READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 62:6-12
Romans 6:19-23
- St. Mark 8:1-9
Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Savior. (Titus 1:4)
Who speaks to you from the Gospel reading today, saying:
“just as the Son
of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a
ransom for many.”
On this the Feast Day of St. James, we honor him by
worshipping. That is, gathering together with the risen Christ and His church
to receive His gifts of forgiveness and life. The Apostles and prophets had no
gift, forgiveness, or life that was their own, therefore they are not meant to
be invoked or depended on for mediation.
But are to be honored by our thanks to God for them, our
strengthened faith because of them, and our following their example of faith
and good works.
Saint James became the first martyr of the twelve apostles.
But we know practically nothing from the Scriptures about his life and
ministry. This is the St. James of “and Jesus took with Him Peter, James,
and John” fame, gaining the nickname “Sons of Thunder” for saying to Jesus “Is
it Your will that we call fire from heaven to consume [these sinners]” in
St. Luke 9:54.
This St. James, one of the first Apostles called by Jesus,
granted to see Christ transfigured on the mount, and His deepest agony in
Gethsemane, has only seven Greek words, 10 in English, to describe his service
and martyrdom, “He killed James the brother of John with the sword” (Acts
12:2).
And of course, it was a Herod who killed him. A grandson of
the Herod that went after Jesus in Bethlehem, with the sword, after Christmass.
But that’s it and that is all we are given and it is more than enough. For we
are not to worship James, but Jesus.
St. James doesn’t even get his own name. James, the name, is
an English translation of the Biblical name, Jacob. In the New Testament, it is
Iakobos. Jacob became James through the Latin via the Greek translation of the
Bible. So even his own name is not his own.
However, there was one thing that James had that Jacob did
not. And though the epistle to the Hebrews says that Jacob died in the Faith,
being an heir of the Promise of God, 11:13 reveals that Jacob died “not
having received the things promised”.
This is the Jacob that wrestled with God, that saw Jesus on
a ladder stretching from earth to heaven, and that inherited the most fertile
and prosperous part of all Egypt. He did not receive the Promise. Where Jacob
prospered, James suffered. Where Jacob amassed wealth, James was a fisherman.
But where Jacob missed Easter morning, James did not.
Though each lived their lives, each bore their cross. And
each, like every Apostle and Prophet gave up everything and followed Jesus.
They committed themselves to the Lord and to His message. And that message is a
message of prosperity, but prosperity through the cross of Christ. It is also a
message of suffering, but suffering in order to produce eternal glory.
You see, when we celebrate the saints, we are to do it in
three ways. The first is to give thanks to God, not for the men, but for
examples of His mercy shown to men. As St. Paul says, “For this reason,
because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all
the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you” (Eph 1:15-16).
It is through the saints and the patriarchs, we are shown
God’s true Will, that is to show mercy. This is what is witnessed to us, by our
reading from the Book of Sirach, this morning.
Though not a part of Holy Scripture to be used for
determining doctrine, it is none the less good to read. For the part of the
Bible Sirach is in, the Apocrypha, is found in the oldest copy of the Old
Testament we have, dated to about 200 years before Jesus and still used, read,
and quoted by the Apostles and Church after Jesus.
And in it, we hear today of God’s mercy. In fact, in a
previous verse of Sirach, he tells of a “man of mercy” Who shows God’s mercy
and is shown God’s mercy. The book goes on to use Moses, Isaac, and Jacob to
describe how this mercy works and to whom it is given, as we heard.
Thus secondly, we receive encouragement from remembering the
saints, to use God’s gifts, remember His mercy to us, and strengthen our own
faith in them. Jacob and James were not successful on their own. They believed
the Word of God and it was counted to them as righteousness.
Jacob trusted in the coming Messiah, Who would show mercy to
his sinful life and his family. James trusted in the Messiah Who Had Come,
suffering, dying, and rising again to produce eternal life for all who believe.
The saints push us towards Word and Sacrament in order to use God’s gifts
rightly and increase faith.
Finally, in that same forgiveness of sins, we imitate the
saints’ faith and good works. By faith we mean their trust in God’s Word and
belief in His promises. And by good works, we don’t mean all or any of the
works of men, as if aping what Jacob literally did in his whole life, nor even
seeking out a martyr’s suffering and death.
By good works, we mean the daily struggle of the Christian
life against his own sin, the world, and the power of the devil. For a good
work, in God’s sight, is everything a child of God does, speaks, or thinks in
faith according to the 10 commandments, for the glory of God, and for the
benefit of his neighbor. Jesus says, “He who abides in Me, and I in him,
bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).
So we come to see that the shared glory between Jacob and
James, Old Testament and New Testament, saints and you is the same glory of
God: Jesus Christ. You do not wait for a pope to canonize you after death; your
baptism has already canonized you in the courts of heaven.
Between the Bridegroom and the Bride, The Bride brings all
her debts, sins, and death to the marriage. Christ takes them upon Himself and
dies for them. In return, Christ gives the Bride His endless righteousness,
life, and sainthood. Baptized into His Body, you are a new Creation.
Hopefully you see now, that the saints and the patriarchs
are not so far away as we maybe feared, but are now a part of the great cloud
of witnesses, that company of heaven that follows in His train to Jesus’s call
to worship each Lord’s Day.
And in His Call is death. Death to the world and death to
self. For there is your martyrdom. And it may be worse than facing the sword.
For, “martyrdom is aided by an agitated time, an emotional disposition, and it
is often quickly won; it only takes a brief moment. But being faithful in
little things involves bearing patiently the quiet tedium of a monotonous,
elapsing life to the praise of the Lord.” (Löhe, The Word Remains, p. 81)
"It is a hidden glory in the Christian life to practice
faithfulness in little things, that is, in one’s vocation; yet it is more
difficult and more glorious than martyrdom.” Because since we carry the name
“Christ” in the world, we should expect to dress like Him: in hunger, in
thirst, in wounds, and in death.
Being conformed to His Image is more than “playing nice”. It
is dying and rising to new life. A moral and honorable life is a part of that,
but Christ did not die to give us a moral life. He took on flesh to succeed
where Jacob failed. Jesus is faithful, chaste, and the Husband of one wife. And
where James failed to preach to the whole world and come back from the dead,
Jesus does that.
Jesus is the honor of the martyrs, therefore the best way to
honor the saints is to believe their word and do what they would have done:
invoke and pray to Jesus. They would have devoted themselves to the Apostle’s
teaching. They would have joined in fellowship of believers. They would have
had the breaking of the bread each Lord’s Day and they would be constant in
prayer.
It should not be difficult to envision a life of sainthood
or martyrdom. Jesus calls us by our baptism to new life every day, giving us
His death and His resurrection. And though St. James got to be the first of the
12 to be martyred for the faith, and though he got to walk with Jesus, and
though he raised the dead and did other miracles, his main gift to us is the
faith.
The “faith which was once for all delivered to the
saints” (Jude 1:3), “the prophetic word more fully confirmed” (2 Pet
1:19), and the servanthood of Christ and stewardship of the sacraments of
God (1 Cor 4:1). In this way, you remember St. James in the best way possible: in
the very same faith and in the very same Church he preached, suffered, and died
for.
Amen.
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