(James.17-27) 29 August 2021
Neil Millar
If you’ve travelled in the UK, you’re probably familiar with the warning to passengers on the London Underground to take care when entering or leaving the train. ‘Mind the gap’ … it’s written on the platform of every tube station and sounds over loudspeakers hundreds of times a day; it’s famous around the world, and I think it’d make a great title for the letter of James.
Half a foot between knowledge and wisdom: ‘that’s the short and oh so very long of the situation in James’, writes Casey Thornburgh Sigmon[1]; the gap between true religion and hypocrisy, between being truly responsive to God and merely talking about it. It was critical to ‘mind that gap’ in James’ time, and just as critical today if religion is to be a force for good rather than a cause of oppression, injustice and ever more suffering.
By way of background, the first verse of this letter identifies the author as ‘James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ’. He’s generally thought to be James the brother of Jesus, not James the son of Zebedee, (James of the Camino), though in truth, the letter could just have been attributed to him. It’s not entirely clear when it was written either, although it’s generally thought that these are some of the earliest words in our New Testament – dating from the middle of the first century.
The first recipients were Jewish Christians scattered around the countries of the Mediterranean basin. The book refers to them as ‘the twelve tribes in the Dispersion’ and it seems that many of them were struggling. ‘Framing his letter within an overall theme of patient perseverance during trials and temptations, James writes in order to encourage his readers to live consistently with what they have learned in Christ’, Sigmon writes. These words urge them to grow strong roots and bear good fruit in the faith, and this will happen as they live into the good news they have come to believe, as they mind the gap!
The ten verses we’ve just heard read like a collection of proverbial lessons, and many a sermon has been preached on their themes – on being ‘quick to listen and slow to speak’, on being ‘slow to anger’, on being ‘doers, not just hearers of the word’, and on ‘taming the tongue’. For James, however, it’s important we hear these admonitions not just as tips for good behaviour but as signs and practices of ‘true religion’, religion that in his words is ‘pure and undefiled’.
Well, I imagine that much of this passage is familiar, that you’ve heard a sermon or two in your time on these themes. My intention today is to focus on what these proverbs have to show about the nature of true religion. For James, two of the key touchstones are listening and responding.
- Listening
‘You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.’
There’s a bunch of exhortations here, but underneath, is this clarion call to listen. Let everyone be quick to listen, that is, eager and focussed. True religion prioritises deep listening.
What are we listening to or for? In the first instance, the word of God. ‘Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls’, he writes.
Tell me, how were you listening as our readings were brought a few moments ago? Were you welcoming the word with meekness – with openness, hospitality, receptivity? ‘Meekness’ isn’t a word we use much today. It refers to the condition of inner humility and submissiveness, the dictionary says. It requires patience, gentleness, lack of resistance, deference, gratitude, and curiosity. We welcome the word with meekness when we allow it to land, to address us and unfold in us, and to take root in our lives.
And ‘welcoming the implanted word’ is not just about hearing scripture, I suggest, but also about listening to one another, to land and sea and the creatures of the earth, and to the inner prompting of the Spirit.
‘Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger’. Actually, as we practice ‘living as listeners’ (Thomas Merton) we do become slower to speak and to anger. As we pay careful attention, we become more thoughtful and compassionate; less distracted; less reactive and judgmental. ‘Most people, including most professionals, listen [primarily] to reply’, writes Nancy Kline in her book Time to Think. They
take in what they are hearing just long enough to come up with something to say in response. They listen to comment, to advise, to diagnose, to determine a clever intervention, to direct.
True listening doesn’t interrupt or override – it listens, patiently receiving the other. As such, it is an act of self-giving love, a generative force for good. Things change, people change when they are truly heard, as I hope you know from when someone has truly listened to you.
True religion is nurtured by listening because it’s about attending to the reality that is larger than us, a reality not confined to our perspectives and prejudices. The practice of deep listening opens us to God and to the world God loves, and gradually liberates us from illusions of our own making.
Which brings us to a second touchstone – responding.
2 Responding
True religion is nurtured as we respond to what we hear. As we receive and act in accordance withwhat we hear. ‘Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers’, James writes.
In these verses, James likens the person who hears the word of God but does not act on it to someone who looks in a mirror and walks away, and immediately forgets what they look like. Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th century Danish philosopher, recounts another story to illustrate this point and you may have heard it – the parable of a town full of ducks.
Every Sunday the ducks waddled out of their houses and down the road to their church. They waddled into the sanctuary and sat in their pews. And then, the duck choir waddled out and sang the anthem. And then, the duck minister waddled into the pulpit to deliver the sermon. ‘Ducks! God has given us wings!’, he quacked, beating the pulpit with his beak for emphasis. ‘And with wings, we can fly! There is nowhere we ducks cannot go! No God-given task we cannot accomplish!’ The congregation loved the sermon and began to quack their approval. ‘Yes, my duck friends, we can fly!!’, he yelled, in a final closing flourish. And the ducks all yelled ‘AMEN’. And, he waddled contently out of the pulpit. And, at the end of the service, they all waddled home.
*****
James is aware of the difficulty of listening when it comes to taking in the word of God, and of the gap (sometimes a yawning chasm) between hearing and doing. Being true to our faith, a true disciple, means minding this gap. As followers of Christ, we are called to become the word we hear. That’s our vocation, and Christ is our example and hope in this.
In Jesus, there was no gap between hearing and doing, word and action. He is the enacted word of God, the word made flesh (Jn 1.14). His life lived in complete responsiveness to his Father, utterly coherent and consistent. ‘Very truly I tell you’, Jesus said, ‘the Son can do nothing by himself; but only what he sees his Father doing; whatever the Father does the Son also does’ (Jn 5.19).
James calls us to ‘persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act’. But for us, willpower alone isn’t enough to make us as Christ is. It takes more than good intention and sheer strength to close the gap between hearing the word of God and doing it, as I’m sure you’ve discovered. It’s only as we are joined to Christ and his relationship to the Father, abiding in the vitalising spring of divine life that our lives increasingly cohere. This is where prayer and meditation is important; why contemplation and action go together. Meditation is the practice of dwelling in Christ, in the love and prayer of Christ, in the constantly renewing life of the Spirit. It helps us to ‘look into the perfect law [of God]’, to discover it, as James says, ‘the law of liberty’.
In the next
chapter of this book, James says that ‘faith without works is dead’, but works
without faith won’t do it either, works sourced only in the ego and the will. Faith
sources us in the life of God, and this life animates hearing and our doing,
enabling us truly to mind the gap, to become the word we hear. And this
is true religion.
[1] Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship at Saint Paul School of Theology, Leawood, Kansas.