Bible Reading: St. James 5:1-6

Come now, you rich, weep and howl over your miseries which will come upon you. Your riches have rotted, and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you, and will devour your flesh as the fire does. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who reaped your fields, which have been kept back by you unjustly, cry out; and their cry has entered into the ears of the Lord of Hosts. You have feasted upon earth, and you have nourished your hearts on dissipation in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and put to death the just, and he did not resist you.

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This is from the Epistle of St. James the Apostle, who was one of the original twelve apostles of Jesus Christ. This is St. James "the lesser" (that means younger), not St. James the Greater, also an Apostle, whose memorial day is this week.

I hadn't intended to include a fire and brimstone kind of Bible reading tonight, but the book fell open to this section and I realized there are some good points I can make that touch on current topics (the Bible always has comfort and insight even for the most modern problems).

First, a little bit about St. James. Known as a pillar of the Christian community in the decades after Jesus, St. James also retained and demonstrated great knowledge of the Jewish roots in the Old Testament. He was the Bishop of Jerusalem, and is known to have been at the council of Jerusalem around the year 50. St. Paul consulted with him about the Gospel. He was esteemed by the Jews and called "James the Just," yet was nonetheless martyred by them in the spring of 62.

And so, you can read this letter, this Epistle written by the man who was also Bishop of Jerusalem, and see that there are elements that already demonstrate the "teaching" role of a bishop in his diocese. So you could view the section that I cite above as kind of the "fire and brimstone" part of one of his sermons as part of exhortation and instruction through his diocese. So you can see that already around three decades after the Lord Jesus Christ's death, resurrection and ascension, St. James was visibly performing a role that we see in Catholic bishops today. This is another example of the continuity of the Church as established by the Apostles and its organization. Think about it. Here is one of the Apostles, bishop of the city where Jesus had been crucified just several decades prior. St. James the Greater had been martyred (the first of the Apostles to so die) in the year 42, so it was a continually hazardous place, the city that was the very cradle of what would be the Catholic Church through the presence of Jesus Christ. I'll return to that point after first discussing some of the commentary about this passage that I'm citing here.

The most important point is that while it is vehement it is not an "anti the rich" sermon. It is an anti the unjustly rich sermon. St. James is criticizing the rich who do not pay the wages due to their employees and he is also criticizing the rich who hold money back when it could be put to good use. So this text cannot and should not be cited as justification for either side of the so called "prosperity Gospel" debate. It does not condemn people who are rich; it condemns the people who are unjustly rich. Likewise, though, it does not endorse being rich because of some argument that God wants people to make as much money as possible. Clearly St. James recognizes that morally correct wealth relies on fair and prompt payment to the workers and active use of the wealth for good and charitable purpose on earth. This is what he means by not storing it up, it rusts, and so forth. St. James is not saying that the rich cannot have holdings or savings. But he is strongly implying that their wealth must be refreshed and used in the community, and not hoarded.

Doesn't it make you wonder if there had been some scandal or some specific outrageous cheating of the poor workers by the wealthy that inspired this part of what sound much like a sermon? I point this out to remind you that yes, that was probably the case, just as how bishops speak out, often making real waves (like in the Eucharist controversies) in response to specific events within their diocese. The difference is that these would not be wealthy Christians that he is railing against, as in his flock, but these are more "social injustice" commentary toward wealthy merchants and landholders in Jerusalem. Remember, the early Christians, most especially the Apostles, were always simultaneously preaching to their early fledgling Christian flock and to evangelize and hope to convert the large majority around them of Jews and Gentiles. So early "sermons" by the Apostles always had two audiences at the same time: the small numbers of faithful believers and the huge numbers of those who still opposed them, or who had not heard and accepted the word yet.

This is why notice how very neatly St. James concludes this section with reference to "the just" who was condemned and put to death but did not "resist you." St. James is clearly aligning Jesus, who meekly and without resistance had everything, including his life, taken from him with the desperately poor workers who are deprived of their wages by people who do have the means to pay them. This is very astute preaching if you remember that indeed his audience would be both the converted but especially the not yet converted. This section is undoubtedly representative of his actual words on a number of occasions where he preached. You can also just with this small analysis of his words here understand how the Jews might have admired his sense of justice, hence giving him that nickname of "James the Just," yet still be driven to martyr him because of their disbelief in the Christian doctrine.

I hope that this is helpful at once again showing how a reader of scripture can glean a lot of insight into what it would have been like "looking over the shoulder" of Jesus' Apostle who became the first Bishop of Jerusalem. Returning to that topic, I want to remind you that what Jesus essentially said to Peter is that wherever you establish yourself, that is where I will build my church. So Peter, after a time as Bishop of Antioch, went to Rome, to the heart of the Empire to evangelize, and established the bishop's seat in Rome. Therefore as Bishop of Rome this is where Peter established the Church, and the Papacy. Jesus gave the physical placement of the heart of the future Church within a person, a man, to establish, not the sentimental or spiritual location. This is why Rome is the home of the Papacy and the Vatican, and not Jerusalem, where one might have otherwise assumed. I thought that comparing St. James being Bishop of Jerusalem with Peter's movement to Antioch and then Rome to be Bishop of Rome, and hence the first Pontiff, would make the organization of the very earliest Church and its continuity into its present form be easier to see and, honestly, to admire. Jesus knew what he was doing when he sent the Apostles out to become what would be the role models and actuality of bishops, while one man, Peter, would be the Vicar of Jesus Christ himself where he established his staff, which would be... Rome!