It’s almost the first thing they ask of you when you show up for an appointment with the Doctor.  “Step on the scales, please.”  For some of us, there is a mad rush to shrug off the jacket kick off the shoes, maybe lose the belt, too.  Because the minute the scale settles in on a number – that’s it.  If you’re lucky, they just write it down.  If you’re at one of the doctor’s offices I used to visit, they announce the number loudly so everybody within 20 feet can hear it.

Of course, our weight is not the only determinate of our health – it is one factor that physicians take into account when they evaluate our overall health – but it is a measurable factor in our physical condition, and there is some kind of “ideal standard” for weight, and there is a link between behavior and what is revealed on the scales.

Today we are beginning a “spiritual check-up,” and the wisdom literature of Proverbs and James invites us to step right up to the scales.  But these are not scales that tell us once and for all what we weigh today.  These are scales that place in balance the faith we proclaim and the deeds we do.  They do not weight pounds; they measure the relationship between the faith we proclaim and the behaviors we exhibit.

While the book of Proverbs has lots of advice for living, and lots of references to the rich and poor, it is chiefly concerned with the question of what it means to live wisely, versus living foolishly.  And it sees God as a source of wisdom.  In fact, in Proverbs 2 – God is personified as Lady Wisdom – or in the Greek – Sophia – who cries out in the streets, and yet is largely ignored.

Wise living, in terms of biblical wisdom, is living that is life affirming, community sustaining and personally fulfilling.  To put it in more contemporary terms, we humans are at our best when body, mind and spirit are healthy and in balance with one another.  Many of the demands of modern life pull us away from attention to our spiritual well being.  Many of the demands of our own needs for ego gratification pull us away from spiritual wellness.

Just as physicians have criteria for evaluating personal health, so the writers of James and Proverbs have criteria for evaluating spiritual health.  Inner wholeness, or holiness of heart, is measured by these texts in terms of two criteria:  treatment of the poor and the presence of absence of a culture of favoritism.

James tells a sort of parable.  It would be as if, once upon a time, in a pretend place, two people come into the community gathering at the same time.  One is bedraggled – the other bejeweled.  One is Brooks Brothers; the other is Goodwill.  One is Nordstrom; the other is Wal-Mart.  One drove a late model import; the other doesn’t have a driver’s license, and wouldn’t have an address to put on it if they did.

The bejeweled guest is given a prominent seat in the assembly – ushered to a pew about 1/3 to half way down the aisle, where there is a place on the center aisle available.  Not clear in the back, and heaven forbid – not all the way in the front; and certainly not trapped in the middle away from either aisle.

The bedraggled guest is shown to a folding chair in the hallway where they might await an opportunity for the pastor to deal with them.

That would not happen in a real place, of course – this is a parable.  And parables have a point.

The point is not that some have more economic wealth than others.  The point in James is that the advantaged are given privilege in the community that is not offered to the less advantaged.

Gary is required to wear a dress shirt, tie and suit to work every day.  Often, he runs family errands on his lunch hour – running into the grocery store, the hardware store or the mega we – sell – everything – here – store to pick up a few things.  He has noticed time and time again, that when he is in a store in the middle of the day dressed in business clothes, store personnel will inquire, “May I help you, sir,” while they ignore other shoppers dressed in casual daily wear.

The truth is, we respond to external signs that tell us absolutely nothing about the internal worth or value of a person.

And there is an important key to spiritual wholeness here for everyone at every level of the economic ladder.

In God’s economy, your worth is dependent on one thing only.  Your worth is dependent on God.  And God values every one of us uniquely and equally.  You can stop striving for all the things that make you feel accepted and worthy.  Easily said.  Hard to do.  Because we live in a culture where favoritism based on evidence of status is rampantly practiced.  In every Middle School and High School in America, there is a social hierarchy.  And there are talented, precious, beloved pre-teens and teens that are made to feel unworthy every day because they don’t fit into the right part of the hierarchy.

There is a corporate culture of reserved parking and corner offices.  People will somehow assess their own worth in terms of whether they have an office or a cubicle- because the corporate culture has aligned status symbols and titles and compensation in such a way that there are clear hierarchies.

And so we chase after status symbols.  And we are deeply unwell spiritually both personally and culturally because of this.

But it’s not just economic status and the symbols that go with it that haunt us.  There is no end to the ways in which we both practice and experience favoritism.  Teachers experience it from their principals and practice it in the classroom.  Parents receive it from their parents and practice it with their own children.  Pastors receive it from their Bishops and practice it with their parishioners.  See how easily this cycle gets set up?

Here is the good news.  God has no favorites.

On the one hand, wisdom literature just sounds like good advice, or instruction for living well.  It would be easy enough to just leave here today with a commandment, an instruction, a plan for living without showing favoritism.  It would be easy to say to the favored … give away half of what you have to someone who has nothing, and then you’ll be equal.  But we all know the world doesn’t work that way.

I wish that I could say that this is what we should do:  we should stop letting the people who have a government health care plan that gives them access to the best health care in the country and the profit driven insurance company CEOs write health care policy, and we should let the uninsured sick write the health care reform bill.  But we all know the world doesn’t work that way.

I wish that I could just say, “God is watching you – don’t practice favoritism.”  But that’s not the way the human spirit or community works.

In a world where some have too much and far too many have too little, there is, from time to time, evidence of an alternative reality- a spiritual truth that can heal us.

The movement of people throughout the sanctuary during Communion never fails to touch me emotionally and spiritually.  I can seldom explain or articulate why…but it is a consistent experience whether I am in a community where I am familiar or whether I’m in a community where I am a stranger.  I think this is so because communion profoundly models inclusiveness and rejects favoritism.  It make visually and experientially real what we know to be true:  God favors us all.  God wants us all to have enough.  And when the bread is broken here, and the cup is filled…there are no distinctions.

Wounded by living in a world where both privilege and poverty are burdens that deprive us of spiritual health, we are restored by grace.

James is reminding his community, and reminding us, that we are being watched for evidence of the “shalom,” the wholeness of community and the balance of body, mind and spirit that is true wisdom.  What we model at the Lord’s Table we are to practice everywhere.

And when we are weighed on the scales of righteousness and justice – if we come up a little light, here comes grace…just enough to balance the scales so that we, too, are made just right in the eyes of our loving and faithful God.