James 1:17-27 focuses upon allowing the word of God to transform us.
James 1: 17-18 conclude a discussion of temptation that began with verse 12. 17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above. James begins by acknowledging the tremendous gifts that have come to creation from the hand of God. The “perfect gift” James refers to is discussed in more detail later, but the fact that it is clearly a “gift” negates any fears about James suggesting we somehow “earn” God’s pleasure through good works. The perfect gifts are coming down from the Father of lights. The image is unique to Scripture and intriguing. He stresses the creative power and identity of God. God is the “Father” of all these lights, or the stars and other heavenly bodies. As such, James emphasizes the role of God as creator and originator of every good thing. The contrast is with his previous conversation about temptation, where he stresses that God does not tempt us. Rather, temptation arises out of evil desires. The starting-point of the generous and perfect gift lies outside our world. In 1:5, he has said that God gives generously and ungrudgingly. He further identifies this creative God as the one with whom there is no variation (παραλλαγὴ) or shadow due to change (or of shifting shadow). The heavenly lights are constantly changing, of course. While the terms the author uses here are references to astronomical events as a trope (metaphorical expression) and a variation, he does not specify the events themselves (an eclipse, the waxing and waning of the moon or the shift between night and day). God is without change in the way humans experience change across time and culture. Individual experiences throughout life shift our understanding of God. God is the source of life and all that is necessary to sustain it. It may seem like God changes, especially when we look seriously at the movement within the Bible from the God of the Patriarchs, to the God of Moses and the judges, to the God of the kings, to the God of covenant and Law, to the Father of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. James is not suggesting that God is a static, inflexible and immovable monolith -- undoubtedly, God has and will continue to act and respond to choices people make. The Lord can be sorry for making humanity and determine to blot them from the face of the earth (Genesis 6:6-7). The Lord determined to destroy the Hebrew people due to their breaking of the first two commandments, but after the intercession of Moses, the Lord had a change of mind regarding the intended disaster (Exodus 32:7-14). The Lord will bring blessing or curse upon the people of God, depending upon their obedient participation in the covenant (Deuteronomy 28:1-68). The Lord can choose to work with a nation, but also have a change of mind and bring disaster upon it because the nation chooses evil (Jeremiah 18:5-17). The Lord will also have a change of mind if the people repent, averting the disaster the Lord now intends for Judah (Jeremiah 26:3, 13, 19). God had a change of mind regarding the intended destruction of Nineveh due to their repentance (Jonah 3:1-10). Rather, James's assertion is that God is steadfast and true to whom God is. To be sure, God demonstrates faithfulness by giving wisdom to anyone who asks God for it (1:5). Proverbs 2:6-8 says that the Lord gives wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, giving sound wisdom to the upright. For that reason, those following the Lord can depend on the Lord to be the true God and to act in ways that are faithful to the divine character and consistent with divine revelation. 18 In fulfillment of the purpose of God, to provide salvation, he gave us, as the supreme gift, birth (a phrase unique to James suggesting re-birth) by the word of truth. This stresses that while the gift of physical life is important, the regenerative birth that comes through the word of truth is the supreme gift. If we question the clarity of the Word that comes to us, we put our knowledge of this Word, and therefore faith, love, and hope, on an inadequate foundation.[1] The Word of God transposes humanity into the new state of one who has accepted and appropriated the promise, so that one lives with it. Therefore, the word of truth begets the Christian.[2] This means that we do not produce the Word out of our experience, but rather, the Word begets us.[3] The purpose of this rebirth is so that we would become a kind of first fruits of the creatures God has made. We must bear the fruit that reveals the work of God in us. This suggests the relation of Christians to the rest of creation and humanity. If you are a Christian, you are the “first-fruit” of the rest of humanity and the rest of creation in experiencing the redemption that God will bring to all that God has created. Re-birth through the word is a prelude to the re-creation of the world. To say that they are first fruits is to speak of the liberation the Christian experiences in personal life.[4]Christians are the “first fruits” of a redeemed creation (Romans 8:19-23).
The theme of James 1:19-27 is that true religion is to be doers of the Word. James, however, is not writing an instruction manual whose primary purpose is to catalog attributes of dutiful citizens and good neighbors. Instead, his aim is to nurture disciples of the rule of God. Here is clarification on what it will mean for them to become “first fruit” and show their re-birth through the word of truth.
19 You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen to the word of God. Let everyone be slow to speak. Have you noticed that people who talk much about themselves often use their talk to conceal who they really are?[5] To stop talking before others stop listening is always wise. James will return to the theme of the unrestrained tongue. At the same time, we will have enough silence when we die. We need to have people speak words of love to us and we need to speak such words to others.[6] Let everyone be slow to anger. Followers of Jesus are to offer a contrast with too many prophets of doom and political agitators. The statement itself summarizes Jewish wisdom. We see a typical technique of James here in contrasting behaviors and their outcomes side by side. James then stresses the reason for his advice in that 20 your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Demagogues may believe they do the work of God, but they do not. Jewish apocalyptic circles often went against Rome. The righteousness of God has not developed in us if we give way to anger. Such outbursts do not produce God's righteousness. Unguarded anger spewing out of Christians negates what James wants to stress God has implanted within the true Christian heart. Christians are to put off or take off old non-Christian ways of acting and speaking once they have been re-born. Christians must not imagine that human anger brings about God's righteousness.
In verses 21-25, the main concern is hearing and doing.
21 Therefore rid yourselves (ἀποθέμενοι) in baptism, as a gardener must get rid of the weeds, of all sordidness (ῥυπαρίαν, filthiness, pollution) and rank growth (or “abounding in”) of wickedness. If they rid themselves of one set of vices, they must also welcome with meekness (πραΰτητι), stressing that the antidote to the misuse of anger is humble reception of the implanted word [at baptism] that has the power to save your souls. James incorporates a gardening image to animate his directives. To begin planting paradise here on Earth, believers must get rid of sordidness and root out the rank (under)growth of brambly wickedness that thrives and threatens us. Only then, can the "implanted word" take root, flourish, and "save your souls." What doers achieve and hearers miss is nothing less than "the power to save your souls" -- which is the Word's ultimate purpose.
22 In contrast, be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. Paul actually says nearly the same thing when he says that hearers of the law are not righteous in the sight of God. Rather, doers of the law will receive justification from God (Romans 2:13). Here is another use of a favorite technique of using contrasting words, expressing the difference between the genuine and the deceived. This verse is the principle admonition of the section. 23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror, an image or metaphor philosophers and theologians of the first century in a variety of ways. James might have been aware that the Romans were experimenting with the use of glass in the first century, but his mirror was a piece of polished bronze or copper. Whatever it was, there is no doubt that his readers knew what a mirror was. Artifacts of mirrors made of polished stone go back to 6000 BC. Reflective surfaces made of polished obsidian are the oldest "mirrors" in the archaeological record, dating back as far as 4000 B.C. The first evidence of mirrors as grooming tools dates to the fifth-century B.C., in illustrations of elegant Greeks gazing at hand mirrors (these illustrations are found on antique pottery). These mirrors, made from a polished metal disk attached to a handle, did not contain any glass. The first real glass mirrors in the record are from the third-century A.D., consisting of extremely small (a few square inches) concave or convex metal surfaces with glass coatings. The size and style of these early mirrors leads many archaeologists to believe that they were used as jewelry or amulets rather than for personal grooming. There were several critical issues that posed a challenge to glass mirror production throughout the ages. The most important obstacles were in creating untinted and uncolored glass, making large panes that were uniformly thin and flat, and finding a way to apply molten metal to the glass without inducing thermal cracks and breakage. Techniques of plane glassblowing and silvering were so elusive that successful methods were not reliably developed until around the 12th century A.D.[7]
In the book of Job, the earliest of the biblical texts, we read, “Can you, like him, spread out the skies, unyielding as a cast mirror?” (Job 37:18). The women of the Exodus had mirrors, and on one occasion donated them for the making of a bronze bowl for tabernacle worship (see Exodus 38:8). The prophet Isaiah, writing in the sixth century B.C., refers to “mirrors, and the linen garments and tiaras and shawls” (Isaiah 3:23). And the apostle Paul refers to a mirror in his famous essay on love in 1 Corinthians 13: “For now we see in a mirror dimly …” (v. 12). Nature lovers are thrilled when, in the early morning hours, they come across a woodland pond or alpine lake that is as still as glass, reflecting the pines and mountains above the clear water.
The simplest mirror is water, as Narcissus in Greek mythology discovered. His story related by Ovid in Book 3 of his Metamorphoses.is a lesson that one can overdo self-awareness. Narcissus was a young man of extraordinary physical attractiveness. When his mother Liriope gave birth to him, she consulted the seer Tiresias, who predicted that the boy would live a long life only if he never discovered himself. Years later, he was out walking in the woods when the nymph Echo came across him and fell madly in love. Narcissus rejected her, and she never got over it. Nemesis, goddess of revenge, decided to punish him. One day when Narcissus was thirsty after hunting, she lured him to a pool. As he leant over to take a drink, he saw his own reflection in the still water. Narcissus had never seen his own reflection before. Imagining it was someone else, he fell deeply in love with his own image. So captivated was he that he could never bring himself to stop gazing into the pool. Eventually he died of starvation, and a gold and white flower sprung up in that place, known forever after as the narcissus. His name has also been given to a psychological disorder: narcissism.[8]
James uses the mirror here to emphasize further the different attitude that molds doers and hearers. Within James' image is the suggestion that the ones who see just their own image in the mirror find the vision absorbing only while they are actually gazing into the mirror. The doers on the other hand need only to glance into the perfect law, the law of liberty, in order to experience a change of life. The mirror (word) enables the new person in Christ to appear. If the hearer receives newness of life in baptism and then reverts to old patterns, shows that the new birth was not very important. This perfect law recalls James' mention of the perfect gift in 1:17. Thus, those who do not do the word in their lives are like those who look into the mirror, 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.As the late, great Yogi Berra, catcher and then manager of the New York Yankees, used to say: “You can see a lot by looking.” Deceivers/Deceived will never know who they are or where they are going. 25 However, those who look into (παρακύψας, having looked intently, getting the best look possible) the perfect (τέλειον) law, because it is from God, while humans make bad law, so one cannot make it better, and it directs us toward our proper spiritual end or goal,[9] the law of liberty, a notion that seems to have in its background the Stoic concept of "The law of freedom." They especially focus on the inner freedom to do the law, as God requires. James comes, not from Pauline Christianity, but from a Diaspora Judaism that sought to simplify the Law. It viewed Christianity as a new law (Shepherd of Hermas, Barnabas, and Didache). The gospel is the true law. The emphasis is on its attributes, "perfect" and "liberty." Liberty in context is against wrath and evil passion. This may reflect adaptation to stoic teaching. Zealousness for the law often led to an aggressive attitude toward Rome or Christians. Those who look into the perfect law of liberty and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act— God will bless them in their doing. James now identifies the mirror with the law, which he has also identified with the word. One must then move to what it is that one finds reflected in that mirror. However, the simile itself is simple we forget mirror images quickly. The one who looks deeply will become "doer."
The dichotomy exists between those who are doers of the word and those who are merely hearers. Some profess Christianity, and may give public profession, but they are not considering the wider implications of the gospel. They believe salvation will come by merely listening and participating to a convenient extent. Barth has a discussion of humanity as a doer of the Word. The emphasis is upon humanity as recipient of the Word of God. The Word has the power to save. In this power, God engrafts the Word in the one who believes and confesses it. The Word is something alien and the element of a new order. If so, this receiving and reversal are the self-evident and inevitable consummation of our existence as God posits it. We deceive ourselves if we try to be only hearers of the Word and not doers. As hearers, the Word takes us prisoner and we surrender to it. The totality of our existence is evidence of what we have heard. To hear and not do is deception because we treat it as though it were not the Word and imagine that to ignore the engrafting is to rob it of its power. We can see our natural face in a mirror, and then turn away and forget it. However, in the mirror of the Word we see ourselves as we are before God therefore in truth. Once we have heard what this Word has to say to us, we can never forget. We can only be what it says that we are. The Word lays claim on us. It demands our confession through our lives. It demands our hearts.[10]
My wife and I have often been in stores in which a clerk will ask if he or she can help. Usually, we will say, “No thank you, we are just looking.” James is inviting us to do more than just look. He is inviting us to gaze into the gospel and let it reveal whom we are. Granted, such a gaze is dangerous. Yet, asking someone who truly knows you, loves you, and cares for you, whose opinion you respect and who wants the best for you, asking them to give you feedback can be an incredibly healthy and highly constructive thing. As members of God's family, we must be willing to ask the question, "Am I spiritually ugly? Am I reflecting the righteousness of Christ, or today, in the way I am thinking, acting and treating others, do I look like I've been hit with the ugly stick of sin?" The audience for this question makes all the difference. We can ask on twitter and Facebook, but that may be a dangerous enterprise. We can ask ourselves and we will see what we want to see, conveniently justifying everything unattractive. Alternatively, we can go to someone who knows us, someone who loves us, someone who wants what is best for us, and who can look well beyond what's on the surface and peer deep into our souls.
The gospel is promise or good news that opens us to the future. The gospel proposes a future that might belong to us, if we open ourselves to hear it. The gospel enables a new future.[11] If the law is those words which tell us what God demands of us, revealing our ugliness, then gospel is those words that tell us what God has done for us, revealing how lovely we are to God, and thus how God treasures, values, and desires us.
“The Andy Griffith Show” is a sitcom that has been in reruns for 60 years and is still going strong. In season 3, episode 9, Floyd the barber tries to enlist Andy’s help in a deception. According to one source, “Floyd has pretended to be a rich man in letters to his female pen pal, who then suddenly decides to visit. Andy hastily arranges a deception so that Floyd can continue the ruse.” When Floyd tells Andy about his problem, Andy is in the barber chair and Floyd is brandishing a razor. He is upset, mostly at himself. Three times in this particular scene he dashes to a mirror on the wall and shouts: “Floyd Lawson, you are nothing but a liar, a cheat and a scoundrel! I hate you!” But then he and Andy hatch a scheme to continue the deception, even after the woman appears in town. It turns out badly, and Floyd yells at the mirror again.
The view we get when looking into this mirror is often not a pretty one. We might have some temptation to yell at ourselves. Will our frustration lead to a change?
Robert Fulghum tells of a seminar he once attended in Greece. On the last day of the conference, the discussion leader walked over to the bright light of an open window and looked out. Then he asked if there were any questions. Fulghum laughingly asked him what was the meaning of life. Everyone laughed and got ready to leave. But the leader held up his hand to ask for silence, saying, “I will answer your question.” He took his wallet out of his pocket and removed a small, round mirror about the size of a quarter. Then he told this story:
“When I was a small child during World War II, we were very poor and lived in a remote village. One day on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.
I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible. So I kept the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone, I made it round.
I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun could never shine. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.
I kept the little mirror, and as I grew up, I would take it out at idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child’s game, but a metaphor of what I could do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of the light. But light — be it truth or understanding or knowledge — is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.
I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have, I can reflect light into the dark places of this world — into the dark places of human hearts — and change some things in some people. Perhaps others seeing it happen will do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.”[12]
These words of gospel serve not only to tell us who we are but also to transform how we live. Once we have heard that word, we then become doers of that word by seeking to live in a manner reflective of the beautiful, beloved and grace-given creature God says that we are. James is urging us to frame our whole lives in a way that corresponds to how we present ourselves within the Christian community. We are to be Christian in the course of our lives and not just appear to be Christian. Too many Christians pay respect to the sermon or teaching they hear in the gathered community, but leave within the church what they have heard.[13] Rather, we become a doer of these words when we give grace to others as we have received grace from God and others. We become a doer of the word when we speak life to others as God and others have spoken life to us. I offer a cagey bit of humor to make the point.
If you can start the day without caffeine,
If you can get going without pep pills,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,
If you can overlook it when something goes wrong through no fault of yours and those you love take it out on you,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can ignore a friend's limited education and never correct him,
If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can say honestly that deep in your heart, you have no prejudice against creed, color, religion or politics,
Then, my friends, you are almost as good as your dog.[14]
We become doers of the word whenever we embrace a loveliness with our doing that matches the loveliness in our being that God says is ours through Jesus Christ. We only believe the part of the Bible that we do.[15] Intellectually, we may divide faith and works. I can intellectually divide the light I receive from the candle and the heat I feel from the candle. Yet, if I extinguish the light, the heat is gone as well.[16]
I offer a benediction.
People of God, be beautiful, Love well and serve all. Speak gently and listen wholly. Let the mind of Christ be ever guiding you so that your lives may bring glory to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Go now and be beautiful.
In the final two verses, James once again returns to his focus on the acerbic, abusive tongue as the greatest detractor to true religion, religion that is pure and undefiled.
26 If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. James concludes by declaring that all those who fail to follow the mandate outlined in verses 19-21 deceive themselves in their hearts. What these deceived ones call being "religious" is in fact "worthless" -- that is, fruitless, for they will fail as God's first fruits to bring about any harvest of fruits of their own. James makes clear that it is not right to pretend to be religious (one of the few times the New Testament uses this word with the meaning of the moral duty as the cultic veneration of God[17]) while attacking society with an evil tongue. Of course, lovingly offered criticism can be the path to healing and liberation. Wisdom receives criticism offered in this way and for that motive. Sadly, too many people rather receive praise even if it leads to their ruin.[18] The self-deception, to which James is alerting us, however, is that such outspoken criticism is compatible with Christian confession. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. James is against any piety which does not lead to moral purity, or which tolerates gross moral defects and consequently is not genuine. This is close to Jesus. One does not lead others to God through the discussion of difficult problems, but the simplest thing of all, leading a life that is pleasing to God. In addition, he has become acquainted with such piety through the tradition.
It seems appropriate to end with a benediction.
[1] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.3 [69.3] 230.
[2] Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1 [5.3] 152-3.
[3] Barth, Church Dogmaitcs I.1 [6.2] 195-6.
[4] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.3 [71.6] 674-5.
[5] Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. —Friedrich Nietzsche.
[6] I like not only to be loved but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. — George Eliot.
[7] —Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University, “The Rise of the Mirror as Commonplace.”
[8] —Adapted from “Narcissus (mythology),” Wikipedia.org.
[9] William Barclay
[10] Barth, Church Dogmatics I.2 [18.1] 365.
[11] Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology, (1997) Volume 1, 15-16.
[12] —Adapted from Robert Fulghum, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, (Random House, 2010).
[13] Clement of Alexandria, writing around 200 AD, said that:
Christians ought to so frame themselves in their whole life, as they fashion themselves in the church ... and to be, not to seem such. Too many, after having paid reverence to the discourse about God, leave within the church what they have heard (The Instructor, Bk III, Ch XI).
[14] -Ann Landers, The Washington Post, March 20, 1999, C13.
[15] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church (Zondervan, 2007).
[16] John Selden, 17th-century English jurist and scholar.
[17] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 121.
[18] The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. — Norman Vincent Peale.
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