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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Pastor Galler is on vacation, but, for our reflection this morning on the Second Reading for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Pastor Galler edited a sermon written by The Rev. Elliott M. Robertson, pastor of Martini Lutheran Church, in Baltimore, Maryland. Rev. Robertson’s sermon was published in the 20-21 volume of Concordia Pulpit Resources (31:4, pp.21-24), to which publication Pilgrim subscribes primarily in order to supply sermons on occasions such as this, when our pastor is away and the congregation has not otherwise supplied the pulpit. The edited sermon reads as follows:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
The last chapter of many New Testament epistles has one- or two-sentence “gems” reminiscent of the Divinely‑inspired Solomon’s Old Testament book of Proverbs. Perhaps more than any other New Testament book, the book of James has such “proverbs” sprinkled throughout it, and so the book of James is sometimes called “The Proverbs of the New Testament.” In your individual or family daily devotions, you could pick out a few and consider your place in them. Here are four just from today’s Second Reading: “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.” “Friendship with the world is enmity with God.” “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” And, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”
Now I suppose we could rip these “proverbs” from their context and use them as handy steps, mantras, or positive affirmations to get us through the day. But, doing so would be offensive to Holy Scripture Itself. For, part of understanding Holy Scripture is seeing how a particular verse fits with the Person and work of Jesus Christ, especially His blessed Gospel, the very center of all of Holy Scripture. Therefore, James 3:16, “For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice,” can be enlightened by John 3:16, so that we understand that Jesus came to take into His body every jealousy and selfish ambition, so as to bring truth and peace to us in His forgiving love from the cross. Or consider James 4:7: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Would we not be in spiritual danger if we thought that we could resist the devil in our own strength and not by the strength of Jesus’s blood and righteousness and the new identity that His blood and righteousness gave us in our Baptism?
James is a practical book, and this morning’s sermon reflects that practicality. The portion of James that is the basis for this sermon focuses on sin’s war and God’s peace, and, as always, Christ is the resolution. James wants us to see that the war of our passions within is so destructive to us and to those around us that only God’s grace in Christ can win a blessed harvest of peace.
There is a war within our hearts. Now, admittedly, James talks about war only after he exhorts us to wisdom, that we “show [our] works in the meekness of wisdom”. But, apparently since the world and our sinful flesh are not completely with the program, the next verses then tell us in an all-too-familiar way what happens when God’s will meets the will of the adversary, the devil. And, your reading of the Bible and your living of your life show what James says to be true. As long as you are in the mortal body, the devil enlists your thoughts, urges, and body parts to sin. The mouth spews vulgarities, or the ears hear gossip to be recorded for later broadcast. The eye may be covetous or lustful for flashy desires or fleshly ones. The hand may slap or steal.
With the same Holy Spirit as the ultimate author, St. James not surprisingly agrees with St. Paul, who says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15). So, the disorder and vile practice are at war within us. And James is clear: it is “earthly, unspiritual, demonic”. The devil, however, did not enlist your sinful flesh only to bring you inner mayhem. A calculating fallen angel, he looks for a kind of harvest of his own. If, as James says, “a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace”, the devil reckons that a harvest of strife can be sown out of the jealousy and selfish ambition that vie within—and against—us.
Permit me to say something more about selfish ambition. What might the “meek wisdom” version of “selfish ambition” be? Would the “meek wisdom” version of “selfish ambition” be to be unselfishly ambitious for the kingdom of God? For our congregation to make a new effort to build up our congregation or reach out to others by telling them the Gospel or serving them in some way? Maybe so. Such would be “unselfish ambition,” or “godly ambition.” Maybe also you have such ambition for your family’s spiritual life or for how your job or your resources could serve God. Unselfish ambition may take stock of personal weakness or of neighbors or friends who do not know their Savior. Unselfish ambition is a part of the “meekness of wisdom” that James has set forth. If the devil works through selfish ambition, then unselfish ambition may prove a spiritually healthy exercise. Try unselfish ambition and feel the spiritual muscle burn.
As James shows, the purpose of the tempter is not only to wreak havoc inside of you but also to have havoc out in the open. The devil means for the war within to wound and kill the whole Church, mass casualties on you and others: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?”.
Dear brothers and sisters, because the sinfulness that we bring with us to this place can be dealt with by the forgiving grace of God or become a source of discord in our very midst, the Church must always be a place where people can have bad things known about them and still be loved and cared for as the baptized Christians they are. Never is there license to sin, but everyone is fighting a spiritual battle within—or should be. Most would be mortified if the rest of us should know some of the thoughts, words, and deeds that they have done. (A few might be relieved that those thoughts, words, and deeds became known, just so that they could quit hiding what is giving them grief inside.) Led by the Holy Spirit to repent and seek absolution, we find Christ’s cure, forgiveness by grace through faith in Him, which is the harvest of peace.
But, do you know what happens in too many congregations? People do none of this; they bleed rather than find peace, because they do not trust their sisters and brothers. They languish in their wounds, hide their past sins, their present addictions, or their undisclosed self. And, just as James tells us, their passions are at war within them and that war spills out. They bring trouble in their families, in their church families, and elsewhere in society. Looking at the list of bad acts by church people in today’s Second Reading, we see that most if not all the Commandments become casualties of war: it is what sin does! When we Lutherans prepare for the Divine Service by confessing our sins, we show ourselves to be desperate people. We may look so nice saying the words, that some penitent sinner may look around with one eye open and say to him- or herself, “They all look so reverent. I must be the worst sinner here. I am troubled by my sins and really need forgiveness. They do not know how much I have going on inside of me.”
If that description describes you, dear friend, do not despair! You have come to a great Savior with a great salvation. He is greater than any one sin you have committed, greater than all of them put together. And, be joyful: when you realize how sinful you are, you know your forgiveness will have to be by grace! One more time: if you realize you can’t release yourself from the fightings and fears in and around you no matter what you try, be thankful that Jesus is your reliable and only hope. His cross is His payment for your well-deserved punishment. His empty tomb is your guarantee of life eternal with Him. Only with Him is there plenteous redemption, healing from the casualties of war!
Yes, there is a war going on inside you, but God refuses to lose it. That is to say, God refuses to lose you. In the Second Reading, James interestingly says, “The Scripture says, ‘[God] yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’”. On its face, that God would wish to be called “jealous” is startling. Usually when we say “jealous,” we are talking about sin. A jealous boyfriend, for instance, may be someone to get away from, lest he become an abusive, controlling husband. Jealous people around us may act vindictively and be unkind. But, hear this: If there is anyone you want to be jealous over you, it is God. For God to be jealous is for Him to wants you to Himself, and He does want no one else to have you—He does not want a false god or false idol, false doctrine, false hope, or the devil himself ever to have you. He says in giving the First Commandment, “For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:5‑6). Only God can be this kind of good jealous, jealous without sin, perfectly. And, we praise Him that He is.
Jealousy, in most cases, means that the jealous person does harm to another, because keeping another is all for the jealous person’s benefit. But, God’s jealousy is a protective jealousy, a guardian jealousy, a loving you with a perfect love, with no exception to treating you kindly. And, that’s for your benefit. So, James puts God’s merciful and holy jealousy in terms of grace: “But he gives more grace. . . . God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (4:6). Would that all jealous people did the same! We, humbled by our sins, are seen by our God who wants us only for Himself, and He, without hesitation, gives us more grace, so as to strengthen the relationship.
In the end, God’s jealousy triumphs and puts the competition out of our misery. The devil will certainly accuse us before God. Yet each day, God’s previous giving of more grace brings us again in gratitude to our knees, submitting before God each night at bedside, and resisting the devil through a faith that knows only Christ’s forgiveness. Each day our forgiving Lord calls us to go to those against whom we have sinned and seek to be reconciled, and the devil’s chaos gives way to God’s order. In a sense, forgiveness is God’s wonderful way of neutralizing the devil’s accusatory protests against us and having him flee from you and me. One day, the devil will, at Jesus’ command, be assigned permanently to his place, the place prepared for him and his angels, the place of eternal torment, hell, and he will be gone from us forever.
Until then, or our earthly deaths, whichever comes first, we live strengthened and nourished by God through His Word and Sacraments, especially in the Divine Service, from one Lord’s Day to the next. The final verses of today’s Second Reading seem to relate to that. James says, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you”. Such drawing near is especially the case in the Divine Service: The baptized enter where Jesus Himself is present and we live. James says, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded”. That statement echoes Psalm 24: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully” (Psalm 24:3-4). James is using Biblical words about the corporate worship of God’s people, is he not? That “holy hill” was the temple mount then, and now it is any gathering of pastor and people around the purely preached Gospel and the rightly administered Sacraments. James says, “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom”. Jesus Himself one time said, “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep” (Luke 6:25). The implication is, “Better to mourn and weep now, and live as God’s people, than not to repent, only to mourn and weep when you hear the verdict on the Last Day.” James agrees. Finally, James says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” God-given faith and Holy Spirit-led repentance make us humble before the Lord. And, that humility before the Lord comes full circle back to the meekness of wisdom where we started discussing today’s Second Reading and the peace whereby there is a harvest of peace for those who sow in peace.
God has a wonderful way of dealing with the war within, the war fed and funded by Satan. In this war, we have no peace, no hope—and never will—apart from a peace that the world cannot give. God has given you the grace of sins forgiven and the privilege of sowing in peace. In Him, we may live out all that happens this coming week with the meekness of wisdom. We who may have been brash in our sinning have now been humbled before God. God has seen to it. And, because He is a God who gives more grace, we are filled with living hope, able to withstand Satan’s schemes and live in the joy of salvation. God is pleased to exalt us—to raise us up to worship and serve, to love Him and our neighbor. The war with sin bows to God’s victory, and the passions fighting within us are overtaken with the peace that shall be sown according to God’s will and reaped in His good pleasure. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +