During the month of September on Wednesday nights for the Hub, our mid-week worship gathering w/ the youth, we are reading through James, following the lectionary (more or less).
As I studied this part of James I found myself going back to 1 Corinthians 1 and John's gospel to read Jesus' farewell discourse. I thought I would share this exercise in intertextual reading.
All of James' letter is aimed at "practical" matters -- calling Christians to practice their faith. In that regard you could say this whole letter is concerned w/ wisdom -- practical knowledge. But here in the second 1/2 of chapter 3 and into chapter 4 James is explicitly concerned that the Christians not be fooled about what Christian wisdom really is. If they get this wrong they get it all wrong!! They treat one another badly, they are full of envy, selfish ambition, and every kind of evil springs up among them.
When we read our bibles we discover that there are two kinds of wisdom. The wisdom of God and what you might call "the wisdom of the world." These two kinds of wisdom are in direct opposition of one another all the way along.
St. Paul is articulating this very thing in the beginning of his first letter to the church in the city of Corinth. Here's what he says:
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are
being saved it is the power of God...
...God was pleased to through the foolishness of what was preached (Christ crucified) to save those who believe. You see the Jews demand a miraculous sign and the Greeks look for logic and "wisdom", but we preach Christ!... Crucified!! -- a stumbling block to the Jews and absolute foolishness to the Greeks. BUT, to those whom God has called -- both Jews and Greeks -- Christ is the power and wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than our "wisdom" and the weakness of God is stronger than our "strength"!
Need an example? Take.....yourself for instance, just look at the people Jesus calls! You were not the wisest or most influential or from the right family. BUT in you we see once more that God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise; God chose the weak to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things and despised things, the things that are not -- to bring to nothing the things that are. So no one can boast. It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus (not because of yourself or a good decision or something), Christ Jesus who has become for us God's wisdom -- that is, HE is our righteousness, holiness,and salvation. Therefore it the Scripture tells us, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord!"
And I usually read this passage and think, "Good thing I'm one of the people who 'are being saved.' I get it, I'm tracking w/ God's wisdom. God does some unexpected things sometimes, yeah the cross was a pretty strange move."
But what James is reminding us and what I really think Paul was reminding the Christians in Corinth is that God's ways are NOT our ways -- NOT in the slightest, God's thoughts are NOT our thoughts -- NOT in the slightest, God's salvation in Jesus is NOT our preferred or expected salvation -- NOT in the slightest! And we are awfully good at living NOT according to the salvation that comes in Jesus Christ and him crucified but by a salvation that revolves around the good decisions we can make. If we can go to the right schools, get in w/ the right people, make a good decision to accept Jesus into my heart, get the right job, work really hard and make good decisions, store up a good nest egg for retirement, then I will be successful, happy, and I when I go to church on Sunday morning I can thank God for all the blessings He has given me.
James tells us that when Christians live this way they are cheating on God, literally having an affair w/ "the world." He says that when this is that case we have become "friends w/ the world and enemies of God."
I'd like to share w/ you a story about Jesus. As the time of his suffering was fast approaching Jesus gathered his disciples together and he said this:
I love you the same way my Father loves me! Live in my love. If you live by what I say
you will remain in my love, just as I have lived by every word that came from my Father
and remained in His love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy maybe full and complete. This is my command: Love each other as I love you. Greater love has no one than this: To lay down one's life for one's friends. You show yourselves to be my friends if you live by these words. I don't call you servants or slaves, you aren't my employees or volunteers, But... I... call... you... friends! You know everything about me and the work my Father has given me to do...
The wisdom of God is revealed in the love that Jesus brings. It is a love that is most clearly expressed not by a royal crown or a throne or a dominate army or a strong government but by a cross. The cross where he died, for sinners, for people nobody even wanted to save anyway. And in God's wisdom (Jesus) God decided to call these nobody sinners to live w/ him, to work w/ him, to be his friends in the world and to love like Jesus loved.
All the things that James sees going on among Christians -- they mistreat one another, fight w/ one another, quarreling, compete against one another for wealth and possessions, are greedy and jealous, set themselves up as better then each other -- proves that they are not living by the wisdom of God but by the wisdom of the world; not the wisdom of the cross but the wisdom of security and greed; not the salvation that comes from Jesus crucified, but the salvation that comes from ourselves.
Which wisdom do you live by? If you're like me you find yourself steeped in the wisdom of this world and needing to learn over and over the ways of Jesus, the way of the cross, the wisdom of God.
God of Wisdom, save us from our own wisdom, save us from our attempts at saving ourselves. Save us through your Son Jesus and his cross that we may live as your friends in this world! Amen.
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