A Generous Interpretation James 1:17-27

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1 Garrett Vickrey Pentecost +15 A Generous Interpretation James 1:17-27 Woodland Baptist Church San Antonio, TX I. Buen Camino I m glad to be back with you after a two-month sabbatical. Thank you for the gift of this time away. It was a great summer for my family and me. We spent a month in Crested Butte, CO all together. Then Cameron and I dropped our kids off with grandparents and hopped on a plane to Europe. We made our way to a small village in southern France called St. Jean- Pied-de-Port. St. Jean is the most common starting place of the Camino de Santiago the way of St. James. The Camino is a road faithful Christian pilgrims have walked for over a thousand years. The Camino goes from St. Jean, through the Pyrenees Mountains, though the bulls of Pamplona, and across northern Spain to the town of Compostella near the western coast. The pilgrimage traditionally ends at the shrine of St. James the apostle in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella. It s a five hundred mile trek across Spain that takes most people about 5-6 weeks. The Camino has been featured in movies The Way starring Martin Sheen a few years ago; it s believed to be the background of Ernest Hemingway s novel The Sun Also Rises. Thousands of people walk the Camino each year. People from all over the world. The first night we stayed in a hostel in St. Jean with a man from Hong Kong and another from London. The next night we stayed in a hostel housed in an ancient monastery; we bunked there with about 350 of our closest pilgrim friends. Cameron and I only did about 45 miles. We hiked from St. Jean to Pamplona over 3 days; then we took a train to Barcelona to rest and recover before flying home. My favorite part of this trip was getting to experience the pilgrim culture. There s an unspoken covenant amongst pilgrims; there s a way (a camino) of life left unarticulated but lived out on the road. Here are people from all over the world walking together at times you are alone on the walk, at times you walk with others. But, there is a real sense at each stop along the way that we are all in this 1

2 together. Along the way pilgrims greet each other by saying, Buen Camino. It s the official salutation of the way. Buen Camino is a greeting that initiates community. I couldn t help but think of that simple phrase in reading the Santiago of the New Testament. Just kidding, I didn t say that. I didn t say anything. I just politely Brexited the conversation. Sorry. We can t just leave our children with the nanny for 3 months to do a 500-mile walk. Who am I the Queen of England? The book of James wants to articulate a buen camino for the community of Christ. Throughout this small book he seems to be talking about a general posture of compassion within a community. A posture of compassion which must start by expecting the best of people and interpreting each other s actions through the lens of best intentions. We must be generous interpreters of the words and actions of others or else we will move through life bouncing from one outrage to the next. Always waiting to be offended. We met a pilgrim from England along the way on day 2. When we told him that we were only doing 3 days of the walk he smirked and replied, Typical Americans. Parachute in for a few days and leave as quick as you can. To which I replied, Well, at least we stayed around long enough in WWII for you not to be speaking German. This guy was just joking around. But, isn t it interesting how quickly we can be offended? That is, how quickly we can be offended if we choose to be. The 24 hour news cycle is built upon a foundation of outrage moving from one outrage to the next each story crafted to evoke a response. We take our outrage to the comments section of our favorite website, to twitter and facebook and we pass on the cycle of anger until its our turn to take up the mantel of wrath again. James has a word for us. This book is for us. We ll be reading passages from James in worship all month. You should read the whole thing. Or you can listen to the entire book on biblegateway.com in about 15 minutes. I hope we get to know this book well this month. 2

3 II. James Calls us to the Way of Christ The James of the New Testament book of James is not the same James of the Camino de Santiago. Santiago is James the Greater the apostle, the Son of Zebedee, brother of John the apostle. The Book of James in the New Testament is attributed to James the Lesser or James the Just or James the brother of Jesus and there s a lot of different opinions on which of those wrote this book and whether or not they are all the same person. But, seriously, how would you like to go down in history as James the Lesser? That s not fair. The book of James, nonetheless, has a lot to say to pilgrims or anyone on a journey. It has a lot to say to communities of faith trying to live together, trying to be the body of Christ. Martin Luther called James an epistle of straw. He noted how little Jesus is actually mentioned in this book. And Luther didn t care for the way James seems to refute Paul s message. James says, Be doers of the word. James says, Faith without works is dead. Paul says we are justified by faith; we aren t saved by works but by grace. It is believing that saves. James challenges us, and in doing so brings another dimension to our understanding of the gospel. Luther argued that this book should be taken out of the bible. While it was never removed from the canon officially, it has been marginalized. We ve deemed James a works righteousness gospel. We may not have removed it from the bible, but we ve mostly ignored it. And yet, as much as we try to focus on believing, on receiving Jesus in our heart, on working on our personal faith as much as we focus on these things we ve culled from Paul s letters James stands at the margins of scripture speaking a word to us. Your faith is not your own. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to care for the orphans and widows, and to keep oneself unpolluted by the Romans (he says, World ; he means Roman world ). Your faith will increase in relation to the growth of your compassion for those on the margins. Your faith will grow the more you give yourself to the body of Christ. Every generous act of giving, every good gift comes from God. Everything good comes from the 3

4 (author and) father of the heavenly lights. When we give we do what God does. When we give of ourselves we give of what God has given us. In a few verses James is expressing what so many have tried to articulate for thousands of years: God, or the God who really is God the God beyond all our gods beyond all the gods we put in boxes to dissect and manipulate God, yes that God, architect of the stars, is beyond our conception the one who created all that is is the ultimate reality whose character shows no variance this God is the highest, purest reality we can seek. But, God is also the ground of being in all our seeking all our thinking all our living we live through God. As Augustine says, God is not only beyond my utmost heights but also more inward to me than my inmost depths. 1 There s no partaking in reality without this ultimate reality, without the ground of being, without or aside from God. And now that James has defined God he answers the question all preachers fear most: So what? III. Choosing a Generous Interpretation We all share the same origin. We are all of God. And like those pilgrims on the camino we find out sooner or later that we share a common journey. Since we re all in this together, and since we all share so much of the bounty we have been given from God, we need to give ourselves a break. Let go of the anger that poisons your mind and prohibits the growth of the implanted word within you. Be doers of the word because its in the doing that faith takes hold of your life. If you re looking for God look to the margins with the forgotten children and women. The word in us has a word for them but more importantly, the word in them will shape us into the people of faith Christ has called us to be. We are all of the same origin. Being doers of the word means seeing the word in action around us. It means seeing God in others. And we can t see through angry eyes. We would be better (live better, live healthier) if we would be generous interpreters of the words and actions of others. 4

5 Jason Fried, the creator of the popular project-management software Basecamp, tells a story about attending a conference and listening to a talk. He didn t like the talk; he didn t agree with the speaker s point of view; as the talk went on he grew more agitated. When it was over, he rushed up to the speaker to express his disagreement. The speaker listened, and then said: Give it five minutes. Fried was taken aback, but then he realized the point. After the first few moments of the speaker s lecture, Fried had effectively stopped listening: he had heard something he didn t agree with and immediately entered Refutation Mode and in Refutation Mode there s no listening. And, when there s no listening there s no thinking. To enter Refutation Mode is to say that you ve already done all the thinking you need to do, that no further information or reflection is required. 2 We might be changed. We might even be saved. Maybe you re thinking, I don t need that. I was saved at six. I believe. I m done. Some people need to be writtenoff, ignored. Maybe you re upset right now thinking this whole sermon is a bunch of baloney. Maybe you agree with Luther James is an epistle of straw. Maybe your thinking there s so much in the world to be angry about the injustice, the hungry, the rich getting richer, all these people protesting. It all just makes you seethe. If your angry, if your offended Give it five minutes. Refutation Mode prohibits growth and transformation. It s a poison to beloved community. Being generous interpreters of the word and each other opens us up to new possibilities of the Spirit. Yes, it s dangerous. It comes at a cost. 5

6 1 David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT: 2013) ebook, Introduction. 2 Alan Jacobs, How to Think, (Currency, New York, NY: 2017) ebook, Introduction. 6