folks beyond the obvious people of God. That woman is exactly right.  There is already enough for everybody.

That’s when we come back to loving your neighbor as yourself.

Have you ever decided not to take your private trouble to God in prayer because it just wasn’t important enough?  Because hurricanes and cancer and someone else’s needs were more important?

How does that reflect on God’s love?

Listen to the Syrophonecian woman:
Even the dogs eat the crumbs already.  There’s enough, now, for the least important to be heard and seen and fed.

Have you ever gone out of your way for someone important at the expense of your spouse, or your co-workers, or even yourself?

It’s what we often have to do to succeed, let’s be honest. It’s normal.

But how does that reflect God’s values?

James and the Syrophonecian woman tell us the same thing:

 The least of us – the everyday people, the 99 percent – matter equally with the “important” people, the top percent.

Our faith works when we are so confident of enough that we feed the hungry and shelter the destitute out of our own resources,

and it works when we spend God’s time on the ordinary people.

When we turn off the newsmakers on the TV in order to listen to and care about the ordinary news of our grandchildren, our very average neighbor, or the relative you’ve stopped listening to because they never stop talking.

Our faith works when we turn our attention, and God’s, to the banal, ordinary needs for respect and connection that each of us have, in our prayers for ourselves, in time spent with others, and in hundreds of little, ordinary ways.

None of the “Fab Five” Olympic gymnasts go to Glenbard or Willowbrook.  And in each of those high schools are hundreds of kids who won’t ever win a game, get the highest grade, invent the next iPhone or become President.  Your high school class was the same.

Our faith works when we love those neighbors as ourselves,

and we love ourselves with one hundred percent of God’s love,

because there’s already enough,

and when we stand up for that, everyone wins.