Friendship with God James 4:1-8
- I have heard the modern-day definition of friendship is walking into a house and your Wi-Fi connects automatically. Friendship requires that we spend enough time together in person on in our thoughts. We make friends a priority, because they are important to us, we share a connection with them and we want to be around them. There is an agreement in between two souls who are friends. They think alike. They can sometimes complete each other’s sentences. They know each other’s hearts. The prophet Amos asked, “Can two walk together, unless they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3). James tells us that if we are to be friends with God, then we have to be in agreement with him. We have to have shared values and experiences, just as we would with a friend on earth. We have to spend time with each other, and desire to be in his company, because we have come to realize that when we are in God’s company our hearts and souls flourish.
- Before we get to James, I want to remind us about a conversation Jesus had in the Gospel of Luke. In Chapter 17, people are predicting the end of the world and looking to the clouds for the end to come. Jesus patiently listened and then said the Kingdom of God cannot be observed. It’s not out there somewhere. It is in you, or within your reach, tempting on what translation you read. The kingdom of God is yours for the taking. Jesus said, as we have talked about before, that to enter in requires metanoia (changed mind) and faith (that the kingdom indeed exists, even though you can’t see it yet – potential).
- If you can change your mind from your old negative, defeatist, self-destructive way of thinking and believe in the divine potential for the kingdom of God (flourishing, what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia), then you can experience the kingdom of God – Here and now
- Earth is here. Heaven is the eternal. But the kingdom of God is the intersection between heaven and earth. When you and I open up to, live into and thrive in the Divine that has been placed in us through the Light, then the kingdom of God manifests and we flourish as individuals and as a community.
- Why would we not choose to flourish? James, in our passage today, says there is a problem. The Divine within us has been pushed aside, tied up and put in a closet, replaced with a spirit of weakness, defeat, selfish desire, narcissistic pride and impure hearts. We are the ones who have pushed aside the Divine and chose other paths that distract us from flourishing.
- The alternate paths look different in each generation but perennially take on one of three forms. They are the same three forms that Jesus rejected when tempted in the wilderness: Privilege (rocks to stone), power (you have angels who will protect you) and possessions (all of this will one day we yours).,
- The problem with allowing yourself to be overcome with a desire for privilege, power and possessions is that it eventually leads to some level of violence that begins inside the one who is desiring, starts tearing up the one who desires , and eventually, as James said, it shows up as quarreling, fighting and sometimes killing. And over what? Hurt pride, jealously, greed, envy, stuff, stuff that will rust and decay?
- Most importantly though is that this desire for privilege, power and possessions creates a divide, a wall, between us and the Divine. It stops the flow. It keeps out the Light. James makes it akin to cheating on our spouse, who is supposed to be our one love, our best friend. “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”
- So there we have it. As our minds and hearts are lured and enticed by privilege, power and possessions, we cheat on our Beloved, that same Beloved, you’ll remember from Song of Solomon a few weeks ago, who came leaping over the hill like a gazelle, looked into the window of your prison when you were enslaved to depression, addiction, desire, pride, bitterness or some other sin, and he said, “Arise, and come with me!” And now, James says, we dare cheat on our Beloved, turns our backs and choose these empty things that the world offers. Of course, under the Levitical law, adultery was punishable by death, so the analogy is not lost in James’ warning. God jealously longs for the spirit he caused to dwell in you, but if you start desiring the privileges, power and possessions that the world offers, and you will find yourself opposed by God, at enmity with God, which means you will be spiritually dead, empty, no meaning, no purpose beyond the praise of men and stuff that rusts and fades.
- Ah, but James says there is a path to life, there is a way out of the empty, meaningless life built on privilege, power and possessions. God gives us more grace, James says. But the days our evil and short, so do this now, James says: Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded…Ouch.
- James says God does not play around. You want to play around with the short life you are given and make it all about toys, appearance, outward show, attending the best parties, hobnobbing with the powerful, accruing power and possessions to yourself? And to what end…Oh, but God gives more grace. Flee while you can and submit yourself to God. That means nothing more than changing your mind and having faith. Being convinced that the old way is empty and vain and that the new way, the way of Christ Jesus, is what brings life and meaning, satisfies the soul and fills the heart with joy.
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