Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.
Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.
In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge said:
“After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of the opinion that the great majority of people will always find these the moving impulses of our life.”
Coolidge's words apply today. That the great majority of those who presently support giving businesses and corporations free rein do not benefit from such policies does not seem to concern them.
Or perhaps St. James?
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed, Tim. Thanks to you, the mistake was posted for less than an hour before correction.
ReplyDeleteHow could I make such a mistake? The citation is right below the title.
I'm teaching an adult Bible Study on James and we are reading just this passage this week. I am not sure that my folks are making the connection either.... I think for many people, translating the Biblical situations into today's world is difficult. They were taught not to do that for themselves but to rely on their pastor to do that. Or they were taught not to inquire into the Bible beyond what it says on its face (which has the effect of limiting what it says to the historical situation that prompted the writing). And so such translation strikes them as taking perhaps unholy liberties.
ReplyDeleteI do what I can to encourage them to treat the Scriptures as the living word of God and to do just what you have done here - to ask ourselves "where do we see this going on here and now? But it takes a long time, I think (and perhaps the experience, or non-experience, of not being smitten for doing so!) and sometimes we are sad to discover that we are in fact often aligned with the Pharisees.
It is sad to see so many in our country (that the right insists is a "Christian nation") doing all they can to convince the disadvantaged to act against their own interests and instead support the systems that disdain and oppress them. But as we see in James, this is nothing new.
Penny, it's often difficult to get folks to see that God's word lives today. One of the wisest bits of advice I ever heard was to take everything I read in the Bible as directed to me, the good as well as the corrective passages. You see, for far too long when I'd read or hear certain passages, I'd think, "Oh so-and-so really needs to hear that and change her/his ways!" No. That's not how it works. The words were for me. Following that advice has set me free. I will pray for the members of your Bible Study class.
ReplyDeleteCaring for the least amongst us is the golden thread that runs all through the Hebrew Testament and the New Testament, not just for individuals, but for whole societies.
it's often difficult to get folks to see that God's word lives today
ReplyDeleteI don't understand that though. If they think it isn't living today, what is the point of any of it? In a sense, how could you be a Christian at all?
Cathy, exactly. What's the point of reading and hearing the messages in the Bible over and over if the words were only for the people of the time?
ReplyDeleteQuite often, I get new insights from passages that I've heard or read many times, which, to me, is the work of the Holy Spirit, if we are led by the insights to bear good fruit.
The verse that skewered me this morning at Morning Prayer when I read this passage was this one:
ReplyDelete'Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin'.
Ouch!
I guess we all stumble daily over that one, Tim.
ReplyDeleteAt least, I sure as s*** hope everybody else is stumbling over it daily, because I certainly am :-(