NOTES for Jam 5:1-20

The apostle James uses the metaphor of rusted gold and silver to point not to the material side of life, but to the goals and meaning of every kind of accumulation. Accumulated experience, fame and recognition as a specialist, a great public figure, success in business, academic degrees - these are the very gold and silver that rust and will be a testimony against us. And the goals we set for ourselves are our treasure. They mean very little for the future. None of the successes of this world is required in order to love our neighbors, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. And for a believer, a churchgoing person who reads the Gospel, awareness of the smallness and inconspicuousness of our successes before the world and before God must become fundamental. When the Apostle says, "Lament and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom," he calls us to pay attention to the fact that we strive for joy and merriment, that we drive difficult and heavy thoughts away from ourselves. But there is no joy in the world. We carry joy in our hearts. And this joy is from God. He alone can grant it to us. Yet we look in this world for a substitute for relationship with Him. And we understand that we must do good, we feel the need for it, but the mercy we have shown and the help we have given do not bring us joy if through them we do not glorify God and thank Him for the opportunity to help and to be near someone in need.

Today the apostle James returns us to a time of waiting. Waiting in uncertainty - that is what the life of the prophets is. To live in a state where you know how things must be, to believe that this will certainly happen, and at the same time not to experience it yourself. Not to touch what you know about, and at the same time to awaken people who know as you do, but do not wait.

Our situation, compared with the life of the prophets, can be considered comfortable and well arranged. What they spoke about has been fulfilled. We can now join John the Baptist, about whom the Savior says: "blessed is the one who is not offended by Me." That is, knowing everything that will take place, knowing that He will be born, die, and rise, we can and must not be offended by Him. This is one of the beatitudes most accessible to us.

The Apostle James tells us today: “Do not grumble against one another.” Let us remember: how long has it been since we last said, “If it weren't for him...” “It's all his fault...” “How can anyone work with people like that?!” It would be good if it stopped there, but we often also say, “If it weren't for you...” Is it easy to refrain from such phrases? Is it easy not to look for someone to blame and not to complain, even if only to oneself? After all, this happens essentially automatically. And it is precisely this automatic response that we must do something about. To begin with, we can try not to say any of this aloud... and pray that the Lord will teach us not to seek someone to blame or complain, but simply to do our work as well as possible under the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

James values patient endurance highly. As an example to his contemporaries he sets both the ancient prophets and Job, the hero of the biblical book of the same name. Of course, Jesus Himself also warned His followers more than once about the inevitability of suffering. And if we take into account that the persecutions being discussed were understood more as the norm of Christian life than as isolated episodes, it becomes clear that one must prepare to endure, and to endure for a long time. But the matter still does not, apparently, come down only to the inevitability and practical necessity of patient endurance. In fact, on what does patient endurance depend at all? In principle, short-term suffering, even intense suffering, is often easier to bear than prolonged suffering, even when the prolonged suffering is not so intense. There is nothing surprising here: the resources of a healthy human organism are usually quite great, and with the proper motivation their short-term mobilization has the corresponding effect, sometimes allowing a person to endure even what had previously seemed unbearable. Of course, such motivation can be faithfulness to Christ, but not only that: emotional uplift, intellectual conviction, and religious exaltation are also possible. One cannot say that all this has nothing to do with spiritual life, for it presupposes a conscious choice and following a decision once made. But such spiritual life still does not go beyond the bounds of the world that has not yet been transformed. When, however, the matter concerns faithfulness to Christ and relationship with Him, one must speak directly of the life of the Kingdom, for relationship with Him is possible only in the Kingdom. And here we receive, in essence, an inexhaustible resource that allows us to endure difficulties and trials not merely for that short period during which human strength, not so very great after all, is exhausted, but for a long time, for which no human strength would suffice. That is why the apostle values precisely patient endurance during trials so highly: he bears witness to the quality of the spiritual life of the one who endures these trials. To a quality conditioned by the fact that his life, although it still takes place partly in our transforming but not yet fully transformed world, is nevertheless determined not by the laws of this world, but by the laws of the Kingdom.

What was an oath for a believing Yahwist, and later for a Jew? First of all, of course, it was a kind of obligation a person took upon himself. In this capacity it essentially did not differ from the obligations we take on today when concluding any agreement. In fact, when concluding an ordinary agreement in antiquity, Jews customarily swore an oath in the presence of witnesses, after which the agreement was considered concluded. So what then: does the apostle, following Jesus, forbid this kind of practice? And thereby encourage irresponsibility, since the issue is obligations without which no relations between people are possible? Surely not. And the matter here, one may think, is not the obligations themselves. The issue is that when concluding the most ordinary agreements, people swore by the sacred name, by the name of God. And thus they involved Him in their affairs without first asking whether He needed those affairs and whether He intended to take part in them. So then: may one never swear by God's name? Even when the issue is not secular matters, which often really do not concern God and to which He is at best indifferent, but religious or even spiritual matters, where one not only may count on His support but directly needs it, otherwise nothing will come of it? Apparently yes. For the issue is not only what exactly we are occupied with. The issue is that by swearing by God or by the sacred name, which in essence is the same thing, we involve God in our affairs without asking His opinion and consent. And we take upon ourselves a responsibility we are unable to bear. Indeed, an oath by God's name requires unfailing fulfillment; otherwise, if we fail to fulfill what was promised, we become unquestionably guilty not only before the people to whom we swore, but also before God, by whose name we swore. Without any allowance for circumstances. Of course, in practice the Torah also takes into account some attendant circumstances that can, for example, hinder fulfillment of obligations under a concluded contract. But in that case it makes sense to leave God aside, not involving Him in the deal and not taking upon ourselves what we obviously cannot fulfill without Him. Thus our "yes" or "no" should remain as unambiguous and binding as lies within human power. And to our human efforts God, if He wants to intervene, will add His own. He does not need our oaths for that.

In today's reading, the Apostle James advises us to confess our offenses to one another. This phrase is one of the biblical foundations of the sacrament of Repentance. But it is also important to us in its simplest and most obvious meaning: indeed, how important it is, after doing something foolish, to admit it in time... It would seem obvious—and yet how difficult it is.

The readings from the Epistle of James over the last several days have been so simple, as though addressed to children. Let us not pretend that we are the most mature and the wisest. It does each of us good to recall the simplest things from time to time—such as these words: “Confess your offenses to one another and pray for one another.”

We often do not even remember that our whole life actually unfolds before the eyes of the Lord, and that in any situation we can turn to Him and He will hear us, because He is always near us. Prayer is abiding in God’s presence, listening to God, and speaking with Him. In suffering, we can ask God for help, or we can simply weep with Him. In joy, we can thank Him for it, or simply rejoice beside the Lord. In illness, we can implore God for healing and ask our friends to pray for us, or we can patiently accept what the Lord has given us. Both paths are beautiful; both are with the Lord. The main thing is always to remember God and live in His presence. The season of the Holy Forty Days is now approaching, a time when the Church invites us to remember precisely this, when all the texts and all the services lead us to remember that God created time as well, and that time belongs to Him. During these days it is easier to remember that we live constantly before the face of the Lord and, perhaps, easier to live in such a way that it is not very painful for the Lord to look at us.

Why should we confess one to another the faults we commit? Isn’t sufficient the fact that God knows them? Well, it would have been clear again, if it was about a fault towards this person, - so this fault lies between us, as a barrier for genuine relationship, relationships are darkened by the hiding of this fault and its burdensome possible consequences. Confession opens the road for forgiveness, which deletes all barriers. It is clear. But why is it necessary to confess the faults, which do not concern this person?

May be, because in the Church we are members one another and sin in one of us affects the entire body. And again confession leads to forgiveness and the healing of the spiritual disease of sin as well for the sinner, as for the entire body. Moreover, faults result from spiritual problems, and their knowledge allows other people to pray "aiming" for these problems, which means for healing.

It is still probably necessary to say that the expression used here by the apostle James should not mislead us: it is not the prayer that heals, it is not the prayer that "availed much" – only God can avail much and heal, and prayer is the testimony of our will to accept His Grace, His healing.

Recalling Elijah's prayer in connection with confessing sins to one another, James points to the simple fact, forgotten by many, that God not only hears a person but also comes to meet him, in the case, of course, when two wills, God's and the human will, coincide. Outwardly this looks like a miracle, but in reality we should speak here of divine-human co-creation, without which neither the world nor human life is conceivable.

After all, the Bible is not accidentally unfamiliar with such a concept, so widespread everywhere in antiquity, as fate, destiny, or fatality: God's will and fatalism are incompatible; where one exists, there is no place for the other. It would seem that there is an external reality in relation to the human person that is often partly or completely beyond his control, yet in fact reality is not so simple. Indeed, today even scientists are increasingly inclined to think that any existing reality can exist only as observed reality.

Without an observer it ceases to exist. Such a view requires the postulation of an absolute Observer for the existence of the universe, and here we have another version of the cosmological proof of God's existence. What matters, however, is that the human person is also an observer, creating his own reality, which is real to the extent that the being of the person creating it is spiritually whole. Only God can create absolute reality; any other will by definition be relative. But what will happen if two wills, God's and a human will, begin to create one reality?

In such a reality, everything possible to God will open to the human person and include the person with his freedom to the extent that such inclusion is possible for him. The person finds himself in a world of miracles, in a world of higher reality created by God, but in the creation of which his human will also participates, for example through that same prayer. Within and in the context of such a reality, called the Kingdom of God, Christ acts, and every one of His followers is also called to act there, if he is a Christian not only in name.