Easter 5
James
1:16-21
5/3/15
We live in a time when people spend
their lives looking down. When you go to
a restaurant you often do not see people looking at each other, but instead
they sit there looking down at their smart phones. When you go to a sports practice for children
or youth – and I have some experience with this one – you see people sitting on
a bleacher looking down at their smart phones.
Basically when you go to anything where people are not required to be
actively doing something or to be focused on something else, you find them
looking down at their smart phones.
It’s really not surprising that our
smart phones attract so much attention.
When you combine the ability to communicate instantaneously with access
to the internet all in the palm of your hand, that is an incredibly powerful
draw. Add to this of course that access
to the internet means not simply access to unlimited amounts of reading material,
but also the ability to interact on social media, and you have a black hole in
your hand with seemingly unlimited power to suck you in. People spend their lives looking down, and
until the next breakthrough in technology that transcends the smart phone, I
think they will continue to do so.
While we spend so much time looking
down, people in the ancient world spent much time looking up. We live in a world where we feel the need to
be entertained constantly. Much of this
entertainment is visual in nature. The
ancient world led a much slower life with far less entertainment. It was also a life that spent far more time
outside at night. Whether because it was
due to work, or because the roof was a more comfortable place to sleep in the
summer, people often found themselves outside with time on their hands. And when they did, they looked up.
The ancient world was far more
attuned to the moon, the planets and the stars. I don’t know about you, but
apart from the Big Dipper, I can’t name or find anything in the night sky. I don’t pay any attention to what phase the
moon is in, and I only really notice it on random occasions. By contrast the ancient world paid
attention. Some of this was for
practical reasons. And some of it was for religious reasons since it was very
common to think of the heavenly bodies as astral powers – divinities that
controlled life. This kind of thinking was everywhere in the first century
world in which James wrote.
It is therefore not surprising that
James begins our text by writing: “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” God is described as the “Father of
lights.” He is the Creator of all of things
in the heavens and controls them. We
heard about this in last week’s Old Testament lesson from Isaiah in which God
said, “To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the
Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings
out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his
might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing.”
James says that there is no
variation in God. He is reliable. You can count on him. And what you can count on him to do is to give
good things. Our text says, “Every good
gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of
lights.” God is the giver of good things. Now it is easy to lose sight of this fact and
focus on the good things themselves. It
is easy to focus on our own actions and think that we can take credit for those
good things. And so James warns about
this, “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.”
God is the giver of all good
things. James has just said that what he
doesn’t give to us is temptation.
He writes, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by
God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.”
God doesn’t seek to lead people into
sin. Instead James says that we take
care of that on our own. He writes just
before the start of our text, “But each person is tempted when he is lured and
enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to
sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” James has written one
of the best descriptions of how sin works in our life. Our desire lures and tempts us. You don’t have to look outside yourself for
the reason you do the things you shouldn’t.
It’s right there inside you.
Our desires are disorderd. Since we don’t fear, love and trust in God above
all things, we desire things. We put them first. This desire conceives and gives birth to
sin. It prompts thoughts and actions
that are sinful. And this sin brings forth death because that is what sin
always does. It kills.
This is who you are. And because this is so, salvation was never
going to come from inside you. When you look inside, you find nothing there
except crud. So instead, salvation comes
from the outside. It comes from above,
from God who is Giver of every good and perfect gift. James says in our text, “Of his own will he
brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits
of his creatures.”
While sin brings forth forth death, God
gives us life by the word of truth. He
gives us life through the Gospel. The
Giver of good gifts gave his Son by sending Him in the incarnation to suffer
and die on the cross. But this is a
story about giving life. And so God gave
new life – resurrection life – when he raised Jesus Christ from the dead. He began in Jesus the resurrection of the
Last Day that will be ours when Christ returns.
Now, God has given you saving
life. He has begun that new life in you
through the work of His Spirit. As James
calls Christians to live in ways that reflect what God has done for them, he
says, “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your
souls.” For all of us, that word has
been implanted with water. In Holy
Baptism God used water and the Word to join you to the saving death of Jesus
Christ. The saving Word that joins you to Christ has been implanted in you and
has made you a child of God. It is
through this word that you have been made “a kind of firstfruits of his
creatures.” You have been redeemed, and
your redemption is the beginning of God’s saving work that will extend to his
whole creation.
This is a word that you continue to
receive as you hear it read and proclaimed.
It is a word that you continue to receive as Christ’s Gospel words are
spoken over bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar – as he says given and
shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
God has given you the gift of life
from above through his word – through the Gospel. And this means something. It does something. It leads you to do
something. James writes, “Know this, my
beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to
anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” In that very practical way that characterizes
this letter, James tells us how to live as those who have been brought forth
through the word of truth.
He says be quick to hear. James urges a desire; a willingness; an
eagerness to listen to others. When we are
quick to listen we are not rushing to form our own judgments about the actions
of others, but instead we are allowing the best construction to be placed on
them. When we are quick to listen we
show that we care for others because we are ready to hear what they are
experiencing.
James says Christians are to be
quick to listen. They are, however, to be slow to speak. If you are familiar the book of James, it’s not
hard to understand why he says this.
It’s because of the tongue. Later
in chapter three he writes, “For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and
sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being
can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” When we are slow to speak we are careful to
keep the tongue fenced in behind teeth and lips where it does no harm.
We are to be slow to speak because
when we are quick to speak, it is often because we speak in anger. James says in our text that we are to be slow
to anger. The reason for this is that “the anger of man does not produce
the righteousness of God.” We like to
talk about “righteous anger.” But the reality is that we give ourselves too
much credit. Instead, quite often our
anger is sinful. When sinners get angry,
we tend to sin. It’s just what we
do. Our motives, our goals, what we do
and what we say get pulled into sin’s gravitational field. This is why James
says that we need to be slow to anger. In
general the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
Instead, because of what God has
done for us in Christ we need to be quick to love; quick to serve; quick to
forgive. This is not something that we
can do on our own. It requires instead
that we confess and repent of the presence of sin in our life, and that we turn
to the source of forgiveness and life that James describes in our text. For as he,
“Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with
meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
No comments:
Post a Comment