Rogate 2022
James 1:22-27
May 22, 2022
Immanuel Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Alexandria, Virginia
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Beloved brothers and sisters, you will remember that last week we heard from St. James that we all must “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (1:19f). It’s good advice for us all, to listen more and talk less. But the Bible is more than good advice. More than moral improvement is in view, but the rescue of the world—and each of us—from the judgment. The goal of divine wisdom isn’t career advancement, getting into the right school, or preparing for retirement; the goal of divine wisdom is becoming the soul, the living creature God made us to be. So James concluded last Sunday’s Epistle like this: “Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
“Meekness” doesn’t always seem like a good quality. If you’re in trouble, you aren’t going to hire an attorney based on his meekness. I doubt the Ukrainian army is busy promoting their meekest soldiers. I hate to always be quibbling with the translation, but words matter. Meekness seems like weakness, but it’s better rendered as calmness. In Greek mythology, the same term is used for an angry Apollo being calmed by the lyre; and it’s used in medicine for a fever going down. It’s a positive trait of a ruler who is not brutal toward his subjects. With that background, it’s easy to see how it matches up with the call to put away our anger. St. Augustine somewhere says that when we’re angry, we should direct that anger at ourselves, meaning, confess our sin. Then we’re ready to receive what God has to give us: “Receive with [calmness] the implanted word.” What’s that? This is the Word of Baptism, which forgives us our sins and declares us to be part of a new family and having a new allegiance. That’s the saving word. And that’s where today’s Epistle picks up, right where last week’s left off:
“Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” In other words, the Gospel is to begin working a change in us.
Now you may have heard that the great reformer Martin Luther once called James an “epistle of straw.” He said this in 1522, which is still quite early in the Reformation. It’s seven years before the Small Catechism is published, and eight years before the Diet of Augsburg. In the early years of the Reformation, Luther was urging people who had been under the bondage of the papacy to read Romans and Galatians, where they would hear clearly and distinctly about the forgiveness of sins.
One of my friends, a fellow Lutheran pastor, likes to joke that I have “Romanizing tendencies.” I don’t think he’s always joking, though. So that’s why I wear an Eastern Orthodox cross, to balance it out! I do long for the reunion of the churches. But that cannot happen until we reach doctrinal agreement. It still is necessary for us to be very clear: the Roman Church rejects the teaching that a man is justified by grace apart from the works of the law. The current Catechism of the Roman Church says this: “Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to man’s collaboration.” That idea that man collaborates in his salvation is against God’s Word, and it was in that context that Luther was directing people away from reading James; all their lives they’d only heard that they had not done enough. You speak differently to a person terrified of his sins than you do to a person secure in his sins.
Sometimes you’ll also hear folks slander Luther by saying things like, “He took James out of the Bible.” That’s nonsense. He included James, and the entire apocrypha, in his German translation of the Bible. But even if he had removed a book from the Bible, one of the great things about being Lutheran is we don’t have to regard him, or any man, as infallible. But did Luther in his later years keep saying the same things about James?
No. The younger Luther was excited, the way all young preachers are, that when people heard the truth they would love it and embrace it. But human nature being what it is, when people heard the Gospel many took it as a license to sin. So the mature Luther didn’t back away from the Gospel one iota, but he did emphasize the need for discipline in the Christian life. And that’s where these words of James have their application: ”Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” So on this day in 1535, twelve years after the “epistle of straw” comment, you find Luther preaching on the same Bible readings we heard today, saying,
[Pastors must] continue admonishing and teaching—as not only James [does], but [as do all] the prophets and the apostles—that the one who wishes to be a Christian must be serious [about it] and not hypocritical. The hypocrites [come] to the Word and imagine that they believe, [but] if you truly look into their life, it is the old Adam. They produce nothing of what they have heard. But when it comes to the point that they must exhibit [their] Christian faith, there remain greed, pride, envy, and anger. The Gospel produces nothing except froth in their ears and hearts. [LW 57:191]
Here’s how it works: when we are baptized, the Word is implanted in us, like a seed. The Scriptures call this a new birth. So just as a baby grows as it receives nourishment and pedagogy, so we are nourished by God’s Word and grow into it. The Law which condemns our sin then also serves to show us the mind of God, what God delights in. The Psalms are replete with this kind of language. The very first Psalm describes the man of God like this:
Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
The Law condemns, but it does not only condemn. It condemns those who break it, but it also shows us what is good. The commandment, “You shall not murder” shows us the goodness of human life, and the blessing of loving our neighbor and providing for bodily needs. The commandment “You shall not commit adultery” shows us the goodness of marriage, and the joy of family life.
The Christian isn’t liberated from the Law, but liberated from its condemnation. Furthermore, the Christian is liberated for the Law, delighting to walk in the way that delights God. See how St. James describes the Law? “The one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
The mature Luther understood we need both admonition and comfort. We need to be called out on our hypocrisy; God’s forgiveness can’t be bought, or taken for granted. The Law condemns us, but then also becomes our joy and delight.
In all things look to Jesus. In Him is your peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer; He has overcome the world.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!