Worship and Texts

Reading the Epistle of James as a Mystical Text  

this is Wyn's paraphrase used at the opening worship.

How to use this text

James, a servant of God and of Jesus, who is the Christ, the Lord.
I write to God’s own people dispersed in a dozen places.
I greet you all.

Count it all joy my brothers and sisters when you stumble into motley challenges
because you know that testing your faith  produces patience.
And let patience have its end,  so that your end may be wholeness wanting nothing.

Are you lacking in wisdom?
Ask God who is a generous giver, he doesn’t grudge sharing himself with you.
Ask for wisdom in simple faith – but not if you are at odds with yourself
- not if you want to think this and that
-for then you are odds with with yourself
and you’re like the wind-blown waves of the sea– just crashing spume.

Such folk shouldn’t think they will take hold of anything from the Lord
– those with a vacillating mind, lacking in simplicity but, being changeable, complicated,
they are constantly changing their path.

Those of us who are have no social status can boast because God has raised us up
and in the same way those with power and influence can also boast
- because God cuts them down to size. As the Psalmist says about the rich… they will vanish like flowers in a field.

The blistering sun rises high and scorches the field and the flowers dry and shrink, their beauty evaporates.
So with the rich, whilst they are busy, busy, busy, making money they shrink to nothing and are gone.

Blessed are those who stay on top of experiences that prove them.
They will be approved and will receive from the Lord what he promised: the crowning honour of life itself.

These proving experiences don’t come from God… so don’t pretend they do.
God himself doesn’t need to be proven in this way… and this isn’t how God proves us.

We prove who we are by our own lusts when we allow them to lure us away and entrap us.

When we cohabit with our lust it breeds a litter of sin… and sins grow up fast and in turn breed death.

So don’t be taken in… that’s how it is with lust.

Lust can’t give you the good gifts, the gifts that are complete in themselves
-they can only come from the one who truly sits above
- these good things come down to us from  the one who illuminates us,
the Father who is not fickle and does not turn this way and that in the shadows.

The Father is always true to his own purpose
and so, when he gave birth to us it was by the Word of Truth, and in this way we are prototypes of the new creation.

So, I speak to those I love: this has consequences for our behaviour:
be always ready to hear, but be slow to say anything, and slow to aggressive passionate desire.

Because, no matter how justified you feel your aggressive passionate desire  to be, it can’t fashion the uprightness of God.

So then, drop  those little grubby habits as well as the big malign moments.  I
nstead, in humility, receive the Word engrafted into you and which has the power to save your very souls.

But let that word become the script from which you perform your life.
Don’t just hear it read as in a rehearsal. What nonsense!

To perform this word, look at yourself in the mirror before you go on. 

But then remember who you are, because if you forget your  character you will not perform honestly.

Look: there in the mirror you reflect the perfect law of love - yes you,
and this both is a freedom and a demand for stickability.
Don’t hear and forget the script, but learn it by heart and act it out. And your performance will be a blessing.

If anyone thinks their performance is pious but can’t stick to the script but ad libs to get a cheap laugh
they are only fooling themselves. They are just ham actors.

The best performance is both art and craft - with God the Father in the royal box
- it is to take the performance into the street and choose to take the pressure off those most at risk - orphans and widows.

This is the only way to keep clean from the world’s deluded promise of 15 minutes of fame.

Why is it we think the church should be full of people we approve of?
So, you choose favourites from among yourselves.
Is that how belief in our Lord, Jesus Christ, the glorious one, works in practice?

Someone comes to church dressed in the latest fashion with designer clothes.
Another arrives who is struggling to make ends meet, grubby and dishevelled.

“Come and sit with me”, you say to the first… and, “Oh,do you want to stand behind me, or sit on the floor just here?” you say to the second.

Surely you can see the distinctions you are making? You have made yourselves the judges of others  - judges with degenerate thoughts.

Are you paying attention, brothers and sisters?
Didn’t God choose the world’s poor to be rich in faith?
Aren’t they the heirs of the kingdom that he has asserted belongs to them.

No, you’ve despised the poor. 

And yet it is the rich who are your oppressors, dragging you into court to rob you of everything!
And worse - it’s the rich who vilify the beautiful Name by which was invoked over you at baptism?

You’ll only do well if you keep the royal law… love your neighbour as yourself.
But let’s call choosing one person over another what it is - it is sin.
And you are found guilty as violators.

The trouble with the law of Moses is that you can keep most of it, but fail to keep one small bit.
And that’s the same as failing to keep any of it - and you’ll find yourself liable for it all.

You can’t pick and choose which laws to keep - for instance both murder and adultery were outlawed by the One lawgiver.
But  being chaste whilst murdering is no defence and you are guilty.

But we are those under the Law of Freedom - freedom from the law of Moses -
so,  speak, and act, as those who are free from sin and guilt, but not free from doing right.

It’s all about judgement and mercy. We judge others and so mercilessly condemn ourselves.
Or we are merciful and both we and they are set free. 

Mercy always wins out over judgementalism.

So our faith isn’t a set of beliefs but it’s the force that enables us to live it out in practical ways, brothers and sisters.
Otherwise we don’t have saving faith, just fancy religious ideas in our head.

Let’s suppose you come across a brother or sister who has no clothes and doesn’t even have a daily ration of food.

If you say to them a hearty, “Peace be with you, keep warm, eat well.” but do nothing to supply their lack… what on earth  is going on?

So faith, even doctrinally accurate belief, without taking its truths  as a script for daily living, is a dead production.

You might say, “Look, I believe all this and I can explain doctrine at length.”
Well, I say, “Show me your faith, not an explanation. And I’ll show you my faith by what I do with it.”

You have all this doctrinal belief ? Great!… but the demons of hell know that belief is true - and it frightens them so much they shudder.

For goodness sake, are you so senseless? Belief is no good until it becomes  active faith and so called “faith” without action is dead.

Let’s think of two people from our past: Abraham and Rahab. 

Father Abraham offered his son Isaac on the altar..
He acted in faith and God reckoned Abraham to be righteous. His faith was active … and his actions completed his faith.
So the  text that reads, “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”, works itself out by Abraham’s action. 
In this way he lived out friendship with God.

Faith, simply as a stand alone belief, is not able to save unless it evolves into an active  faith.

So Rahab, the sex worker, didn’t just believe that the Israelite’s God was indeed God…
she took in the spies and got them home by another route.
Her works made her right with God as a consequence of  her faith.

We are body and spirit - and the body can’t live without the spirit.
So faith and action are not  an “either /or,” but rather a “both /and”.
It is a living unity, and our faith  is dead if it is not an active faith.

Those of us who teach have a problem - we’ll be judged more strictly
because we don’t just act ourselves but encourage others to copy us. Maybe we don’t all need to become teachers!

Because we all make plenty of mistakes! You would be perfect if it wasn’t for your mistakes!
You’d keep your whole body in control like a horse with a bit and bridle
which makes them obedient and we guide their path.

Ships are another example of control - large enough to need string winds to move them
and yet steered by a little rudder as the one at the helm decides. 

Our tongue is a little thing too, but it knows how to brag!
And think of wild fires - set off by a tiny spark.
And our tongues are blazing away, scorching our bodies with its hot seduction.
We’re smoke-charred and the circle of life itself is combusted by hellfire. 

Human beings have tamed animals and birds, reptiles and even sea creatures
- but the tongue is something else - a seething, writhing, evil-filled thing, toxic with a fatal charm.

This is the same tongue that we use to  sing worship songs to the Lord and to God the Father,
and with the same tongue curse other human beings, like us made in God’s own image.

This is not right, brothers and sisters, this isn’t how it should be, cursing and blessing from one mouth.

Think of a spring - it’s either sweet water or salty - it can’t be both..

Fig trees don’t produce olives. Vines don’t grow figs. Salty water can’t turn itself into fresh water.

So wisdom isn’t having wonderful airy-fairy thoughts. Understanding isn’t being able to explain physics. 

Wisdom, the holy wisdom we have been talking about, is pregnant with gentleness, and gentleness grows up to live the good life with good deeds. 

If you bitterly want to achieve selfish power over others then stop, see what’s happening.
Stop boasting. Stop being false in the face of truth.

This sort of “look after number one” wisdom doesn’t come from God.

When we want power over things and power over others then social order collapses, and everyone is just out for themselves and wickedness wins.

No, the wisdom we are seeking comes from the one who truly sits above.
To start with it is pure, and it is at peace with itself
so that it is naturally gentle and merciful.
It grows good fruit,
and it doesn't have all that judgementalism we thought about just now. 

What hypocrites we can be!

To be peacemakers we have first to be at peace with ourselves, with the peace that we can only get from God’s gift of wisdom.
Then, as a people at peace we can spread the seeds of that peace everywhere we go
- and those seeds will bring a harvest, a harvest of upright living, of goodness and rightness with God.

But you’re not a people of peace when there are fights and feuds among you, are you?
And where does that aggression come from ?
You desire, you lust, you are avaricious - and war is declared.

You see it, you want it, and you can’t get it. So you kill to get hold of it.
You lust after something but it’s just out of reach, so you become litigious, you love the fight, you love the battle.
And yet it’s all so simple… if you only asked, you might just get it!

But when you do ask you don’t get it. And why?
Because you don’t know how to ask. You just want to have power, so you can exercise control and satiate your desires.

You are adulterers, cheating on your first love, God.
You can’t have an affair with the world, the very world which is God’s enemy!
Make up your mind - God’s friend or the world’s friend.
The choice is yours.

Our God is a jealous lover. He yearns for the creation
- I mean the spirit that he put in your bodies -  to be whole and pure.
Scripture is loaded with this message.

But here’s the good news - God just gives more and more grace.
But, here’s the thing: scripture also reminds us that God gives grace to the humble, but opposes the haughty.

So learn humility. And then you will be able to resist the devil’s lures - and the devil will turn and run.

Drawing near to God is God drawing near to you.
As sinners we have hands that need sanitising and hearts that need healing from that “being at odds with ourselves”we mentioned earlier.

God will lift you up
- but you must first let yourself go down into the deep places
where laughter gives way to cold realisation, and to grief in the face of the truth about ourselves.
This is the time for honest repentance, and the tears that might go with that.
Joy must first give place to a heavy heart.

I really should not need to say this - but don’t speak evil of someone else, brothers and sisters!
- you know perfectly well when you judge someone what you are actually doing is judging the law itself and finding it wanting.
Are you the judge? I don’t think so.

There is a judge, the One who gave us the law of love, who alone can eradicate - or make things new.
Who do we think we are if we judge the ones living with us?

So, you entrepreneurs, with your jet setting about to make money,
have you got a crystal ball to see the best investments and returns?
Of course not. 

What is your life? Just a misty moment, come and gone.

What would make more sense would be to place everything in God, and then, if it seems good to God, we’ll be alive and get things done.
Otherwise you’re just over confident braggers, and that will only breed evil.

When you know perfectly well what you should do and then deliberately refuse to do it - well, there’s only one word for that - sin.

O, come on, so you’ve got a big fat bank balance? … but instead of being pleased with yourselves what you should do
is notice what’s coming down the track, straight at you - Misery. 

So cry out and show some feelings.
Sell those material possessions which will rot away, for your clothes will be full of holes stinking of moth balls.
Gold and silver, far from being timeless elements, will corrode away
- and their residue will be the evidence that proves your guilt and you’ll burn with embarrassment when you realise the truth
- that this was the precious treasure you amassed for the day of reckoning.
Yes, it was all wanton self indulgence that fattened you up for the kill.

You pronounced guilty the innocent who didn’t even oppose you.

So, it’s time for real patience, being on top of these things in a godly way. 

Because ever present with us is the moment when we see that God is God  . 

Farmers have to be patient, as they wait for the crops to sprout and grow, receiving the seasonal rains, and finally produce a harvest.  

That’s the kind of patience I’m talking about, being on top of events because we don’t own them, just tend them and wait.
In this way your hearts will grow strong as you learn to wait. 

The Lord is just here.

Stop picking fights with each other - otherwise you’re bound to be judge by the Judge who is standing here, just outside the door!

Look, you’re not the first people to have lived this way - think of those prophetic characters from our past,
who spoke out with the insight God gave them. We celebrate those heroes of our past. 

I’m a big fan of Job, sticking it out through all that trouble.
But we all know the story, and what the end was that the Lord intended for him  - it was always going to be compassion and mercy.

So there’s no need for extravagant displays of religiosity, loudly vowing to do this or that with heaven and earth called to witness us.
Just be quiet: a simple “yes” or “no” is all that’s required.
Anything loud and you’re self condemned.

Life is tough. Are you suffering? Well - to state the obvious - pray. 

Are you happy? Then by all means praise the Lord. 

Are you unwell? Don’t suffer alone - call the church and let the mature leaders pray over you,
crossing you with olive oil and all in the Name of the Lord. 

Indeed, being together is vital - you need to acknowledge your sins when you meet together
because that’s how our salvation - our healing (they mean the same,  of course) works out. 

When the holy community prays together the prayer has force.
Like Elijah, who prayed for drought and for three and a half years it didn’t rain
.. and he prayed again to release the rain and the harvest grew. 

And look out for each other.
We can so easily be pulled away into worthless activities.
Whoever helps us come home is a life saver and such acts of love cover up all the sinful mistakes.