Practical Advice from James (did I really just say that?)

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

Texts: Psalm 148, Proverbs 1:1-7, James 3:13-18

With 2011 behind us and 2012 ahead, I think that today’s texts lend well to a new breath of life, new goals (for some of us), and a sense of hope that this year will be better than the last.

Though Luther referred to James as the “Gospel of Straw,” counting it among the last books of his “canon within the canon,” largely because it does not speak of Christ or Christ’s promises but rather the shoulds and oughts of Christian life, I find today's reading an apt suggestion in the hopes for a new year.  As we enter a new year, we can only hope for the kind of leaders who are “peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”  We may not read this as Good News, or as Gospel, for ourselves, but it may be Gospel, or Good News, for the Other. 

What if the hoping for peace was something more than a naive cry for an ideal that does not exist?  What if we lived in such a way that our behaviors were Good News for our neighbors?  And no, these behaviors aren’t our ticket to “get into heaven,” we don’t do them to put more “stars in our crown;” we do them for the sake of our neighbor who also bears the mark of our Creator.  We do these things because we have been saved, not in order that we might be.

According to the Psalmist, it is not just our neighbor, but also all of creation that bears the mark of the Creator.  We are not to live peaceably with only the humans who worship with us, not only the humans whom we encounter, but all of creation.  I’m not sure what it looks like to be at peace with all of creation; I am not sure it is even possible.  What I do know is that, if - little by little - we seek peace in our little corners of the world, it is possible that the peace will extend beyond our little corners, touching on someone else’s world, as if using one candle to illuminate an entire room of candles.