Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, 2015 – Deuteronomy 4:1-9; Psalm 45:1-9; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-23
This is a sermon about wisdom and life based largely upon the epistle appointed for today from the letter of James.
I saw a young man in the subway this past week, in his 20’s probably. You’d call him a hipster. You know, short red beard, long blondish hair swept up loosely in a topknot, cut-off jeans, sandals and a black T shirt with this message in large Gothic letters: “Save me from Life”.
What do these words convey? They aren’t meant to give hope. There’s clearly a little bit of youthful arrogance. He offers his own wisdom – nothing around us gives life truly. It’s sad, his take on life. But the words on his T shirt would provide a great opener for a conversation about wisdom and life.
The epistle of James has a lot to say about such things. But it hasn’t always been well-received. Martin Luther famously dismissed it as “an epistle of straw”. Despite this, it has retained a special place in the whole canon of scripture. Luther discredited James for contradicting Paul’s teaching about a person being justified by faith alone. James does say that a person is justified by works and not be faith alone (2:24). However, most interpreters today agree that James and Paul do not contradict each other because they are not addressing the same point.(Luke T. Johnson, Commentary on James, NIB p. 177)
Paul is talking about salvation by faith alone. James, on the other hand, is making the point that faith is nothing if there is no practical evidence of it. Faith to be real must be translated into deeds of grace and compassion – two very different purposes for Paul and for James.
But it is to James we turn this morning. James has a positive view of moral commandments and of the law. He reveals that he understands very well the place of wisdom literature in the Bible. Our choices are to be measured by the wisdom from above says James. “Every generous act of giving comes down from the Father of Lights “(1:17). The source of all wisdom is God.
There was and is a vast collection of wisdom literature that spans every culture and every age, even the modern age with its bumper stickers and T shirts. But James has a special message about wisdom. For him, wisdom isn’t about family honour and family obligations, so crucial in the Greco-Roman world in which he lived. It isn’t even about sexual morality. Wisdom is from above and is meant to be reflected in common values in the church community. Wisdom isn’t about judging, playing favourites, boasting or slander. It has more to do with putting aside arrogance, desire and rage (things that contravene God’s righteousness). Instead, wisdom has everything to do with putting on meekness and compassion, and the caring for widows and orphans.
Wisdom is found in keeping oneself from being polluted by the world.
By the putting on of such things the whole community of the faithful declares the word of truth, which we acknowledge was finally manifest in Jesus. This is the context of wisdom in James’ letter.
What about rules and commandments that give structure to our lives?
James stands in a long line of those who saw the giving of the law as a means of conveying divine wisdom. In this morning‘s Old Testament text from Deuteronomy (chapter 4) we can see the connection between law and wisdom. It is, we find, something any woman or man is capable of discerning. In this Deuteronomy passage Moses tells the people of Israel that the wisdom of God is openly declared in the statutes and ordinances that God has given. They are accessible to all, even to those outside Israel. As the people of Israel are about to move into Canaan, Moses tells them to observe the statutes diligently , “for this will show your wisdom and discernment to all peoples” – so much so that they might be moved to say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people”. For what other nation, argued Moses, has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? Wisdom itself shines perpetually behind the law that God gives and it is meant to seen by the whole world.
All of this is brought forward by James in his epistle. For him, life itself emerges out of this wisdom almost as a continuing creation one could say.
Life out of the word of truth.
“In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures”.
If life emerges out of God’s wisdom, what might we say to the young man I mentioned at the beginning, wearing the words, “Save me from life”? He was sadly not able to grasp the kind of wisdom that gives life. And can you blame him? – if all he heard from the culture was, ‘go to school, get a job with a pension, buy RRSP’s, buy property as soon as possible, don’t dress like a nerd, vote for this party even if it went back on its promises, wipe out anyone who is a threat, keep the homeless out of sight at all costs’. Of course, who would not want to be saved from such a life, from such phoney wisdom?
Now listen to what James says, “Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has power to save your soul”. How is that young man, (or for that matter any of us), to find the wisdom and life that he could not find in the world? He needs to be in a place, like a church where he hears over and over again the wisdom of God that changes life. But James has a warning – this will have almost no impact on such a young man if he doesn’t see in action what lies at the heart of wisdom; mercy and forgiveness exchanged in the church and care for those forgotten or banished by suffering or oppression.
Such action itself reveals the wisdom of God.
We know from the gospels and particularly the opening of John’s gospel, that the word and wisdom of God ultimately took flesh in Jesus, God’s incarnate Son. James very skillfully plays on this profound truth when he writes, ‘welcome with meekness the implanted word that has power to save your soul’. It’s Jesus, you see, that is the focus of this wisdom. And only by living in him could we ever hope to grasp the truth of his life that gives us life. Looking at Jesus on the cross would that young man hear, ‘my blood shall save you’? At Christmas would he hear the wisdom of Jesus addressed to the world? – ‘no longer will you be called Forsaken’?. If he were to stand with us to hear the gospel each Sunday would he feel the call of a completely different kingdom? If he saw us forgiving each other’s flaws and helping the man with no shoes at the coffee hour would he see a life worth living? Under the weight of such wisdom, says James, the implanted word has the power to save. This should give us confidence.
Last week, I was sent the words of a very young poet. He is barely 19 years old. Let me read his words in closing because they can draw us all into a conversion to the true word of wisdom.
The poem is entitled, “My lover, the man in robes like lamb’s wool”.
I want to kiss his dark pink aureola [the crown of glory of a martyr] and his cashmere neck
I want to touch his butterfly eyelashes, I want to spend forty days and forty nights looking deep into those hazel wells
I want to hear him breathing like a frightened antelope, ragged from the chase
I want to see the wounds
O come, O come my love
And ransom me from this fantasy
Let me live in grimy half-light
Let me taste your bitter love of sweet rejection, vinegar on a sponge
Let me lie close to you
Fill my lack and call out to me from across the waters
Come at the sounding of the trumpets, the trumpet climax
Be my judge, I prostrate myself before you
I’d rather spend an eternity in the molten lake
Than a single day as my own God.
(Copyright 2015 – Samuel Chapin Hodgkins Sumner)
Let the word of Jesus now be planted in our hearts and let us together find at hand the actions that make our faith real. Save me for life.
Amen
