(James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a) 

 Who is wise and understanding among you?  Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.  But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.  Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.  For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder, and wickedness of every kind.  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.  And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?  Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?  You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder.  And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.  You do not have, because you do not ask.  You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures….  Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

In our Monday afternoon book study we are reading and discussing the book Holy Hell wherein the author, our former pastor, Derek Kubilus, is making a case against the concept of eternal damnation.  Inevitably, in our meetings, we’re gonna find ourselves having conversations about how one gets to heaven or avoids being condemned to hell.  Whether or not we think there is a hell, this thinking is baked into our culture.  How to get to heaven.  How to avoid hell. 

We Protestants have decided to go full bore on the “you will be saved and will get to heaven only if you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior.”  If you’ve done this, then you have your ticket.  Within that is built the steps that you must go through to be sure of your eternal destiny. 

In a sort of parallel way of thinking are the rules for Catholics in which you must not commit sins, especially mortal sins, and, if you do, you must confess to your priest and receive forgiveness after you’ve done penance.  Then you should be okay, but with certain exceptions, like if you’re of another religion.

…Today’s lesson from James gives us a glimpse of a thinker and writer from, perhaps, a hundred years after Jesus walked the earth.  But James has a bit of a different approach to the matter of what we might call “conversion.”  Most of our church tradition has relied upon the Apostle Paul and his letters and the writers who followed Paul. 

The Book of James seems to me to be more in the school of what we call Wisdom Literature.  He has similarities to the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and a few other Old Testament books.  A good way to read James is with fresh eyes.  We need to see him having a rational way of talking to us about how we live. 

He begins today’s reading with calling his readers to a good life.  And that good life is defined as ensuring that our works are done with gentleness that comes from wisdom from above.

He immediately switches to how we will inevitably get off-track from this simple path, and he gives us a detailed list of problems beginning with “…if you have envy and bitterness and selfish ambition, then don’t be arrogant and lie.”  And where there is envy and that selfish ambition, we are given to understand that that is not God’s wisdom.

And here’s the proof.  This is the list from James that we must go through in order to know what is of God and what is not.  The wisdom from above is pure, it is peaceable, it is gentle, it is willing to yield, it is full of mercy and good works.  If it’s from above there will be no showing favorites or pretending how holy we are. 

Many times over my years in ministry, I and the members of Bible Study classes have posed the question, “How can we know who is truly of God and who is a poser?”  Now, you may think that you will know, but the truth is that many of us have been taken in by those who are motivated only by ego, those who know how to manipulate and pull the wool over our eyes.  Just ask the folks who have given tens of thousands of dollars to TV preachers who prey on people who respond to their every request.  Those would be among the worst case scenario situations, but, to tell the truth, many of us have been taken in by others’ egos and manipulations.  

Had we and the folks who were taken in asked the questions that James gives us, we may have been more alert.  So, there are many who think they have wisdom, but that “wisdom” may not be from God.  It may be driven by envy and self-centeredness. 

There is that, but James is also giving us a warning about how we may fall into a life of envy and self-centeredness.  This very human way of being competitive and living as though there isn’t enough for everyone has us always seeking to come out on top.  This is the opposite of striving to be people of integrity.

Does our wisdom come from God and is it pure?  Are we rigid or are we willing to yield?  Are we full of mercy (as in willing to forgive and understanding ourselves as forgiven)?  Do we do good works because it’s the right thing or are we just showing off?  Is our piety only to look holy instead of having integrity and being authentic?

James doesn’t stop there.  He talks a lot about envy.  Envy, he says, is at the heart of the human failings.  It is about believing that there is never enough, believing that we live in a world of scarcity and that our God is one of scarcity rather than abundance.  When we are in a state of envy, of jealousy, we think that our worth is wrapped up in what we can acquire and possess. 

Having more, we foolishly think, is what makes us worthy and important.  This puts us in competition with each other because we get hung up on thinking that there is only so much to be had; there is only so much worthiness and importance.  Then we become hate-filled, faithless, competitive and arrogant.  The sin of pride is the natural logical consequence of envy. 

We must honestly look at ourselves, because in our culture we kind of think that we can exist in both worlds.  We think we can have the wisdom from above, that is, from God, yet live in the wisdom from below, exercising the ways of envy and pridefulness.

If this section of James is about conversion to God’s ways, we must be very clear that this is a process, that we will never get it exactly right.  And we must know that the natural logical consequence of living as envious and prideful people is that we will tolerate bad stuff: dishonesty, manipulation, violence, people crippled by poverty, no health care, children who are hungry and deprived of a decent education. 

… James is very realistic about how we must always be on the road to conversion, that we can never give in to the ways of envy and pride. 

We must beware of proudly claiming faith in Christ when our attitudes and actions are not fully aligned with God.  Getting this right requires a lifetime of work, and we’re always backsliding on this.  To imagine that one decision, one moment of conversion is all it will take for us to be in complete alignment with God is to be unrealistic about our humanness.  This denies the struggle that we live with.  We people of good will want to be faithful.  We desire to live into the wisdom from above.

…Now, back to where we began.  You may have noticed that there is no talk of heaven or hell in today’s scripture text, but there is a lot of talk about how we conduct our lives and how we make decisions every day whether to live out of God’s wisdom or what passes for wisdom here in our world.

There is no talk about a one-off decision that will cement our eternal destiny, but there is a lot of talk about how we conduct ourselves and how we make our everyday decisions. 

There is no talk about seeking forgiveness from a religious authority and that that is the only way for us to find a way of living that will have us in friendship with God. 

There is, though, a call for people to be in charge of their everyday lives, a call to each of us to come away from envy and pridefulness, to work on a life of faith that requires us to keep our eyes upon the divine, the wisdom from above and to not be tempted into thinking that we can manage all this by ourselves. 

There is the calling to us to a life that is not based on envy or acquisition or who comes away with the most money or accolades or attention or power.  It is a study in choosing a life of works done with gentleness and a humble lifestyle.  It is about living a life of righteousness and justice that is sown in peace by those who have made it their business to be peace-makers.

It comes down to this.  Nothing about this is easy.  Life is not cut and dried.  It requires work, yes, but we can do this if we have God’s vision for our lives, a wisdom from above, a sense of where we don’t want to go and a determination to live our life free of envy and selfishness.

I have ordered us some signs that have been made for United Methodist Churches around us.  We have 10 coming: 1 for the church, and the rest can be had for 6 bucks apiece.  They have the UM logo on them and they say simply “Love Your Neighbor.”

This is at the heart of what James is saying.  It cuts directly to what it means to live in the wisdom from above.  And it is so very appropriate in these times in our nation’s politics.  We are going to love our neighbor and demonstrate this wisdom to the world.  This does not mean that we accept the unacceptable.  It does not mean we allow hateful talk or behavior.  It means we love our neighbor, no exceptions.  This is the wisdom from above.