Getting your act together

 

One of the most comforting things that gives life strength and purpose is knowing that when you are suffering or have a particular challenge, there is someone who knows what you are going through; someone who understands.  I think most people genuinely want to be able to share with others the wisdom of experience when they see them facing the same struggles.  There is nothing quite like saying to someone who has a cold, “Oh, I had that cold two weeks ago and now it is gone, and look how wonderful I am.”  It makes you feel good to know that you are giving comfort during a difficult time.  While one of the great challenges of our time is a somewhat perverted love of what they call in German, schadenfreude, the enjoyment at the suffering of others, which is gradually creeping into our culture in a most distasteful way at the moment, I think most people want to encourage those who are facing difficulties by giving them a word of comfort.  

 

Is that not the principle of an organization like Alcohol Anonymous, where an alcoholic can turn to someone who has gone through what they are going through for help?  Is it not a mark of our church that we have one of the longest running and most respected AA group in the city, the Hill Group, that has helped thousands of people, because someone who has been there is willing to stand by the one who is suffering right now?  Is it not also a principle that is being used more in medicine and in healing?  I remember going in to a seminar that was hosted by the hospital back when I had my hip replacement, and in walked this man, robust and strong, with hardly a limp, who informed us all that he had had this operation and that he was doing just magnificently.  We didn’t need to hear anything else; we had seen someone who had come through it and he looked just great!  You could have offered me a million dollars at that moment, and it would never have matched the joy that I felt seeing someone who had experienced what I was about to, and thrived.  It provided incredible support and a calming of the soul.  Is that not what comforting from having a shared experience is really all about?  

 

Now, I want you to tuck that away for a moment, our passage today from the Book of James addresses this.  The Book of James, unfortunately, has had some bad press over the years.  It is one of those books that is very rarely read or preached upon, mainly because Martin Luther called it “a book of straw” – not an endorsement of any kind!  It is a book that has been questioned for its authenticity in its very earliest days.  People were not quite sure of its origins.  There was a bit of a debate in the early church as to whether this was such a Jewish book that maybe it wasn’t really born out of the early Christian community at all, and its references to the prophets and people in The Old Testament can reinforce that argument in the minds of some. Some have suggested that it was written by somebody who was using a pseudonym. In other words, using the name of James as a cover for their own ideas, because James was a very popular name in the first century Israel.  Or maybe it was, as traditionalists ascribe it, the brother of Jesus as possibly the source.  Or perhaps it was James, one of the Apostles, who had followed Jesus all along.  It is hard though when you peel it all apart, because it seems more like a sermon, or words of instruction, encouragement and support.  It was written, clearly, for the purpose of encouraging the saints, and it was spread far and wide, as evidenced at the very beginning of the book, where it says, “To those who are scattered.” In other words, Christians and new believers all over the world.  But it was also written from Jerusalem.  There is no question that its foundation is in Judaism: You can feel the prophetic influence.  This is a book of ethics.  This is a book of encouragement:  not to discriminate; not to pick on the poor; to lift up the weak; to watch what you say; to be faithful in matters of religion; to do the just and the equitable thing; to be kind.  These are sentiments throughout The Book of James. He was writing to people who clearly needed to be lifted up.  

 

It was very hard to know precisely what was wrong, but there is evidence in the text that there were people, particularly farmers, workers on the land, who weren’t getting paid their wages.  They were being defrauded and treated unjustly.  The ptochoi as they are known in Greek, the people of the land, were being exploited by the rich, who were sitting back enjoying a life of luxury, while they were living in misery.  There is more! There is an implication of greater sacrifice for having served Christ, for following what he calls “the innocent One” and for having served the innocent One facing persecution.  Again, that was happening in the Roman Empire to those that followed Jesus Christ as Lord.  

 

There is also an implication, not only of injustice to the farm workers, but injustice as a whole, and if you read the whole Book of James, and contrary to Martin Luther’s advice, I recommend you do, you will see that there were many challenges that the people of God were facing in the first century.  It is a powerful book!  But where it really demonstrates its power is in this passage from James Chapter 5, where he talks about how you deal with difficult challenges in life, and how do you so faithfully.  In other words, how do you walk with God in the midst of suffering and difficulties?  He has a couple of very solid pieces of advice.  One of them is patience.  He uses this word three times in this particular text, and he uses an illustration that the farm workers would understand.  This is what makes James so great!  He uses the illustration of planting and sowing: when you plant something in the ground you have to wait for the rains to come for the seeds to grow.  Patience in the midst of a challenging world is needed because the plants will grow, but also in reference to the people, because the Lord is near, the Lord is coming.

 

I was reflecting, as I do at this time of the year, when I get Christmas gifts from people, about a dearly departed uncle of mine, who was without doubt my shining star, the uncle above all other uncles! I followed him around like a puppy!  I hung on his every word.  I told everyone else of his successes.  He was the golden boy of the family!  He had gone to Cambridge University, written books, was Principal of a college, an athlete, and the father of two lovely girls.  He had it all!  He was a great guy, and I loved him dearly.  I still have his books on my shelves, and I look at them from time to time.  He was an historian of great repute, yet his gift buying at Christmas was ridiculous!  It was pathetic!  When I got gifts from him, I wondered “How can a man from Cambridge be so stupid?!”  He used to enjoy teasing his nieces and nephews with his gifts.  And you know what teachers are like, no disrespect, but they always feel they have to teach you something.  He would give a gift that we would learn from.  But I must confess that as a teenage boy, getting a gift to learn from was not the top of my priorities!  One year, he gave us a flower bulb in a bag with water and dirt, and a little note on it saying, “I hope you enjoy this.  Water it regularly, and wait.”  

 

We thought he was losing his mind I must say.  My cousins and I were bemused and, frankly, just a little bit irritated.  But we took these things home and did as he had advised – and nothing happened!  Around Christmas time (he had given them a little bit in advance), I went out to see if anything had happened, and nothing.  I don’t recall what I said to my uncle on Boxing Day, and it is probably unrepeatable at the moment. I just waited, and nothing happened.  I went out every now and again when my mother reminded me to water it, and waited, and nothing happened.  Then one day I was playing soccer out back, and kicked it to the far end of the garden where the bulb had been put in the ground, and here was this glorious yellow flower, shining in the sun.  It was gorgeous!  It is hard for a teenage boy to fall in love with a flower, but this was as close as I was going to get.  This was beautiful, and it was MY flower!  Weeks and months later when remonstrating with my Uncle Ray about the wonder of all of this, he did remind me that he had put on the note, to wait.  I just wish he had been a little more instructive of how long to wait.  A beautiful thing at the end of it all!  For all the difficulties and the waiting and the uncertainty and the watering, it was worth it.  Why?  Because, as James is saying, putting a plant in the ground, adding water and waiting, so too God is continually at work during the waiting, so too God is always there to provide strength, and to make sure that growth is occurring.  You don’t often see it, it just is.  So James says, “Wait patiently, for God is near.”  Just like with that plant, wait patiently and something beautiful appears.

 

Waiting for change is not a passive thing.  You don’t sit back and wait as if nothing is happening.  You need to have what he calls “a steadfast heart”.  Here, I come back to what I was addressing at the beginning of the sermon, namely that there is this sense in James that God and God’s strength is there to comfort in times of need, to be there to say “I have gone through this.  I know what you are enduring.”  You know how he expresses it?  He expresses it biblically!  He says, “Look, for example, at the prophets.  The prophets waited patiently, but God came and cared for them with mercy and with comfort.”  If we think we have problems, if we think we have challenges, look at the prophets of The Old Testament.  There was not one of them that did not have accusations against him.  There was not one that didn’t face the turmoil of the people.  There was not one of them that did not face an enemy coming in at the gate.  They all did!  Take Jeremiah, for example, who was a prophet in the south, and saw the terrible things that were happening in the north. He warned people not to be seduced by their own wealth, but to rely on God. When the Exile came and the people were thrown out of the country, he wrote the incredible book that we know now as Lamentations.  If you want to know what misery is, read Lamentations.  But don’t read Lamentations if you are having a really good day and you want it to stay that way!

 

If ever James knew of someone who had endured difficulties and hardships, it was Jesus, the Lord.  It was the Cross, the Cross that had been borne.  Unlike Paul, James does not go on about that.  Unlike John, James does not go on about it at great length.  He is just there.  It is just implied that the “innocent one” knows exactly what you are going through, knows your pain and suffering, had been there in the Garden of Gethsemane and said, “Take this cup of suffering from me.”  He said it.  He knew it.  He experienced it.  But he was raised from the dead.  If you wonder whether there is anyone who understands and can go there and has been there with you, believe-you-me, it is Jesus of Nazareth.

 

It doesn’t end there really.  James doesn’t talk much about Jesus; he talks about Job.  He says, to use the Greek phrase, “Job had a gallant spirit.”  Job lost everything:  he lost his children, his business, his reputation, his friends, who told him that he was unwise.  For all the things that Job had, he questioned at times, he doubted at times, struggled at times, he faced injustice at times, and yet, he endured.  Why does James mention Job?  Because Job said things like this in Chapter 16: “I have a witness in heaven and I have an advocate who is on high.” And then those immortal words that Handel put in The Messiah, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”

 

Say it in your mind:  “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”  Job, for all that he had gone through, knew that this was his ultimate reality.  As James makes the point, if God is with us, then what does it matter who is against us?  It is a powerful phrase!  Job is a representative of all of us. But there is more to this than relying on those who have gone before us, of having a steadfast heart because we know that the Lord and the Redeemer is close. There is also a profound sense in which if that is true, should we not also be close with those who themselves are suffering?  Should there not also be in our lives a commitment to stand side-by-side with those who are suffering?  Is this not one of the great gifts of faith?

 

 

Unless the Divine Power has raised you up, I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that abominable practice of slavery, which is the scandal of religion in opposing that thing.  It is the scandal of England and of human nature also. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils, but ‘if God be for you, who can be against you?’  Are all of them together stronger than God?  Oh, be not weary of well-doing.  Go in the name of God and in the power of his might.

 

Signed:  John Wesley

 

 

John Wesley stood beside Wilberforce.  He comforted him when he needed it.  In the face of injustice and difficulties, he was there for him.  He was there with a message of hope and encouragement.  Is that not what we should be offering those who similarly face difficulties in our world?  Not to enjoy their suffering, but to endure it with them, to stand beside them and to encourage them, to hold them in our hands, and to say, “I know someone who has been through what you are going through, and I know that Redeemer liveth!” Amen.