The St. James learning curve [Feast of St. James the Greater]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Acts 11:27-12:5
• 1 Corinthians 4:9-15
• St. Matthew 20:20-23

To you who are called; to you who are beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ: mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.

           

Who speaks to you all today, saying,

“I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.”

When we talk about James, it is important to remember that there are 3 Jameses of the New Testament. There is St. James, the brother of Jesus, author of the epistle that bears his name. There is also St. James the lesser, son of Alphaeus and there is our James for today, a son of Zebedee, a son of Thunder. Called a son of thunder, along with his brother John, because they asked Jesus to call down fire from heaven upon a hostile-to-the-faith Samaritan village, in Luke 9.

Today’s celebration is one of martyrdom; laying down your life for the Faith and belief that God was made man. James gave his life for something he was taught; something he knew. “We speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony” (Jn. 3:11). For, as St. Paul says, “one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die” (Rom 5:7).

In this age of drone strikes, we are not asked to risk our own lives. St. James and the other Apostles are not dying on a whim or at the promise of riches or fame. They lived their entire lives in poverty and in constant threat to their lives and families. They were not simple martyrs dying for a small, lost cause that no one believed in. Not one of us would die for such a thing. They died, offered their lives up, because they knew.

They were all trained. Three years, or so, Jesus trained His Apostles before He ascended to heaven and sent them out. For three years, St. Paul was trained after his conversion, he did not just jump into it as most surmise. They listened. They studied. They learned to know and believe.

Dying is no small matter for us. In fact most Americans spend their whole life medicining death away, so it takes a complete convincing to even approach that level of dedication. We promise, in our confirmation, to die for the faith rather than give it up. So we read up on it and gather our info. This is why we bother to study theology, even when we think its unnecessary.

Do not be fooled. Theology literally means “God’s words”. You read the Bible, you’re a theologian. You think about God, you’re a theologian. It is not an area of study that we just “leave to the experts”, who simply make formula after formula, program after program complex and hard to follow. In fact, Theology can not be properly or even accurately understood without the role of faith in the life of the ordinary man. Jesus died for sinners, not for formulas or programs.

One of the lessons we get from studying theology is that the life of faith that we interact with in Church is not a given in nature. Fallen man did not suddenly grasp the context of religion towards God. These things needed to be revealed and re-taught over the course of thousands of years. God walked with Adam in the Garden. What were they doing? Schooling. The progression of the Bible is not an evolution of a religion, but a continued revelation and catechesis of Who God is.

More importantly, these things were not just revealed by miracles. God uses means. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all use means to accomplish all their goals. God chose human actors in history who withheld personal preference in order to hear and receive the revelation. Over time, the more that was preached by these men, the more later generations would benefit, finally being able to recognize Jesus when He was made man.

Yet, how the story goes, not everyone did. Even with the ultimate revelation there are still some who do not know you need to be born again and who do not believe in the Resurrection.

In the fallen world, life is nasty, brutish, and short. It is the darkness and old night of sin, where men live lives just getting by. It was theology, given by God; it was the revelation of the forgiveness of sins that allowed and does allow man to become a knowledgeable, physical communer with this current, prosperous age of the Church.

The world we see around us is a result of grace and we know this, not because we have guessed, tested, and compared societies that have theology against those that don’t. Instead, we know this because God understands the necessary relationships we have with each other, with Him, and with the world and urges us to be taught.

In studying theology, we are given the ability to interpret the course of history, to appreciate and hold in high regard the contributions of the Gospel in the Church, and determine virtue and what is best in life. In this light, you become a preserver of forgiveness in your home and in your community.

You bear the burden of ensuring that the forgiveness of sins is preached and the Sacraments administered according to the Gospel. But we are prone to wrong decisions, and intellectuals, the masses, the politicians, and the media continue to hate the Church. They propagate a different religion which undermines faith and even the regular lives of people around the world, wishing destruction rather than peace.

Support what you like or it goes away. Teach your children or someone else will. Live by your values or you will be a slave to others’ values. This is why understanding theology is important. A fractured, multi-denominational church and the false hope of false gods from state and society alike, make studying an imperative, now more than ever. 

This is not simply an intellectual endeavor. There is beauty in understanding these things. Being able to see more and more through God’s eyes, puts color into a gray world. Learning more and more of how things are supposed to be, assembles the world into its proper places like a puzzle. This knowledge banishes fear and is the Rock promised.

Faith is intellectual and spiritual. All the pieces fall into perfect place in the faith of St. James and all the Apostles. So much so that they give up family and livelihood in order to prove it. And what is this perfect place the Apostles found or rather that found them?

Hebrews 5 tells us: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who listen to him” (5:7-9).

St. James and the Apostles, armed with the certainty of the perfect and Resurrected Jesus, were able to climb that last hurdle and suffer and die as their God did. They had to learn about it. It had to be revealed to them, first by the Mary’s, then by Jesus, the God-man, Himself.

I do not write these things to make you ashamed (1 Cor 4:14), says St. Paul. Jesus does not present His Bible to you to make you feel dumb or intimidated. He presents holy Scripture AND His holy Body and Blood in order that you hear, see, taste, touch, and smell and believe. He unites spiritual with physical learning to give you the answers you seek. 

“Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105)

“grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 3:18)

Knowing and learning doesn’t grant you grace and forgiveness and peace with God. Only Christ can give that and He does, for free. Your knowing and learning is for your benefit so that you do not play with intellectual fire, chasing after this or that fancy speaker, but with water, Word, and Body and Blood. 

Miracle upon miracle, we live in the Age of the Church. We live in the era where Grace wins out over all. Where knowing the Lord is not enough. St. Jeremiah says, “No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’”

Knowing is not just study of ink and paper or even turning your life around. Knowing is being forgiven. Knowing is finding communion with Jesus. Knowing is living the life of faith built around Christ and His Church and confessing the same. We must read and understand theology because in knowledge is truth and in truth there is hope. 

In order to know God we must know Christ. In order to know Christ we must find where He has promised to be. In order to find Him, we must hear Him and how can we hear if someone is not preaching. “And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” (Rom 10:15) and faith comes by hearing.

The Father sends the Son. The Son sends His Apostles. The Apostles send the pastors. The pastors preach and teach the Gospel of Christ, that is the free forgiveness of sins in Jesus. The Spiritual sends the physical and the physical lives like the spiritual. St. James goes and literally sticks his neck out for his Savior’s Church. Not a book. Not a class. Not a curriculum. But a Bridegroom and a Bride.

A Bridegroom that promises resurrection to His Bride, because even though she learns all there is to know, she will still face the unknown; she will still face death. But her catechesis and study has led her there. Jesus brings you to that portal, but because of the cross, it leads to bliss untold. And there in shining, gold letters it is written:

"Who there My cross has shared. Finds here a crown prepared; Who there with Me has died. Shall here be glorified."