Sermon for St. James of Jerusalem, preached on Sunday, October 23, 2022.
Jesus’ words are hardly novel. Everyone knows that familiarity breeds contempt. Every prophet is without honor in his own home and in his own hometown. Do you think that Zipporah was impressed with the glow of Moses’ face when he came home after meeting the Lord on Sinai? Do you think that the apostles were given a hero’s welcome when they came back from their mission trips? Do you think that a pastor’s wife and family waits upon the pastor’s every word and adores him as a man of God when he gets home at night? My dad enjoyed another expression. The cobbler’s children go barefoot. When you get home, you take off your work clothes and you are just you and your family knows you, warts and all.
So is that what Jesus is saying? Because the folks in His family and hometown watched Him grow up into the man He gets no respect? Jesus is not the usual example of a rebel child who finds God and grows up to be somebody. He has no past except obedience and goodness. They have no stories of His bad behavior to tell. He is not Moses or Elijah or Abraham or Daniel or Larry. His life and His words match up always, from a youth in the Temple about His Father’s business to the Savior who sets His face like flint for the cross to redeem a sinful world.
Jesus has no secrets. That does not mean we get everything about Him but it does mean that He speaks plainly of who He is and what He has come to do. So plainly, in fact, that the disciples wish He had not told them everything. Nobody wanted to hear Him say He would be betrayed into the hands of sinners, suffer, die on a cross and on the third day rise again. Not even Peter was ready for those words. Jesus is not rejected because people fear He is not being honest with them or hiding something. Jesus is rejected because He tells the truth and is painfully clear about who He is and what He has come to accomplish.
We want to think that people reject Jesus because they do not know Him but they reject Him because they do know Him and get Him. What is most shocking about Jesus is that He is the Son of God in human flesh, that He is perfect in a world of excuses for sin, that He is single-minded in purpose to redeem us, and that He alone can save us. And so they must invent lies and lay false charges against our Lord because the truth is on His side. Since Jesus eats with sinners, He must be hiding some sin. Since Jesus does miracles, He must be a charlatan or using the devil’s power. Since Jesus is a man, He must only be a man and not God.
The reason Jesus is a stumbling block or an offense or a scandal is not because of what Jesus says but because of who He is. Those who reject Him are rejecting Him as perfect man and perfect God and perfect Savior. The rejection is not about what Jesus says or does but who He is. God does not comes to sinners. Sinners must find a way to come to God. God does not become incarnate. Man becomes God. Sins are not a big thing but minor problems you can fix with words and a token sacrifice. Death is not the final enemy but something you can make your peace with by putting it off as long as possible. Rejecting Jesus is rejecting the God who Jesus is and the saving purpose for which Jesus has come.
James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas did not have secret knowledge that would have disqualified Jesus or embarrassed or discredited Him. They did not have the right knowledge of Him that would have caused them to believe in Him and follow Him. After His resurrection, our Lord appeared to James and forgave him. In the light of the resurrection, He saw what He had refused to see before. Jesus is who He claims to be and has accomplished what He said He would. James then saw that the Old Testament revealed Christ and laid out the plain of His salvation by which James and all sinners would be redeemed from sin and raised from death.
Jesus did more than forgive James. Jesus made James a bishop. So when it came that the Church was divided about what to do with Gentiles, James the Just would sit in the honored seat at the council of Jerusalem. In the end, the word and will of Christ would be affirmed and the Old Covenant was fulfilled in Christ and the New Covenant of His cross extended to all sinners. James, the unjust James who had first rejected Jesus, is now James the Just because of the forgiveness shown to him and the righteousness of Christ that covers him. That is who Jesus is and what Jesus does. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of James and the world, of you and of me. That is His new covenant that reaches even one who said no to God’s yes and was forgiven and who then affirms that God’s yes is even for Gentiles.
The strange thing is that Zipporah knew Moses was a sinner and still loved him. That the families of the apostles loved these men even though they were sinners and ordinary sinners at that. That a pastor’s wife and children love him knowing all his faults and failings better than any. That God loves us even though we are dead in trespasses and sin. God’s familiarity with us does not breed contempt for us but mercy. He forgives us all our sins and we forgive one another.
The more we know forgiveness, the greater the awe we have of God. The more we know Jesus, the more we are in awe that God would come in flesh and blood to be our Savior, a Savior who though innocent and holy would become sin for us, and forgiveness that we not conditional on something we must do but full and free.
We all have things to hide and secrets to bury. God pulls out the hidden and reveals our secrets and sees us as we are. Sinners without any redeeming qualities and without any worth or value. What James found out from the Risen Lord, is what we find out. Though we have no redeeming qualities and are not worth the cost that God expended to make us His own, that is exactly what He has done. That is the glory we have in Jesus. It is the only glory worth having. Not pride in who we think we are but the light that exposes all our secret sins and shines the cross onto every one of them.
In the end, it was not the Lord who turned away from the unbelievers in Nazareth. They turned their backs on Him. But He did not turn His back on them. He bore on His back the weight of their sins as much as ours. In the end St. James rejoiced that Jesus died and rose for him. He was honored by the Lord to call Him brother, and to share in the Fatherhood of God within the fellowship of the redeemed. And that is why we rejoice today and confess Jesus as God’s Son and our Savior. That is why we are honored to call Jesus our brother and to share in the fellowship of the water that gives us new birth and the table where we are eat the foretaste of the eternal. In Jesus name. Amen
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