James 1:1-12

Take Your Stand

Sermon preached January 11, 2015
Opening
Some thing about me that many of you find unfortunate is that I am a fan of the New
York Yankees. I grew up in the 70s during the great teams that had Thurman Munson
and Graig Nettles and Ron Guidry, when Reggie Jackson hit three home runs with three
swings in the World Series...its in my blood, I cant help.
There have been so many great Yankees - Joe Dimaggio, Mickey Mantle...but my favorite
is Yogi Berra. Most people think of Yogi as an amiable clown, but if you look at his
career, he is right up there with Johnny Bench as one of the great catchers of all time, and
one of the greatest Yankees.
Now, most of us know about Yogi through what are called Yogi-isms - his sayings that
sound ridiculous at first but have hidden wisdom
When you come to a fork in the road, take it!
Speaking of a restaurant in Manhattan - Nobody goes there anymore, its too
crowded.
"You should always go to other people's funerals, otherwise, they won't come to
yours."
"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you
might not get there."
Of playing baseball on the West Coast - It gets late early out there.
Almost Zen-like, arent they?
Well - got us a saying here from James - indeed, right from the beginning of the letter My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but
joy...
James, you lost me at hello - start letter this way? Trials and suffering, consider them joy?

James credentials
That saying may strike us as odd - but lets give James a hearing - because the man had
major credentials in speaking about suffering.
First, who is this James? There are three men named James mentioned in the New
Testament, but most scholars agree with the tradition that this is James, the brother of
Jesus. Jesus had younger sisters and brothers, grew up in the same house with them, and
James was one of them. Jesus and James likely slept in the same room, used the same
bathroom, ate together at the family table, for years.
Younger brothers typically have a hard time when an older brother becomes
famous. Remember Roger Clinton, Bill Clintons brother? Remember Billy
Carter? Billy Beer?
And the NT tells us that James did not believe in Jesus when Jesus was carrying
out his ministry - John chap. 7 says it right out - Jesus brothers did not believe in
him.
But then something happened to James. After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to a
number of people, and almost always groups of people. But 1 Cor. 15 tells us that Jesus
appeared privately to James. Thats the only time we know of that happened. And I bet
that was a fascinating conversation - would love to see a YouTube of it - but we dont
know what was said, but seeing the resurrected Jesus changed James, to the point that he
believed in Jesus as Lord - which for a Jew was the way you said God - he came to
believe that his big brother, was God in the flesh.
And he also became one of the pillars of the early church. The leaders were Peter and
Paul and John - and James. In Acts 15, there is a big council called to decide how to
bring the Gentiles into the church, and all the leaders are there, and who chairs the
meeting - James, who had become the leader of the Jerusalem church.
And James encounter with the risen Jesus gave him the perspective to be able to say,
Consider it pure joy, my brothers (and sisters) whenever you face trials of many kinds,
because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
And he lived what he preached. Because in the year 62 AD, the enemies of the church
arrested James, and took him to the top of the temple and told him to tell the crowd
gathered below not to believe in Jesus. And James said, Why do you ask me about the
Son of Man? He dwells at the right hand of power in heaven and will come again in
clouds of glory. And so they threw him from the top of the temple - but he survived the
fall and broken and battered he got to one knee and prayed for God to forgive them for
what they had done and they then finished the job by beating and stoning him to death.1
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James did exactly what he wrote in his letter - he persevered right to the end.
Meaning of perseverance
Perseverance in suffering. The Greek word is fascinating - its a two part word - the
prefix hupo is the Greek word we translate hyper. Hyper means over, above,
excessively great. Like, hypertension is elevated blood pressure. Or, a hypersonic jet
flies really fast. And the second part of the word - mene - means to stand. So the word
means hyper-stand.2 Standing firm. Standing fast. Immovable. Unshakeable. No
matter what.
To illustrate, let me show you a brief clip from The Lord of the Rings. The heroes Frodo, Samwise, Strider and the rest - are traveling through the mines of Moriah when a
fire demon from the depths of the earth awakens and attacks them. And Gandalf the
wizard hyperstands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZZNHekEQw
James is saying it is possible for us to hyperstand in the face of suffering - to stand up to
it and even find that God uses suffering for our good. How do we do this? Three ways.
First, accept suffering as a normal part of the Christian life
James doesnt say if trials come; he says when they come. Now almost everywhere, in
every time, people have understood this. But in the last 30 to 40 years, American culture
has come to believe that suffering can and should be avoided.
David Brooks is an astute and funny interpreter of American culture, and one of
his big ideas is that Americans believe that with the right attitude, education,
lifestyle and things, life on earth can get pretty close to perfect.
And thats very different from a lot of other cultures - now and throughout
history. Russians, for instance, have an acute sense of the tragic and ironic
in life, and view suffering as ordinary, to be expected.
But many Americans lack that understanding of the tragic dimensions to human
life. And the big problem with that is, when suffering comes, and life turns sour
and dark, youre left with nothing, no ways to deal with it, cope with it, withstand
it - especially if that suffering is persistent or leads to death.
Everyone, Christians included, is going to suffer sometime in life.
Did you get to see the great movie Black Hawk Down? Its the true story of the
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Battle of the Bakara Market in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. In one

scene, the actor Tom Sizemore, in the role of a hard-bitten U.S. Army Ranger
colonel, is in command of a small convoy of Humvees trying to get back to base
with mortar and rocket fire exploding all round. In this violent vortex, the colonel
stops the convoy, brings some wounded on board, throws a dead driver out of the
drivers seat and yells at a bleeding sergeant whos standing in shock nearby:
Colonel: Get into that truck and drive.
Sergeant: But Im shot, Colonel.
Colonel: Everybodys shot, get in and drive.
Everybodys shot. Thats a metaphor for life. Everyones taken a hit, or will one day.
And we can begin to take our stand when we understand that suffering is an inevitable
part of life. Its that way because our world is broken - our alienation from God, our sin,
brought suffering and death into the world. God didnt intend the world to be this way,
and in Christ God has begun a great work to remake the world, but for now, life can be
hard and painful, and when that happens, we should not conclude that something is wrong
with us, that God has abandoned us, that life no longer is worth living, that there is no
hope. We dont descend into self-pity, we face it as part of life in a broken world, and
take our stand.
Second way we take our stand is by using suffering for growth
James says that our trials and sufferings can make us mature and complete. The Greek
word for complete is actually teleios, which means perfect. Now teleios doesnt mean
morally perfect, like you never say a naughty word or lose your temper, it means instead
that one is in right relationship with God, and that relationship is expressed in love for
and obedience to God. In other words, James is saying that suffering can bring us closer
to God, and make us more like God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Protestant pastor who was imprisoned and eventually
executed by the Nazis during World War II. From his prison cell, Bonhoeffer
wrote letters full of faith and hope. This is a quote from a letter he wrote to his
sister: I think that God is nearer to suffering than to happiness, and to find God in
this way gives peace and rest and a strong and courageous heart
You see, the remarkable thing here is that God can use suffering for our good, to make us
better people. To be human means we will suffering - but the consistent promise of the
New Testament is that God takes the worst that life or Satan throws at us and does a judo
move on it, turns it into a means of growth and blessing.
So when we suffer, the promise is that God is going to somehow use that for our good. It
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may make us more compassionate - the word which means to suffer with - we have a
new ability to be a comfort to those who suffer; we may develop a new strength and
resilience that helps us meet other challenges; we may learn to identify with people who
get stomped down by life or by powerful people; we may learn a deeper practice of
prayer; we may learn to lean on God rather than our own strength, we may learn humility.
Heres a small way that worked in my life. In December 1990, five months after I
began my first ministry, I had a series of seizures in the middle of the night. I
came back to consciousness lying in the back of an ambulance taking me to the
hospital in Columbia. They put an IV drip into me of a drug called Dilantin that
felt like my arm was on fire - they put me in a CT scanner and took pictures of my
brain, and I spent three days in the hospital recovering and then was on
medication for ten years.
Now on the scale of suffering that was pretty minor, but God took that experience
and used it to make me a more compassionate person. I know what its like to be
blind sided and end up laying in a hospital bed not knowing whats going on and
wondering where God is in all this. And that has made me a better pastor.
One of the most agonizing parts of suffering is that it can make you doubt the existence of
God, the goodness of God, that God knows and cares what you are going through.
Whatever you are going through right now, we have a promise that somehow God is
going to take that mess, that pain - and use it for good. . And knowing that, we can take
our stand.
Third way we can take our stand. We are loved by the Lord Jesus Christ who went
through suffering for us, and came out the other side, and is now not only Lord of all
creation, but also our companion and friend.
One of the unique aspects of the Judeo-Christian understanding of God is that we believe
in a God who suffers.
Jesus Christ went through sufferings, and hyper-stood - he took his stand for us in the
Garden of Gethsamene and withstood temptation to avoid the cross, he took his stand for
us and endured scourging and death by torture on the cross, he took his stand for us so we
could be reconciled to God and forgiven the burden of our mess and sin and shame, he
took his stand for us all the way to death, and then came out the other side, the resurrected
Lord of the universe who is with us always, and is our companion in suffering.
Conclusion
James says in vs. 12, Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, because when he has
stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love
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him. You see, this life is not all there is. Even if suffering should lead to death - and you
know what the death rate is, right - 100% - there is waiting for us a crown, a reward. This
is the crown of life - eternal life - promised to all who love Jesus Christ.
And that, in the end, makes it all endurable - the promise that as Jesus went through
suffering and emerged into resurrection glory, so will we; that as Jesus still carries the
nailprints in his wrists and feet as signs of his identity as the one who triumphed over sin
and death - so our scars and wounds will be signs of glory, that we have hyper-stood, that
we have taken our stand in Christ. Amen.
Endnotes
1. From a sermon by Dr. Timothy Keller, Power for Facing Trouble, preached October 8, 1995.
2. Keller, ibid.