Imagine a happening with me. The scene is a fine restaurant all decorated for the holidays. It is noontime and the restaurant is crowded. Five well-dressed businessmen are seated around a round table enjoying drinks after an expensive lunch. They are entrepreneurs. Each has been successful in building up a business and operating it in a way that has made him wealthy. Since it is the holiday season, they have gathered for a celebration. But they are not celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah. They are celebrating their own success. They take turns politely inviting each other to tell their stories. Each in turn tells of how he has come from some kind of situation of disadvantage, either real or imagined, and, by his own shrewdness and willingness to take risks and by hard work has become a successful man. They all listen attentively and wait for their turn to tell their stories. They all speak just a little louder than they need to, as if in the hope of being overheard. It is a celebrative ritual they enjoy indulging in on special occasions.
In fact, the people at the nearby tables do overhear. For the most part, they share in the admiration. These men are telling stories that the culture has taught everyone present to call success stories. There are, however, some who overhear but do not share in the admiration.
Two businesswomen at the next table overhear and are honestly jealous. They, too, are trying to achieve a similar kind of success. They share hushed comments about how they intend to crash that "good old boys' club" and make them take notice.
The waiter overhears too and, in spite of his impeccable courtesy, he does not admire. He recognizes one of the men, but is not recognized by him. He once worked for his company. He had received a commendation for his work two weeks before he was laid off as a part of the company's program of downsizing. He was told that the company had to get lean and mean to meet competition. He doesn't think his former boss looks too lean. He has lots of bad feelings. He is hoping to find a new job that will get him back on some company's ladder. But, right now, he is just hoping for a generous tip.
The woman who is collecting dishes from the tables has bad feelings, too. She is a single mother, holding two jobs to support her family. She is very anxious because she can't give her children the quality time she knows they need. She thinks it is really unfair that some people have so much and some others have so little. No, not everyone who hears is celebrating.
As a matter of fact, some of the people at the table are not really able to put themselves completely into the celebration. One is a younger man who has scored some spectacular early successes in business. He is proud of himself, but he does not yet feel entirely comfortable in this winner's circle. He knows he still has to prove himself in the long haul.
Another of the men has just made a risky investment to expand his business using lots of borrowed money. If the enterprise is successful, he will reap huge profits. But if it is not, he will be very vulnerable. He knows that all of the men at the table know about this situation. He knows that, if his venture fails, it may well be one of these men who will move in to take advantage of his misfortune. He really does not feel that he is among friends. But none of that is mentioned. He speaks of his new enterprise as a sure thing and the others congratulate him for it.
A third man feels thoroughly uncomfortable. He really doesn't feel a part of this scene. He has indeed been successful in business. He would be frank to tell a friend that his success has been three-fourths good luck and only one-fourth his ability to stumble into the right decisions at the right time. He is deeply grateful for his good fortune and he feels a real responsibility to manage it for the good of all whose lives are touched by his enterprise. These are two attitudes that the others at the table would not understand, so he does not mention them. He just participated half-heartedly in the celebration. This man's problem is that he is a Christian. He is grateful for his good fortune and intends to keep on working to be a successful businessman, but he finds the values and the attitudes and the competitive arrogance of his companions foreign to his way of life. He goes along because it is expected, but he will be glad when this lunch is over.
That was not a true story. It is not something that happened just like that at some particular time. But it could have. It wasn't hard to imagine, was it? The elements of that story are all around us every day and we see them. In that sense, it was truer than a story about one particular event.
But the big question is: What does it have to do with our scripture lesson or with the season of Advent or with anything that we are supposed to be talking about in church? Much more than you may think.
Paul contrasted two ways of life: the way of the flesh and the way of the Spirit. Other biblical witnesses refer to the way of the flesh as the way of the world. One of every Christian's greatest challenges is to keep living according to the Spirit, that is to say, living a life that is being shaped daily by a relationship with the living God, while everyone else around us is living a very different kind of life. That is hard to do. The temptations and the influences and the intentional pressures of our culture are always pulling us or pushing us to live like everyone else and making it costly not to do that.
What is this "way of the world" that we have to cope with? Paul's use of the expression, "living according to the flesh," has given lots of us the idea that it must have something to do with sex. But the letter of James goes to some trouble to describe it in another way. What James describes has a remarkable resemblance to the things that we imagined going on in the restaurant. It is life committed to material gain and dominated by envy and competitiveness. Listen to some things that the letter said in the passage just before the one we read.
"Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God" (James 4:1-4). A little later, he hoots at those who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money" (James 4:13), as if they could really be in control of their future. And in the beginning of the chapter from which we read our lesson, he said, "Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you" (James 5:1).
All of a sudden our own culture and perhaps some aspects of our own lifestyles are on the stage on which the biblical drama is being played out.
What does James want to tell Christians who are living in the midst of cultural circumstances like these? Don't give in. Keep living the life of faith and of love that you have learned from Christ, even in the midst of the competitiveness and greed and envy of our culture. And don't let envious and competitive attitudes invade the fellowship of the church. Keep supporting each other in the way that you learned from Jesus. And be patient in enduring any stress or abuse that comes from being "different."
James reminds the Christians that Judgment Day is coming. That is one of the themes that is always a part of the observance of the season of Advent. The time of the coming of the Lord is always a time of judgment in which the things that are wrong with our lives are shown for what they are and we are called to get our lives right. James reminded the early Christians that the way of the world that is so tempting and troublesome will fall under judgment and be shown wanting, and the way into which Christ called them will prove to be real life at its best. James warned his readers not to let themselves be drawn into the ways of the world that will fall under condemnation because "the Judge is standing at the doors" (James 5:9).
We suppose James must have been wrong about that. Judgment day has not come yet - or has it? Judgment doesn't come just on one terrible day at the end of time. Judgment is one aspect of every meeting with the Lord. It is going on all of the time, and it is going on for our own good. All of the awesome biblical images of the final judgment can be taken as descriptions of something that happens right in the midst of our everyday lives. Judgment can happen in lots of different ways. There was really a lot of judgment in the story we imagined, wasn't there? A business failure, the loss of a job, a situation of disadvantage, or any other experience in which the system you depend upon lets you down can be a judgment day. Any day on which you wake up and realize that the life you have invested yourself in has not delivered what it promised, and that you don't like the life you have, and that you really don't like yourself as you have become is judgment day. We are wise to recognize those experiences as times when the Lord comes to show us what is wrong with our lives and to call us to better lives.
What is the message for today? Take a good look at the lifestyle of our culture and recognize all of the things in it that are contrary to a life shaped by a relationship with the living God whom we know through Jesus of Nazareth. Don't let yourself be drawn into the world's way of thinking about things and of acting and of living. It really won't lead to happiness - in spite of what it keeps telling you. Follow the way of Jesus, the way of faith and love, no matter what it costs you. That will lead to the life that really is life at its best.
Where should we start? We might start by taking a good look at the way in which we are planning to celebrate Christmas. Some of you have already thought of that, haven't you? It would be easy to get drawn into an experience of envy and competitiveness that could spoil your season. Open the door and welcome the judge who will help you to get things into a right perspective.
But some may be wanting to cry out, "Wait! Why must we be talking about such a somber subject as judgment during this season when we want to be happy and celebrate Christmas?" The answer is that it is part of our preparation for a real celebration of Christmas. The first verses of our scripture lesson for today spoke of waiting patiently for the coming of the Lord. It is part of God's way of dealing with us that judgment comes before the Savior comes so that we can know our need for the salvation. That is the function of judgment. It is not to condemn us. It is to prepare us. The one who comes brings forgiving of our sins, healing of our sickness and brokenness, and the possibility of a better life. It is important for us to realize that those things don't just have to do with a salvation in some realm of abstract spirituality or with salvation after we die. The forgiving of sins, the healing of brokenness, the offer of a better life has to do with the real things that are going on in our real lives. It has something to offer to people like the ones in the little story of the businessmen's lunch with which we began. It has something to offer to you that has to do with the things that are hurting in your life.
We will be wise to open the door of our lives because the Judge is standing at the door - and so is the Savior.