James 4:13-5:6 – Wills, Wealth, and Subtle Sins

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

James 4:13-17

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

No, I’m not writing this from a confessional. I’m not even Catholic and I haven’t played a priest on T.V. But I have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express… I also spent a few hours reading this section, taking notes, outlining it, taking it apart, putting it back together again, I even compared it to James 1:9 – 12, its companion writing on the other side of James’s sandwich. But I still couldn’t figure out what to write.

At first glance, this passage appears to be an invective about rich people. They are to weep and howl because their riches are rotting, corroding, and moth-eaten. They have abused the poor, lived in luxury, and they will pass away just like grass fades in the harsh light of a hot and dry summer day. But I don’t think this passage is really about the rich. It seems to be about something a bit deeper than what’s in your wallet.

At any rate, after studying this passage and not coming up with anything, I ate lunch, ran a few errands, then went grocery shopping. I had a short list so I knew I wouldn’t be at the store for long; I had to get back to my desk to figure out what to write. I didn’t speed through the store, but I didn’t dally either.

Shortly after getting my cart, I ran into a woman wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers t-shirt. She was looking at watermelon and I made a crack about her shirt. She muttered something about the watermelon being too expensive. We smiled and parted ways.

When I was in the last aisle of the store I found myself in a shopping cart traffic jam in front of the paper products. There were two ladies looking at the donuts, a befuddled-looking older gentleman sitting in an electric cart dragging his walker behind him, and me. I didn’t know if I should wait, barge ahead, or pretend like I was checking my list. I realized the ladies in front of the donuts weren’t going anywhere soon, so I looked at the old man. He looked even more befuddled so I passed through the aisle clog.

I’m not sure why, but when I got to the end of the aisle I looked back. The old man was still dragging his walker and the two ladies had moved away from the donuts. I thought about going back and offering the old man some kind of help, but I quickly pushed it out of my mind.

When I got to the check-out I saw the lady wearing the Pittsburgh t-shirt. She had no watermelon. I considered running back to the watermelon shelf, grabbing the one she had looked at, and purchasing it for her. But I didn’t. Instead, I placed my items on the conveyor belt and tried to avoid thinking about watermelon. I told myself, as a Browns fan, that I should probably show some love for my enemy — any Pittsburgh fan — but I didn’t. I left the store as she was checking out; the old man was nowhere to be seen.

I loaded my groceries into my car’s trunk and thought about going back in. I figured the Pittsburgh lady was gone but I could still offer some help to the old man. I closed my trunk and returned the shopping cart to its little shopping cart home in the middle of the parking lot. I glanced at the store for a moment then got into my car. A number of times on my way home I thought about turning around but again, I did my best to ignore the urge. I got home put my groceries away, parked my car, and returned to my comfortable office area to figure out what to write. When I reread the verses, I realized that I had just ignored everything I had been studying this morning from James’s letter.

I had plans I wanted to accomplish. There was nothing wrong with my plans, but they were my plans and I wasn’t going to change them for anything or anyone. It’s not like my day would have been ruined if I had spent a few minutes helping that older man get groceries. And I’m pretty sure that watermelon wouldn’t have hurt my budget; I just didn’t do either of those things. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to do them — they would have been good deeds — but I was scared about what the other people would think of me. Then, I overcompensated and thought that my pride would have welled up had I done those things. I mean, I don’t want to be proud about doing a good deed or two; surely I was wise to avoid the sin of arrogance, right?

But those moments are now gone. That time has passed. I should have bought the watermelon and I should have offered to help the old man who was dragging his walker behind him. But I didn’t. I knew the right thing to do, but I didn’t do it. And according to James, that is sin.

I’m sure there is another way to read these verses and make them apply only to rich businessmen, but I think that would miss the point; they apply to everyone. James describes a very simple battle in which each and every one of us engages every day; the battle between our will and God’s will. This isn’t a new battle; not for me, not for you, not for the human race. Sometimes God’s will comes at us in bright lights in the big city — it’s so obvious we don’t even have to think about it — but then there are other times when God’s will is merely a quiet voice speaking to us as we walk through the aisles of a local store in a somewhat average town in the mid-west. In either case, we have two options, and only two options: choose his will or choose ours.

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, 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 self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

James 5:1-6

I think the early Jewish believers, after hearing these words, would have thought about the words of the minor prophets. Amos wrote about how the Israelites sold “the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals” and how they trampled the poor into the earth and turned away the afflicted (Amos 2:7). He wrote about how they oppressed the poor and crushed the needy all the while they reclined on their couches drinking wine in their houses of luxury (Amos 4:1). He tells us that they exacted taxes from the poor and built stone houses for themselves and planted vineyards all while they afflicted the righteous (Amos 5:11-12). Micah writes about how they lay awake at night coveting fields and houses and then in the daytime they went and stole them (Micah 2:1). He says they were unjust in their business dealings and were full of violence, lies, and deceit when they dealt with the poor (Micah 6:11-12). And it’s not just Amos and Micah, the other prophets reiterate these accusations; and more.

Do I think I was crushing the poor when I ignored that quiet voice in the grocery store? No. But I certainly wasn’t doing anything to help them. Have I used illicit means to put money into my bank account? No, I have always paid my bills on time, paid fair wages, and kept short financial accounts. But when I parked my car and walked into my air-conditioned house, it didn’t feel the same as it did when I left my house in the early afternoon. It felt tainted; almost unjust.

When I was very young I would often leave food on my plate; I’d even throw some out. Frequently, I would hear about all the starving kids in China who would want my food. I’m not quite sure why it was always China, but it was. I think I was supposed to believe that throwing away cold McDonald’s french fries was a horrible and insensitive act. I thought about mailing the fries to the hungry Chinese kids once, but I didn’t know what address to use.

To be quite honest, I’ve never really felt too bad about those starving kids across the Pacific Ocean. Maybe I’m heartless, but since I never saw them it was hard to feel like I was doing anything wrong to them. But I did see the look on the face of that old guy in the grocery store today and saw the face of the lady wanting watermelon. I know that when she gets home today she won’t have watermelon and the old guy will probably need a nap because he is exhausted from dragging his walker around the store while he shopped on his own. And maybe that lady didn’t really need the watermelon. And maybe the old guy didn’t want any help. But I’ll never know. I do know, however, that when I look at the food I brought home and consider the ease with which I got it today, I see tainted groceries.

I’m not sure if anyone is really tracking with this or not. I hope I haven’t muddled up what could have been, I’m sure, average exegetical writing. But after I got back from the grocery store I began to think that James wrote these words to remind the first-century Jewish believers of their past. He wanted them to remember that Israel lost their love for God, embraced foreign idols, and became horribly selfish when it came to the poor, the homeless, the widows, the widowers, the elderly, and the foreigners. James wrote these words because he didn’t want the current believers to repeat the error of their ancestor’s former ways.

But I also realized these words aren’t just about the ancient Israelites or those who oppressed the early Jewish believers. It seems that many people today are upset at the 1% who supposedly oppress them, but I don’t think James is writing about them, at least not directly. Since when are we to worry about the splinter in the other person’s eye? Aren’t we supposed to deal with the huge log in our own first? We don’t have to be millionaires or operate a business with oppressive practices to ignore God’s will and choose our own. Sin is far too subtle to require a rapacious regime; we can condemn and murder the righteous person from the comfort of our own Lazy-Boy chair, iPad, or even the local grocery store.

This “sandwich” James has constructed continues to amaze me. The meat of true religion (1:26-2:17) is surrounded by words about the works of faith (1:22-25 and 2:14-26), the dangers of the tongue (1:19-21 and 3:1-12), God’s wisdom from above (1:16-18 and 3:13-18), and our damning sinful passions (1:13-15 and 4:1-12). But James doesn’t stop there; he reminds us that our preoccupation with our own will and our own wealth gets in the way of our doing the right thing (1:9-12 and 4:13-5:6). As James describes these struggles and trials of the early Jewish believers, he also challenges those of us living in the twenty-first century; we struggle with the same things.