Sermon for the Feast of St. James & Eighth Sunday after Trinity

admin | 25 July 2021

“Behold, we go up to Jerusalem”

Providentially, The Eighth Sunday after Trinity coincides this year with The Feast of St. James the Apostle. The connecting link is the idea of the Resurrection and the forms of our participation in the redemptive work and life of Christ as the pilgrimage of our souls. The Saints remind us that glorification is intimately intertwined with the concepts of justification and sanctification. St. James, in particular, reminds us of our life in pilgrimage. He is the great saint of pilgrimage which, simply put, is about going up to Jerusalem.

St. James, too, is a Maritime saint. There are so many, many churches in the Maritimes dedicated to the honour and memory of St. James, sometimes more than one in the same community! St. James is one of the disciples whom Jesus calls from fishing to become a fisher of men, as we heard on The Fifth Sunday after Trinity. St. James speaks to our Maritime sea-faring traditions. The Collect alludes to his calling even as the Lesson from Acts points to its radical cost. James is put to death by Herod the king. The Gospel teaches the meaning of that calling. It has altogether to do with our going up to Jerusalem with Jesus. We know this from Quinquagesima Sunday in the preparation for Lent in the Gospel reading, there from Matthew and now here from Mark. It points to the radical meaning of Christian pilgrimage as a form of witness or martyrdom, highlighting the connection between justification, sanctification, and glorification.

Going up to Jerusalem, as Jesus explains, means his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The Saints show that this means our participation in Christ’s redemption of our humanity: drinking of the cup of which Christ drinks; being baptized into Christ’s baptism. We are consecrated to God by virtue of our incorporation into the death and resurrection of Christ. Suffering and glory are all part of that story. As Paul tells us in the Epistle for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, “we have received a spirit of sonship.” We are “the children of God and fellow-heirs with Christ.” But only “if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” The martyr saints remind us of the suffering and the glory.

To be a martyr means to bear witness. The Saints are more than heroes and more than mere role models. What defines them and what is meant to define us is the calling or vocation which we share with them. What moves in them is the redemptive life of Christ made visible in them. They have found their wills in the will of Christ. It is “not I but Christ who lives in me;” that has to be the constant theme and struggle of Christian witness. It cannot be about calling attention to ourselves. It is not “look at me looking at you looking at me,” the culture of narcissistic self-obsession. It is “look to Jesus.” See Jesus and see yourself in him. This is the point of the liturgy – seeing ourselves and one another in Christ and being with one another in Christ.

There is not a whole lot of historical and biographical detail about the Saints whether the Apostolic Saints of the Scriptures or the Saints of the historical tradition of the Church. Legends abound, invented, yet imaginative and often insightful in symbolic ways. Yet it is the idea of the Saints that most captures our attention imaginatively, intellectually, and spiritually. And so with St. James.

Perhaps you have heard of the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrim journey to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in the northwest corner of Spain. The story or legend of St. James, the first apostle who was martyred, is about his body being placed in a little boat which somehow sailed from Palestine across the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar up the coast of Spain and Portugal to the northwest corner of Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Santiago is Spanish for James who became the Patron Saint of the Spanish. The claim is that this is where St. James is buried. Since the 9th century, it has become a popular pilgrimage destination for the peoples of Europe. This is not tourism. It is about a sense of connection with others in the universal journey of the pilgrimage of the soul to God. Such is “the heart in pilgrimage,” if I may quote Herbert.

I just learned the other day from Marilyn in conversation with friends that the Camino de Santiago is on our so-called ‘bucket list’. Who knew? St. James points us to the pilgrimage of our souls in intentional spiritual exercises whether on a walking tour in Spain or in our more ordinary lives here and now. It is all a kind of pilgrimage. And along with our many Maritime churches dedicated to St. James, the surrealist painter Salvador Dali’s wonderful depiction of St. James of Compostela, Santiago El Grande (1957), hangs in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Who knew? It is, I think, worthy of a pilgrimage on its own.

The painting belongs to Dali’s return to the Catholic Faith and places St. James in the context of Spanish history and the mythical legends of St. James. He is depicted upon a rising steed, a white horse, itself rising out of the image of a nuclear explosion, a kind of unity of modern physics and mystical theology. St. James reaches up to the cruciform yet glorified figure of Christ just out of his grasp. He is looking and reaching to Jesus. The scene is enclosed within the vaulting arches of a cathedral, perhaps that of Santiago de Compostela, itself. The harness of the horse centers on the symbol of pilgrimage, the scallop shell associated with St. James. You might think about that whenever you have the pleasure of enjoying Coquille St. Jacques! Scallops!

The Gospel reading teaches that St. James and the nature of martyrdom is about looking and reaching to Jesus; in short, the idea of bearing witness to Christ in our lives. Such is the radical teaching of Christian pilgrimage. Going up to Jerusalem is about our life to and with God in Christ as the followers of Jesus.

The Lesson from Acts simply tells us about the end of James’ life – his death at the hand of Herod. It is mentioned almost in passing and more as pointing to the further persecution of Christians. The greater point is signalled in the Gospel about going up to Jerusalem. Here James and John ask Jesus directly about what they seek to which Jesus replies “Ye know not what ye ask.” The clarification of our desires, whether for ourselves or for one another, is what matters. Our lives bear witness to our desires.

There is the paradox that we do not really know what we want because of the disorder of our wills and the confusion of our minds. Nor do we realise the cost, a cost greater than we can pay, the cost of Christ’s Passion and Death, itself the reality of justifying grace, the condition of sanctification and glorification. The great wonder is his grace, his gift to us in the privilege of participating in his redemptive work. “We go up,” he says, God and man together. Such is our liturgy.

We go up to Jerusalem in the lifting up of our hearts in prayer and praise. We go up to Jerusalem in the reading and hearing of the Scriptures. We go up to Jerusalem in our getting up out of our pews and going up to the altar. The Jerusalem of Jesus is made audible and visible to us in the ordered pattern of the liturgy. This, too, is our camino, our way of going up to Jerusalem, our pilgrimage.

As Augustine so wonderfully remarks, “we ascend in the ascension of our hearts.” Such is prayer but it also speaks to the radical meaning of our looking to Christ, following him “without delay,” and “forsaking all worldly and carnal affections,” as the Collect puts it. It means putting aside our selfish ambitions and desires as shown in the Gospel. What James and John think they want has to be purged of the pride and ambition that is self-serving and self-promoting. The problem with that desire is that it creates invidious distinctions, seeking something for oneself at the expense of others.

What is going to define us? The devices and desires of our constantly wayward and wicked hearts? Or our wills and desires as purified and perfected in the love and service of Jesus? What will be our camino, our pilgrimage?

The pattern of sainthood is the pattern of our Christian witness to the truth of Jesus Christ. It always means, first, the repudiation of all that stands opposed to God and his truth and, secondly, the recapitulation of what belongs to the truth of our humanity as redeemed in Christ. It means death and resurrection in our daily lives through our participation in Christ’s death and resurrection, liturgically and sacramentally. That is our glory through the justifying and sanctifying grace of Christ. The witness of St. James shows us what it means to go up to Jerusalem, trusting not in ourselves but in the one who says,