Dcn Susan Erickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today we celebrate the feast of St. James of Jerusalem (also called James the Just), the brother of our Lord and a martyr.

James may have been Jesus’ brother, but apparently that wasn’t enough to convince him of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. In fact, being Jesus’ brother may actually have worked against his realization of Jesus’ true identity; I can imagine James exclaiming: “What’s that you claim about my brother?! C’mon, we grew up together!” We infer James’ skepticism from a passage in the Gospel of John, Ch. 7:5: “(For not even his brothers believed in him.)”  

James seems to have undergone a conversion experience after Jesus’ resurrection. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8, that Jesus appeared to Peter and the disciples, then to “more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time,” then to James, and finally to Paul. 

But if James was late to believe in his human-divine brother, he made up for lost time. He was the head of the church in Jerusalem, where, among other issues, he had to deal with the difficult question whether Gentile followers of Christ were required to observe Jewish law.  The Jewish historian Josephus says that even the Pharisees admired James for his piety and his own strict observance of Mosaic law. 

But following Jesus does not always make for harmony, especially in a disharmonious world; our Gospel reading for today, from Matthew, warns that his followers “will be dragged before governors and kings because of me … Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name.” (Matt 10: 18, 21-22) James was eventually martyred, sometime around 60 CE. 

The special collect for today asks God to grant that the Church, following James’ example, “may give itself continually to prayer and to the reconciliation of all who are at variance and enmity. No matter in what stage of our life we begin to follow Jesus, we become part of His body, the Church. And as part of this body, it is never too late to practice prayer— Saint Philip’s gives us so many opportunities to pray together! Our personal and corporate prayer lives, in turn, equip us to be reconcilers, peacemakers. As Jesus tells his followers in Matthew, we don’t need to worry about whether we’ll find the right words, “for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”  (Matt 10: 19-20)

— Dcn Susan