Some Thoughts on James 2:1-13

Jesus summed up the way his followers should live in a twofold love commandment: Love God with the entirety of your being; love your neighbor as yourself. The first love begets the second love. The second love reflects and expresses the authenticity of the first love.

James assumes and applies this twofold love commandment in writing to the community of Jesus-followers in those first years after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. “You believe in Jesus as Messiah and Lord,” he says, “then love your neighbor as yourself.”

That sounds grand, but how do we love our neighbor as our self? James gives us one concrete, highly practical way to love our neighbor: Do not show favoritism to those who are rich in worldly terms. Success and wealth as measured in terms of our worldly culture – money, clothes, jewelry, property, popularity, physical appearance, and so on – are not God’s marks of favor. God favors those who are poor in worldly terms. He lavishes them with richness of faith – with trust, hope, and love. These are their assets. These are true riches. (Compare Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20.)

Clearly even in James’s time, so close to Jesus’ sojourn on earth, the love commandment was a challenge. When believers gathered for worship, they tended to show favor to the wealthy and disdain for the poor. James warned that this pattern of thinking and behaving contradicted the twofold love commandment of love for neighbor and love for God.

Do we show this kind of favoritism today? In what ways? Why might we do this? I suspect that we do it because – in too many ways shaped as much as by our culture as by the kingdom of God – we desire to possess the cultural marks of favor for our self. We envy worldly riches in others because we want them for our self. Consciously or unconsciously, we betray this cultural pattern of thinking and behaving when we show favoritism to those who possess worldly riches.

Yet God wants to humble us in order to exalt us with true richness – richness of trust, hope, and love in him. When we possess true riches, the riches of the kingdom, we will lavish not envy and favoritism but love on our neighbor, no matter their circumstances in worldly terms.

Some Brief Thoughts on Work as Blessing and Curse

In the world as we know it, work is ambiguous. It is both blessing and curse. The admixture makes us ambivalent about work. In general, it is better to have work than not, though we tire of work and desire not to work. Yet not having work or not being at work finally has positive value for us only as respite from having work or being at work.

Even this way of putting the matter evokes the ambiguity and our ambivalence, for there is a subtle but significant difference between the phrases "to have work" and "to work". Likewise, there is a subtle but distinct difference in meaning between "at work" as a place and "work" or "at work" as a verb or an activity. "I am at work" means something different from "I work" or "I am working."

God created us to be, yes, and also to do or to make. So in God's good created order, being and making are blessing, even if, as finite creatures, we tire as we live and act. Yet in a sinful world, tiredness takes on a different quality, the character of a curse. Tiredness results not only from our finitude but from our servitude, our bondage to sin and death. Being wears upon us, and making wears us out. Compare the tiredness an athlete feels after hours of exertion in a favorite sport with the tiredness a seamstress feels after long days in a sweatshop.

Work as God intended it and made us for in original creation is more like what we experience in this life as activity when engaged in hobbies.

God Loves Us

God loves us as we are, but he never leaves as we are.

A Glory in This Day

Well into July, there is a glory in this day seldom experienced around here this deep into summer. We have traded winds from the southwest for winds from the northwest, a pattern not unheard of but infrequent for our summer weathers. In the low 80s, humidity is tolerable. Clouds and sky have not hazed into each other in nondescript color. Rather the clouds, white and light gray beneath, insubstantial as they would be were we flying through them, but seemingly massive and dense from earthly vantage, slowly move in sharp relief against the clear enamel of cerulean sky. Leaves of tulip poplar and bigtooth aspen and beech, on fractal branches from sturdily rising trunks, play their solid and varied greens on the breeze, under the pure light. A cardinal flits about, feathering the trees and grasses with bolded red. Today these created things body forth glory and praise without trying - simply by being. The kingdom of God is near.

Leaves Live Light upon the Wind

In this trinity of tree and dawn and air,
chlorophyll now greens your glory, Lord,
as leaves live light upon the wind.

Love is Grace, Love is Gift

St. Paul makes clear that none of us deserves a relationship with God on the basis of our worth, in character or deed. "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God ...." (Romans 3:22a-23, New Revised Standard Version.) All of us must say in the end, whether to God or to any person who loves or cares for us, "You are good to me; I don't deserve it." Hence, in our relationships with each other, in marriage or in family or in friendship, when we love and care for one another, we image in our own small but true way the divine character and deed, that we are all "justified by ... grace as a gift." (Romans 3:24a, NRSV.)

It is true that for various reasons we experience some people as simply, intrinsically more lovable. We find that caring for certain people - spouse, family member, or friend - comes more easily and naturally, perhaps even compellingly. Yet no one is wholly lovable, even ourselves. We may joyfully and affectionately connect with the best self in another person, yet no one is entirely his or her best self. Therefore, when we truly love and care for another, we embrace both that person's best and worst self - in grace as a gift. Likewise, when a person truly loves and cares for us, that person embraces both our best and our worst self - in grace as a gift. In the end we all must acknowledge that, in God's sight and even in the sight of those around us, we fall short, we sin, we do not deserve. None of us merits love from and a relationship with another person.

So when we love and care for another, we image God's character and act, in creation and redemption. Love is grace. Love is gift. Essentially. From first to last.

Consider a Basic Thought about Work and Worth

Consider a basic thought about work and worth which is most essential to understand. Work is not the measure of our person. If it were, then many persons would measure as worthless. I think here of those for whom work is no question at all – the severely handicapped, the chronically infirm, the imprisoned, the utterly destitute in this land and other lands. For them work as the measure of their person would be but burden and condemnation. But in God’s sight, important as work ought to be, it is but part of a total scheme of things, and in this divine scheme the ultimate and therefore true measure of a person’s worth is God himself. Namely, it is God who measures the person, so to speak. It is God who accords worth to each person. When we seek the measure of a person, we go to the cross on which our Savior and Lord died, and we see God’s ultimate affirmation of this world and the persons who live in it. Do we see there the intrinsic goodness of persons or the intrinsic value of human beings? No, we see that God gives worth, and so in this ultimate giving do we see where persons – equally, with no pleading of one’s ability or skill or virtue or ambition or perseverance of courage, for at the cross all such illusions and oppressions of self-worth are stripped of their vain power and appeal – stand. They stand judged and redeemed by the holy mercy of God, incarnated and manifested in Christ. They stand made worthy by the very God who made them stand at all.