In the days when James the brother of Jesus
was writing this, if you were alive back then, you could easily go to a
fortuneteller to learn what your future would bring. We can even read about this in Acts 16:16, written about
the same time as James was writing: “One day as we were going to the place
of prayer, we were met by a slave girl with a spirit of divination, who earned
a large income for her masters by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and
the rest of us, shouting, ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who are
proclaiming to you the way of salvation!’ She continued this for many days.
Eventually Paul grew so aggravated that he turned and said to the spirit, ‘In
the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!’ And it left her at
that very moment.”
The center of the ancient world for learning
your future was the Oracle at Delphi. People would make pilgrimages to go visit
the Temple. There the chief priestess, known as the Pythia, would allow herself
to be possessed by the Greek mythological god Apollo. She would then utter what
your future days would entail. Upon archaeological investigation it has since
been learned that this Temple at Delphi was built over a natural gas vent–so
people were literally getting gassed on the fumes and pretending to be in a
divine state.
Some of you might be thinking how foolish that
sounds. Yet, today we have a company called “oracle” that allows people to
compile and interpret large volumes of data. Apply the correct algorithms and
one can produce actuarials that show future probabilities that much of our
economy runs on today. At this point, I
thought it would be fun to ask AI what the price of a loaf of bread will be
next year. The computer gave me an answer.
It is not the answer I was hoping for, by the way.
The bigger question is whether I am going to
die next year. AI can tell you the odds of your dying. You put in your
information and hit the calculate button. Guess what? I have 7 years left on
the planet if I claim my American citizenship, but 10 years if I go with my
German passport! This is really all crazy. Nobody knows what is going to happen
tomorrow. The computer or the oracle at Delphi know absolutely nothing.
James says in the first verse of today’s
scripture that we should not make plans for tomorrow: “Come now, you who say,
‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there
doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will
bring.”
The key to understanding
how we are supposed to plan our lives is in verse 15: “Instead, you ought to
say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’” Our job is not to
plan for ourselves how to get ahead in this world. Our job is to discern what
it is that the Lord wishes and desires for us. That comes down to our very
lives. If we just stop the sentence mid-stream, we read, “If the Lord wishes,
we will live.” We live because the Lord wishes us to. If we wake up tomorrow, it is only because the Lord has it in His
plan that we wake up tomorrow.
Our lives are truly in
God’s hands. We have seen enough miracles in our own days to know that this is
patently true, that God grants to us every breath. At any minute the Lord can
have you breathe your last breath. James tells us that our lives are like a
vapor. The Greek word here is for that mist that one can see when one breathes
on a piece of metal or mirror. James’ point is that we are all just one breath
away from meeting our Maker.
The story of the raising
of Lazarus in John 11 tells us that this is true. We know the story: Lazarus
was ill and so his sisters sent a message for Jesus to come to save his life.
They sent for Jesus so that he would heal Lazarus. As the story goes, Jesus
waited and did not go to Lazarus. Jesus stayed two days longer in the place
where he was before he finally set off for Bethany, where Lazarus was.
In reaching the town of
Bethany, Jesus is told that Lazarus has long since passed. He has been in the
tomb already for four days in fact. Some in the town are upset with Jesus
because he did not come earlier. But then, Jesus goes into the tomb where
Lazarus was laid and out walks Lazarus fully alive. Jesus is life! And, outside
of the life that God has given, you are nothing but the dust of the earth.
Our lives can be taken
from us by God as God sees fit. The breath of God can flow down from heaven and
dry us out and cause our bodies to shrivel like grass on a hot summer’s day.
Again as James says, we are only a little mist or vapor that can be swept away.
Open your Bibles to Isaiah 40:6-8, “All people are grass, their constancy is
like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word
of God will stand forever.” We live or
die by God’s breath upon us.
Open now to Genesis 2:7,
“Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” What plan did the dust of the earth have
before God breathed life into it? What plan can we make for our own lives? It
is not my own breath that is in this body. It is God’s! If God wishes, I will
live.
Now consider this: If
this breath in my body belongs to God, then I better make good use of every
breath I take, right? The last lines of our Scripture for today seem to make
that point for us: “Anyone who knows the right thing to do, but fails to do it,
commits a sin.” That sounds rather harsh, doesn’t it? However it goes back to
the very idea that if God has given you each breath, and you are living this
life because God lets you live it, then if you see something that is against
God, you should oppose it with every living breath of your body!
There is a musical that
was on Broadway called “Rent.” It dealt with a group of people who were
diagnosed with AIDS, some of whom had a year or less to live. The theme song to
this musical was entitled “525,600 Minutes.” The idea behind the music was that
if any of us knew that we had just one year to live, we would start making
every minute count! It would no longer be one year. It would become “525,600
Minutes.”
In the musical, there is
a sub-theme that runs through the plot that the characters must try to set
everything right before they leave the earth. They must reconcile their
relationships. They must pay up their debts—even the rent must be paid in full.
If you knew for sure that you had only one year to live, wouldn’t you do that?
Wouldn’t you try to find out if anybody had something against you and set that
right again? If you knew that you had sinned against somebody, you would want
that to be forgiven!
According to the Letter
of James, we don’t necessarily have “525,600 minutes.” We have 21,000,000
breaths this year if God lets us live. And, everyone of those breaths must
count because each one belongs to God! So, we must seek reconciliation with
every breath. We must ask for forgiveness with every breath. We must address
injustices with every breath we take.
Remember when Jesus
Christ was on the Cross. In his last breath he asked that the sins of the world
be forgiven: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do!”
Then after Christ’s
resurrection from the dead, Jesus goes and meets with his Disciples. Now, let
us read what happens in the Gospel of John, Chapter 20:19-23, “When it was evening
on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the
Disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among
them and said, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’
When he had said this HE BREATHED ON THEM and said to them ‘Receive the
Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; If you
retain the sin of any, they are retained.’”
You see, when we were
formed of the earth, as we read in Genesis, God breathed life into us. When
Jesus was resurrected and came back to his Disciples, once more God breathed
something into us—not just life, but eternal life through the forgiveness of
sin! Every time we exhale, we should be breathing that Holy Spirit of
forgiveness back out into this sinful world.
So, what are your plans
for tomorrow going to be? Are you thinking that you are going to make a million
dollars? Are you thinking that you might take a great vacation? Are you
contemplating changing careers? Or, are you planning to use every breath of
your body given to you by the Almighty Creator to live fully and breathe
eternal life into this world? I pray
that you hear the Word of God in these lines from James.
Amen.