On Doing It Anyway--January 11, 2022

On Doing It Anyway--January 11, 2022

"Blessed is anyone who endures trials. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him." [James 1:12]

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Every kid I know has been asked a question like that at some point or another.  Children are asked that question from the time they go off to kindergarten, and we only intensify our interrogations as they get older.  So before long they know what grown-ups mean when they ask that particular question--the adults are talking about jobs.  Whether the answers are lofty and ambitious (astronaut, Olympian, president, and the like), adventurous (firefighter or superhero), or grounded in some aptitude they show in childhood (architect, mechanic, teacher, engineer, musicians, etc.), we start teaching our children from the earliest ages to think about paid employment.  That's really what the grown-ups are asking when they say, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

But I wonder... what if the question were less about "what place of employment you go to for a paycheck" and more about "what sort of people we grow into"?  What if the answers to be inviting our children and grandchildren to think about are more like, "I want to be kind when I grow up," or "I want to be wise when I am an adult," or "I want to be strong and loving and generous and truthful..."?

I ask that because it seems to me that the writers of the Scriptures are a lot less interested in what jobs we have (and even less about how much money we make or how much we contribute to the Gross Domestic Product), and a lot more interested in what kind of humans we are.  They care about whether we grow up into people of compassion and integrity, of perseverance and grace, of humility and wisdom.  They care that we be people in whom the character of Jesus can be seen, and that we be mature, rather than childishly self-absorbed.

And the more I think about it that way, the more certain I am that those are the kinds of answers that matter, far more than how much money you make or what your title is, by comparison.  And when I keep that in mind, I can get where James is coming from.  I don't hear this verse as a hoop to jump through in order to win a heavenly prize.  I don't think this is about earning God-points for going through a certain amount of suffering.  I think it's more a glimpse about what kind of human it is worth becoming.  It's James giving us another sketch of the kind of humans we are meant to be--regardless of what we do for a paycheck.  

So, yeah, being the kind of person who can endure through difficult circumstances is the kind of life that's worth striving for.  The word used in this verse can be translated "temptation" or "trials" (the way I've proposed translating it above), and it's the root word used back at in the very opening of this book, when James had said, "Consider it all joy when you face trials of any kind..."  In other words, it's about how we endure through all kinds of difficulties and make good choices through them.  It's about making the choice to do the honorable thing, the decent thing, the compassionate thing, the selfless thing, when we are faced with a hard situation.

All too often, I hear folks talk about their faith as though Christianity offers some plan for how to avoid suffering, get out of having to go through hard times, or to be spared difficult things in life.  And just as frequently, I hear people who identify as Christian complaining about inconveniences or the general difficulties of life as though they are being "persecuted" for their faith, as though being a follower of Jesus should be exempt from having to face the tough stuff of life, or as though Jesus hadn't specifically called us to enter more deeply into the hardships of others to walk with them in their difficult times.  

James, however, is under no such illusions.  He doesn't think that the "blessed life" is one that's free of difficult choices.  He knows that the "blessed" kind of life is one that is able to face those dilemmas and do the good thing that is also the hard thing.  That's what it is to endure trial or temptation--it's the ability to act with grace and integrity in our character, even when that is costly.  It's the refusal to sell-out just because it seems easier.  It's the choice to put the interests of others before our own.  It's the willingness to look foolish or be called a loser because you're less interested in looking tough than you are in being decent.  

Those choices often mean doing what's good--what reflects the character of Christ, you could say--even when nobody is looking, and when you won't get a pat on the head or a like on social media as a reward.  But as James points out, God knows.  God knows and sees the times we are faced with the difficult thing and we do it anyway.  God knows the costs we bear, even if nobody else can see the pain you are willing to endure, the loss you are willing to absorb, or the tears you are willing to shed, for the sake of acting with integrity and love.  And, rather like Jesus reminding us that there comes a point for the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant," James, too, here says to us, "When nobody else notices, God sees.  When it feels like you've done good and nobody sees, God does.  When you've gone the extra mile and spent your love and minutes for the sake of adding a bit more brightness to the world, even if it seems like it was for nothing, God knows.  And in those moments, you get a glimpse of how God loves the world even when we don't see it or appreciate it.  In those moments of doing the difficult-but-nevertheless-right thing, we show a family resemblance to Jesus, who was willing to give himself away no matter the cost.  It's less about a promise of a prize or a heavenly gold-star-sticker, and more about the promise that our willingness to do good in a world full of rottenness is still worth doing, even if it looks like it's all for naught.  It may seem like it's all for nothing, but we do good anyway, and trust that God can do with our small actions what God chooses.

These days, in the mornings when I wait with my son for the bus to come, the last words I say before the exchange of "I love yous" is this sentence: "Remember, buddy: do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good."  The words are obviously borrowed from another Bible passage (see Romans 12:21), but I think those moments are in the same spirit as James' words here.  When we face whatever difficult stuff the day will throw at us, and we have responded to the rottenness with goodness, it matters... even if it doesn't look like it from the vantage point of this day.  But we keep at it anyway, trusting that God can use all those seemingly insignificant choices to be decent, truthful, diligent, and loving--to do the hard-but-right thing.  

That's the kind of human I would be proud to see my son--and my daughter--become when they grow up, regardless of what they do for a paycheck.  Honestly, that's the kind of human I am still striving to be now.

Lord God, give us the ability to face the difficult choices of this life with strength, grace, and integrity, and to trust that you still see and use those choices of ours for good.

Rejoicing in Reversal--January 10, 2022

Rejoicing in Reversal--January 10, 2022

"Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up, and the rich in being brought low, because the rich will disappear like a flower in the field. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the field; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. It is the same way with the rich; in the midst of a busy life, they will wither away." [James 1:9-11]

This is one of those provocative Bible passages the Respectable Religious Crowd often pretends isn't there.  Especially in a culture like ours, whose conventional wisdom says that making a bigger pile of money is both a worthy life's goal and a sign of "good, decent Christian values," many Americans don't know what to do with an outright condemnation of wealth like this from the pages of Scripture.  And let's admit it: popular religion in our time and place tends to me more interested in what will make you a profit more than what makes you a prophet.  And yet... here is James, throwing down the gauntlet and poking at us with the promise of a great reversal of rich and poor. And he does so, not to alert the wealthy and well-heeled so that they can sequester their fortunes away and hide them in tax shelters or preserve their assets, but because he is convinced that God is behind this grand table-turning that lifts up the lowly.

So, we're left with the question: what are we going to do with James and his words here?  The temptation is to willfully ignore, soft-pedal, or blunt the razor-sharp message he brings here.  We can look for ways to tell ourselves that James doesn't mean what he sounds like he is saying.  We can decide, with folks like Luther, that this is just an "epistle of straw" and that we don't have to listen to it, in favor of other books which don't seem so critical of wealth and prosperity.  Or try and change the subject by criticizing James later on for sounding like he's saying you're saved by works rather than grace, so that we can avoid the way he is making us squirm here in these verses.  Really, any of those approaches are ways of avoiding what James wants us to hear:  in God's ordering of things, it's the ones regarded as nobodies who are to be lifted up, and those who have been hoarding more than they need will find their wealth evaporating like the morning fog.

Now I'm not terribly brave, but I do think we need to muster up the courage to hear James on his own terms, even if it means we are going to have to let go of much we've been told is Respectable Religion about money.  There are lots of voices out there who are sure that being a good Christian will make you richer, or that following Jesus is compatible with being a billionaire, or that the Gospel has nothing to critique about the decrees of "the market."  James, however, isn't one of them.  And he's convinced that all those other voices have confused the living God with a golden calf.  

James knows his Bible, after all, and he knows that over and over again, the God of Israel finds the nobodies and lifts them up, while taking the proud, puffed-up plutocrats down from their lofty perches.  It's the enslaved Israelites to whom God brings redemption, at the expense of Pharaoh's monopoly on wealth and power.  It's the scorned Hannah whom God grants a child to, leading her to sing a song about God lifting up the poor and needy.  It's the people without land, resources, or money that God made special provision for in the Torah--insisting that the rest of the nation provide for them from their own harvests and resources.  It's the folks who had lost their family inheritance that God promised to cancel debts for and to return their lands to.  It's the exiles God speaks tenderly to, while promising eventual calamity for the empires that carried them away from their homes.  

The thing we are going to have to wrap our heads around if we want to be in relationship with this God, the particular God whom we meet in the story of Israel and the face of Jesus, is that the living God takes sides--always for the sake of those who are left out, stepped on, and empty-handed.  And if we're sitting on a pile of more than we need, the way to align our hearts with God's is for us to share what we have, rather than pretending God is a lucky charm to help us cling to our investment portfolios.  If we hear these words of James and are a little squeamish about whether we'll be losing some of our money and status, then maybe we need to look at what we're doing with our resources.  James is convinced that God's grand reversal of the lowly and the lofty is Good News--if it doesn't hit our ears that way, we need to ask how our priorities and assumptions have gotten out of alignment with God's table-turning ways... and what we can do to get back in tune with God.

Today, the change James wants to make in us is that we would come to value people over profits.  It may take a long time for the grip of greed to be pried from our hearts (and our pocketbooks), but maybe it starts with re-examining what luxuries are in our lives that could be better spent helping someone else simply to live.  If I'm wallowing in a thousand different television channels to watch (while I also complain that I don't get the quality time with my family these days), maybe I need to take the money I'm spending on personal entertainment and use it to help a local non-profit help homeless families get permanent housing.  If I find I'm buying more and buying new, not simply to replace what's broken and unfixable, but for the sake of having the latest whatever-it-is, maybe I need to re-evaluate my choices and imagine what it would be like to be a refugee family from Afghanistan who has nothing but the clothes on my back to start a new life with my children.  If I'm giving my kids so much "stuff" that they are becoming spoiled and entitled, maybe I need to see that what I've been justifying as "showing love to my kids" is actually cruelly stunting the growth of their spirits. If I can only think of my work in terms of how much money it brings in rather than whether I'm doing good work that needs to be done, maybe I need to revisit what work is for.  All of those may be small choices, and small actions, but they begin to pull up the fingers of the clenched fist of avarice in our lives... so that we can learn again that the Gospel is good news for people with empty hands.

Lord God, where our hearts are out of line with your table-turning goodness for the lowly and the poor, shake us up and redirect us so that we will rejoice in your way of providing for the ones left out by the world.  Use us and the resources you have entrusted to us to make that happen.

Real-Life Horcruxes--January 7, 2022

 Real-Life Horcruxes—January 7, 2022

“But don’t let the wavering one, being split-souled and unstable in all his ways, think he’ll receive anything from the Lord.” [James 1:7-8—my translation]

Something terrible and insidious happens when we set our hearts on competing loves that point in opposite directions. It’s rather like we split our souls into pieces and send each part chasing after something different.

Honestly, that’s about the best way to describe what James is getting at here. It’s the way we can drape ourselves in the language of Respectable Religion and still send our hearts seeking after other things—and then we wonder why we don’t ever feel satisfied. James’ word for it is powerful: “split-souled,” or sometimes our English translations will say “double-minded.” The idea is that it’s possible for us human beings to divide our deepest selves into pieces, and then we end up feeling, well, less than whole.

It’s funny—I never really found much of the Harry Potter series of novels terribly deep, until I got to the final books, where the author invented a really interesting image of evil. Without spoiling too much (although, come on—you’ve had at least twenty years to read these books!), the arch-villain of the series has found a way to split his soul into pieces, in the attempt to leave pieces of himself in safe locations and objects as an attempt at achieving immortality. In the books these are objects with fragments of soul inside are called “horcruxes,” and they turn out to do terrible damage to a person—after all, to divide your soul into pieces is to lose something of the wholeness of who you are. That idea—that in the interests of chasing after something good, you might split your deepest self into pieces—is curiously enough pretty close to the idea James has in mind here. When we do that to ourselves, we are setting ourselves up for ruin, because it’s tantamount to cutting our bodies into pieces. Splitting our deepest selves—our souls—into pieces is setting us on a course for a slow death.

Well, here’s the thing: it’s not just in the fantastic worlds of children’s novels with wizards and dark magic that such things as horcruxes are possible. We live constantly in a world that teaches us to split our souls up in to compartments, each chasing after very different goals, and we end up wondering why we feel so incomplete… and complicit in terrible things. This isn’t the stuff of fantasy novels. This is our everyday lives in this ordinary world, where we are told to be unapologetically cutthroat and ruthless in our business lives, fiercely dedicated to our jobs, self-centered in our investments, kind to our friends, loving to our family, attentive to our own self-care, loyal to our country (but suspicious of anybody else outside our national borders), and somehow also faithful to God. No wonder we all feel broken into pieces!

The culture in which we live teaches us to make horcruxes out of ever facet of our lives, from work to family to country to wealth to friends to church, and to chase after each of them with equal ferocity. And then we wonder why we end up feeling exhausted and unsatisfied! We are sending different pieces of our deepest selves in different directions, and most of them (to be perfectly honest) are pointed away from the Reign of God and its hallmarks of mercy and justice. In the old days, one of the worst ways to be executed was to have each of your limbs tied to a different horse, and then each horse was set running in a different direction. In another time, it was a terrible punishment to be “drawn and quartered,” and here we live in a culture where we are all taught to cut our souls into pieces and set them each running after different loves. No wonder we feel incomplete, fragmented, broken, and empty. We are constantly taught to do the same to ourselves and told it is the road to success!

This what James is warning us against. If we’re trying to chase the American Dream and the Reign of God, we’re drawing and quartering ourselves—we’re splitting our own souls in the attempt to run in opposite directions at the same time. If we’re seeking more money and a side order of God, James warns us not to be surprised if we don’t end up feeling like we have gotten any closer to the divine. If I’m just using my religiosity as a way to drum up customers at my business, or to get support for my political agenda, or to make myself feel superior to my neighbor, I’m splitting my soul into pieces and making myself less fully alive. If I’m dividing my loyalties between God and my 401(k), or Jesus and my political party, or the Reign of God and my own personal imaginary recollection of some past mythic time when things were “great,” I am unwittingly putting myself to death by drawing and quartering. We live in a culture that teaches us to make horcruxes of ourselves—to split our souls into pieces—and sets us up to think it will lead to success and happiness, while it is in actuality sucking the life out of us. That’s what James is calling us away from.

In this day, then, the challenge is to turn our focus wholly onto the way of Jesus. That doesn’t mean you have to quit your job, burn your possessions, and disavow your family or country. But it does mean that we see our selves in a new way: as complete selves, given completely into God’s way of being in the world. So when God’s Reign runs up against the chance for higher profits, we’ll still seek after God’s Reign. And when the way of Jesus takes us away from old familiar hatreds and prejudices, we’ll do the hard work of letting go of those old habits of bigotry. And when the direction of the Spirit calls us to question the empire in which we live, we’ll give our allegiance to the Spirit rather than the Gross Domestic Product. And through it all, we’ll refuse to let our souls be split into pieces in the attempt to chase after both at the same time.

That’s what James is trying to get through to us. If he seems sharp in his warning, it’s because he knows the stakes are high. If it seems uncomfortable to consider all the ways we’ve already made horcruxes out of our bank accounts, party affiliations, tax brackets, demographic groups, and the like, well, that’s just more evidence of how urgently we need James’ message. Today, for all the ways we have already given in and cut our souls up into pieces, James calls us back to put the pieces back together and to place them in the hands of the One who can heal us and make us whole. That’s what it is to be the people of God—we are people whose fragments souls are put back together in the hands of Mercy. Let’s do that today.

O God, take the pieces we have broken ourselves into, and make us whole again in you.

Beyond the Dragons--January 6, 2022

 

Beyond the Dragons—January 6, 2022

“But ask [for wisdom] in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind….” [James 1:6]

I’ve got to be honest here: this passage feels like it should come with one of those warnings you read about from ancient maps where they drew monsters near the uncharted waters and unknown lands with the words, “There be dragons here.” At the very least, these seas have some dangerous rocks to navigate without running ourselves aground.

Let’s just start with this: remember from yesterday that the conversation is about asking for wisdom specifically. James started out this train of thought with the opening invitation, “If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God…” We have not changed subjects here in today’s verse, so this is not an open invitation to treating God like our personal heavenly vending machine. And this is not about saying, “If you didn’t get what you prayed for, you must have doubted and therefore disqualified yourself.”

Let me say that again: this is NOT biblical permission to tell someone that if they didn’t get the thing they prayed for, it must have been their fault for doubting or not believing hard enough. We do NOT get to pull this verse out of context to use as a weapon to club someone whose grandmother died or who just lost their job to say, “Well, this bad thing wouldn’t have happened if you would have been praying harder and without doubting.” Not how it works, and not what James is saying. But wow, you can sure see how someone might abuse this passage in that way and weaponize the Bible like that if you took these verses out of their context. That’s an easy temptation to fall into, but it will come back and bite us in the hindquarters if we do. There be dragons down that way.

All right, so if we’re a little clearer about what this passage doesn’t mean, what ARE we supposed to do with it? Let’s start with the context—James had been talking about asking God for wisdom. “If you are lacking in wisdom, ask God,” he had said. So far, so good. So when we ask God to give us wisdom, number one, it means we are going to have to trust God’s ways and God’s time for doing that—and we should be prepared that it’s a long-term kind of gift that often takes time to receive and grow into. It’s not a magic spell. Asking God for wisdom is not like Cinderella asking the Fairy Godmother to go to the ball and getting an instantaneous change of outfit, footwear, and transportation. It’s rather like the old joke about asking God for patience—one should be prepared that God will put people and situations in your life that require you to learn patience as the way of getting it. Wisdom isn’t a magical knack or a lucky hunch—it is a gift that takes life experience to receive, understand, inhabit, and put to use. It’s going to take both the patience to let God give it in God’s good time… and the faith to trust that God knows what God is doing in the mean-time.

That, I believe, is the spirit in which we need to hear James’ insistence that we not doubt after we’ve asked. It’s not that God will cancel the gift or cut off the flow of generosity as punishment for not believing well enough—it’s more like the need to keep walking the trail even if you’ve never been on it, trusting that the guide who is leading you along the way really can get you home. If I ask an expert hiker to help me get to the top of a mountain, and then part way up I bail out and decide I don’t trust them to get me to the summit, I’m in for a world of trouble if I go off from the way they are taking me on to go wandering on my own. Or, to borrow James’ nautical imagery, if I’m on a voyage in the open ocean with only a compass and the night sky to guide me, I am destined to be lost at sea if I keep changing course because I don’t trust the North Star or my navigational tools any longer. And that’s another good way to end up running into those dragons…

Becoming wise is a journey to a destination, rather than an instant change. It requires trusting the One who is leading us. In our own lives, too, then, to trust God to give us wisdom means we dare to commit ourselves to God’s direction for the long haul, not just for a quick fix. Because there are going to be times in the short-term where it looks like the way of Jesus doesn’t make a difference or is only for fools.

Let’s be honest about that, too. It will often seem like answering meanness with goodness is a waste. It will often seem like refusing to return evil for evil makes you look weak. It will feel like nonsense to give away our treasures in money so that others may simply eat and have shelter—that means losing profits! It will feel foolish sometimes to take additional steps to care for others or keep strangers safe, and they may even ridicule or mock you for the effort. Plenty of loud voices of conventional wisdom think it’s lunacy to turn the other cheek because they’ll tell you, “It gets you nothing.” And in the short-run, it sure may look like that. Trusting God to teach us wisdom means being willing to say “No” to those self-appointed experts and keep on walking the way of Jesus nevertheless.

So that’s where we’re being led today: the way of Jesus, even if the loud voices of blowhards around us think it is nonsense. And our calling is to trust that God’s kind of wisdom is what we most deeply need, even if the watching world sees it and thinks it’s utter foolishness—even if other Respectable Religious voices think it makes us look weak, too. So rather than head along the trail with our guide only part of the way up the mountain before heading on our own thinking we know better, today’s a day to keep going where our God leads us, all the way… even past the reach of the dragons.

O God, enable us to trust your kind of wisdom even when it runs up against the expectations of others who think your kind of love and justice are foolish or unprofitable. Enable us to trust your timing as you lead us on your way.

What's Worth Receiving--January 5, 2022

What’s Worth Receiving—January 5, 2022

"If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.” [James 1:5]

Some gifts are like time-bombs of goodness. When you first receive them, you don’t appreciate their value… and then, sometimes quite suddenly, you see their worth and treasure them (and the givers) much more fully.

I remember once getting a particularly high-quality flannel shirt one Christmas a few years back. And at first, I barely even looked at it. (Christmas mornings can be a bit of a blur in our house, even at the best of times.) Flannel, after all, isn’t regarded as a terribly glamorous fabric, and this one was a pretty subdued plaid at that. In a time when so many Christmas gifts are abuzz with electronics, come packaged with an array of attachments, or connect to the internet, a flannel shirt can seem… well, pretty lackluster. But to tell you the God’s-honest truth, I have lost, broken, or pitched plenty of gizmos and gadgets over the years—and that flannel is still hanging in my closet getting regular use. Its fabric has only gotten softer over the years, but it’s durable enough that I can wear it without worry when I’m working with tools in the woodshop or out for a walk on a brisk fall day. And while other colors come and go out of fashion (I’m looking at you, avocado green, burnt orange, and harvest gold), its simple classic pattern has stayed in good condition. A good flannel like that may not be flashy, but it will serve its wearer for a very long time. It’s a gift worth receiving, even if it wasn’t what I was expecting when I saw the box under the tree once upon a time.

My guess is that you’ve got your own experience with gifts like that—whether it was a piece of clothing you have come to treasure, a kitchen tool you never knew you needed but can’t live without now, a book you were not expecting that has now become a favorite, or the music of an artist you had never heard of but now have come to love. Those gifts are humbling in a way, because they remind us that the givers of those gifts just might know something or see something about us, and about what we need, that we hadn’t recognized in our selves. Those kinds of givers aren’t afraid to take the risk of giving us something we might not fully appreciate at first, and they’re willing to invest the time it might take for us to come around to see their worth. When you find such a giver in your life—a friend, family member, or whomever—hold onto them.

Beyond flannels or French presses, though, there are the unexpected and underrated gifts of God. And that’s where James takes us today. He starts in a surprising direction: “If any of you lacks wisdom, ask God.” It’s not odd that God would be the one to ask, of course, but rather, I think for a lot of us, wisdom seems an odd thing to ask for. After all, I’ve seen more than my share of televangelists insisting that God is here to increase our wealth, give us better jobs and bigger houses, and help us find our ideal romance. I’ve heard Respectable Religious talking heads invoke God to give their political party victory at the next election or frustrate the plans of the incumbent they don’t like, too. And I’ve read plenty of sermons, statements, and messages from celebrity pastors who are certain they have the right agenda to pursue in their culture wars, so they only ask God to help them win, rather than ever stopping to ask God to show them where they might be wrong. But very rarely have I heard it suggested that what we most need is wisdom—a gift that even more rarely leads to money, power, or fame.

And yet, here is James, holding out to us the offer of wisdom as a free gift, like it’s an unopened flannel shirt just waiting for us to discover how much it suits us. He’s one of those givers, it turns out: the kind who knows what we need better than we do ourselves. Or rather, God is. James here is only pointing us to the God who gives wisdom, even if it’s not the gift we thought we wanted, and even though it isn’t the latest, flashiest, or most highly coveted thing around.

So I want to ask us to pause here for a moment and let James point us in a direction we might not have even thought of before. What if we followed James’ lead here and revised our own prayer lives, so that they would be less like wish-lists on Amazon of things we are placing orders for with God, and more like asking God to rearrange what we want and work for in the first place? What if, instead of, “Dear God, please give ME that raise at work so I can renovate my kitchen,” or “Help my political party to win more seats in the midterm elections,” or “Here is my five-year-plan for my life, God—rubber stamp your approval on it and make it happen,” we started with, “Maybe I don’t even know what I should want, or seek, or spend my life on, God. Help me to be wiser, to know and act in light of what YOU see that I need.”

That’s going to change things for us, to be sure. It means asking God to shape us, to help us to grow—the very things we talked yesterday about, too, it turns out—and to make us people whose lives look like Jesus, rather than just asking God for favors and merchandise. It means seeing that the-kind-of-person-I-am is more important than the-circumstances-I-experience-or-the-stuff-I-possess. And it means opening ourselves up to let God rearrange the priorities in our hearts, so that our actions and choices change as well.

After all, wisdom isn’t just about head knowledge—it’s about being able to see the purpose and meaning behind things, as well as knowing what truly matters, so that we act in light of what lasts. Like the old joke goes, “Knowledge is the recognition that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is understanding not to put one in a fruit salad.” We aren’t just asking God for more religious facts, or helping us memorize Bible verses or creeds, or for a more refined abstract systematic theology to learn. We are asking God to help us re-evaluate everything in light of who God is. We are asking God to change the way we see the world in light of Jesus, so that we can live in the world in the way of Jesus. That’s what it means to ask God for wisdom.

Now, I’ll readily admit that isn’t as flashy or dramatic as our usual ways of praying like God is a genie here to grant our wishes. If faced with the choice of seeing prayer as a divine lottery ticket or seeing it as a means of deep self-reflection and change, it’s always going to be pretty tempting to go for the jackpot rather than growth and maturity. But James isn’t selling Super-Ball tickets. He is convinced that God isn’t here to grant our selfish wishes, but rather to help us grow beyond those selfish wishes in the first place.

That’s the journey we’re on with James. This is not going to be a course in how to make God give us what we want. James is interested in letting God shape the things we want—to grow us more into the character of Jesus, to make our words, actions, and choices become embodiments of God’s Reign. And the goal, the point, of all of this, is that we become more fully inhabited by the love of Jesus. Seeking God’s kind of wisdom isn’t about learning clever tricks for getting more money back on your taxes or a better set of time management skills—it’s about becoming the kind of people who live in light of what matters to God, and knowing what things just don’t matter at all, in the end. That might not seem like the kind of gift we knew we wanted—but it turns out it’s easily what we need.

So, let’s dare to open the gift we have been offered and find that like a sturdy flannel shirt you had overlooked, it suits us well to do the work in front of us. Let us ask for the wisdom God knows we need.

O God, give us wisdom—teach us and shape us to want what you want, to seek for what you seek, to be heartbroken over that which breaks your heart, and to act with your motion.

Who We Are Becoming--January 4, 2022

Who We Are Becoming—January 4, 2022

“My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.” [James 1:2-4]

So here is a difficult but solid realization I have come to as a parent: if I had to choose, I would rather my kids grow up into mature and decent adults than happily immature jerks. I would rather they become responsible and compassionate humans than coddle them into childishly expecting they are the center of the universe. I would rather they grow into thinking of others and knowing the value of persistence, even if it comes at the price of having to struggle sometimes, or even fail. In a culture that has taught us only to pursue some mirage called “happiness,” I would rather my children choose for themselves to pursue love, justice, wisdom, and courage.

And so, I suspect, would every decent parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or mentor who cares about a child.

The difficulty of that choice, however, is knowing then that there are going to be times when you cannot—or do not—prevent them from experiencing hardship. Being a parent, a teacher, or a mentor means knowing you are not there to win a popularity contest or be your kid’s “friend” all the time, but that your bigger picture goal is to see them grow into maturity. So rather than doing your kid’s homework or science project for them, you choose that they will have to learn long division through practice. Rather than letting your kid get away with bullying or bigotry at school, you choose that they have to face the consequences that come with their words and actions. Rather than handing them everything they say they want (and insulating them from the experience of delayed gratification), you choose for them to go through experiences that will teach them diligence, hard work, persistence, and the value of sharing what they have with others. Rather than teaching them to look out for their own interests first, you choose for them to practice habits that will be considerate of others—from holding doors to helping strangers to wearing masks, even when no one is “making” them. Those and a thousand other choices mean that the young folks we love will have to experience difficulties, even including times when we could have stopped those hardships in the short term, but instead chose to go through those difficulties with them.

Now, to be clear, it’s not that raw suffering by itself teaches anything. And it’s not that we merely want to “toughen up” our kids by making them endure pointless stress, extra labor, or forms of hardship while we put our feet up and sip tropical drinks. But we do believe that every time we are given one of those situations in life when it would be easy to cheat, or to be selfish, or to lie, we are also being given an opportunity to choose wisely and maturely, too. When your child tells you about how scary it was to stick up for the kid who was getting picked on in school, you feel both a bit of sadness that they had to deal with a situation like that, and also a swell of contentment to see that they chose well and faced the fear to do the right thing. When your kid comes to you and admits they broke the flower vase in the living room rather than blaming it on the cat or their sibling, you’re somehow a little less upset because they did the brave and truthful thing of telling you rather than passing the buck. And when you hear the weariness in your college student’s voice because they stayed up all night studying so they could ace the final exam, you know they learned something about the value of giving it their all in addition to whatever the subject matter was.

I think all of that is the right frame of mind for hearing James’ opening message here. “Consider it nothing but joy,” he says, when we are going through those difficult times. That might sound odd, until you think of what it’s like to be the parent, the mentor, or even the older sibling, who wants to see you grow into maturity. James doesn’t want us to suffer a certain amount just to make us “tough,” and he doesn’t say that present hardship can be traded in for heavenly rewards or earthly prizes. But he does know, like any good teacher, that we grow because of those times we have to decide to do the right thing even when it’s the hard thing.

Maybe that’s just it: if you know what it’s like to be proud of a child for doing the right thing, the good and decent thing, even when it’s difficult, then we can understand why James would have us “consider it all joy” when we are in situations to do the right thing… that is also the hard thing. Responding with respect and love when you’ve been treated with rudeness and rottenness isn’t easy—but it’s a sign you’re more mature than you were before if you can pull it off. Taking the time to put yourself in someone else’s shoes rather than arrogantly assuming you know it all is difficult—but it’s evidence you are growing in wisdom. Going the extra mile when others are bailing out, listening to someone you disagree with, risking your reputation by loving the unloved ones around you… these are all difficult, and often painful, things to choose. And yet, they are the kind of things that make our lives more like Jesus—they are practices that direct our lives to be more like his. And every chance life gives you that can shape your heart to love more like Jesus is one worth taking. It is something worth getting excited over—even worth “considering it all joy.”

That’s what this is all about. Not pretending that random suffering is fun or that heartache is an investment for the afterlife. But that every time we face the choice to do the hard but right thing, there is the joyful hope that God is growing us into the mature selves we were meant to become, like a seedling straining through the soil line to put forth a leaf as the sun’s warmth draws it skyward. If our version of Christianity has ceased caring about whether we are becoming more like Jesus (even while insisting we are just as infinitely beloved at our least Christ-like moments, too), we are missing something vital about what makes the Gospel actually “good” news.

For whatever hard choices are in front of us today, James offers us the perspective of seeing those difficult situations as the seedbeds of joy, because they are the very places God works best to help us mature into being people whose love looks like Jesus.

O God of all our days, use the challenges of this day to make us more fully like Jesus, and let that hope bring us joy today.

One Person to Another--January 3, 2022

One Person To Another--January 3, 2022

"James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings." [James 1:1]

It begins with one person, reaching out to other ordinary people, all trying to serve God, and all of them convinced that following the way of Jesus can make that happen.

Let's just start there.  This--this new series in our devotions together, as well as this book of the New Testament--is about people daring to live out the good news they have found in Jesus.  It is about people seeking to embody the Gospel.  And therefore we are always going to have to come back to the question, in some form or another, "How do we live this out?"  The first organized communities of Jesus' disciples called themselves, "followers of the Way" (see the book of Acts on that), which suggests at the very least that they saw their faith as something concrete, practical, lived, and without a doubt, embodied.  And so here, even in the very first words of the book, we start with one embodied disciple, whom we know as "James," reconnecting with other disciples, who are all seeking to serve God together.

Beyond that, let's agree to leave other preconceptions and baggage aside for the moment, especially about this book in particular.  Some folks get antsy about even touching the book of James. They might remember that another disciple and older brother in the faith, Martin Luther, just couldn't help but hear some passages of this book as an attack on Paul's theology of being justified by grace through faith. Luther himself called this book "an epistle of straw" and came very close to proposing that the church cut it out of the Bible (he didn't, which suggests to me that ultimately Luther was willing to be humble and open-minded enough to consider that he didn't have all the answers and that there could be worth in things he could not see the value of).  Other folks get hung up on whether this "James" whose name is attached to the book is the same "James" named elsewhere as "the brother of the Lord," or one of the twelve apostles named "James" (there were two in that group), or whether he was just an ordinary member of an early Christian community who also shared the name.  (Fun fact: although our English translations refer to this person and book as "James," the actual name in Greek is "Iakobos," which is more literally akin to our name "Jacob," and which would already have been a popular Jewish name because of the patriarch Jacob, later named Israel.  For our purposes, we'll just call him "James," but you can think of him as a "Jake" if you like, too.) James, for his part, doesn't say anything more about himself than merely that he is a servant of God and of Jesus, so maybe that's all we need to worry about.

It is so very easy for us church folk to overcomplicate the Gospel or turn it into something abstract and intellectual--just head knowledge, or mere feelings and "spiritual" emotions.  James and his book here are going to help us resist that temptation. He meets us as an ordinary person, with calloused hands from labor, tired feet from walking, and wrinkle lines worn into his face from years of living.  And he finds us much the same--equipped with these bodies, these hands, these feet, and these lives of ours, in which the Good News takes shape.

If you have found yourself, now or ever, let down by talk from Respectable Religious people whose words didn't match their actions, or whose love didn't look much like Jesus (and let's be honest, we've all been there), then come along on this journey together, with our older brother James keeping us honest and training us more authentically to embody the Good News that has already been given to us.  Come, one person, just as you are, reaching out to other ordinary people who are daring to live the Good News of Jesus.

O God of all, we deeply want to serve you, and we are convinced that Jesus makes that possible for us.  So help us, with the help of older guides along the way, to embody the love of Jesus, and to serve you as his disciples.