(Deuteronomy 11:13-17; James 1:2-4, James 5:7-11)

Back when I was in seminary, I had the chance to watch a video of the great preacher E. V. Hill. The Rev. Dr. Hill, who died not long after that, was one of the greatest of the great black preachers in this country, a fine example of a preaching tradition that I truly admire. I’ll never preach like an E. V. Hill or a Gardner Taylor, but I’d love to be able to. Dr. Hill was a Baptist, the long-time pastor of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, and the sermon I got the chance to see was delivered to the general convention of some Baptist denomination or another. I don’t remember which one, but I do remember this much—it was one of the historically white Baptist denominations. The choir stood behind him on the stage, and their robes were white, too, so you can well imagine that Dr. Hill appeared as an incongruous figure up there. It didn’t bother him any—this was a man who’d marched with Martin Luther King, he was a friend of Billy Graham and a confidante of presidents—but he was clearly aware of the incongruity; so he started off with a joke.

As Dr. Hill told it, there was an old black farmer out with his mule, working not far off the side of the road, when a half-drunk cowboy came riding by. The cowboy stopped, looked at him, and said, “Hey, old-timer, do you know how to dance?” The old man said, “No, sir, I don’t.” The cowboy responded, “Well, you better learn quick,” pulled his revolvers off his belt, and began firing into the dust at the old man’s feet. The old man, of course, began capering around as the cowboy fired off a dozen rounds, laughing himself silly. When both hammers clicked down on empty chambers, the cowboy, still laughing, looked down and re-holstered them. A moment later, he looked up to the sound of another sharp click—and found himself looking down the barrels of a double-barreled shotgun. The old man asked him, “Mister, you ever kissed a mule?” The cowboy answered, “No sir, but I always wanted to.”

Dr. Hill segued from there into talking about how he’d always wanted to speak at his fellow Baptists’ general convention, which never exactly seemed to me like a compliment; but the joke has stuck with me for a different reason. They say that the thing that makes jokes funny is the sudden reversal of expectations at the end—you get hit with something you didn’t see coming—and that’s certainly the case here; but what makes this joke particularly satisfying, I think, is the way that that reversal of expectations moves from injustice to a sort of rough justice, as the old black man is humiliated by a younger white man, but then gets his own back. That’s not just a joke, it’s a morality play of a very old type, which expresses an impulse which we might even call biblical in its essence.

Though James isn’t joking, we see that same reversal in our passage from chapter 5 this morning. “Therefore,” James says, “be patient until the Lord’s coming.” In other words, “because of this”—because of what? Look back up the page, what do you see? You see James laying out God’s judgment on the arrogant; in particular, right before this passage, you see judgment pronounced on the rich who have oppressed the poor and the vulnerable. During my time in Colorado, one of the restaurant owners in Grand Lake closed down for a month during the spring for inventory—nothing new about that, every restaurant did it; they staggered things a bit so that someone was always open, but the spring was so quiet in town that even if we were down to one restaurant, they still weren’t all that busy—but what was new was that he told his employees that they weren’t allowed to file for unemployment during the month he was closed, and if they did, he’d fire them. They couldn’t afford to lose their jobs—it was one of the few really stable businesses there—so they did as they were told, and our food bank was even busier that month. That’s the kind of thing James is talking about in the first part of chapter 5—and he makes it clear that God will not tolerate it, that his judgment is coming and cannot be stopped.

Therefore, James says, be patient—because you can trust God for what he’s going to do. Be patient in the face of suffering, be patient in hard times, be patient in dealing with injustice, because it’s all only temporary; the Lord is coming, and his justice is coming with him, and all will be made right. This is a new development in the thought of this letter. It ties back, of course, to what he says in chapter 1, but there his focus is on the rewards of patience under trial; as we read again this morning, he tells them—and us—that having our faith tested helps us develop the ability to persevere, it builds up our spiritual endurance, thus helping us grow to maturity. In verse 12 of chapter 1, James adds to that the promise of reward: blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, because “when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” Different focus, same basic idea: yes, trials are hard, but if you don’t give in, the benefit you get out of them is more than worth it.

Here, though, James goes further: be patient and strengthen your hearts, because the Lord is coming—and he is coming not only to bless us, but he is coming as the one who will judge the world. We will not be immune from his judgment, for even the best of us are sinners—this is why James says, “Don’t grumble against each other,” for if we let our frustrations in hard times turn us against each other, we are liable to judgment for that—but for those who follow Jesus, though the day of judgment will not leave us unscathed, it will be a time of joy nevertheless, for it will be the time of our vindication, and the time when all that is wrong will be set right. We can be patient in dealing with trials and suffering, we can endure the injustice of this world—though not without doing what we can to create justice, but in the understanding that even our best efforts will be both flawed and limited—because we know that perfect justice and an end to all suffering are coming. As such, we are to work actively for what is good and right in every way that we can, trusting that God is coming, and when he comes, everything will be put right, and our efforts will not have been in vain. Like Paul, James encourages us not to lose heart in doing the work God has given us.

The first image he offers is that of the farmer who “waits for the land to yield its valuable crop”—but not passively! No, we might say the farmer is actively patient, waiting for God to provide the early and later rains, waiting for the land to respond to the rain with a crop, but at the same time hard at work to do everything possible so that the crop will come, and so that it will be large and healthy. The interesting thing about that language of early and later rains, which the NIV translates as autumn and spring rains, is that this is Old Testament language, used in a number of places talking about the faithfulness of the Lord to provide for his people and keep his promises. In the way he phrases this, then, James is reinforcing his point: God is faithful to do what he said he will do, he is faithful to take care of his people, and we can trust him to do what he has promised. As such, we can persevere, we can hold fast, we can keep going, trusting that Jesus is coming, that the work to which he has called us will not be in vain, and that though the wicked seem to prosper now, their victory will not endure.

James also offers examples from the history of the people of God, first of the prophets, then of Job. Both of these are interesting. The prophets, of course, are strong examples of active patience—none of them passively waited around for God to do something, or simply endured suffering, but all actively and stubbornly went about proclaiming God’s word, often to people who really didn’t want to hear what they had to say. Indeed, for most of them, that was the cause of the suffering they faced—if they’d just been willing to shut up and go hide in a corner, they could have had much more peaceful lives. They would not. They saw injustice, and they spoke out against it; they saw unrighteousness and disobedience of the will of the Lord, and they would not be silent. Because they condemned injustice, they suffered it, and because they did the will of God, they faced significant trials; but that did not cause them to give in. Instead, it only strengthened their resolve, and their commitment to be faithful to God who called them to be his messengers, trusting that he would vindicate them—as, indeed, he has.

And then there’s Job. People will often talk glibly about the patience of Job, and I’ve said more than once that anyone who can do so has clearly never read the book; I wouldn’t particularly call him “patient.” However, that’s not what James says. He talks, rather, about the perseverance of Job, about the fact that Job endured suffering. If you’re familiar with the book, stop and think about that for a minute. Job as we see him in the book isn’t an especially pleasant man, though certainly he has reason not to be. He has a great deal to be angry about; he lived a righteous life, he followed God faithfully, and all of a sudden, his entire life was destroyed; and then, to make matters worse, his three best friends come along and start telling him it’s all his fault, that obviously he was really a terrible sinner in disguise. You could see why he’d complain. But complain he does—at God, to God, about God, to his friends, about them, and all in a rather self-righteous way—again, understandable, but still, a little grating.

But what’s the one thing Job doesn’t do? He doesn’t follow his wife’s bitter counsel to “curse God and die.” He doesn’t change sides, and he doesn’t give up. The one thing he has left to him is the faith that somehow, someway, God is still out there and still good, and that God can be called to account to Job for what he’s done to Job. It’s bedrock faith stripped down to the absolute bedrock, nothing left standing on top of it. I think James holds the endurance of Job up as an example because Job’s endurance wasn’t particularly pious, or pretty, or meek and uncomplaining, but it was uncompromising. It didn’t look holy, and it gave his friends plenty of room to criticize him, but he never let go of God. Job didn’t understand, and he raged about it, but he raged in faith . . . and God loved him for it, and blessed him for it.

And as a consequence, James says, “You have seen what the Lord finally brought about” in the life of Job—which is twofold. First, through his trials, God refined Job, bringing him to greater maturity and a deeper understanding of and relationship with God, which is the sort of thing James is talking about in chapter 1. And second, God vindicated Job and restored his fortunes, giving him back everything he’d lost. As such, the example of Job reminds us that our present suffering and our present struggles are not the end of the story, and do not have the last word. When Christ comes again, God will transform our situation for good. Why? Because the Lord is full of compassion and mercy. He cares for us, he suffers with us in our suffering, and his love for us never fails; he is absolutely faithful to us, he will never let go of us, and his commitment to us never wavers. This explains his forbearance with the unjust, for he loves them, too, and is at work seeking to bring them also to repentance; but he will only let them go so long before at last his justice comes. We will be vindicated in the end, and all that is wrong will be made right, because our Lord is faithful, and he loves us.

(Psalm 39:1-7; James 1:9-12, James 4:11-5:6)

I said last week that if you follow the headings in your Bibles, the way I’m breaking up this part of James will seem strange to you. The reason for that is that the headings were added by people who are used to thinking of the book of James as a collection of practical wisdom on various topics, and thus they miss the broader organization of the book. In particular, they miss the fact that there are two long coherent sections in the middle of James. One is 3:13-4:10, which we looked at over the past two weeks, which is a call to James’ hearers to set aside their worldly wisdom, stop having one foot in the world and one in the church, get off the fence, and choose their side. As we saw, wisdom and humility and the necessary connection between the two is a major theme in that section.

The second long section is the one we’re looking at this morning, which follows right out of the preceding section. That’s not immediately apparent, because it’s easy to focus on the obvious topics James is addressing here—slander, business, oppression of the poor, and judgment coming on the rich. If you do that, though, you miss the common thread running through these three topics: having made it clear that true wisdom brings humility, and called his hearers to set aside the false wisdom of the world for the true wisdom of God, James now proceeds to warn them against pride. He shows them the folly of arrogance, and rebukes them for the ways in which they are living in arrogance rather than in proper humility before God.

Now, remember what I said last week about pride: the core of pride is insisting on our own primacy. Pride tells us that we’re number one, that we’re the most important thing in our own lives, and more important than those around us. It tells us that we have the right to rule our own lives and to get what we want when we want it. Pride says that no one has the right to tell us what to do, or how to do it; it says that we are gods unto ourselves, and no one can tell us different. As such, the core of pride is the root of the sin of idolatry, because it directs our worship toward ourselves rather than to God, and thus will not allow us to worship any external god which we cannot control, or at least manipulate.

This is the spirit against which James is writing, and we can see it in his three sections here. In verses 11-12, he’s condemning slander and false judgment—on what grounds? That the one who does this judges the law. That may seem strange to us, but stop and think about it: the law of God forbids slander and false judgment, and also gossip and other ways of tearing people down. James himself has laid out the case against that in chapter 3. To violate that is to say, in essence, that we have the right to pick and choose which of God’s commands we want to keep and which ones we want to say don’t apply to us. It’s to set ourselves over the word of God rather than to stand under it. As such, it claims a position that does not rightly belong to us, but only to God.

If the one who slanders and attacks a brother or sister in Christ is guilty of arrogance in claiming for themselves the right to judge the law of God, which is the law of love, then what about the businesspeople James talks about in verses 13-16? That sort of business planning makes perfect sense to us; what’s wrong with it? Is planning a bad thing? No, it isn’t, if it’s undertaken in the right spirit; but look at the way these folks talk. “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.” There’s no humility there, no recognition that their project depends on many factors beyond their control; they’re talking as if they can control the future and determine their circumstances, and they can’t. They have the arrogance to assume that they can determine their success—and not just to assume that, but to boast about it. They need to learn to recognize that their success, their future, even their very existence, is in God’s hands; rather than taking life as a given, they need to recognize it as a gift—a gift from God, which may be taken away at any time.

From here, James turns to the rich who oppress and exploit the poor and the powerless. It’s an interesting thing that he feels the need to do this in a letter addressed to the church; but this is in line with his earlier remarks to the church about showing partiality to the rich and treating the poor as unimportant. Certainly, it has been a temptation for the church throughout the centuries to try to attract the rich and keep them happy, because they can make your budget; if keeping them happy means not challenging them on how they treat their workers, or on other aspects of their business practices, well, that’s a small price to pay for the income.

As such, it may well be that folks like this were a real problem in one or more of the churches to which James was writing, and that their arrogance was going unchallenged by the timidity of the church leadership. James, however, calls them out for that arrogance: do you think your money will enable you to avoid the judgment of God? No, but God will judge you harshly for what you have done to those who worked for you.

Now, that one might not seem to connect to us particularly, since we don’t have any rich folk of that type among us. The principle still holds, though, as it connects to the previous two sections. We need to remember that we stand under the law of God, that we cannot control the circumstances of our life, that even our life comes to us as a gift from his hand, and that we are liable to his judgment for what we’ve done. The only way to escape that judgment is by his grace—by casting ourselves on his mercy. We have to accept that we aren’t in control, God is; we have to accept that we cannot judge his law, but his law judges us, and that we cannot be good enough on our own to get a good judgment.

James’ purpose in laying all this out is not simply to call out sinners in the church, though there was evidently need for that—indeed, there’s always some need for that. His purpose, rather, proceeds from the previous section: he has called his hearers to be purified of their double-mindedness and to commit wholly to God, but he knows that many of them will resist that call. He knows that they are proud, and that they see his call to humility as foolish; they’ve bought into the world’s wisdom, and they’re comfortable with one foot in the church and one in the world. As such, he takes pains to make it clear to them that their arrogance is the true foolishness, because it leads them to act as if they have far more control than they in fact have, and that can only get them into trouble, sooner or later. His purpose is to show them the downside, the ultimate pointlessness, of continuing on living that way.

This whole passage, then, is in service of James’ statements earlier in chapter 4: “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity toward God? Do you not know that you cannot have the best of both?” Therefore, he says, “Wash your hands, you sinners”—deal with the specific outward behaviors he’s addressing in this passage—but not simply for their own sake; rather, he’s highlighting these behaviors to demonstrate and illustrate the double-mindedness of many of his hearers. That’s his primary concern; he’s not just calling them to change their behavior, but to purify their hearts.

This is an area where God’s been working on me, these last few weeks. After our last presbytery meeting, as I was driving back from Rochester, God convicted me of the dividedness of my own mind and heart, of the ways in which I don’t serve and follow him whole-heartedly. He gave me a sense of how much of my energies are dissipated in ways that aren’t really fruitful, that there are things in my life that need to be pruned away, or at least pruned back. Jesus, you’ll remember, talks about that in John 15, about how the vinedresser prunes every branch that doesn’t bear fruit. This isn’t exactly his point, but the principle applies, I think. I have to admit that I am not, within my own mind and heart, simple, whole, at one; rather, I’m at war within myself.

Such, of course, is the human condition; this isn’t just me, it’s something that’s true of all of us to one extent or another. But I found myself strongly convicted of it, and driven to pray that God would correct it—that he would purify my heart and mind, that he would give me an undivided heart so that I might be always moving toward the same goal, in the same purpose. I prayed, and I’m still praying, that he would prune away all the efforts and occupations in my life which don’t bear fruit, all the activities that produce nothing of value, all the wasted effort and wasted motion that dissipate my energies and produce heat but no light.

This is the desire God has given me, and it’s the way of life to which he calls all of us; we’ll never fully realize it in this life, but this is the goal, and it’s what James is talking about in this letter. It’s what he calls us to ask God to do in our lives, that God would prune away all those things that don’t glorify him, and free us from our other allegiances—that he would bring us to a point where we are single-minded in his service, no longer divided against him and against ourselves, so that we might be truly, wholly and completely his.