Sheringham: St Peter

According to the Church Year, this weekend we in the Church of England celebrate the Festival of St. James the Apostle. The actual day was Saturday 25 July, but it is our privilege to consider James’s life and ministry together today.

James is usually spoken of in conjunction with his brother, John. They were Galilean fishermen, sons of Zebedee and as such, worked in a business partnership with another pair of fishermen brothers, Simon and Andrew. All four were among the first people to be invited by Jesus, a Rabbi, originally from Nazareth, to follow him as his disciples in the Rabbinic tradition.

By all accounts, James and his brother were men of a quite fiery temperament - as evidenced in the fact that Jesus pointedly called them “Sons of Thunder” (“Boanerges,” in Aramaic/Hebrew), which might explain some of their later behaviour. At least their mother (Salome, thought to be Mary’s sister and so Jesus’ aunt!) thought highly of them though; so much so that, according to Matthew’s gospel, she dared to intercede on their behalf, even asking if they might be appointed high positionsin the coming kingdom of heaven (on Jesus’s “right and left” - equivalent in modern government we might say, to Prime Minister and Home Secretary, for example!) Mark, however, suggests that the brothers asked this favour from Jesus of their own accord.

Which would be just like them!

Either way, the other disciples were not impressed, to say the least!

The brothers (along with Simon and Andrew) were both present during some of the most significant moments of Jesus’s ministry including the Transfiguration, Jesus’s traumatic conversation with the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, and athis subsequent arrest.

On a side note: James the Apostle should not be confused with the James who wrote the Epistle of James that we have in our Bibles. That James was a later follower and pillar of the church in Jerusalem who indeed, in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, is identified as Jesus’ brother. As such, he might even have been one of the family who earlier considered Jesus to be insane! (Mark 3:20-21).

Back to our thunderous James, though!

Clearly, he was a passionate follower of Jesus, even to taking upon himself what might be considered over-protective duties.Luke recounts that when the time was approaching for Jesus to head up to Jerusalem to face his destiny, he sent some of his followers on ahead to prepare for his arrival in an upcoming village. The villagers’ response was far from welcoming (after all, why would they be? Jews and Samaritans hated and despised one another!) James and John’s response was, literally, fiery! Perhaps, still reflecting upon the extraordinary events of the Transfiguration, which had included that visionary encounter with Elijah, they asked whether they could call down fire on these unbelievers in the same way as Elijah had done on the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel!

“No!” Jesus cried out. “You do not realise by what spirit you are responding here!” Unlike Elijah’s mission of judgment, Jesus implies, his was a mission of salvation. Insult is not a pretext for injury! The challenge, then, for us today as then, is whether being right or having a just cause justifies the use of reactive force or violence. Just because Elijah in his day and in accordance with his prophetic calling was permitted to call down fire, it does not follow that Jesus’ followers should do the same! The Law of Love Jesus had come to proclaim and practice legislates against retributive violence. As Jesus had pointed out before, the old system of “an eye for an eye” has been overtaken by the new one based on love and forgiveness. James, along with his fellow apprentices, had yet to understand that violence only begets violence, and that Jesus had come to break that cycle of death by dying and forgiving rather than killing and exacting retributive vengeance. His resurrection would only reinforce this total revolution in thought and behaviour, because in it lies the power to live a whole new way of life!

For James and John, the consequences of following Jesus and living by his law of love were to be for them of the utmostkind: They wanted equality with him; so, it would be, for they would experience the same ‘baptism’ of death as their Master’s.

“You do not know what you are asking for,” Jesus challenges them; “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”

“Yes, we can!” reply the over confidant and self-assured brothers.

“Just so,” Jesus warns, “You will indeed drink from the same cup of suffering as I.”

As indeed he did: James was one of the first of the Apostles to be murdered – put to the sword - under the Roman authorities, by order of Herod Agrippa the First.

What might be our take-away from the life and example of James? The account of the life of James the Apostle shows us how well Jesus knows our nature: He identified James as a “son of thunder” right away. So too, Jesus patiently works with us to graciously conform us to His will, just as He did with James. We also learn from the life of James that courage in our service to Christ is a valuable asset in spreading the gospel—although it might well make us the target of persecution. At the same time, for some of us, boldness should not be allowed to descend into brashness. Yet, by the transforming power and restraining presence of the Holy Spirit, our zeal will be tempered with grace, and our inclination to impetuosity curtailed by a steady commitment to - and conformity with - the will of God. Let us, like James, be bold enough to passionately preach and practice Christ. Amen.

Toby Perks, LLM in training

Sheringham: St Peter

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