Without Partiality: A Homily on Hunger and the Epistle of James

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto,  8 September, 2024, the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.  Readings for this Sunday:  Pr 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Ps 125; Jas 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17; Mk 7:24-37

My brothers and sisters, do not claim the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory while showing partiality. (James 2.1)

Today we continue to hear from the Epistle of James.  No book in the New Testament outside the gospels spells out our duty as followers of Jesus in such a clear and uncompromising way.   One of James’ key words is “partiality”, by which he means our human tendency to show more attention and regard to the rich and the well off than we do to the poor and the humble.    I’ll come back to this idea in James in a moment, but first let’s take a little trip down Highway 26 to see what  James might ask us to see in today’s world.

As most of you know, my wife Joy and I are from Barrie and we still maintain a foot there.   I moved there a decade ago, when I was posted to CFB Borden, and I got to know Barrie quite well because I was a runner.   One of my routes took me through Berczy Park, which is several acres of forest and trails just north of the downtown.  It’s surrounded by older homes and high rises.    Joy’s mother’s retirement home is on one side.   

Berczy Park is a case study for homelessness in Canada.   In the last few weeks it’s been in the local news because a homeless encampment has taken root there, with about a dozen tents according to the local news.   Local residents have raised concerns to the media about safety issues, and one home owner complained that she may not be able to sell her two million dollar house because it is next to the park.  As of several days ago, the City of Barrie had ticketed those camping in the park, but had not evicted them.

Berczy Park is just one small example of a problem that seems to be both everywhere and insoluble.   It’s thought that there are some six hundred homeless or underhoused people in Barrie, and as many as 1200 throughout Simcoe County.   The causes are various and complex:  drug  and alcohol addiction, a shortage of living wage employment, not enough affordable housing, and a mental health crisis.   It’s a toxic brew.

These problems often feed off one another and they create dangerous situations for everyone.   Several random stabbings have set Barrie on edge and have been blamed on homeless people, but talk to some of the people who come to our Friendship Dinners and they’ll tell you that the shelters and the encampments are dangerous for the homeless.   So homelessness is a problem that affects all of us because it degrades the quality of life for our communities.  So who should fix it?

The City of Barrie wants to ticket and evict the people in the park, but under Ontario law they can only do that if local agencies can provide shelter beds for the people being evicted.  In the longterm, homelessness and affordable housing are a problem for the County, and while Simcoe County wants to build more affordable housing in Barrie, that will take time.  So in the short time, it’s up to the nearby Busby Centre to operate more shelter beds.   Those of you with long memories will recall that Busby started off as a faith organization, founded by the Rev. David Busby, who was then the rector of Trinity Anglican Church in Barrie.  And that brings us to the role of churches in all of this.

Churches and faith communities have been helping the poor and the homeless from the beginning, and in part we have our second reading, the Epistle of James to thank for this.  Tradition holds that the James who wrote it was the brother of Jesus, so he may well have heard his brother say that “whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me” (Mt 25.40).  Even if somebody else wrote the Letter using the honoured name of James, the message is clear.  As the Letter famously exhorts us, we can’t just hear the word of God, we have to put our faith into action and be “doers of the word” (Ja 1.23).    And the word that we must put into action s distilled into one of Jesus’ core teachings, as we heard today, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Ja 2.8).

The Letter of James is written with an acute awareness of the gaps between rich and poor.   As this letter was shared and passed between the first churches throughout the Roman Empire (“the twelve tribes in the Dispersion” (Ja 1.1), those churches would have lived with those differences.   

The city of Rome itself at the time would have had one million inhabitants, and historians estimate that a third of that population would have been “desperately poor”, living in slums or worse.  We can imagine people of all social classes being interested in this new religion from Palestine, and James is clear that if someone with “gold rings and in fine clothes” were to visit a church, they should not get “partiality” or special treatment.

That word “partiality” does some heavy lifting in scripture.   One of the traditional readings on Easter Sunday is from Acts, when Peter preaches a sermon defending the baptism of the first Gentiles.   “I truly understand”, Peter says, “ that God shows no partiality but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10.34).   In other words, and this is the theology of the Epistle of James, all people are equal and valuable in God’s sight, and all can become citizens of the kingdom of God if they wish to be.

So our calling as the people of God is to see those around us without “partiality”.    At the same time, we need to be clear-eyed the challenges of our calling when it comes to homelessness.   As we noted earlier, this are massive social problems, and churches aren’t well-equipped to deal with them.    I mentioned the Busby Centre, and while it was started in the basement of an Anglican church, it soon became too much for that church to handle.  Similarly, many downtown churches across Canada tried offering winter shelter space but most ended these ministries when they discovered the challenges of keeping people safe and secure.    

However, there are many reasons to be encouraged.   Trinity Church in Barrie, where the Busby Centre started, has a new partnership with an organization called Care Without Borders.  They host a community nurse and a social worker who are working with Barrie’s homeless population.   Other churches in the area have plans to help build geared-to-income housing.  So the church still has a role to play.

Our approach at All Saints has been to focus on food insecurity.   We welcome all for our Friendship Dinners, and last Wednesday our Five Loaves program sent 100 hot and nutritious meals out the door.  Many of these were delivered to by our friends at the Collingwood Mobile Soup Kitchen, who know were the greatest need is in our community.    I’m very proud of the volunteers who make these programs possible.

This week we’ve taken another step to be doers of the word and to show love without partiality.   On Elgin Street, just beneath the kitchen, you will notice one of those little food pantries that more and more churches are offering.   Ours will be stocked regularly with non-perishable food offerings as well as hygiene items and some warm-weather items.   We will welcome contributions to keep the pantry stocked, and inside your bulletin today you will find a list of suggested items.    All contributions can be left in the  containers by the church doors and will be gratefully accepted.

A small pantry may seem like a drop in an ocean of need, but it’s a sign that we see the need and we hear our calling, to show our faith by word and deed without partiality.