Proper 17.B.24
James 1:17-27
The Rev. Melanie McCarley
On May 23, 2014, Bob Fletcher died at the age of 101. Who is Bob Fletcher? Well, he was a retired agriculture inspector in California. Still not ringing any bells? I’m not surprised. Bob wasn’t a Pulitzer prize winning author. He wasn’t an inventor or an investor—just solidly middle class. He didn’t star in a movie. To my knowledge, he never ventured into social media. He wasn’t a politician or a pundit. He didn’t serve in the military. He didn’t play professional sports or do anything else to merit the attention of the masses. But Bob Fletcher was this—in the words of St. James—he was a doer of the word, and not merely a hearer.
Bob was 30 years old in 1942. You may recall that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Following this, the United States government forced 120,000 Japanese-Americans on the West Coast out of their homes and into internment camps for the duration of the war. At this time, Bob’s neighbors, the Tsukamoto family were relocated to the Jerome War Relocation Center in Arkansas. Near Sacramento, many of the Japanese who were relocated were farmers who had worked land around the town of Florin since the 1890s. Mr. Fletcher, who was single at the time, knew many of these people through his work inspecting fruit for the government. Al Tsukamoto, one of the farmers, approached Mr. Fletcher with a business proposal: Would he be willing to manage the farms of himself and two family friends, paying their taxes and mortgages while they were away? In return, he could keep all the profits. It was a desperate bid to keep all that the families had worked so hard to achieve. Take a moment and imagine, reaching out in desperation to someone you barely knew, to entrust them with your home, land, livelihood, your inheritance and hope for the future, with absolutely no idea as to how long you would be away.
Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Tsukamoto had not been close, and Mr. Fletcher …well, he had absolutely no experience growing the farmers’ specialty, Flame Tokay grapes, but he accepted the offer. He quit his job and moved to Florin, where even before the war many people had resented the Japanese immigrants for their success. In fact, Japanese children in the area were required to attend segregated schools. Mr. Fletcher was unruffled by personal attacks. He felt the Japanese farmers were being mistreated. He said: “I never did agree with the evacuation…. They were the same as anybody else. It was obvious they had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor.” Fletcher ignored the resentment of his neighbors, many of whom would have been more than happy to see the Tsukamoto farm go into foreclosure, and for the next several years he worked 90 acres on three farms. He worked 18 hour days and lived in the bunkhouse that Mr. Tsukamoto had reserved for migrant workers. He paid the bills of all three families. He kept only half of the profits. When the Tsukamoto family returned in 1945, they found that Mr. Fletcher had left them money in the bank and that his new wife, Teresa, had cleaned the Tsukamoto’s house in preparation for their return.
From the very first chapter in his Letter, James gives faith an active dimension. For James—faith isn’t something you have—it is something you do. God is a guiding presence in every moment—and in each moment we decide what to do with that guidance—ignore it, reject it, or incorporate it into what we become.
In verse twenty-five James writes: “But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.” Many biblical scholars believe that the “perfect law,” to which James alludes is a reference to Jesus’ great commandment—to love God “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength…and your neighbor as yourself”. Just in case we need to know what this actually looks like, James gives us the great synthesis from the prophets: it is to “care for orphans and widows in their distress.” Doing is actively caring for the vulnerable, especially when they are in need of help.
The message of James is this—what we choose, and how we act, matters. Ultimately, what we do is a reflection of what we believe—and it either ushers in the Kingdom of God—or not.
I don’t know if Bob Fletcher saw himself in the words of St. James and the command of our Savior—but I know what he did; and that tells me a great deal about the man.
I suspect each of us know people who stand in the same vein as Bob Fletcher—those who speak truth to those who would manipulate it to their own advantage; others who—at great cost to themselves—do the right thing, opening their hearts and homes to those who are in need. There are those who give liberally both of their time and their resources for the less fortunate. Others who refuse to take advantage of loopholes in an economic system that too often strips resources from the people who need it most.
This weekend we honor our nation’s workers and their contributions to the well-being of our country. We honor the doers, those whose work benefits the lives of others. James leaves us with a challenge as to how we are to accomplish this in our own day and age. To begin, we must look to the vulnerable in our society and within our world; those whose lives are not blessed with the same resources that we possess—whether that be money, time, ability or compassion. We are to work together as one family of God. In this, we not only become a blessing to others, we are blessed ourselves. Think of it this way. What we choose and how we act matters—quite literally, it materializes the world in which we live. Let’s resolve to make the world better by becoming doers of the word. In Jesus’ name. Amen.