Andrea Steinkamp: "The Joy of James: Drawing Near to God" (Sermon for September 22, 2024)

"For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."  James 4:14b

Friends,

As I've been prepping for Sunday, my brain keeps transporting me back to the Intermediate Hebrew class I took during seminary. Perhaps a strange place to be, since we aren't working with any Hebrew Bible texts this week? Rather, we're back in the New Testament, with the epistle of James (and a visit to the Gospel of Mark), for the fourth segment in our September series: The Joy of James.

James's brief allusion to the fleetingness, the transitoriness of human life using the metaphor of mist can be traced to the Jewish scriptural tradition from which he and Jesus came, all the way back to the book of Genesis and the birth of the first sibling, Abel (ָ֑הָ֑בֶל(, whose name comes from the Hebrew root hevel, meaning, you guessed it, mist. In this week's text, James points pretty bluntly to the truth of the human experience we spend most of our lives trying to outrun, or protect ourselves from, or pretend doesn't exist - human life ends and is ending. Always. Where's the joy in that, you might be wondering?

Don't despair friends, James doesn't leave us hanging. He also offers insight into how to live lives of hope, meaning and connection amid this reality.

Let's gather together Sunday morning and see what more he has to say.

See you there,
Pastor Andrea