"The Character's Caricature"

James, the brother of Jesus, provides a caricature of a character familiar to him — and us — the fawning toadie who honors the rich and loathes everyone else. James knows we need everyone because God has given us differing talents and gifts and only together do we become the Body of Christ. In the end, we are not characters or caricatures. We are flesh-and-blood human beings with unique life stories and unique gifts to offer. e flesh-and-blood human beings with unique life stories and unique gifts to offer.

There were only 12 episodes of the 70s TV series Fawlty Towers, but some consider it the greatest British situation comedy ever made. It’s about Basil Fawlty, who runs the seaside hotel Fawlty Towers, along with his wife Sybil, Polly the maid, and the waiter Manuel.

Basil is a failure as a human being, insufferably rude to everyone — unless he thinks they are rich upper class, in which case he is obsequious, fawning all over them in a nauseatingly nonstop fashion.

The show was written by Monty Python alum John Cleese and Connie Booth, who played Basil and Polly, respectively, but it might just as easily have been penned 2,300 years earlier. Theophrastus (370-285 B.C.), a student and companion of the great Aristotle, wrote a highly influential work called “Characters,” which has influenced comic writers in both the ancient and modern world. He wrote about the Dissembler, the Flatterer, the Boor, the Bore, the Coward, and of course Basil Fawlty himself! As Theophrastus writes:

Obsequiousness, to put it in a definition, is a manner of behavior that aims at pleasing, but not with the best intentions. You can be sure the obsequious man is the sort who greets you from a distance, then after calling you “your excellency” and, expressing great respect, detains you by grabbing you with both hands, walks along a little farther, asks when he will see you again, and calls out compliments as he leaves.1

And this obsequious one is also satirized in today’s passage from scripture:

For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here in a good place, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

You can almost see this scene taking place in a comedy, but James is writing from real life. The Letter of James is considered one of the most down-to-earth and practical books in the New Testament.

Backstory

James was the first leader of the Jerusalem church in the apostolic age,2 and he may have been kin to Jesus.3 The apostle Paul mentions that James received a special resurrection appearance.4 His martyrdom took place in A.D. 62 during a power vacuum after the death of the Roman procurator Festus but before his replacement could take office. According to the historian Josephus, James’ death by stoning on the orders of the Sanhedrin offended “... those who were considered the most fair-minded people in the city, and strict in their observance of the Law.”5

Though some disagree whether James actually wrote the epistle bearing his name, it definitely seems to have been written by someone who heard him speak. No other book of the New Testament, outside of the gospels, has so many echoes of the words of Jesus, as if the author is quoting Jesus from memory.6

The diversity of the early church

In today’s passage, James warned his fellow believers not to fawn over the rich and ignore the poor, (which we might call “fawlty behavior”). That tells us the astounding fact that the early fellowships of Jesus Christ were ethnically and economically diverse, and included rich and poor, Jew and Greek, slave and free.7 This is not always the case in our churches today.

This economic diversity was assumed in the early Christian church. Paul called upon the rich man, Philemon, whose home provided one of the house churches in Colossae, to look upon the escaped slave as a “beloved brother.”8 When Pliny the Younger, the governor of Bithynia, for instance, investigated Christianity in the province of Asia Minor, two of the deacons he questioned for information were female slaves. And toward the end of the first century, when the Emperor Domitian, seeking to wipe out all potential messiahs, ordered the arrest of all descendants of King David, he was shocked after questioning two grandsons of Judas (another kin of Jesus and leader of the Christians of Judea) to discover that their hands were toughened “from their incessant work.” Additionally, their net worth was around $2,500 in today’s cash, and most of that was tied up in the 10 acres of land they owned and farmed in order to pay their taxes. Because they were so poor he released them, figuring they were harmless.9

This was astounding. People in the Roman Empire were extremely conscious of their rank and status and generally did not associate with others outside their class. There was a huge disparity between rich and poor, and a great percentage of the population were slaves. James refers to a rich man with a gold ring. In the Roman Empire only nobles, especially those of senatorial rank, were allowed to wear such things.10

Amazingly, James asserts that those who have less are richer in what truly matters: “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” he asks in today’s reading.

One can’t help but think of the two sides of the Beatitude in Luke, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” and “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”11

Indeed, Jesus highlighted the dangers of being rich, (“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”12 (See also the parable of the rich man and Lazarus,13 and the story of the widow’s mite.14)

Characters and Caricatures

But this is not a simple screed against the rich or an idiotic idyll about the joys of poverty. What James is saying is we belong together. As it says in Proverbs, “The rich and the poor have this in common: The LORD is the maker of them all.”15

In the third vision of the second-century Christian bestseller, The Shepherd of Hermas, the former slave who narrates the book is shown a tower constructed from various stones by angels, and when he asks his heavenly guide what he’s seeing, he’s told it’s the church. All those stones of different sizes fit together perfectly so the tower can weather any storm.16

We need each other. We need those the prayer warriors, the floor scrubbers, the worship leaders, the hand shakers, the quiet ones and the noisy ones, those who laugh easily and those who weep for the pain of the world. Like the hymn says:

We share each other’s woes, each other’s burdens bear,

And often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.17

What we don’t need are the Basil Fawltys, who obsequiously seek the favor of those they think are important in the eyes of the world, or who want to use the church to advance business opportunities — because it’s not only not funny, but also fundamentally unnecessary. In the post-pandemic world, the church is no longer a place to be seen to conduct business in the community or build clientele. It’s where, to paraphrase James, we who are suffering can pray for each other, where the cheerful can sing from the heart, the sick and the suffering can be raised up with anointing and prayer and where we can pull each other back from the edge of disaster and save each other!18

In the end we are not characters or caricatures. We are flesh-and-blood human beings with unique life stories and unique gifts to offer. We are the children of God.

We are the Body of Christ.

1 “Characters,” translated by Jeremy Rustin, in Theophrastus: Characters, Herodas: Mimes, Sophron and Other Fragments, translated by I.C. Cunningham, Loeb Classical Library 225, 65.

2 Acts 15:13-21; Galatians 2:9.

3 Mark 6:3.

4 “Then he appeared to James ...” (1 Corinthians 15:7).

5 Antiquities 20.9.1.

6 Frank Ramirez, “Reading the ‘Other’ Gospels,” Messenger, 16-17.

7 Galatians 3:28.

8 Philemon 16.

9 See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, III, xx, 2-7, translated by Kirsopp Lake, Loeb Classical Library, 1926.

10 Bo Reicke, The Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude, The Anchor Bible, 27.

11 Luke 6:20 & 24.

12 See Mark 10:25 ; Matthew 29:34; 18:25.

13 Luke 16:19ff.