The text this morning is from the Epistle of James, the third and fourth chapters:
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Imagine for me that deep inside your chest there is an animal, an animal that cries out night and day, “Feed me! Feed me!” The more you feed it, the bigger it gets, the more persistent it gets. “Feed me! Feed me now!” You give in, if only to shut it up for a little while. But, it always is crying, always complaining, always seeking more and more and more.
This animal is the passion for sin that rests in each of our hearts, as James says. Last week, he focused us on our tongues, which are the way we sin. But now, James brings us to our hearts, which is why we sin. Our hearts are restless, always crying out for its god, but not the God of the Scriptures, not the God we know as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but the god which it has created. It cries out for more power. It cries out for more lust. It cries out for more of its own way. It cries out to be listened to. But, as loud and long as its cries are, they are shallow.
Feeding our hearts, feeding the passion for sin within our hearts, will never, ever appease it, not truly. There is no appeasement for sin, there is only deeper and deeper and deeper need for it to be fed. If your child cries out for a bread, would you give it a stone? The stone might literally fill its belly, but the stone will not sustain them, only drag them deeper under the water. If you need water to survive, would you drink salt water? The same is with your heart. The only true remedy for ending the cries of your passion is the cry of dereliction from the cross, the cry, “It is finished!”
But our hearts, our sinful hearts, don’t want that cry of Jesus. They want what they want. They want their way, their food, their desires. As you feed your sinful passions, those passions will only cry louder. They want more because what they’re getting is not truly filling. It’s not truly what our hearts need. So, the heart must be taken by Christ, must be staked, must be killed. And then, the Great Physician will put His heart in you, which only cries out for the goodness of God’s mercy.
But, this is too simplistic. In fact, our Lord has killed your sinful heart, He has put His heart in you in your Baptisms, and yet, still we reside in sin, filling our passions up with the candy of the world and not the bread and wine of the gifts of Christ. We desire a simple remedy, and it is simple, but it is not totally realized now.
The new heart that is in you in Christ is there, but it will always struggle against the dead heart of sin that still shall be with you as long as you live in this world. This is the struggle of the Christian: “Do I give in to the sinful passions that are in me or do I seek out the wisdom of God?” James’ answer to this question is, “Yes.” He’s not hedging his bets; he’s showing us that we continue to struggle in this life, war against the world and against God, even at the same time.
“Who is wise and understanding among you?” Not one of us. Yet, all of us, for we have received the wisdom that comes from above, the wisdom of the goodness and knowledge of Christ. And this demonstrates itself through the good things, the good works that we do toward one another. When the heart of Christ is fed, it does not cry out but turns us even to more good works. But when the heart of man is fed, it cries out bitterly for more. It is not fed by good works towards our neighbor, but works done in the shadowy, evil places.
When our hearts are fed by the things that are from above, the gifts of God, they rest, they are at peace. But when our hearts are fed by the things from below, the deceptions of hell and the devil, they will always be restless. Our hearts are restless always, until they find rest in God.
This is indeed what James is saying, but he doesn’t just leave his hearers in the struggle. He doesn’t leave them alone with trying to do the good on their own. He gives them Jesus. For the wisdom of God, the faith that we have received through our Baptisms and that is strengthened by the Lord Jesus Christ’s body and blood in the Supper, the wisdom of God forces us to be humble. It puts others, all others, first, and does not show itself to be haughty, filled with contempt, but peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. That is the heart of Christ.
That heart is that which turns you to your Lord. That heart, which was gifted to you by the hand of God Himself, turns you constantly toward Jesus, for that is where grace always turns you. The grace of God is getting that which you do not deserve. For our sinful hearts, we deserve sickness and death, jealousy and bitterness, judgment and damnation. But, having been gifted the heart of Christ, the heart which slowly bled out of our Lord as He hung upon the tree, the heart that declares us to be righteous in His sight, we are able to realize that what we least deserve is all that we receive from the hand of God: we receive His forgiveness. We receive His peace. We receive His pardon.
After all, James, at the end of this reading, begs us to be repentant of the sin that dwells within. That’s what he means by being wretched and mourning and weeping. This is repentance, realizing what our standing before God should be, but seeing the brightness of His face, smiling at you like father seeing his child returned home after a long trip. And when we are repentant, when we kneel at the foot of the cross of His Son, when we confess our sins, God is faithful and just, He fulfills His promises to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Who among us can clean ourselves of all the evil we have done? Not one. Who has ever seen the soul so as to grab it and wash it clean? Not one. But the Lord who has created your body, who has redeemed your body, who has sanctified and kept your body, knows all your parts, and by the very blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, washes you clean from your sin in all your parts, so that you may stand confidently before Him, declaring that this God is your God.
Though we struggle in this life with our sinful hearts, and though it causes us to struggle and quarrel among ourselves, we, repentant sinners as we are, also stand before God fully justified, fully given to Christ for the good works He desires us to do, those good works that love and serve our neighbors. And we do not do these good works, if we hate our neighbor, despise them, think ill of them, put on a show to draw others away from them, then these evil works are not a gift from God down to us, but they are a gift of ours passed down to Satan.
Should we desire to feed the lord of darkness and death? Of course not. But, by our actions, so we do. Yet, even for this, for the sinner who repents, there is forgiveness. This is still something for which Jesus died, and it is something that we are strengthened to no more do when we come to the Sacrament of Christ’s Altar. For here, by His own hand we are fed with the medicine that quiets the sinful heart and gives strength to the heart of faith.
Here we receive the medicine of immortality. If we do not receive it, we should doubt our Lord’s promises and we fall back to the arms of Satan. But when we do, when we receive it with confidence and faith in the promises of Christ, that this bread is His body, that this wine is His blood, that they are given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins, then you trust. You trust Him to the heights of heaven and the depths of the earth. His heart requires certain sustenance, food and drink that sustains it, and so here we receive it for the strengthening of our faith, for the preservation unto everlasting life.
This is true wisdom; this is the wisdom of God. For by His wisdom, by the faith which He gave us, we desire more and more of His gifts. His gifts desire more of His gifts. They can only be fed by His gifts. And when they are not, we fail, we falter, we quarrel and fight among ourselves because we have given our hearts over to sin and passion. And then we are enemies of God by being friends of the world.
But to the one whose heart is humbled by God, humbled by the majesty of the death of Christ for sinners, they are the friends of God, and they are invited to come and eat and drink. And for the sake of life, God’s friends do not turn down the invitation to eat and drink, but are rewarded with life everlasting, a good conscience before God, a good conscience before their neighbor, love and peace and joy as they serve their neighbors with their good conduct and works flowing from the humility of their hearts.
And we are humble sinners, coming for a meager scrap of food and drink, He feeds us with a feast that lasts forever, giving you ever more grace, ever more Jesus, for your heart is humbled before the Lord who has saved you, redeemed you, sanctified you, and will keep you in His grace until He returns to raise you from the dead. There we find our hearts yearning for Christ, for His rest, and we find that heart has stilled even the passions of sin that we struggle against, for He has put that heart of sin to death, now, in your Baptisms, soon, when He feeds you, and soon again, when He comes to make you whole in Him forever. And there we find our rest in Him, our restless hearts ceasing to struggle against sin, for sin has been wiped away from you as the tears from your eyes. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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