"Treasure" (James 5:1-6)

The Legend of King Midas

Perhaps you’ll have heard this story before.

Once upon a time, long ago, a certain king loved his wealth. The sight of gold would make his heart flutter, and he desired to acquire as much gold as he could. The only thing that rivaled his captivation with gold was the love he had for his daughter. Yet the more he loved his daughter, the more he desired gold—for what better gift to give her when his time was done? So he set about to become as rich as he could become.

One day a stranger passed through his kingdom, a young, handsome fellow. When he saw the king, he declared his admiration, “You are a wealthy man, king! You must be happy.”

The king shrugged and said, “It is but a drop in the sea, if you consider how much more could be made with more time. Imagine if I lived a thousand years more!”

The stranger squinted at the king and wondered aloud, “Then you are not satisfied? What would satisfy you, if not all that you already have?” He waited a moment and then added, “Please, king. Tell me your wish.”

The king suddenly had an inkling that this was no ordinary stranger, that whatever he said next could indeed become a reality. His heart raced with desire, as he deliberated how to become even richer. “I wish,” the king said, “I wish that everything I touched would be changed to gold.”

The stranger kept silent and eyed the king soberly, before asking, “You are sure this will satisfy you?”

“How could it not?” the king replied.

Well, you know it goes from here. At first, the king is in a wonderland. He walks out into his garden, eager to test his newfound power. Every flower he touches turns to gold. He cannot believe his fortune.

Later that evening, his daughter enters his room, her face in tears. She holds in her hand one of the flowers. “Daddy,” she says, “they’re all metal now.” Her tearful face pierces the king’s heart, and he rushes to console her. But the moment they embrace, she goes still. And cold. And hard. And the king takes a step in back horror, faced with the golden statue of his daughter.

Frantic with fear, the king sent all his servants out to look for the young stranger who had visited him earlier. For three days they looked and found no one matching his description. On the third day, however, the king saw the young man himself wandering his garden.

“You seem upset, king. Has your wish not been granted?”

The king fell on his knees before him, shaking his head, “It has been granted…and I’m unhappier than ever. I see now what really matters.” The stranger winced and nodded. Then the king pleaded with him, “Please, is there any way to lift this curse?”

The stranger then gave him instructions: go down to the river at the bottom of his garden. Immerse himself completely and bathe himself in it. And then fill a pitcher full with its water and sprinkle anything gold he wished to return to its original state. “If you do this with a sincere and earnest heart, king…it may be possible that your life is restored.”

The king rushed to do as the stranger had instructed. After bathing, he filled a pitcher and hurried to his daughter. With trepidation, he sprinkled the top of her head—and lo and behold, she looked up at him, sneezing and sputtering and laughing, “You’ve just spilled water on me, father—how foolish!” She did not know that she’d previously been a golden statue. The king hugged her, longer than usual, relishing that he could feel her heart beating and hear the inhale and exhale of her breathing.

It is said that from that day on the king abhorred the sight of gold—except in the hair of his daughter.[1]

A Cautionary Tale

Our scripture this morning begins in rather jarring fashion. I don’t know about you, but that opening line—“Come now, you rich people”—already has me squirming a little bit in my seat. (Imagine how you might feel if I started one of my own sermons in that way!) To be sure, I wouldn’t call or consider myself “rich.” But I know enough about the world around me to know that anyone who’s living in relative comfort in the United States is, in a global sense, quite rich.

I don’t want to tame today’s scripture, to water it down, to let us off the hook too quickly or easily, but…but it is important to know that the rich people whom James seems to be addressing in today’s scripture, were not actually the recipients of his words. To put that a different way: the early community of Christ-followers that would have received James’ letter would have been made up largely by people considered poor in the Roman empire. If you’ll remember, when Jesus begins proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God, he indicates that this is especially good news to the poor (Luke 4:18), and he regularly commends the poor as being recipients of God’s blessing. To put it simply, the early Christian movement was, on the whole, a poor people’s movement.

So what is James doing, addressing a group of people who aren’t actually in his audience? Clearly his goal is not to convert the rich. Nor does he seem to be advocating a program of reform, encouraging his poor audience to seek some revolutionary redistribution of wealth. No, what James is doing is encouraging his poor audience to maintain the treasure they have received in Christ, rather than to exchange it for the treasure of the world.

In apocalyptic fashion—not unlike what we might see in the book of Revelation—James paints a picture of what’s really going on with wealth. He peels back the curtain of the appearance, of the alluring images of the comfort and convenience of wealth, to show what’s happening in reality, what’s happening in the soul. He depicts riches that rot and decay, fine clothing that burns at the flesh, accumulated money that screams to God on behalf of the poor from whom it has been unjustly withheld. And the scene ends in a vague murder, the very anonymity of which allows it to fit to so many different scenarios: the laborer who dies because of unsafe working conditions, the laborer who dies in jail because they cannot pay off their debt, the laborer whose child dies because of a lack of food and nutrition…and so on.

In effect, James is telling a cautionary tale not unlike the story of King Midas. The tale of King Midas entered folklore, getting told and retold in popular settings. In other words, it was not addressed to kings who were greedy. It was addressed to the common person, warning them against the kind of greed that consumed their kings. In a similar way, James addresses his words not to rich folks, but to poor Christ-following communities that might be tempted to seek the status and privilege of wealth. He is warning the early Christ-followers against the lure of wealth, alerting them to its disintegrating, destructive quality. On the one hand, it does not do what it promises to do. The images of rot and decomposition point to its fleeting nature. King Midas, we might remember, is unsatisfied long before he realizes he is cursed. Indeed, he is the richest man in the kingdom when he meets the stranger, and yet it is his unsatisfaction that leads him to make his wish. On the other hand, wealth also disintegrates relationships. When profit is prioritized over people, the fabric of relationship begins to unravel. James paints a picture where the wealthy see only their profits, and not the people who suffer as a result of their greed. Their monetary gain is a grave spiritual and relational loss. We see a similar loss of relationship in the tale of King Midas. His greed for gold turns his daughter into a lifeless golden statue.

Listening for the Good News

The good news for King Midas is that when his daughter turns to gold, his heart is horrified. His horror is good news, because it turns him away from a pursuit that was not making him happy anyway and turns him instead toward the true source of life, which is to say love. I love the way Nathaniel Hawthorne ends his version of the tale, having King Midas proclaim about his granddaughters’ blonde hair: “Ever since that morning [when my wish was granted], I have hated the very sight of all other gold, save this!”[2]

The good news is perhaps a bit more difficult to detect in our scripture today, where James never really lets up from his tirade against wealth. But I think the good news is there. We just have to listen closely.

I hear it in a single word: treasure. “You have laid up treasure for the last days,” James cries out to the wealthy (Ja 5:3). Now, I think the immediate sentiment is akin to “You reap what you sow.” That is, if you make wealth your treasure, then when you find yourself alone and without a friend, the wealth that you’ve laid up will be little comfort—but that’s all you’ll have.

By itself, that’s not really good news. But I wouldn’t be surprised if when James uses the word “treasure,” he’s actually remembering one of Jesus’ teaching, one of the times Jesus used the word “treasure.” “Sell your possessions, and give alms,” Jesus tells his disciples. “Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:33-34).

The good news according to Jesus is that there is an “unfailing treasure” (Luke 12:33). Which is to say, a treasure that will enrich our lives rather than destroy them. The surprise is that this treasure is found in other people, and especially in the least, the last, and the left out (the very people neglected and oppressed in the pursuit of wealth—as we see in James’ picture of the world). Repeatedly in the gospels, Jesus encourages us to let go of things so that we might receive the company of others, especially the needful (cf. Luke 12:32-33; 14:12-14). That’s the surprising twist to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the story of King Midas, Midas learns at the end of the story that the real treasure is his daughter. The gospel affirms that, yes, love is the treasure, but it invites us to love not only kith and kin, but also the needful. For in so doing, we suddenly receive a kingdom of care, a community where people are precious, much more precious than things, a world where we are never alone but always in good company (cf. Mark 10:28-30).

The real treasure, according to Christ, is being able to look into another pair of eyes and see God. Such a person will always be rich.

Prayer

Dear Christ,

Whose riches are found not in comforts or conveniences,

But in communion with others,

Inspire us to see other people

As you saw them

…

Not as more or less than us,

Nor as potential sources of wealth (or impediments to wealth),

But as precious brothers and sisters

In God’s family.

Amen.

---

[1] Loosely adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Golden Touch,” in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (Boston: Tickner, Field, and Reeds, 1852).

[2] Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Golden Touch,” in A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (Boston: Tickner, Field, and Reeds, 1852).

"Thy Will Be Done" (James 4:11-17)

“…and the Creek Don’t Rise”

I was at a family reunion in Kentucky—probably 8 or 9 years old—and someone was sharing about their plans for the rest of the summer. When they finished sharing, they paused, and then added: “Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.” At the time, I didn’t understand the meaning of this phrase. My mom, who grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky, later explained to me that the phrase had probably originated from a time when the early settlers had nothing other than the most basic dirt paths to take them from one place to another. Too much rain would flood the creeks in the “hollers,” and the flooded creeks would wash out the paths. “Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise” was a way of acknowledging that while we may have expectations and plans for the future, we are not in control of the future. Maybe the creek will rise and wipe out the path we’d plotted. Or maybe our will for the future simply doesn’t match up with the good Lord’s will.

Speaking Evil Is Not God’s Will

In last week’s scripture, James addressed his audience in some harsh language. “Adulterers!” he cried, accusing his listeners of becoming too cozy with the selfish, greedy ways of the world. “You sinners” and “you double-minded,” he followed up, before urging his audience to repent with tears and mourning.

But in this week’s scripture, James suddenly softens his tone, calling his audience “brothers and sisters.” Listen to how he begins: “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters” (Ja 4:11). I think of how a parent might address a child who had wandered off and gotten lost. First they would express their fear and their anger in unfiltered terms, “How could you!” “What were you possibly thinking?” But then their tone softens as they sink into gratitude and a sort of sober seriousness. I hear something similar in James’ tone. Previously he’d been admonishing his audience for allowing themselves to be dragged into conflict with one another by way of their selfish and greedy ambition. But as he cools down from his initial outburst, we hear now from him a sober plea: “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters” (Ja 4:11).

It is a simple, if difficult, instruction. “Do not speak evil against one another.” I don’t know about you, but a part of me immediately reacts and wants to say, “But what if it’s justified?” But James gives no exceptions, no conditions, no “ifs,” ands,” or “buts.” Instead he doubles down and insists that this instruction is part of God’s law, and to transgress it willfully is to put oneself above God. Whoever speaks evil against others, he says, effectively “speaks evil against…[God’s] law” (Ja 4:11). Which part of God’s law James has in mind is not certain. He could be referring to the ancient laws in Leviticus that prohibit “go[ing] around as a slanderer” and instead command us to “love [our] neighbor” (Lev 19:16, 18). Or he could be referring to Jesus’ own words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged” and “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your father in heaven” (Matt 5:44; 7:1). In either case, it is clear for James that it is not God’s will for us to speak evil against others. To do so would be to write off what God has not written off, to judge and condemn the very same people whom Jesus Christ came to save.

Never in Control, Always Responsible

On the surface, it seems like James switches subjects rather suddenly, as he moves (in verse 13) from speaking evil against others to speaking boastfully or arrogantly about our plans for the future. But the underlying principle remains the same: not taking God’s place, not putting our will above God’s will.

In one sense, James’ instruction not to speak boastfully of the future is the flipside to Jesus’ instruction not to worry about tomorrow. Jesus was speaking those words to anxious hearts, to hearts that asked, “What if?”; James is speaking to greedy hearts, to hearts that boasted, “Just imagine…!” (cf. Ja 4:13). But both Jesus and James are saying the same thing: “Don’t think about tomorrow.” Either about what you might not have tomorrow, or about what you might gain tomorrow.

The problem with thinking about tomorrow is that it puts us into a mindset of control, which invariably leaves us at odds with God and reality. Talk to any wedding planner or event coordinator worth their salt, and one of the first things they’ll tell you is that things never go exactly according to plan. Whether it’s unexpected rain, a child tearing through the venue on a sugar high, a late arrival, a lost item, and so on—something is sure to go wrong.

Jesus and James both invite us out of a mindset of control and into a mindset or orientation of responsibility. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” Jesus urges (Matt 6:33), which is a way of saying, “Live in the way of God whatever your circumstances.” James expresses a similar idea, albeit in a more critical tone: “Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin” (Ja 4:17). It is another way of saying, “Live well in the moment—do the next right thing.”

If I had to put into a nutshell the wisdom that James is expressing, which is actually a wisdom that echoes Jesus’ wisdom, it would go something like this: “I am never in control, but I am always responsible.”

And as Jesus assures us, when we live responsibly, we can trust that all our needs will be provided (cf. Matt 6:33).

“God, I Guess”

“Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise” is perhaps a useful phrase for folks, a helpful reminder that they aren’t in control. But what I hear in today’s scripture is more than a reminder that we are not in control. James is not offering the simple message, “There is a God, and you’re not him”—however true and helpful that message may be. James is not imagining a puppeteer God, pulling the strings, calling the shots. James is, rather, pleading for his audience to live like God. For James, aligning ourselves with God’s will is not about making sure our wooden arms or wooden legs pop up when God pulls the string. It’s not about a detailed, linear, point-by-point plan that we have to follow or else. Aligning ourselves with God’s will is about living the way that God lives—“so that [we] may be children of [our] father in heaven,” as Jesus says (Matt 5:44).

When the Jesuit priest Greg Boyle began his gang rehabilitation ministry with former gang members in Los Angeles, he began to get a lot of local press. One day, a producer from 60 Minutes read about the ministry, about how Father Greg Boyle strove to give any former gang member (many of whom would have already spent time in prison) a second chance at life in the shape of not only a job but also a community of belonging. I’ll let Greg tell the rest of the story in his own words:

Mike Wallace, also seeing the piece, wanted to do a report. I was assured that I’d be getting “Good Mike.” These were the days when the running joke was “you know you’re going to have a bad day when Mike Wallace and a 60 Minutes film crew show up at your office.

Wallace arrived at the poorest parish in Los Angeles in the stretchest of limousines, stepped out of the car, wearing a flak jacket, covered with pockets, prepared, I suppose, for a journey into the jungle.

For all his initial insensitivity, toward the end of the visit, in a moment unrecorded, Wallace did say to me, “Can I admit something? I came here expecting monsters. But that’s not what I found.”

Later, in a recorded moment, we are sitting in a classroom filled with gang members…. Wallace points at me and says, “You won’t turn these guys in to the police.” Which seems quite silly to me at the time. I say something lame like, “I didn’t take my vows to the LAPD.” But then Wallace turns to a homie and grills him on this, saying over and over, “He won’t turn you in, will he?” And then he asks the homie, “Why is that? Why do you think he won’t turn you over to the police?” The kid just stares at Mike Wallace, shrugs, nonplussed, and says, “God…I guess.”

For Father Greg Boyle, aligning our will with God’s will and living the way that God lives, means, at the very least, not writing off the people whom God has not written off. It means “not speak[ing] evil against them” but instead showing them the same love, patience, and grace, that Jesus shows the shamed outcasts of his own day. (As Paul might put it, aligning our will with God’s will means coming to share the mindset or attitude of Christ.) Father Greg’s ministry has grown exponentially since the day of Mike Wallace’s visit, but as he will tell you, it’s not down to his business acumen or financial expertise. It’s not down to the control of anyone, really. It’s simply down to living responsibly in the way of God, seeking God’s kingdom. Clearly the gospel is meeting the hunger of a large, needful population there in Los Angeles. But, according to Greg, it wouldn’t make a difference if the ministry was just as small as when it had started. They would keep doing the same thing regardless… trusting that God’s will is a good place—the best place—to be.

Prayer

Compassionate Christ,
Your embrace of tax collectors and sinners
Scandalized the world
That spoke evil of tax collectors and sinners—
Grant us your faith
In the good will of God,
That we might live
Not seeking control
But to live responsibly
In the merciful and compassionate ways
Of our father in heaven:
Amen.

Letting Go (James 4:1-10)

Tragic Choices

I’ve heard that among some communities in Central America, where monkeys run wild and will occasionally pinch food or other possessions, people have developed a clever device to trap them. They build a small container and put a banana or some other tasty treat inside. Then they carve an opening in the container that is just large enough for the monkey’s paw to reach through. When the monkey reaches in and grabs the food, however, he is met with a rude awakening. The opening, which was just large enough for his paw to reach through, is too small for his closed fist. And here’s the kicker: the monkey won’t let go of his plunder. He could free himself, but he won’t. The monkey’s selfish desire tragically keeps him trapped.

I’ve heard of a similar situation that strikes a bit closer to home, pertaining not to monkeys but to humanity. It is a piece of ancient Buddhist folklore. The legend holds that people who are very greedy in this life may be reincarnated—may be reborn in the next life—as a sort of mythical creature known as a “hungry ghost.” A hungry ghost is essentially what it sounds like: a person with an insatiable appetite, cursed with a hunger that they will never be able to satisfy. In one of the stories of this tradition, the hungry ghosts are gathered around a long rectangular table, with a feast in front of them. All that remains is to eat. But when the dinner commences, they run into an immediate problem. The utensils at the table are too long. No matter how they contort their bodies, they cannot get the utensils to their mouths. The tragedy in this case—and perhaps you’ve already figured this out—is that if they stopped thinking about their own hunger for just one moment, they might realize that they could feed each other; their utensils, which are too long to feed themselves, are just the right length to feed the person sitting across from them. But as with the monkey, their selfish desire prevents them from the good that is right in front of them.

A Different “War”:

Redrawing the Battle Lines

In today’s scripture, James begins by asking where conflict and violence come from? His answer is a rhetorical masterpiece. “Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?” (Ja 4:1). In other words, James is redrawing the battle lines from out there somewhere, to in here—in the heart. For anyone who follows Christ, the real “war” is not against “flesh and blood” (as Paul would say), but against “cravings” in the heart. James proceeds to specify that the battle in the heart has to do with selfish desire. With wanting something we do not have.

In one sense, it is the same tragedy we see with those pesky monkeys and those hungry ghosts. Selfish desire prevents us from enjoying the goodness that is right in front of us. And what makes it tragic is that we don’t see this. When we find ourselves in a situation of willful conflict, the default viewpoint is not, “Oh, there I go again—wanting something I don’t have.” We don’t typically stop and chide ourselves when we’re in a fight, “Remember, the war is really within!” No, we draw battle lines, we identify enemies outside of us. In the heat of the moment, it’s all about getting our way.

But when James uses the word “enemy,” he is not referring to anything “flesh and blood”—he’s not referring to those oppressive Romans over there, or his audience’s Jewish brothers and sisters who deny Christ, or anyone else. Just as he first relocates “war” from without to within, from the battlefield to the heart, so he also redefines the terminology of “friend” and “enemy.” For James, the enemy is not a group of people but a way of living. When James talks about the “world” and whether we see the world as “friend” or “enemy,” he’s not referring to our planet and the people on it (which are undoubtedly “very good,” as God Godself saw at the conclusion of creation). By “world,” James is referring to a way of living, a mindset, an orientation. For James, the “world” is shorthand for our tragic habits of selfish desire. The “world” is code for the willfulness that keeps us tragically trapped like those monkeys who won’t let go, the willfulness that keeps us heartbreakingly hungry like those ghosts who can’t see others as their companions. To be a friend of the world is to live by these woeful habits that keep us locked in struggle with ourselves and one another, not realizing that the real enemy is not other people but the very attitude or mindset within that says we don’t have enough and everything would be better if we could just have that one more thing that we very well may have to fight for.

Fighting Back…

If we are in the same tragic predicament as the monkey and the hungry ghost, then we are faced with the same challenge: namely, to let go of getting our way and instead gratefully receive that which is already within our reach. James says as much. A “friend of God,” James suggests, is a person who lives humbly, trusting in God’s grace to supply their need (cf. Ja 4:6). The irony of letting go is that while it feels like losing (the monkey must let go of the food in his hand, the hungry ghost must give up on eating the food on his own plate), the result is actually winning (the monkey is liberated from the trap, the hungry ghost gets not only food but a friend across the table who cares for them).

Intriguingly, as James invites his audience to let go, he continues to use military language. Just to recap, so far he’s talked about “war,” saying it’s within, not without, and the “enemy,” indicating it’s not “flesh and blood” but a way of living. Now he talks about fighting. “Resist the devil” (Ja 4:7), he says. The Greek word for “resist,” anthistemi, is a military term that means “to stand against” the attacks of the enemy. Practically speaking, resist means to “fight back against.” Jesus uses the same word in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, “Do not resist [do not ‘fight back against’] an evildoer,” but instead turn the other cheek (Matt 5:39). If we take Jesus’ instructions together with James, then a clear picture emerges. Our fight is not against other people. Our fight is against what is within, which is to say, a way of living that gains ground inside of us, that gains ground not by bombs and battles, but by thoughts and cravings for what we do not have. Call it evil, call it the devil, call it whatever you want—it’s what separates us from others, from our own selves, and ultimately from God.

…With Tears?

If we do not fight against the devil with fists and firearms, if the real evil is not other people but in our thinking, then how do we fight back against it? James has some surprising advice: “Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection” (Ja 4:9). It is clear James is not here to win a popularity contest….

In our culture, tears are often seen as a sign of weakness, something to be embarrassed about. If we cry in front of another person, we might hide our face and apologize, “I’m so sorry….” If someone wants to offer some hard counsel to a friend drowning in self-pity, they might say, “Well, don’t cry about it…do something!”

But according to James, tears are how we fight back against the devil, against the evil that is not out there but in here.

What do tears communicate? In one sense, it is impossible to say. Tears are beyond language; they express something beyond words. Sometimes they overtake us and we don’t even know why. Which sounds sort of like Paul’s description of the Holy Spirit interceding for us with groans too deep for words (cf. Rom 8:26-27). But if I had to say, I would suggest that tears most often accompany a profound feeling of loss. It could be a real loss, like the death of a loved one. Or it could be a more superficial loss, like the evaporation of a potential business opportunity. I imagine that if that trapped monkey were to by some strength other than his own let go of the food and walk free, there would still be something akin to tears wetting the cheeks of his soul.

Perhaps the tears that James commends, accompany a sense of loss, as we relinquish the need to be right, to be in control, to win. Such tears are not selfish or immature; they are honest, and they help us to see more clearly the reality that we will never live well as long as we seek only our own gain. (As one folk singer puts it, “It’s a hard hand to hold that is looking for control.”[1]) These tears of loss are the prelude to victory, to letting go and walking away. For letting go and walking away is how the war within us is won. How the devil is defeated. It’s one of those gospel paradoxes: die to live; lose to win; weakness is strength. We see it most clearly on the cross, where Jesus lets go of any need to be right, to be in control, to look good, to win. If Jesus had called down some angels and put up a fight…he would have lost to the devil. No matter how victorious he may have appeared, the devil’s spirit of division and contention would have thrived.

One church leader in the tenth century, Simeon of Byzantine, insisted that tears are the “second baptism,” the real baptism; they signify our spiritual surrender and our readiness for the reality of God. Letting go of the need to be right, to be in control, to win, may indeed be a tearful experience and feel like losing in the heat of the moment…but the good news of Christ (which James proclaims in a rather minor key, at times!) is that this loss is in fact a great gain. Or to put it more precisely, a great grace. For when we let go, we discover a much greater reality: God loves us and graciously provides for our need.

Prayer

Today I’d like to close by sharing a prayer written Mary Mrozowski, a native New Yorker and housewife who became a world-renowned spiritual leader. She came to understand her life’s quest as one of letting go and consenting to be in God’s presence.

One of her prayers, which became particularly well-known, is called “The Welcoming Prayer.” It is a little unorthodox, in that it makes no demands or requests of God, but rather makes commitments on behalf of the self. It is written in the first person, and I will read it this way, inviting you to pray it inwardly for yourself:

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I welcome everything that comes to me in this moment
because I know it is for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions,
persons, situations, and conditions.

I let go of my desire for security.
I let go of my desire for approval.
I let go of my desire for control.
I let go of my desire to change
any situation, condition,
person, or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God
and the healing action and grace within.

In Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior: Amen.

---

[1] Willy Mason, “Hard Hand to Hold,” Where the Humans Eat, Virgin Records, 2004.

"Wisdom from Above" (James 3:13-18)

Isn’t Ambition Good?

Several weeks ago, over the Fourth of July weekend, my sister-in-law suggested that my family watch Hamilton as a way of celebrating our national history. If you haven’t seen Hamilton yourself, you have probably heard about it. When it originally burst onto Broadway, garnering widespread acclaim, it reignited interest in the story of our nation’s founding. Through its focus on a lesser-known historical figure, Alexander Hamilton, it gave a surprisingly engaging account of our country’s ambitious beginning. It gained particular renown for its appeal to youth of color, as its author Lin-Manuel Miranda casted many of the founding figures as people of color (thus foregrounding the immigrant character of our forebears) and wrote most of the numbers in a sort of plainspoken rap.

I won’t embarrass myself trying to rap, but I would like to share with you in spoken word a portion of the show’s opener, which introduces Alexander Hamilton as an ambitious upstart, a go-getter, a young man who won’t take no for an answer. Here’s how the show begins:

How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a
Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten
Spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor
Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?

The ten-dollar Founding Father without a father
Got a lot farther by working a lot harder
By being a lot smarter, by being a self-starter
By fourteen, they placed him in charge of a trading charter

And every day while slaves were being slaughtered and carted
Away across the waves, he struggled and kept his guard up
Inside, he was longing for something to be a part of
The brother was ready to beg, steal, borrow, or barter….[1]

Hearing these words rhythmically and enthusiastically delivered, it’s hard not to feel a sense of pride and optimism for the young Alexander Hamilton, and indeed for our young nation. The hungry and scrappy character that would propel Alexander Hamilton to great heights is the same character that much of our world aspires to today. In a word, we could call it ambition. (In fact, that may be the perfect word for it. Ambition comes from the Latin word ambitio, which just means “going around.” The word originated from when politicians would “go around” to seek votes, to build their following, to proclaim their superiority over against other candidates.

In our world, ambition is widely considered a good thing. Ambition is the drive to achieve, to get ahead, to win, to inch your way forward to the top. We think of ambition as what has propelled so many advances in medicine, technology, engineering, and science. Ambition has given us the telephone, the airplane, insulin, the heart transplant, the internet, tiny phones with the processing power of computers, and so much more.

“Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse”

It may, therefore, be a surprise to hear how James takes ambition to task, twice. First as a trait that is opposite to God’s wisdom (Ja 3:14). Then as a trait that breeds chaos and destruction (Ja 3:16). James clearly does not think highly of ambition.

Miroslav Volf, a professor of theology at Yale University, has a pithy diagnosis for the disease of ambition. “Striving to be better than others,” he warns, “makes us worse.” It’s a tale as old as time itself. Consider Adam and Eve in the garden. The serpent tempts them to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by telling them, “You will be like gods” (Gen 3:5). But in fact the pursuit of superior knowledge leads to the humans’ downfall. Striving for superiority in fact entails shame and division, hiding the truth and blaming others. The harmony of God’s good creation is broken by the dissonance of ambition.

Miroslav Volf shares how each school year, several thousand new students arrive on Yale’s campus. All of them are excellent students. They have gained admission by being top of their class. You might think their arrival would be cause for celebration and camaraderie. “We made it! All those years of hard work have paid off. Finally, we’re here!” But instead, he says, many of the students become anxious and depressed. Now they are just a small fish in a big pond. He concludes that their ambition contains in its heart a deep insecurity. A doubt or distrust that they are good enough, that they will be loved and cared for just as they are. They are always comparing themselves with others, always implicitly in competition with their surroundings. The striving of ambition is ultimately an insatiable desire to be better. There’s no rest in comparison and competition. Only endless striving.

It is for this reason that I find the story of Alexander Hamilton so fascinating. The musical celebrates him as a hero (albeit a tragic hero). He rose from obscurity to fame, from the rubble to political power. He is held aloft as an example of the American dream, as an example of the greatness that can be achieved by (as the song puts it) “working a lot harder” and “being a lot smarter.” And yet the tragedy of his story—and of his ambition—cannot be denied. First there is the humiliating affair that he engages in when he chooses to stay behind in Philadelphia to pursue his work during the summer instead of traveling with the rest of his family to the countryside. Then there is the brutal fact that both he and his son Philip died as the result of choosing to engage in duels to uphold their honor (despite the fact that duels were illegal). The rewards of Alexander Hamilton’s ambition were indeed high—but were they worth the cost? I wonder what Eliza, his wife, would say.

British philosopher John Gray suggests that whenever ambition results in what we might consider progress, it nearly always follows this same tragic arc. All of the progress that we might celebrate—in technology, in medicine, in engineering, and so on—all of that, he argues, “is an illusion.”[2] “The core of the idea of progress,” he claims, “is the illusion that knowledge enhances human freedom. The reality is that it merely increases human power.”[3] The unfortunate tendency that we tend to gloss over is that much of human progress is accompanied by tragic misuse of the new knowledge and new power. Consider how at the turn of the twentieth century, western civilization was optimistic about the prospects of our scientific advances, predicting that they would usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity. Instead, we got two world wars and several genocides, all of which implemented our new knowledge and power in the worst of ways.

Knowledge Is Not Wisdom

In Genesis, when the serpent promises Eve that eating the forbidden fruit will make the humans like gods, giving them a superior knowledge to what they have, the storyteller reports a curious, minute difference in what Eve perceives. He says that Eve sees that “the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen 3:6). The serpent promises knowledge, but she anticipates wisdom. In other words, she confuses knowledge with wisdom. It is the same mistake made by the optimists at the turn of the twentieth century, and indeed by anyone who lives by selfish ambition.

Wisdom is not knowledge. If you think about it, this is pretty obvious. A teenager might know what it takes to drive a car—first you turn the key to start the ignition, then you take the car out of park and into reverse, and so on. But knowing what it takes to drive a car is very different from knowing how to drive a car. Anyone getting in the passenger seat with a teenager who’s never actually driven better be prepared for an adventure!

Knowledge is about a what; wisdom is about a how. Knowledge is about information; wisdom is about an orientation. When humans learned what nuclear energy was, that was knowledge. When humans decided to use it to make a bomb, well…a Christ-follower might argue that was a tragic, devastating lack of wisdom.

Worldly Wisdom and God’s Wisdom

According to James, “earthly” wisdom is about an orientation that is selfish and ambitious. “Earthly” wisdom is the orientation that we see in Hamilton: a mindset of competition and comparison, a ceaseless striving to be “better.” James is clear that the results of this wisdom are conflict and chaos and destruction.

But God’s wisdom, James says, has a very different orientation. The “wisdom from above” is, paradoxically, about living serenely below; this wisdom is “peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy” (Ja 3:17). We need only think of how Jesus repeatedly teaches his disciples that greatness is not lording it over others, but being last of all and servant of all. Jesus is not teaching the disciples some new knowledge; he’s reorienting their hearts, away from ambition and toward gentle acceptance and cooperation. It’s telling that not long after he teaches this lesson for the first time, James and John come to him in private and demand positions of power in his kingdom (Mark 9:33-37; 10:35-45). This new orientation, this new “how,” is not easy to learn for us who have long been schooled in ambition.

“Imagine…”

Alexander Hamilton’s widow, Eliza, lived over fifty more years after her husband was gunned down. Remarkably, just a few years after losing him, she founded the first orphanage in New York. What gave her the strength—I wonder—not only to keep living, but to live so abundantly? By all accounts, she was a woman of deep and abiding faith. I would like to imagine—although I must stress, I’m not a historian, and I don’t know this for a fact—I would like to imagine that her faith grounded her in a way her husband’s ambition could never do. I would like to imagine that she stood secure in God’s love, knowing herself to be cherished and cared for, just as she was. For this reason, all the scandal that befell her—from her husband’s infidelity to her son’s death in a duel and her husband’s as well—all this scandal could not move the needle on the orientation of her heart. With God’s wisdom, she continually employed her gifts and efforts toward mercy and peace.

Priest and spiritual leader Henri Nouwen writes, “So much of our energy, time, and money goes into maintaining distance from one another. Many if not most of the resources of the world are used to defend ourselves against each other, to maintain or increase our power, and to safeguard our own privileged position.” Here, I think, it’s pretty clear he’s writing about the spirit of ambition and competition that prevails in our world. But he proceeds to imagine more people living like Eliza. “Imagine all that effort being put in the service of peace and reconciliation! Would there be any poverty? Would there be crimes and wars? Just imagine that there was no longer fear among people, no longer any rivalry, hostility, bitterness, or revenge. Just imagine all the people on this planet holding hands and forming one large circle of love. We say, ‘I can't imagine.’ But God says,  ‘That's what I imagine, a whole world not only created…in my image [but also living in it].’”[4]

Prayer

Dear Christ 

Of gentle and humble heart,
You lived secure in God’s love,
Not striving but trusting
…
Inspire us by your faith
And your example
To live not by ambition—
Not by the need to be more, or have more, or do more—
But by a desire for your kingdom of mercy and peace,
Where all might live secure in God’s love.
Amen.

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[1] “Alexander Hamilton,” Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, https://genius.com/Leslie-odom-jr-anthony-ramos-daveed-diggs-okieriete-onaodowan-lin-manuel-miranda-phillipa-soo-christopher-jackson-and-original-broadway-cast-of-hamilton-alexander-hamilton-lyrics, , accessed July 27, 2026.

[2] John Gray, “An Illusion with a Future,” Daedalus (Summer 2004): 11.

[3] John Gray, “An Illusion with a Future,” Daedalus (Summer 2004): 15.

[4] Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together (ed. Charles E. Moore; Walden: Plough, 2021), 104.