Reading: James 1-3, Psalm 31

Now here is a letter that has generated some controversy. Martin Luther found the letter of James extremely frustrating, calling it “an epistle of straw,” and advocating its removal from regular teaching. On the other hand, James is probably the most easily understood writing in the New Testament. It gives clear direction about doing good things. Care for the orphan, the widow, the prisoner, and the poor. Do not treat the rich as better than the poor. Don’t expect that your faith means you can do whatever you want, because faith without works is dead. Luther’s problem with James was it’s lack of comment on God’s grace working through faith in Christ to the glory of God. Which is kind of true, but only if you think that the people James was writing to didn’t already believe that was the gospel message. I think that comments about how faith and works cannot be divided make a strong case that his readers already knew and accepted the gospel. What they needed was a reminder of what living a life in acceptance of the gospel looked like.

The James who wrote this letter was almost universally accepted to be the brother of Jesus who was mentioned by Paul in Galatians from the earliest days of Christianity. The apostle James was executed almost immediately following Pentecost. The question of the perpetual virginity of Mary did not dissuade this. The idea of Jesus having brothers was solved by positing that Joseph had been a widower with other children. Seems like a lot of mental gymnastics to me, but whatever. Whatever one believes, James was an authority in the Jerusalem church very early on, as we read in the book of Acts. He wrote this letter to the diaspora, or “the scattering” among the nations. So this letter was to be general in appeal. It is not to one church or one person, as Paul’s letters were, but to all those living scattered about the empire. If either James wrote it, it had to be one of the first epistles composed, as they were both executed, one by Herod and the other by being stoned outside the temple courts in the mid 60s A.D.

James is mostly concerned with how the Christians living among the nations are to live holy lives. The center point of his book is the Great Commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. He is practically working out the part of the Great Commission that says teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. James is about teaching the believers to obey everything that Jesus commanded. His first concern is with honesty. He would have the poor boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation. James understands that the temptation to reject Jesus’ teaching that the last is first and the first last is very real. He wants the believers to understand they cannot just ignore it. He has this same concern for the temptation to blame God for our failures. James will not have any of that, as God is the definition and source of all good things. He addresses those who would sit, listen, and nod at the rightness of Christ’s teaching, then ignore it when they live their lives. They are not obedient to the teaching of Christ just because they heard and agreed with it.

James has much to say about speech. He uses the metaphor taming the tongue to address what may be the most persistent problem in human society: gossip and passive-aggressive speech. James has nothing good to say about people who make no effort to control their words, even if they are righteous in actions. He is working from the words of Jesus in the gospel of Luke: from the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. It is far too easy to simply obey rules of behavior. That might impress men, but the Lord looks on the heart. James is pulling his knowledge of both Jesus and the Hebrew Scriptures into the daily life of the believer. The human problem resides in the heart, which comes out in speech. If the speech is bad, the heart is bad.

Which might be really bad news were it not for the gospel message of repentance. James also puts this out there. If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. James is not interested in talking people into faking the condition of their hearts. He would see the believer be honest about their shortcoming. False righteousness he calls unspiritual and demonic. Not the take anyone really wants. While he does not cover it in today’s reading, James’ solution to this situation is the prayers of the elders and other righteous men and women. As we will see in the closing of the letter tomorrow, James sees the hope of those who confess their sins in the community of faith.