We saw, in our last sermon, that James is concerned with how his readers think, how they look at their lives in this world. Christian discipleship leads to a complete reversal in our outlook toward trials and difficulties; we’re to look at trials in terms of what they’re accomplishing rather than how they feel, and are to “count it pure joy” when we encounter trials of all sorts. In verses 9-11, James is continuing this same general approach. He’s concerned here with how we think about material wealth, and the same general principle applies here: Christian discipleship leads to a complete reversal in the way we value the things of this world.
The singer-songwriter Ken Medema has a song called “Flying Upside Down.” It begins with these words: “All your life you have been learnin’/ Every kinda way to get ahead/ You’ve got to build yourself a future/ Those are the words your daddy said/ Now there is another calling/ It’s tellin’ you to change your mind/ Tells you finding leads to losing/ Tells you losing lets you find.” He’s paraphrasing Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:39: “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give it up for me, you will find it” (NLT). Medema goes on: “The bottom line of your survival/ is you better take care of number one/ You don’t want to hurt somebody/ but you’re gonna do what must be done/ There’s a message on the wire/ And you’ve ignored it in the past/ It says the least will be the greatest/ it says the first will be the last/ Yeah the first will be the last/ Turn it over/ turn it round/ Raise the humble and free the bound/ Down is up and up is down/ This world looks different to ya/ When you’re flying upside down.”
Following Jesus leads us to live in ways that don’t make sense to the world. As we seek to live in obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we find ourselves valuing things that the world thinks are worthless, ordering our lives according to priorities that are exactly opposite those of the world. Donald Kraybill, who works at Elizabethtown College, wrote a book on the Kingdom of God entitled The Upside Down Kingdom. Here’s something he says in the book: “The Gospels portray the kingdom of God as inverted or upside down in comparison with both ancient Palestine and modern ways.... Kingdom players follow new rules. They listen to another coach. Kingdom values challenge patterns of social life taken for granted in modern culture. Kingdom habits don’t mesh smoothly with dominant cultural trends. They may, in fact, look foolish” (p. 19). James knows the dominant cultural trends, and he wants his readers to realize that following Jesus turns those things upside down. Submitting to the lordship of Jesus Christ changes the way we think about our lives in this world.
The first thing James says is that the poor, rather than envying the rich, have reason to boast: “The brother who is poor may be glad because God has called him to the true riches” (J.B. Phillips). The temptation is always for the poor to envy the rich. Politicians capitalize on this. They know that it’s easy to get support for anything that penalizes the rich. So, when they want to raise taxes, they’ll often put it in terms of making the rich pay their fair share, because they know this is a popular idea. They’re capitalizing on the sin of envy, and they end up doing harm by encouraging people to cultivate a destructive vice. Envy may be good for winning votes, but it destroys our souls.
James is saying to his readers, “if you envy the rich, you really don’t understand what’s going on. God has given you reason to boast.” He’s telling them, “you need to stop listening to what the world is telling you is important; the world has everything backwards.” In chapter one, James introduces a number of subjects that he comes back to and develops later on. In chapter two, he says this about the poor: “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” (2:5). It’s not that poverty in itself is a virtue. He’s not praising all the poor here; he’s speaking to “the brother in humble circumstances.” He’s speaking to believers who are poor. And he’s saying to them, “God has given you great riches in Himself; He’s made you heirs of His kingdom.” Contrary to all appearances, they have an exalted position in the Church.
Francis Bernardone was born into a prosperous family. His father was a cloth merchant, who naturally expected his son to work at the same trade. But Francis experienced a powerful conversion when he was in his early twenties, and committed his life to radical discipleship. This brought him into conflict with his father, who couldn’t understand the choices he was making. He was doing things that didn’t make sense economically. After a series of incidents, they were both summoned before the bishop. Here’s how one biographer describes the scene: “He stood up before them all and said, ‘Up to this time I have called Pierre Bernardone father, but now I am the servant of God. Not only the money but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father, even the very clothes he has given me.’ And he rent off all his garments except one; and they saw that that was a hair shirt. He piled the garments in a heap on the floor and tossed the money on top of them. Then he turned to the bishop, and received his blessing, like one who turns his back on society.... He went out half-naked in his hair shirt into the winter woods, walking the frozen ground between the frosty trees; a man without a father. He was penniless, he was parentless, he was to all appearances without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as he went under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song” (G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi, p. 48).
Francis made what looked like a very imprudent financial decision. He had it made, in many ways, if he had been willing to follow in his father’s footsteps. But God had taken hold of his life and was calling him to lay all that aside. We know him today as St. Francis of Assisi, but to the people of the town of Assisi on that day, no doubt he looked like an unbalanced fanatic, maybe even a fool. For the next twenty-one years, he lived a life of voluntary poverty in identification with Jesus, who was born in a stable and died on a common criminal’s cross. Here’s what he said about himself and his followers: “If we had any possessions we should be forced to have arms to protect them, since possessions are a cause of disputes and strife, and in many ways we should be hindered from loving God and our neighbor. Therefore, in this life, we wish to have no temporal possessions” (quoted by John Michael Talbot, The Lessons of St. Francis, p. 20). “Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up.” Why? Because God has given us great riches in Himself. If we envy the rich, we don’t understand what’s going on. We don’t understand the riches we have in Christ.
But not all believers are poor, and not all are called to embrace a life of voluntary poverty, like St. Francis of Assisi. So James goes on to say that the rich, rather than being puffed up with pride, have reason to be humbled. Although in the eyes of the society they may be highly esteemed because of their wealth, in the church they have no special status. They’ve been brought down to size. They’ve seen themselves as poor in spirit, sinners in need of God’s mercy. They’ve been humbled by realizing the truth about themselves.
Why is James concerned about the rich being humbled? Because their wealth exposes them to temptation and spiritual danger. Unless they’re humbled before God, their wealth is likely to destroy them spiritually. He wants them to boast in their low position, in the fact that their wealth is of no eternal value and is insignificant to their status in the Church. Rather than boasting in their wealth and prestige, he wants them to boast in their weakness and spiritual poverty as a protection against the temptation to pride.
Two things can help them keep their wealth in perspective. First, their riches are precarious and uncertain. The translations and commentators are slightly divided about the end of verse 10. The NRSV has “the rich will disappear like a flower of the field.” The majority of translations I consulted are similar. But in a few the phrase refers, not to the rich person, but to his wealth: “Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don’t ever count on it” (The Message). Or the Jerusalem Bible: “because riches last no longer than the flowers in the grass.” Among commentators, John Calvin supports this idea that the phrase refers to the precariousness of riches, not of the rich person. Either translation is possible, but I lean slightly toward this second option. James seems to be saying, in verse 10, “don’t boast about your riches, because they won’t last.”
Whether or not he has this in mind in verse 10, James understood that material wealth is precarious and uncertain. That was Jesus’ point in the Sermon on the Mount (and James often seems to have the Sermon on the Mount in the back of his mind as he’s writing): “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19). Treasures on earth are subject to corruption and loss. They’re subject to powers that are beyond our control. When the OM ship Doulos was in South America in the late 70's, they had a dramatic experience of this. Over one weekend they had very strong book sales; on Sunday night they had the equivalent of $30,000 or so onboard the ship. But the economy crashed, and by the time they got to the bank, the value of the local currency had dropped by more than 50 per cent. In a matter of hours, they had lost more than $15,000. Material wealth is precarious and uncertain. It’s subject to powers that are beyond our control. Even if we acquire great wealth, we could be reduced to poverty by the end of our lives.
The other thing that helps us keep wealth in perspective is knowing that our lives are precarious and uncertain. That’s James’ main point in verse 11: “Well, that’s a picture of the ‘prosperous life.’ At the very moment everyone is looking on in admiration, it fades away to nothing” (The Message). Our lives are quickly passing by, and we can’t take our earthly treasures with us. Jesus makes the same point in Luke 12: “‘Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.’ Then he told them this story: ‘The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: “What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.” Then he said, “Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of our life.” Just then God showed up and said, “Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods – who gets it?” (Luke 12:15-20, The Message). Knowing these two things: that our wealth is uncertain and can be lost at any time, and that our lives are quickly passing by, can help us keep material possessions in the proper perspective. Rather than being puffed up with pride, we have reason to humble ourselves before God, before whom we will one day, maybe one day very soon, give an account.
The third thing isn’t stated explicitly in verses 9-11. James is building on what he said in verse 2: “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy.” God is present in your life and is doing things that you can’t see. The same thing is true with our material possessions. The really important thing is not how much you have, but faithfulness to God who is the source of all good things and who will call us to account, not for how much we’ve made, but for how we’ve made use of the resources He’s entrusted to us. So, in the light of this, cultivate an attitude of contentment with His provision.
That’s Paul’s point near the end of Philippians: “Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am” (Philippians 4:11-13, The Message). He can do that, not because he’s resigned himself to accept the things he can’t change. He can do this “in the One who makes me who I am,” in Christ. This contentment is something Paul has learned, something he’s cultivated as he’s grown in obedience to Christ.
As we saw in the last sermon, James wants us to experience a transformation in our outlook. He wants us to have a longer-term perspective on our lives in this world. He’s reminding us of something we tend to forget. He has these verses from Isaiah in mind as he’s writing: “A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:6-8). Our lives are passing by very quickly. Our material possessions are unstable and can be lost in an instant. In the long run, none of it means much. What matters is obedience to God; what matters is that we learn to give thanks to Him in every situation, knowing that He is purifying us and preparing us to live with Him in eternity. If you’re poor, know that God has given you great riches. If you’re wealthy, humble yourself before God, acknowledging your spiritual poverty, coming to Him with empty hands. Either way, cultivate an attitude of contentment and gratitude for God’s gracious care and provision. During this Lenten season we’re celebrating the fact that Jesus, though He was rich, became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9). So, as James says in verse 2, “consider it pure joy” whether He’s provided you, at this point in your life, with little or with much.
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