Yielded & Still | Fr. Chad E. JarnaginJames 3:13-4:3 (NRSV)To Kinds of Wisdom13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. 15 Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. 16 For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. 18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for[a] those who make peace.Friendship with the World4 Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? 2 You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet[b] something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.James 4:7-8 (NRSV)7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.James continues to bring great insight and instruction: Again, I want to remind us to approach James in a patient contemplative openness, not pragmatically. Here, James is essentially speaking of three things we are all interested in. This round he speaks of wisdom, peace, and conflict.13-18 is saying there are two kinds of wisdom. One from above and one earthly. One spiritual, and one unspiritual.Spiritual wisdom: gentleness, peaceful, willing to yield (meaning open to reason), full of mercy, and good fruits. I did a little digging - Side-note: The Greek word for open to reason (or yielding) it is always a feminine tense. So what is unspiritual? Well, he lays it our here...Unspiritual: bitter envy, selfish ambition... false & boastful... saying that where there is envy, there is disorder and wickedness of every kind.Where to these conflicts and disputes come from that James speaks of? Cravings (desires) that are at war within... we can all answer that to ourselves in our stillness.Toward the end here, he speaks of submitting to God... resisting evil... draw near to God and God will draw near to you.Unlike some passages, we see some clear applications for us.1. Spiritual wisdom and the fruit for this kind of living in contrast tounspiritual... so we see how / what it looks like.2. By giving in to our inward battles, we will remain distracted andfruitless.3. Drawing near to God by our humility will bring about the spiritualway: peace, gentleness, and spiritual life... and essentially gives us the tools to appropriately deal with conflicts.This word submission / to obey is difficult for us sometimes, huh? To submit, means to give over or to yield. Why is this so tough?Maybe because we celebrate our individualism more than our communion. Everything around us competes for our attention. Make no mistake, yielding in this context couldn’t be further from a weakness. Our society and culture sees yielding as a weakness... but Jame is reframing weakness: he insinuates that our resistance to a spiritual way of living is an actual weakness. Have Thine Own Way Lord (1907)Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way! Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.Mold me and make me after Thy will,While I am waiting, yielded and still.Through the lens of this one verse of this hymn... In the light of this passage from James: what is it to live a spiritual way? What is it to live an unspiritual way.
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