September 1, 2024
There are 21 epistles, or letters, in the New Testament, most of them attributed to the Apostle Paul. These are all written to specific churches or specific people. Our scripture reading today, though, came from a letter written by James, and it’s referred to as a general epistle. This means that its intended audience was all Christians.
The person who wrote this letter doesn’t tell us who he is beyond his first name, but tradition tells us that this James is the brother of Jesus. Now, every follower of Jesus has a unique story, and speaks from a different perspective. And, as far as apostles go, no two Christians were more different than James and Paul. If this James is, in fact, Jesus’ brother, then nobody would have been closer to Jesus, and nobody could’ve known him better from a human point-of-view. Compare this to Paul—the only apostle who never knew Jesus during his lifetime. Having never spent time with him before his crucifixion and resurrection, no apostle would have been less well acquainted with the earthly Jesus than Paul.
And so it makes a certain amount of sense that James was seen by many as the leader of Jewish Christians, while Paul was thought of as the leader of Gentile Christians. Jewish Christians would have been more connected to Jesus in the flesh; Gentile Christians would’ve been more connected to him only spiritually.
And so when we look at the Letter of James, it probably comes as no surprise to us that it was written by a Jewish Christian to other Jewish Christians. Though its audience was intended to be everybody, it might make the most sense to those who’d grown up in the same tradition as James and, of course, his older brother, Jesus.
When we read Paul’s letters, there’s an obvious break with Jewish tradition. The Christians Paul wrote to were often Gentiles who couldn’t possibly profit from first converting to one religion (Judaism) before converting to another (Christianity). And so Paul argues strongly against making the Old Testament Law the center of Christian spirituality.
James was different. He had never broken with Jewish tradition. He was still steeped in it. The Christians he led still considered themselves to be Jewish—they were simply Jews who acknowledged Jesus as Messiah. And so his letter comes across very differently from Paul’s letters. And I think we can see that quite clearly here in this morning’s passage.
In fact, what I think we see here is a continuation—a New Testament version—of a common kind of literature found in the Hebrew Bible. There we find law and history and prophecy. But a lot of what’s found in the Old Testament is called wisdom literature—books like Job and the Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. These are books of poetry and philosophy, ethics and common sense.
James doesn’t really talk about the cross and the resurrection. And for this reason, when Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he called it an Epistle of Straw. He didn’t say it shouldn’t be in the Bible, but he said it didn’t contain the gospel. Straw might serve a purpose, he said. But, in the end, it wouldn’t last.
This is an interesting viewpoint. But it’s not really very helpful when we look at James, which served a clear purpose in the early church, and continues to serve a purpose today. You see, James was not trying to get people to become Christians. And he wasn’t trying to stamp out some theological heresy or another within the church. His purpose was simply to remind people how to live as Christ’s people in the world—how to be gentle and kind and faithful.
In the opening verse of this morning’s reading—the one I always associated with apples—we also see something else, something we today might call creation spirituality. Creation spirituality isn’t a specifically Christian way of thinking. Instead, it’s a way of making the connection between humanity and creation—something that I think people in all religions might be able to relate to.
So the source of all the stars and galaxies is also the source of the world we live in, the food on our table, and even ourselves and our neighbors. In listening to Jesus, the Word-Made-Flesh, we have been re-born as creatures who embrace the God-within-us. As his children, we can create positive change in the world.
I’m fond of saying that if you want to remember the core teachings of Christianity, you should read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount—Matthew chapters five, six, and seven. Is it any wonder, then, that Jesus’ brother, James, might be the next place you might turn to to find the basics teachings of our faith.
I’m not talking about the minuscule doctrines that some would say make one person’s Christianity more correct than another person’s version of the faith. Jesus never said it was our theological orthodoxy that would cause us to stand out. I’m talking about what Jesus meant when he said it was our love for one another that would prove to the world that we are his disciples [John 13:35].
God promised in Jeremiah [31:33] to plant God’s law in our hearts, and in Jesus Christ, James says that’s what happened. But God’s word isn’t something we just passively listen to and memorize and teach to others. It’s much more important that we act on what we know. “Don’t just listen to God’s word; do what it says,” James tells us.
He tells us throughout this letter how this might shape our lives and the life of the church. But here in today’s reading he points out three different ways that Jesus’ presence in our hearts will make a difference. The first way is patience. Listen to people and understand them. Think before you act. In this way, you won’t lash out in anger. From our homelife to road rage to political discourse, James speaks to our hearts and says, “Calm down. It’s not your anger that’s needed here, but your understanding.”
The next way follows closely on the first. Control your tongue. A Christian who says hurtful things is a hypocrite. It means the word of Jesus hasn’t been implanted in us, but has gone in one ear and out the other; the perfect law of God hasn’t set us free, but we’re still in the same chains that bind the rest of the world in a cycle of vengeance and retribution.
And finally, James says that the true hallmark of Christianity isn’t what we say we believe, but how we put that belief into practice. In Matthew 25, Jesus separates the sheep from the goats based on how they treated the least among us. And here in James 1, the apostle says that caring for the least among us—in this case, he says widows and orphans—is the essence of true religion.
When you read further into James, you don’t discover revolutionary new theological concepts. Instead, he seems to expand upon what he’s introduced here in the first chapter. And so as we gather round the table this morning, let us meditate on James’s common-sense approach to Christianity, and let our faith be made known in the way we treat others.
—©2024 Sam Greening
