Thursday, September 10, 2015

James 3:1-12

Year B - Pentecost +15 or Energy to Witness 15
September 13, 2015


From the same heart and mouth come a blessing and a curse, a spring and a slough.

This is our reality. No matter how we hedge ourselves round with rule and regulation, law (stick) and grace (carrot), we find our teaching but an extension of our biases, our discipleship a Procrustean Bed for seekers.

James, stuck between Hebrews and 1 Peter, searches for an internal purity/unity that is revealed in one context after another as one or more blessings: peaceful, gentle, revealing, filled with mercy and acts of goodness, fair, and/or genuine (3:17). With an example of the first to trigger additional examples for the remainder of the list: Peace sows the seed of Justice in the very act of Peace (3:18) [Want Justice? Practice Peace.]

Here then (after the pericope ends) we cycle back through the impossibilities of discipleship:

  • follow your gifts to your consequence and thus lead the rest of us
  • claiming your life only comes in emptying/losing your life
  • to reveal glory, shame is carved away

= = = = = = =




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