Setting Our North Star--February 22, 2022

Setting Our North Star--February 22, 2022

"Adulterers!  Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." [James 4:4]

Okay, first things first--and this one definitely needs to be said first:  while it's never a good idea to make yourself an enemy of God, God always reserves the right still to love us when we do just that.  

Today's verse comes on strong in warning us not to put ourselves on opposite sides with God, and we'll see that's for good reason.  But all that said, we can't forget that at the heart of Jesus' teaching (and life) is the core conviction that God loves even those who have made themselves God's enemies.  That's what the cross and the Sermon on the Mount are all about.  So if we find ourselves worried we have slid into opposition toward God, remember that we can never be outside the grip of God's grace and goodness.  Even when our backs are turned to the divine, God reserves the right to keep seeking, finding, and gathering us home.  We can't forget that while we're focusing on the details of this verse and lose the forest in the trees.

Now with that said, we also need to hear James' stark reminder that God's "way" and the world's "way" of doing things become mutually exclusive at some point, and there are places where choosing one means saying "No" to the other.  Rather like the stories of Jesus' temptation by the devil in the wilderness, we find in our own lives that saying "Yes" to the way of God means saying "No" to an alternative path or way we might have gone, even if it looks enticing.  And if you have to pick in this life between being where Jesus is, or being anywhere else, it's always better to go where Jesus is--even if that means saying "No" to the old patterns, the old routines, and the old life we knew.

James has just been talking over the last several verses about the competing kinds of wisdom out there--the "world's" kind of wisdom on the one hand, versus God's kind of wisdom on the other.  And we've heard James underscore the contrast there between the world's Me-First, What's-in-it-for-me? kind of mentality and the way of God, which basically turns that inside out and seeks the good of others rather than being bent in on ourselves. There's really no way to pursue both approaches in life: either we'll be bent in on our own selfishness (Luther used to call this being "incurvatus in se"), or we'll be oriented outward toward God and neighbor.  But those two ways of living point in opposite directions, so choosing one is, by definition, to reject the other.  Of course, in the course of our lifetimes, we are constantly changing sides, switching teams, rerouting, and going back and forth that the path of our lives looks like a toddler's scribbly mess.  But James keeps calling us to leave behind the selfishness-is-success transactional thinking that the world usually celebrates, and instead to let our lives be oriented in line with God's kind of wisdom, which has Christ-like love as our North Star. That's the choice.  That's the contrast.  And it's an everyday decision, often every hour and every moment, how we will receive what the day is bringing us, and how we will answer back either with envy or empathy, selfishness or grace.

While we're being honest, James would push even further to see that there's not really a "neutral" position of taking no sides in life, either.  Like Bob Dylan sang, echoing Jesus himself, "You gotta serve someone."  Or as the Jesuit theologian Pedro Arrupe put it, "To be just, it is not enough to refrain from injustice.  One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society." To walk oriented in the way of God means to be committed to doing justice, to practicing mercy, to loving people with God's own self-giving love that smiles to see other people happy rather than needing to pull others down to prop itself up. And that is, of necessity, going to mean turning away from a whole other approach to life, rooted in looking out for your own interests first, grabbing what you can even if it's cheating others, and caring only for your own immediate well-being rather than the good of everybody.

That, we should be clear, is what James has in mind by "friendship with the world."  It's the alignment with that way of thinking.  It's when we live our lives accepting the Me-and-My-Group-First mentality that the world calls "conventional wisdom," rather than daring to walk out of step by following God's alternative path.  It's when we no longer question the talking heads who advise us to get more, want more, fear others more, and hoard more, but decide that we like what they tell us.  It's when we decide we'd rather not listen to Jesus' words announcing blessing on the poor, lifting the last above the first, calling us to serve rather than dominate, and laying down his own life for his enemies rather than killing them.  All of that is what James has in mind when he warns about "friendship with the world."  It's NOT that he wants us to sequester ourselves from the supposedly "sinful" folk, or that he's against dancing or bowling or tattoos, the way sometimes Respectable Religious people like to distance themselves from the ones they think are the "sinners."  James doesn't want to see us stop loving the people around us--rather that he doesn't want us to swallow the kind of thinking that the powers of the day take as gospel-truth.  

So we'll be committed to doing good, but not just to other Christians--to everyone, including folks who will never darken the door of a church building on Sunday morning.  We'll be committed to making sure everyone in our community gets enough to eat, regardless of whether they have ever cracked open a Bible, belong to a different faith altogether, or are convinced they'll never believe in any faith.  We'll seek to make sure there's a way for everyone around to have a roof over their heads and a safe place to raise their kids, and we'll be willing to contribute our resources to do it, regardless of whether they've ever prayed a prayer.  James doesn't want us to stop loving and doing good for the people around us in "the world," regardless of whether they share our faith; he just doesn't want us to fall for the conventional wisdom of "the world" that conflates selfishness with success.

With every day, including this one we are living right now, we are given choices about what will be our North Star and compass orientation--whether the way of life charted out by a God who journeyed with formerly enslaved wanderers and exiles, or the way of the tycoons, moguls, and deal-makers.  And when we have to pick between people or profits, personal convenience or practicing compassion, welcoming strangers or fearing them, we'll understand what James means--at some point it becomes clear that one approach to life rules out the other, and we cannot help but take one path and turn from the one not taken, like in Robert Frost's famous poem.

He was right, Frost--it really does make all the difference.  What paths will we walk today?

Lord God, guide us on your path, and direct us in your ways of loving the world around us without falling for the world's games.