Good Right Now--March 3, 2022

Good Right Now--March 3, 2022

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.' Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." [James 4:13-14]

I am only just now scrubbing the black smudge off of my forehead from Ash Wednesday's stark reminder: I am dust, and to dust I will return.  The Scriptures are unflinching in their honesty, sometimes brutally so, about human mortality and finitude.  Even with the New Testament's assurance of resurrection hope and the promise of Easter that awaits beyond Good Friday's tomb, a writer here like James can say without batting an eye, "You are a mist that vanishes like the morning fog."  James knows well the wisdom of the book often called Ecclesiastes, which keeps coming back to the refrain, "Vapor, vapor, all is vapor!"

Sometimes Christians are so quick to want to find (or invent) silver linings to things that we can't sit still with the truth of our mortality, our smallness, our whole existence being like a breath.  We are quick to blurt out, "But heaven!" or "But the afterlife!" or "But immortal souls!" when sometimes--like, say, the opening footsteps of Lent--we need simply to hear the reality of death which makes the hope of resurrection meaningful in the first place.  We are not only limited, but we are mortal.  We are not only capable of dying, but our grasping for control in the world is so tiny in the big scheme of things.  We like to think that our efforts and accomplishments will be remembered forever, as if they are engraved in stone--but even marble columns and stone statues come crumbling down in time, their writing wiped clean by the wind and weather.  Sometimes we just need to sit with that truth for a while, rather than pretending that either we or our legacies are immortal.  They are not.

Once we have quit trying to convince ourselves (and others around us) that we are in control of our lives and legacies, we can finally getting around to doing something useful with the day.  I think that's where James is pointing us, in today's verses and in the ones that follow.  Our attempts to make an impact for good in the world have to come face to face with our lack of control about the future, which means the question we have to keep coming back to is always, "What good can I do in this day, here and now?"  I can't know where I'll be in thirty years, so I had better not build my life around thinking, "I'll get around to being generous in the year 2050."  I can't assume I'll amass a fortune, and then hoard my money to make a bigger and bigger pile of it now until some ambiguous "someday" when I'll endow some charity and get my name on a plaque.  My goodness--I'm not promised a tomorrow, much less a retirement!  All of that is to say, I think James would warn us against building our plans for life on the false assumption that we know we have a certain amount of time to do things in our lives, whether for our selves or for others. 

What difference does any of this make practically?  Well, for starters, rather than saying, "I'm going to save up a bunch of money for decades, and then when I've made a boatload in investments, THEN, I'll give it away to charity... or the church... or my kids and grandkids. But until then, it's all going in the nest-egg." That makes a lot of assumptions, and it also misses out on the ways I can be generous and joyful now. Or in church life, it can be so easy to say, "We can help take care of our neighbors once the church's pews are refurbished and we've set up an endowment for ourselves," or "We can take on an outreach ministry for helping refugees once everything goes 'back to normal' and everyone who left during COVID comes back like it was before." Or it's the thought, "I'm gonna work non-stop now while my kids are growing up so that I can have more money to give them to go to college."  I mean, sure, it's great to want to provide your kids with a kick-start for their futures, but not if it comes at the cost of never seeing them or being there for them while they are growing up and need the time with you.  I don't need to break out into "Cat's in the Cradle" to make my point, do I?

Because we aren't promised tomorrow, we always have to be attending to how we can be a presence for good in the world today.  It's never that we have to do "enough" to earn a spot in the afterlife--you'll notice James doesn't bring any talk of life after death into the conversation at all here.  He's simply compelling us to be as real and honest as he's being with us. We have this day--this moment, this breath, this chance right now--to be the presence of Christ for someone today.  We have right now to show love, to be generous, to be brave, to restore relationships, to treat people justice and to make amends for where we have failed.  And if we aren't given more than this day (which again, is already a gift of grace all by itself), will we have spent our breath well?

In the end, this is the choice we have.  We can either live in the illusion that we have control over our lives and our destinies, and then set ourselves up for disaster when something comes along that we did not foresee (or were too arrogant to think could touch us). Or we can live honestly with the freedom that we can't rely on a ten-year or five-year plan, and instead use up our minutes and breath and strength every day in ways that show love, that do good, and that reflect the way of Jesus.  I believe James recommends the latter, and so do I.

Whatever else I get to do with my life, for however long I get to do it, I think my mist of a lifespan will have been well spent if it was given to love.  That's where I'm aiming today.

Lord God, with this day we have, enable us to use our time, energy, strength, and care in ways that reflect your Reign of love and justice.