James 3:13-4:3; 7-8a
Be Wise
What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom? Knowledge is to be aware that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is to know not to put tomato in a fruit salad. The way in which one acquires knowledge is also different from the way in which one acquires wisdom. You get to know that that tomato is a fruit by reading up what a dedicated community of botanists who studies plans for their bread and butter, say about tomatoes. You learn not to put tomato is a fruit differently. You learn it through first hand encounters, experience and relationship. By helping your loving mother make a fruit salad and other salads for instance. You cannot learn it is a fruit just by tasting a tomato. You cannot really learn to not put it in a fruit salad by reading a book on why one shouldn’t put tomato in a fruit salad.
Now I want you to ask you another question. Do we know more than previous generations? Yes, we do. Because of the internet mainly. It made knowledge much more accessible. It is said that one edition of the New York Times contains more information than a person living in the 17th century would encounter in a whole lifetime. But are we wiser than generations that have come before us? Nowadays I do not think so. Because wisdom you come by through relationship and rich, deep community ties and even though we are high on knowledge we are low on community. Everything from churches to tennis clubs struggle to gather and get people involved. People in our time tend to think: what is best for me? Rather than to think what would be best for everybody in our community. It is like factual knowledge are the dots, we have many of them. But wisdom is what helps us to connect the dots in a way that makes sense. We have more dots than ever but struggle to know how to connect them in a way that helps us to make sense of the world we live in. Everybody is confused and connect them in the way they think is best. There is no consensus because there is little community left. We know tomato is a fruit but we put it in our fruit salad.
The world of James…
The letter of James is one of the latest letters in the New Testament. It was written in the second century after Christ. It uses the name of one of Jesus’s brothers, but it was written by a community related or possibly founded by him rather than by He himself. Why? Because we know that James died a Martyr death in 62 after Christ already. When I read todays passage I was struck by how relevant it sounds. And then a penny dropped…
We live in a time with increased knowledge and decreased community. And from this community’s perspective, they experienced something much similar. The first disciples had nothing. No status, no wealth and a bare minimum of knowledge. But one thing they did have. They had a very deep sense of community traveling with Jesus day by day. Much the same could be said of the early church. They did not have libraries full of Theology and differed on many things. They lacked much of the knowledge we today take as basic. But as they were pushed out and rejected by the culture, by their religions and sometimes even families, they were bound together in very tight community. That was why Jesus was so spot on when He said: By their love for one another, they shall be known. It was definitely not for their wealth, power or education in the early church!
Now two centuries later it was a bit of a different picture. Now Christians were scattered all over. They did have more knowledge as Paul’s letters and the gospels have been circulating and more people began to write and teach. But that first intimacy in community faded due to many reasons. Them being persecuted and fleeing all over. Them being second generation Christians and having lost a little of what it meant to be freed from the bonds of religion and power. So suddenly there were many disagreements, envy and other ills that chipped away at their sense of community even more. Sounds familiar does it not? Our own diminished sense of community and rapid increase in knowledge might have different reasons than theirs but it is of the same kind and it causes the same kind of problems for us as it had for them.
So, with this in mind let us see how this epistle instructed Christians on how to live in a world on increased knowledge and decreased community…
Don’t give up on the ideal of a good life
James defines as a good life as a life filled with good deeds born from wisdom in verse 13. Listen carefully. The implication is that if I “am right” but do not do right, I am wrong. And maybe we can add, f I am wrong but do the right thing, I am better off than being right and not doing anything. We have elevated being right in theory over and above doing right in practise. Orthodoxy means the right believe. Orthopraxy means holding your beliefs right by doing the right things. We need both. We lack Orthopraxy more than we lack Orthodoxy. We hold on to more theory in a day than we can practice in a life time. When I flush the toilet and it makes the sound of a toilet flushing but doesn’t actually flush…I have a problem. If I have a faith that sounds like a good one but does not actually move me to good deeds, I have a big problem. A tree are known by its fruits. Jesus said this. We are not saved by our own good deeds but by that of Jesus but when Jesus saves you, your good deeds follows as proof that you have really been saved.
Nowadays what worries me is that the question “What is a good life?” and what are good things to do fades. It’s like people are less interested in living a good life than they are in living their life, the one that is most convenient to them. What is good is what they feel is comfortable and beneficial to them as individuals. But often it is not. We sometimes want things and acquire things that are really bad for us. The remedy is community. In the communities this letter was sent to churches who experienced for the first time the rich joining the poor in the same churches. They differed on what a good life is but this was what made it wonderful that different kinds of people gathered in the same community under the authority of Jesus. They were better able to distinguish what the right thing to do is even though it was more difficult to do so. You learn what a good life is the same way that you learn what to put in a fruit salad. By relational engagement. By getting your hands dirty in the messy business that is community.
No man is an island. Sometimes I think the church has devolved into a place where people came to mainly to get knowledge. No wonder people don’t show up in such great numbers anymore! You can get the knowledge you get in a sermon online or elsewhere on the internet. But you cannot get the community you get in church and as church online. Or can we? The internet is also evolving and we did experience in lockdown how certain features did make it possible to have community without physical presence. If you are able to have that, I cannot tell you to stop it. Help us think of ways to invite people into and bless them with community and to think and dream with others what a good life looks like. The value I want you to buy into is not internet or not internet, it is community. Whatever gives you the fullest sense of being in community, the opportunity to both share yourself and receive from others… go for it!
Hold that sin is still sin and fight it.
This letter goes on to encourage people to guard their hearts. We have to take a critical look into our hearts to do that. Who and what makes me jealous? Who and what makes me angry or bitter? How does what I want for myself affect others negatively? When a man confessed his gravest sins to a priest, the priest said: “Well, the good news is that you are a sinner?”. “How is that good news?” the man replied. “Well, sinners is exactly the kind of people, Jesus came to save”, the priest replied. It is not to punish you that you have to search your soul. It is so that you can be embrace by God’s love turned around.
Confession of sin used to be such a regular thing that Christians used to open their Bible studies by confessing their sins to one another. Today it would be unthinkable to many Christians. We have lost something. We have become an authority unto ourselves. We play judge over our own life and that of others and we are grossly partial and unfair in our judgements.
If this passage calls us in verse 17 and 18 to pursue peace and be peace makers, how could we sidestep conflict, inner turmoil and confronting sin as evil in our lives? A peacemaker that says I am not going to engage with the opposite of peace is like bread maker saying that though he will eat bread, he will never touch dough and ovens. “No can do”.
Keep track of your desires
It is like this letter digs deeper and deeper until it gets to the roots of what causes the things that holds us back in life. And in Chapter 4 it gets to one such root. It says that the quarrels and fights even our disillusionment with unanswered prayers are caused by distorted desires. What we desire determines our actions. And if we desire the wrong things, we will kill to get them. If there is one thing we should give God access to in our lives, it is our desires. Your desires either unlocks or closes up life itself. And only God can show them to you and change them with you.
How do I partner with God in changing my desires? I take stock of them. I ask myself two questions: What brings me pleasure? And why does it give me pleasure? If the reason why something gives me pleasure is that it sells a lie to me like that I am invincible, immortal or stronger than everybody, it is a distorted one. If a desire makes me bow down before the glory and greatness of God when I get it, it is the right one. Then also I allow God to change my desires by changing my habits. Desires forms habits but they are also formed by habits. Changing a habit can be very hard but doing the right thing over and over can in time make you want that right thing more. Ask any recovered alcoholic how much they hated not drinking alcohol at first. But ask a long time recovered one how glad he is that he did it and how easy it is for the most part now that it has become a life habit.
Close
I think the last verse we read summarizes it all. Come near to God and He will come near to you. It means as we come closer to God we will experience Him as the ultimate reality, as the One that was close to us all the time.
Knowledge of God becomes meaningful in a relationship with God. Knowledge fills our heads; a relationship with God fills our hearts and together they fill the world around us with meaning.
I don’t always know exactly how to navigate the world we live in. But I know God knows and knows me. The way forward is to respond to that in humility and gratitude. The rest you can figure out as you go along.
Amen