Advent 3 James 5:7-12 · Patience in Suffering Look Who Is Standing at the Door James 4:1-12; 5:1-12
On this 3rd Sunday in Advent once again we are challenged with an Epistle Lesson from the book of James that cuts to the very core of our hearts. The writer of James is attributed to James the Brother of Jesus and not Paul as many has stated. The reading for today contrasts two ways of life:
The way of the flesh and the way of the Spirit.
Other biblical references call it the way of the flesh as the way of the world.
This is one of every Christian's greatest challenges is to keep living according to the Spirit, that is to say, living a life that is being shaped daily by a relationship with the living God, while everyone else around us is living a very different kind of life. That is hard to do. The temptations and the influences and the intentional pressures of our culture are always pulling us or pushing us to live like everyone else and making it costly not to do that.
What is this "way of the world" that we have to cope with? The text states "living according to the flesh," and it goes to some trouble to describe it in another way. What the book describes a life committed to material gain and dominated by envy and competitiveness. Listen to some things that the letter said in the passage just before the one we read.
"Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God" (James 4:1-4).
A little later, he mocks those who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money" (James 4:13), as if they could really be in control of their future. And in the beginning of the chapter from which we read our lesson, he said, "Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you" (James 5:1). All of a sudden our own culture and perhaps some aspects of our own lifestyles are on the stage on which the biblical drama is being played out.
What does James want to tell Christians who are living in the midst of cultural circumstances like these? Don't give in. Keep living the life of faith and of love that you have learned from Christ, even in the midst of the competitiveness and greed and envy of our culture.
And don't let envious and competitive attitudes invade the fellowship of the church. Keep supporting each other in the way that you learned from Jesus. And be patient in enduring any stress or abuse that comes from being "different."
James reminds the Christians that Judgment Day is coming. That is one of the themes that is always a part of the observance of the season of Advent. The time of the coming of the Lord is always a time of judgment in which the things that are wrong with our lives are shown for what they are and we are called to get our lives right.
James reminded the early Christians that the way of the world that is so tempting and troublesome will fall under judgment and be shown wanting, and the way into which Christ called them will prove to be real life at its best. James warned his readers not to let themselves be drawn into the ways of the world that will fall under condemnation because "the Judge is standing at the doors" (James 5:9).
We suppose James must have been wrong about that. Judgment day has not come yet - or has it? Judgment doesn't come just on one terrible day at the end of time. Judgment is one aspect of every meeting with the Lord. It is going on all of the time, and it is going on for our own good.
All of the awesome biblical images of the final judgment can be taken as descriptions of something that happens right in the midst of our everyday lives. Judgment can happen in lots of different ways.
A business failure, the loss of a job, a situation of disadvantage, or any other experience in which the system you depend upon lets you down can be a judgment day.
Any day on which you wake up and realize that the life you have invested yourself in has not delivered what it promised, and that you don't like the life you have, and that you really don't like yourself as you have become is judgment day.
We are wise to recognize those experiences as times when the Lord comes to show us what is wrong with our lives and to call us to better lives.
What is the message for today? Take a good look at the lifestyle of our culture and recognize all of the things in it that are contrary to a life shaped by a relationship with the living God whom we know through Jesus of Nazareth.
Don't let yourself be drawn into the world's way of thinking about things and of acting and of living. It really won't lead to happiness - in spite of what it keeps telling you.
Follow the way of Jesus, the way of faith and love, no matter what it costs you. That will lead to the life that really is life at its best.
Where should we start? We might start by taking a good look at the way in which we are planning to celebrate Christmas. Some of you have already thought of that, haven't you? It would be easy to get drawn into an experience of envy and competitiveness that could spoil your season. Open the door and welcome the judge who will help you to get things into a right perspective.
But some may be wanting to cry out, "Wait! Why must we be talking about such a somber subject as judgment during this season when we want to be happy and celebrate Christmas?"
The answer is that it is part of our preparation for a real celebration of Christmas. The first verses of our scripture lesson for today spoke of waiting patiently for the coming of the Lord. It is part of God's way of dealing with us that judgment comes before the Savior comes so that we can know our need for the salvation.
That is the function of judgment. It is not to condemn us. It is to prepare us. The one who comes brings forgiving of our sins, healing of our sickness and brokenness, and the possibility of a better life.
The forgiving of sins, the healing of brokenness, the offer of a better life has to do with the real things that are going on in our real lives. It has something to offer to people like the ones in the little story of the businessmen's lunch with which we began. It has something to offer to you that has to do with the things that are hurting in your life.
We will be wise to open the door of our lives because the Judge is standing at the door - and so is the Savior.