The author of Murphy’s Laws says, “There are two types of people in the world, those who divide people into two types and those who don’t.” (Edward A. Murphy) I’m not always sure which group I fall under. Sometimes I’m quick to categorize people into “types” and other times I am truly amazed at the complexities of the human endeavor that defy simplistic categorizing. However, because our New Testament was strongly influenced by a Greek worldview, you’ll find all sorts of either-or dualisms there if you go looking for them. You’re either this thing or that, wise or foolish, rich or poor, right or wrong. You’re a faithful sheep or an ignorant goat. It’s the world’s way, or it’s God’s way.

James makes it clear throughout this letter that we have to try pretty hard to escape the ways of the world in order to follow in God’s ways. He sees a split there. Perhaps we do too. Pride and success are gems collected by the world, and yet God is honored by our humility and by the times we acknowledge before God just how little we really know. The two views do seem as different as night and day. James courageously entered into that paradigm to teach us how to live better according to the claims of our faith. He earned his pastoral nickname, “Old Camel Knees” carried down through the tradition of the church because of just how often he fell on his knees in determined prayer. Through those many years of prayer and with ongoing care and connection to the church, he taught what he hoped the followers of Jesus would learn to live, a way of life grounded in wisdom, humility, and compassion for one another.

In one way, we could look at him as an epic failure. Are we really any more wise or humble now because we’ve heard a few sermons based on this letter? I suspect that the ways of the world provide just as much temptation to us now as they did then if not even more so. Biblical scholar Eugene Peterson, in his introduction to this book of scripture reminds those who may not know this that “Christian Churches are not, as a rule, model communities of good behavior.” Did you know that? I guess I knew that too. But what Peterson and James both claim in addition to that is that churches are also “places where human misbehavior is brought out in the open, faced and dealt with.” I’m not sure that’s always the case either, but that’s exactly where James’ text is strikingly fresh for today’s church-going reader. He reminds us clearly and fervently that it is, after all, what we do that counts. And in the church, when we are doing things right, we hold one other accountable for how we treat each other, for how we talk to each other, and for what we believe to be true about each other as children of God. My friends, this is no easy task.

It is far easier to turn a blind eye to someone else’s misdeeds and not get involved. And when we’re honest, we certainly don’t want someone else poking around in our business either. We don’t want our misbehaviors displayed anywhere near out in the open. But James blurts out the whole truth about humankind, and for that emphasis on our works and on right behavior as the tell-tale sign of a spiritually healthy Christian community, there have been those, including Martin Luther who would have preferred to have this letter removed from the Bible. But in Luther’s defense, he was convinced that we were so mired in our sin that we could only be saved through our faith and never through our sorry and pathetic works. It makes me wonder if, in his last days, James might have been sympathetic. For Old Camel Knees, if he was truly that concerned about human beings getting things right with God, he probably did have a long, long list of things to pray about each and every day and, for all that prayer, maybe didn’t ever see the results he hoped and longed for.

Let’s face it. The work of getting things right with God is pretty hard. James teaches us that getting things right with God ultimately has something to do with how well we get along with each other. This really should not surprise us so much. After all, Jesus summed up all the law and commandments of the Hebrew Bible in just two short sentences: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And love your neighbor as you love yourself. What’s not to get? It’s the way we live that counts. That’s true for everyone, especially in the community of the church.

Let me read again verses 17-18. “Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoys its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.”

Or as the NRSV puts it, “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”

In looking at these two renditions of scripture side by side – one might notice that scholars and theologians have often taken liberties with the text of James. Even in the work of getting from Greek to English, it isn’t easy to translate exactly what it means to navigate the garbled mess of human relationships. To get there we use the wisdom of metaphor and the best psychological insights we have available to us at the time. Like James must have prayed in his marathon prayers sessions, I have to believe people of faith really do want to understand just how those relationships we mess up with one another affects how we mess up our relationship with God. It’s one of the tasks I consider crucial to the work of ministry, and I happen to agree with James that paying attention to how we live our lives is essential if we want to achieve greater degrees of health, vitality, or righteousness in our spiritual communities.

But it is hard, hard work – work that will not be accomplished when we ignore or deny the grievous side of human behavior. When we fail to address the brokenness of our lives together and become afraid to unmask those things that are destructive to the family of faith, we allow the worst that is in us to stamp out the love we have for one another. This hard work also will not be satisfied by ticking off some sort of Biblical checklist of what can be categorized as either sinful or righteous. The deep and holy compassion that characterizes just about all of scripture, in the end, will not be constrained by countless rules and always refuses to bear out the hate and pride of human prejudice. The compassion Jesus demands challenges us beyond our own comfort levels to love even the unlovable neighbor as we love ourselves.

I believe there is a way that is “God’s way” and yet I am struck by how wide and varied people are in trying to interpret what following in “God’s way” might happen to mean. Is it about belief? Is it about behavior? Can we follow a set of “standards” and be OK? No, I’m sorry to say, none of us really gets it all right, but God continues to love us anyway. So strive to live God’s way, even among the temptations of the world. As James tells us, “Live well, live wisely, live humbly.” Or in Jesus’ words, “Love God and love one another.” As I’ve said many times over, it’s both as simple and as difficult as that.

Amen.