The Feast of St. James
July 27, 2014
Click here to listen to this
homily (.mp3 file)
When I first came to the Cathedral I didn’t know a whole lot about our patron,
St. James. I know more now but, to be honest, I’m not sure there’s much,
if anything, that I haven’t already shared with you on this feast in past years.
So if what I say sounds familiar, there’s probably a good reason!
St. James. In John’s gospel he is identified as the
brother of John and a son of Zebedee. Matthew and Mark tell us that the two
brothers were fishermen, and Luke adds the detail that they were fishing
partners of Simon Peter. All three of them witnessed an extraordinary catch of
fish one day on the Sea of Galilee, and heard Jesus tell them that, from then
on, it was people they would be catching, not fish.
For reasons we can only guess at, James, along with
Peter and John, were invited by Jesus’ into his inner circle. The three were the
only ones with Jesus when he raised Peter’s mother-in-law from her sickbed and
when he raised the little daughter of Jairus from her deathlike sleep. They were
the only ones to climb the mount of Transfiguration with Jesus and get a glimpse
of his glory; and they were the only ones Jesus wanted close by him in his dark
agony in Gethsemane. And then there’s this final detail about James that
we got from today’s reading from The Acts of the Apostles: when King Herod began
to persecute certain members of the church at Jerusalem, James became his most
prominent victim. He had James put to death by the sword whereas he only had
Peter arrested and thrown into prison.
But I passed over one other important part of the
story of James. It’s the one we heard in today’s gospel when his mother
approached Jesus to ask that her sons might get special treatment for leaving
all and following him. The perfect Jewish mother! That’s how Matthew tells the
story, anyway; Mark tells it a little differently. Mark leaves the mother
out of the picture and says that James and John asked for themselves. But
both Matthew and Mark agree that the request came – rather incongruously --
right on the heels of Jesus’ third prediction of his coming passion and death.
And both say that Jesus answered their bold request – and it was a bold request
-- by reminding them of the cup of suffering he was about to drink. It was
Jesus’ way of saying that the only promise they were going to get from him was
the promise of future suffering.
So, there we have it: a sketchy but significant
portrait of our patron, St. James. It may not be a full-blown portrait
ready for a museum but there are enough brush strokes to tell us who James was
and what his life was like in that inner circle of Jesus’ followers. There
were moments of wonder and moments of sadness, glorious moments and very
sobering moments. And ultimately there was the sword. That’s the way it
was for James and for most of the apostles and, except for the sword, it’s the
way it is for everyone who accepts the call of Jesus to come, follow him - and
that includes, of course, the likes of you and me.
The reading from Second Corinthians filled out this
picture nicely, and quite graphically. St. Paul speaks eloquently of the
apostolic calling by telling what it had meant for him. He begins by
acknowledging that all who follow Christ are no more than “earthen vessels,”
vessels of clay. That’s to make it clear, he says, that whatever we achieve is
God’s work and not ours. And then he recites this powerful litany of the
hardships and the hopes of all who follow Christ. “We are,” Paul says,
“afflicted in every way possible, but never crushed, we are full of doubts but
we never despair, persecuted, but we are never abandoned, struck down but never
destroyed. Continually we carry about in our bodies the dying of Jesus.”
And that takes us right back to that cup of
suffering Jesus promised James and his brother John. Little knowing what
they were saying, they said they could drink it, and drink it they did.
And you and I? Before we sign up we ought to
be sure of what we’re signing up for because suffering of one sort or another
will be part of the bargain. But I shouldn’t have said, ‘before we sign
up’ because we have already signed up! Long ago, in our baptism, we were
initiated into the very death of Christ – buried together with him, as St. Paul
puts it – and ever since then we have been on a journey with Christ through
death to life.
That journey is different for each of us but for
every one of us it involves death of one sort or another: loss, tragedy,
heartache, personal limitation –- death comes in many forms. And we’ve
probably looked for shortcuts. I know I have. Maybe we’ve run from the cross
more than we’ve embraced it. We’re human, after all. But little by little, step
by step, by fits and starts, trial and error, we are doing our best to live out
our Christian calling, and in the process, we are learning what James had to
learn: how to follow and how to drink the cup of suffering.
And that brings us right to this moment. As we
approach the Eucharistic table – as we will very shortly -- our drinking from
the cup will ring true only if we let go any grandiose dreams of special
treatment or personal exemption and embrace, along with St. James, the humble
way of Jesus who came, “not to be served by others but to serve,” Jesus who is
“in our midst as one who serves.”
Father Michael G. Ryan