James Son of Zebedee

 

James Son of Zebedee
Homily prepared for the Feast of St. James the Greater
25 July 2019
Parish Church of Trinity Ashland, Oregon

The Very Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Jer 45:1-5, Psa 7:1-10, Acts 11:27-12:3, Matt 20:20-28

 

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

We have often heard the story of Jesus calling the Twelve:  “I will make you fish for people.”  What we don’t often don’t realize is why Jesus chooses that particular image.  Peter and Andrew, of course, were fishermen on Lake Tiberius, as were the sons of Zebedee, John and James.  But why dwell on this any more than the profession of others so called?  After all, he did not say to Matthew, “I will make you collect spiritual taxes,” or to Simon the Zealot, “I will make you work for a Spiritual Revolution.”  Some came from agricultural pursuits, to be sure, and he calls them all to work in “the harvest, for the field is ripe.”  But the reason “fishers of people” becomes the main image is found in Jeremiah 16, where the prophet talks of the day of the Lord when all that is lost will be found again:     

“Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt, but As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them. For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their ancestors. I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence...” (16:14-18) “Therefore I am surely going to teach them, this time I am going to teach them my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord.” (16:21).    

When Jesus calls people to fish for people, he is saying, “the day of God’s setting things right has come, and we must be part of the work he has promised to accomplish.”

This is a very different take on the coming of God’s Realm.  John the Baptist demanded repentance and promised God’s winnowing fork and burning of the chaff.  People had to come out to meet him.  The Dead Sea Scrolls community nearby called people to come out of corrupt Babylon (Jerusalem) into the Spiritual Damascus (the mother house at Qumran).  But this was a preface not to a Day of Hope and Joy, but to a great battle between the Sons of Light and of Darkness.  

The Qumran community was led by a group of Twelve elders representing the Lost Tribes and Kingdoms that Jeremiah promised God would restore.  Within these Twelve, there was a ruling council of Three elders who ensured conformity to proper interpretation of Mosaic Law.    

Jesus too called Twelve.  But he also called Seventy, sent out broadly to find people where they were (Luke 10:1).  And he also had a close inner circle of three in his leadership, all originally fishermen:  Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, James and John.  

This inner circle, Peter, James and John, were invited by Jesus on several occasion to enter into and behold great mystery:  the Transfiguration (Matt 17:1, Mark 9:2, Luke 9:28), the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:29), the raising from the dead of the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:37, Luke 8:51), and Jesus’s agonized prayers in Gethsemane the night he was betrayed (Matt 26:37, Mark 14:33). 

These three at times seem to miss the point of being called to fish for people.  Peter tells Jesus to not think that the Messiah must suffer; Jesus tells him “get behind me Satan!”  Peter denies knowing Jesus three times.  Peter may be the Rock, but he is a flawed man whose ultimate success in fishing for people comes from putting aside his expectations and pretentions.  

James and John too were flawed: their fiery disposition led Jesus to nick-name them “Sons of Thunder,” that is, “noisy” or “angry children.”  James and John ask Jesus to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans who decline to offer him hospitality (Luke 9:54); Jesus rebukes them.  Another time, they get their mother to ask Jesus for a special place beside him in his kingdom (Matt 20:20-23, Mark 10:35-41), irritating the other apostles in the process.   Jesus replies by asking them if they really want a seat at his table, “Are you able to drink the cup I drink, or be immersed in the waters I will go beneath?”    The “cup of God’s wrath” was a symbol of the bitter and befuddling drunkenness experienced by a person made to drink whatever God sent him.  Similarly, “sinking into the flood,” or “floundering in deep water or the mire” was a symbol of the afflictions some felt God had sent upon them.  Jesus is thinking of his own likely bad end:  you want to be near me, but that means you’ll have to suffer like me.  Can you take it?”  “Oh yes, Jesus, it’s just what we want!” they reply innocently, having no idea of how ironic their words will appear once they have deserted Jesus at the first sign of trouble during Holy Week.  

James got his wish in AD 42, just before Passover (Acts 12).  King Herod Agrippa I—grandson  of Herod the Great (the baby-killing villain of Matthew 2), nephew of Herod Antipas (who beheaded John the Baptist [Mark 6] and interrogated Jesus just before his death [Luke 23]), and father of Herod Agrippa II (who ironically told Paul “you’re almost making a Christian out of me!” in Acts 26:28)—Herod Agrippa I had James beheaded in order to ingratiate himself with the crowds of people flocking to Jerusalem.  James is thus the first of the apostles to suffer martyrdom, a fate that was shared by Peter just a few years later.  

Today’s saint James is often called James the Greater, to distinguish him from other James’s in the New Testament, including another member of the Twelve, James of Alphaeus, called James the Lesser, and James the Just (the brother of Jesus) and the author of the Epistle of James.  

Early tradition said that James the Greater before his death went on a missionary journey to Spain in his fishing for people.  After his return to Jerusalem and his martyrdom, his remains were taken—miraculously or otherwise—to his former missionary field, and were supposedly buried in Compostela (either from the “apostle’s field” campus apostolicus or the “field of stars,” campus stellarum, a description of the night sky in Northern Spain).  

James is an English form of the name Jacob, which shows up in Spanish as Diego, or Iago: Saint James is thus variously San Diego or Santiago. Thus Santiago de Compostela became the patron of Spain, the name of the basilica built over his grave, the end of the lengthy Medieval pilgrimage trail starting in the South of France that is walked to this day.    Because recovering this site was a key objective of Spanish armies seeking to drive out the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula, Santiago de Compostela was the battle cry of the Cid and his cohorts.  His sigil is a scallop shell, that natural object found on beaches in the North of Spain and presumably used by James to baptism those for whom he fished. 

Saint James, son of thunder who became the first martyr among the apostles, took seriously the call to fish for people.  And he finally understood that having a seat at Jesus’ side means sharing in Jesus’ woes.  The fact is, following Jesus means sharing Jesus’ sufferings.  It means being present for and with Jesus in his passion, from the garden and on to the cross and tomb.  But it also means living with the consequences of following his teachings and manner of life:  the craziness and utter counter-cultural rejection of the world and its power and pomp, and acting as if God’s Realm has already come, as if God is already fully in charge, right here and now.  

In the name of Christ, Amen.