St. James the Just
(Presided over the Council of Jerusalem around 50 CE,
where his concluding decision shaped how Gentile Christians related to Mosaic law).
On our journey through the bible, we’ve been spending the past couple of months in the letters of Paul. Today we are reading a letter, or epistle, of James.** The brother of Jesus. One of the earliest pieces of scripture we have. James was Jesus’s actual brother.
So, Jesus’s brother, James, or as modern people like to call him, Jesus’s “half-brother”, wrote this letter. But he was not a disciple of Jesus before he died. After Jesus’s resurrection is when James became a follower of The Way, and eventually the well-known and respected leader of the first church ever, in Jerusalem.
Paul’s letters were, for the most part, written to specific communities with specific circumstances, certain people, particular scenarios. This letter is not written to a specific community. It is written to all the churches scattered around the Roman Empire. And it is not about one thing, it’s kind of about all the things. It’s a mashup of Jesus’s teachings and wisdom sayings, filled with pithy lines like the Book of Proverbs, gut punch truths and direct statements that you can’t help but remember, because they catch you off guard and call you out.
Such as:
Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
Faith without works is dead.
Testing your faith produces endurance.
Every generous act of giving and every good gift is from God.
How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.
From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. This ought not be.
A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Let your ‘Yes’ be yes and your ‘No’ be no.
The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
The wisdom nuggets James drops throughout this letter instruct, and remind, and hope to inspire and direct a wide but intimate audience, a scattered community united in calling and purpose to guide them in this new life they’re now living. It’s like the first pope’s first encyclical.
I spent some time this week just imagining this community. We already heard with Paul’s letters how their way of living undermined the whole structure of society, how they cared not just for the people who looked out for them but especially for those who could not. Women and slaves were leaders, children were valued, and they were a strange group of people not afraid of death who refused to be silenced or stopped in this way of love by the empire’s rewards or punishments.
But I got pretty caught up on this being written by Jesus’ brother. And he and Paul knew each other! Paul visited James in Jerusalem, sat with him on councils, mentions him in his letter to the Galatians. Then I wondered if Paul knew Jesus’ whole family. Surely, he knew Mary, who was also a leader in the church. And while there is no historical record, sacred tradition holds that as Mary’s death approached, Paul and other disciples and church leaders gathered in Jerusalem, where undoubtedly James convened a blessing for his mother, their mother, our mother.
I won’t digress further here into my meandering wonderings about the childhood family dynamics or sibling rivalries in the household of these brothers James and Jesus (Ya'akov and Yeshua), or what elements of big brother’s origin story details were discussed with the other children, only to note that we are not told any of these things because they are not the point. Jesus had an ordinary life in an ordinary family, and that is perhaps the most extraordinary thing about God becoming human.
All we have of God is what God has revealed to us of Godself, by coming, embodied, in Jesus Christ. And all we have of Jesus Christ is what those who knew him or knew of him wrote to each other about him, or passed on in oral tradition until someone wrote it down for the rest of us.
Except that’s not all we have, because Jesus did not stay dead like ordinary humans. So the life he lives that cannot die is now our life, and the connection he shares with the Father that cannot be broken is now our connection, and the way he loved all people as siblings, each one a beloved child of God, is now our way, of loving, of being. The risen Jesus lives now in and through us; we are part of his life that cannot die, caught up in grace, released from whatever might try to trap us in shame, or anger, or isolation, and held in this belonging to God and all others. The real reality of God’s eternal love brought to fulfillment in Christ is our origin, our destination, and our path.
Therefore, as Paul would say. Because that is the truth, live like it’s true. Here’s James’s therefore: Quit adopting the mindset of the world. Care for those who need help. What good is it if you say ‘I have faith in God’ but don’t help the people around you?’ They belong to God and so they belong to you, there is no faith in God apart from our neighbor! What good is it to say ‘go in peace and be warm and fed’ but give them no food or shelter? Jesus didn’t come to us in nice thoughts and kind wishes; he came in hunger and need and was fed and cared for by those he came to. And how is it living in the real reality to decide some people are better or more worthy than others because of their outward appearance? When you forget that the poor have a special place in the God’s kingdom and kiss up to the rich instead, what fear, insecurity, or lies is your life really being guided by?
Nobody likes to feel scolded. (Martin Luther was not a fan of this letter). But there is some extra punch, I feel, to James’ words, because he is not writing them right to a certain community or situation. These messages are not directed at a certain group especially busy with bad behaviors. This letter is sent all throughout the Roman empire, church to church, house to house, family to family, wherever the people of the Way are gathered, these words apply. They are for all followers of the Way to hear.
When we read directives, we like to look around at who most needs to hear the message, then nod along and decide it pertains to those other Christians over there. I may not be perfect all this, at least I’m not as bad as they are.
So, there is something both heartbreaking and deeply comforting to know that these specific mindsets and behaviors James is addressing are universal struggles. He is dealing with pitfalls shared by all Christians living in empire, starting with the very first church, and including us right now. No partiality or prejudice; this is wisdom every one of us needs to hear.
James is warning us about falling back into a way of living that fractures us, from each other, from God, and from our true humanity that finds its wholeness when we are living with and for each other. We’ve called these two paradigms the way of God and the way of fear. One is true and brings freedom, the other is a very persuasive lie that enslaves. So, James sends to everyone a letter that can already guess what our temptations will be, because they’re his too, they’re all of ours. Believing and living these lies is not new to us. This is sin – back to the beginning, human beings turning from the source of life and love and and trying to somehow acquire on our own, over and against each other, what is already given—and can only be given as a gift—from the source of all life. And this lie is fed to us every day by the empire.
We need reminding that we don’t strive to advance in some board game of life or faith, stepping on others on our way up. We are transformed from the inside out by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is the energy that flows between the God who is so wholly other than us that our imaginations cannot even begin to reach toward, and the incarnate Son, God’s own self-revelation on earth, God’s act of reaching out to us and saying, Here is who I am. This is me. I am for you.
We have been claimed by this God for this holy, ordinary life. This God, who is for us, has made us for God and for one another. This life of belonging is a life of presence and of participation. It’s a life of mistakes that are confessed to those we’re here for, and hurt that is forgiven by those we’re here with, and (as our own Marty Christensen used to say) we are here to take care of each other. In this reality, the real reality, those of us who are right now most in need are who we are most here for.
It has meant so much to E and B (a family in our congregation going through some very challenging medical circumstances) to have us praying for them. And we are. Every day we are praying. And also, the more I say to E, we are praying for you, the more it feels like words without actions, Be well! Take care! Thoughts and prayers! A few of you shared this week how sad it felt to eat the meals you’d prepared for them and were unable to deliver. And I keep on reiterating, we are here for you, whatever you need, and being unable to really provide anything, because they’re living in such suspended liminality at the moment that what they most need is our prayers, so we keep praying. And thank God we are able to do that, both that they are letting us do that, by sharing what’s going on and not holding back, and also that God gives us this way to participate in what God doing. Prayer is an act of obedience and trust, and, as James reminds us, the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.
But last night I prayed for some way to do something. And I was immediately reminded that the gathered church breaks bread together and we serve one another communion, and this is one way we practice receiving and living in this real reality, sharing each other’s place and being remembered into our belonging and our calling. So last night I reached out to E and offered to bring communion to them after worship. Pastor Lisa and me, more people from church, just one of us, none of us, whatever would feel right to them. She checked with B and came back saying B said he would love to have communion with whoever of us wants to come.
So later today we will put action to our words and be the prayer we’ve been praying. Here now, with you, for B. And even though it means only a few of us can go in the ICU, and we can’t end pain or bring relief or hope, we can be with and for them, and this is how we see and know God who is with and for us in Jesus.
We can pretend life’s long, pretend it’s easy, deny the suffering, act like we don’t need each other, choose not to see each other, hide from other people’s pain, prop up the powerful, ignore those in need, and make our lives all about ourselves, but all that pretending won’t change what’s real.
This life is short, and it’s hard, and it’s filled with suffering, and everyone dies, and in Jesus Christ God is here, with and for us, belonging us to God and one another, siblings, all, in this human family. And inside and underneath it all we’re held in God’s love that cannot be stopped by our selfishness, altered by our fear, dampened by our suffering, broken by our pain, or ended by our death. This love is our origin and destination, and it is our path—we are here to take care of each other. So let’s live what’s real.
Amen.
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**Here is a fun bit of biblical trivia I just learned this week: In Hebrew James was Ya'akov and Jesus was Yeshua. So, they could’ve been called Jacob and Joshua, but technically, Jacob is actually the same name as James and Joshua is the same name as Jesus. It’s just how they evolved through Greek, Latin and English. And weirdly, wherever the name is used in the Old Testament English bibles have translated it Jacob, and in the New Testament it is translated to James, just to keep straight who is who among all our bible characters, even though Greek calls them all Iacobos.
Here are the Linguistic Progressions Broken Down:
JAMES: Ya'akov (Heb/Aramic) = Iakobos (Gr) = Iamobos (Lat) = Iames (Eng, pre-1500s) = James (Eng, post-1500s, after "I" and "J" became separate letters).
JESUS: Yeshua (Heb/Aramic) = Iēsous (Gr, because lacks "sh" sound and needs 's' masculine ending) = Iesus (Lat) = Jesus (Eng. post 1500s when "I" and "J" differentiated).
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