William Barclay says that “James, the brother of John and the Son of Zebedee, is the most tantalizingly vague figure among the twelve.” (THE MASTER’S MEN, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1959, p.100) We know that he occupied a leading place among the twelve apostles. In every list of the Twelve, his name appears in the first three—even ahead of Andrew, Peter’s brother. And yet we know very little about him. (His name is not even mentioned in the Fourth Gospel.) We know little about him, but what we do know is very significant. We know that James and his brother John were sons of a man named Zebedee, a fisherman on the Galilee who was sufficiently well-to-do that he could hire servants in his business. (Mark 1:19-20) So they were a part of “Zebedee and Sons Fishing Company, Inc.” We know that they were called by Jesus to become fishers of people, and they accepted the challenge immediately. (Matt. 4:21-22, Mark 1:20, Luke 5:1-11) And lest you think that they were not giving up much, the fishing business was, and is, the number one business on the Galilee. They were not poor street people, they were rather well-off for their day, so when they left their nets to follow Jesus, they were really giving up something. The Gospels also suggest that they had short fuses on their tempers, which earned for them the nickname “Sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17). But we’ll talk more about that next week.
Just as Andrew lived in the shadow of his more famous brother Peter, so also James seems to have lived in the shadow of his brother John. They always appeared together. The one and only time that James appears alone without his brother is his martyrdom, and even there his name is linked to that of his more famous brother. This is the event which the New Testament describes in two short verses: “Now, about that time Herod the king laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword...” Acts 12:1-2) But before his martyrdom, what great events in the life of our Lord James shared! He and his brother John were part of the “inner circle.” They were with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. They were with him at the raising of Jairus’ daughter. They were with him in Gethsemane. That night in the garden when Jesus sweat great drops of blood in prayer wrestling with His future, they accompanied Him. Yes, they did fall asleep...but who could blame them? They surely had a busy week! And they weren’t as sure as Jesus was of what was about to happen. Have you ever had a time when you simply could not keep your eyes open to save your soul? I have. So I am not so hasty to condemn him.
I. HOWEVER, THERE IS ONE JARRING NOTE IN THE STORY OF JAMES AND HIS BROTHER JOHN. The Gospel records that they came to Jesus one day and asked to sit on His right and left side in the Kingdom. (Mark 10:35f) It sounds like a pretty crass thing to do, doesn’t it? Matthew’s Gospel tries to tone down the event a bit by saying that it was their mother who came with the request. Everybody is willing to make allowances for a mother’s ambition for her children. So James and John, the sons of Zebedee, wanted to positions of honor at Jesus’ right and left hand in His coming kingdom. That sounds like a selfish request. But give them credit for this: they believed that this itinerant rabbi from Galilee would have a kingdom! At the time they made their odd request, nothing seemed less likely than that Jesus would ever sit on any throne. As William Barclay says: “(Jesus) was a homeless Galilean preacher, following a course which was bound to end in collision with the power of the authorities and in inevitable disaster, and yet even in that hopeless situation, James and John never doubted that Jesus Christ was a king.” (op. cit., p.104) And you know, James eventually got what he asked for. He got to be at Jesus’ side, for at Jesus’ right and left sides were crosses. And James was the first martyr for the Christian faith. His epitaph is found in the first two verses of the 12th chapter of the Book of Acts. “Now, about that time Herod the king laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword...”
Tradition says that James died in A.D. 44, just seventeen years after he had left his nets to follow Jesus, thus becoming the first martyr among the twelve. (It is interesting that the word “martyr” originally meant simply “witness,” but very early in the life of the Church it became synonymous with dying for one’s witness.) James didn’t live long, but he lived deeply. This is a reminder that it really doesn’t matter how long we live, it is how much we live. It doesn’t matter so much how many years we put into our lives, but how much life we put into our years. The Bible says that Methuselah lived 969 years, and had it not been for the great flood, might be alive still! But Jesus lived less than thirty-three years. Is one to conclude that Methuselah’s life was more significant than that of Jesus? By no means. I know of no churches erected in Methuselah’s memory, do you? Yet here we are in the Church of Jesus Christ!
II. I FIND IT INTERESTING THAT THIS SERMON ON JAMES HAPPENS TO COME SMACK-DAB IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR ANNUAL STEWARDSHIP CAMPAIGN. For most of us that usually brings a “ho-hum, so what else is new? The church is asking for money again.” But hearing about James, the first apostolic martyr ought to jog us out of our spiritual stupor and remind us what it was like to be a member of the Church in its infancy. You may recognize the sermon title as a slight re-arrangement of a familiar slogan which used to be used by an auto insurance company. Their slogan was (and still may be, for all I know), “It pays to belong.” But the Church’s slogan might well be “It costs to belong.” That sounds odd to us. Over the years we have gotten the notion that the Church is about the cheapest thing on earth to which you can belong! How few demands it makes on us! In our service club, if we miss a meeting, we are expected to make it up. At the country club we are expected to pay dues. (I have a rabbi friend who thinks that we Christians are simply crazy for not insisting upon dues! And, after attending a recent rabbinical convention he told me that the rabbis agreed that, in light of inflation, a tithe is not 10 percent any longer, now it is fifteen! I’d be happy if the church members I know contributed five percent! We’d be able to pay most of our bills! But I digress.) It seems that the church keeps you on the rolls forever and forever, whether or not you make any contribution of time, effort, or money. In many ways, the church seems to be just about the cheapest thing to which you can belong. A family was riding home after a Sunday morning service. The father complained about the sermon. The mother complained about the music. Every family member had a complaint. But one bright little boy piped up, “But I thought it was a heckuva good show for a quarter!”
How then, can we say “it costs to belong?” For many of us, it doesn’t seem to cost very much! I know that I have not paid very much over the years. Most of us expect our faith to pay dividends to us, not cost us something. We often hear the slogan “Attend the Church of your choice,” and that sounds good. In a democracy such as ours, everyone ought to have the freedom to choose or not to choose whichever community of faith he or she wishes to become a part of. And yet, there is something bothersome in the slogan. It smacks of consumerism...shopping around to find the church which makes the least demands upon us. James didn’t shop around. He found himself a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, and that membership cost him his life.
III. AND WHAT WAS THIS “CHURCH” TO WHICH JAMES BELONGED? For us, the word may mean several different things. It may refer to a building or a denomination, but the primary New Testament meaning is a community. The Church is the people of God in the world. In the New Testament it is called by a variety of different names. Paul’s favorite was “The Body of Christ,” i.e., the means by which Christ gets His work done in the world. The early Christians believed that when Jesus came into the world, “The Word became flesh.” But the Word made flesh was put to death upon a cross. Yet, even though death could claim Him, it could not hold Him. He rose from the dead and continued His mighty work...through the Church, His body. Down through the ages, Christ continues to speak through the lips, minister through the hands, walk on errands of mercy upon the feet of those who belong to His Church. The special Twelve who were with Him were called “apostles,” which means “one sent with a message to deliver.” In the New Testament itself, those who belonged were called “disciples.” The word literally means “students.” They had not yet arrived, but were on their way. I am afraid that too many people look upon joining the church as sort of a “graduation,” rather than enrolling in kindergarten. After joining, they have graduated, and now become alumni, whose only task now is to sit back and criticize, rather than get in and do. But from the very first, those who joined the church were called “disciples,” learners, enrolled in the school of Christ, sitting at His feet to learn of Him.
Also, in the New Testament, those who belonged were called “brothers and sisters.” Some churches still preserve that custom. For them the church was a family. Within the family, there may be differences, as there are in any family, but members of the family are loyal to one another. Brothers and sisters may squabble among themselves, but just let some outsider threaten one of them, and they band together. The first Christians looked upon the church as a family unit, those who accepted God as their Divine Parent, and Jesus Christ as their Elder Brother, automatically brothers and sisters to one another. All who belonged to Christ belonged to all who belonged to Christ. One life therefore gets linked up with the lives of others, so that your life is no longer your own. Our forebears in the faith used to sing that grand old hymn: “Blest be the Tie that binds.” Just look at the words for a moment, will you?
Blessed be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love,
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
Has that been your experience in the church? If not, why not? Who’s to blame? That’s what “belonging” to the church meant for those first Christians, and ought to mean for us. When one suffered, all suffered. I am reminded of the story of the small group of youngsters who were found sitting on a street corner, all awash in tears. When asked why they were crying, one little girl answered, “We’ve got a pain in Billy’s tummy.”
That’s the way it was with the first communities of Christians. When one suffered, all suffered together. And yet we can sit in our pews week after week and not even know the names of the persons sitting next to us! I don’t quite know what to do about that, but somehow it seems wrong to me. Most attempts to try to create “community” during a worship service find resistance from at least some of the people in the pews. James was part of a fellowship where one life was linked up with other lives, together seeking to live the life of Christ in the world, to be the Body of Christ. And that is what the Cross is all about. The Body of Christ is a crucified body! God linked His life with ours, and the world has never been the same since.
Real belonging to the church, belonging to one another, can be costly business. The Cross has been the central symbol of our faith for centuries; would that it might also be the central symbol of our lives, poured out for God and for one another. And you cannot separate the two, for “inasmuch as you have done it to the least of my sisters and brothers, you have done it unto me.” (See Matthew 25:40.) When he died, the most significant thing that the writer of the Book of Acts could think to say about James, the brother of John, was simply “he belonged to the Church.”
There is a curious legend about the death of James, and it is rather exotic. To this day St. James (or St. Iago) is the patron saint of Spain. Legend says that he went to Spain and preached Christ to that country. Afterward, he returned to Palestine where he was executed by Herod Agrippa, as the New Testament records. But after the execution his body was taken aboard a marble ship at Joppa on the Mediterranean, and taken back to Spain—although just how the marble ship was supposed to float, nobody knows. The vessel was brought by the angels to the Pillars of Hercules and, passing through the straits, came to Iria Flavia (today, Padron) in the province of Galicia. There a heathen queen, Lupa, was converted by the miracles attending the arrival of the apostle’s body and subsequently built a magnificent church over his remains. Much later, after the body was supposedly stolen, then recovered, then lost, it was found in the ninth century and taken by King Alphonso to Compostella, where, it is said, it still lies. Indeed, the name Compostella is a corruption of either the Latin phrase “Ad Sanctum Jacobum Apostolum,” or the Spanish phrase “Giacomo Postolo,” James the Apostle. (Barclay, op. cit., p. 102 and Kraeling, op. cit., p. 126)
All of that sounds rather fanciful and far-away to modern ears, but let me bring the whole story of James a bit closer to home.
A few miles outside of Paris, Kentucky, in a grove of trees on a rural hilltop there are a number of graves near the old Cane Ridge Meeting House where many a revival was held in the last century. On one of the grave stones there is an inscription that ought to give us all something to think about: “Here lies Nathaniel Rogers, who was born in 1755. He was a member of the convention that formed the constitution of Kentucky in 1799. But what is of far more consequence, he was a member of the Church of Christ, in the bosom of which he died.” I commend to you that phrase this morning: “But what is of more consequence...he was a member of the Church of Christ.” Of what consequence is your church membership to you? If the answer is “not much,” I can only ask you: “Why not?”