Pure Joy? Homily for Monday, February 12, 2024

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The book of James is hard core. Short, but blunt. And it is blunt right from the start. “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials.”

Pure Joy?

I have to say that the book of James is one of my favorite in the New Testament. It has kind of an interesting kind of, I don’t know, a tone to it in terms of trying to be authentic with the living of the faith. It’s short and to the point, but it stresses some things that are very important.

It’s in the book of James, for example, that we hear, “What good is it to say to your brother, ‘Go out and be well fed,’ and whatever if you don’t give them anything to eat?” It talks about the connection between faith and works and that without works faith is dead.

It is just right at the heart of so many things, and it’s challenging. The reformer, Martin Luther, didn’t like this book. In fact, he didn’t like it so much he didn’t think it was inspired. He took it out because of this connection between faith and works. Faith alone. “Sola fide” is the expression if you were a good Lutheran at one time.

Now, the Lutherans put it back in, so I’m not trying to stir a war here, but the point is that this is a really, really challenging letter if we take it to heart because what it’s really saying to us is kind of a version, a faith version, shall you say, of “Put your money where your mouth is. Show me the works, the actions, the whatever. We can say anything. I want to see what you do as well.”

But the challenge for today to me is this very beginning. Consider it all joy, brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials. Now, I don’t know about you. I don’t like trials. I don’t like when things don’t go my way. I certainly don’t consider it all joy that I have difficulty in suffering.

We live in an age, I just read an article not too long ago, where things like anxiety and depression are high and this psychologist was saying that part of the challenge with anxiety is that we believe, we’ve come to believe at this point in our life, that we should eliminate all anxiety. And so when we feel anxiety, it magnifies the anxiety because we think we shouldn’t have any and we say, “Oh my gosh.”

Now, I’m not suggesting that people that deal with anxiety should not do what they need to do and that was not his point either. His point was maybe to be a little bit more realistic about the way life is going to be. Some things are going to make us anxious. I can only imagine.

We’ve got young parents here. There’s a lot of anxiety that comes with raising a little boy, although your little boy, I think, is such an angel and he’s so perfect that there’s probably no anxiety in your life whatsoever. But there is something of an insight into James, particularly perhaps as we start the season of Lent. Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials.

You know, I’ve had experiences in my life where I’ve encountered people who really haven’t seemed to have experienced any trials and they can’t understand the suffering of others. They can’t understand why people just can’t do X or Y or Z or whatever it is.

It can be that way in our own life too, that without trials, we can begin to think that we don’t need God, that we don’t in our lives have any use for God because everything is perfect. And that’s the point that James is getting at. We need to be people of faith. And so like the apostles asked Jesus, let us too ask Jesus, “Lord, increase our faith.”

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