A costly call
Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.
So there you are, getting up in the morning, doing those little things that become so much a part of your normal routine as you prepare yourself for the day ahead. Nothing seems to be out of the ordinary – the day has begun pretty much as most days begin – the usual joys, the usual irritations. You gather together the bits and pieces necessary for the day’s work that awaits and off you set with no indication or expectation that this day will be significantly different from any other day. Two brothers and their father walk towards the shoreline, perhaps passing the time of day with friends and neighbours on their way, push out their boat with its collection of nets, and begin checking and mending in readiness for a nights fishing – just as they have done on countless days before and will no doubt be doing for years to come; ordinary men doing ordinary things.
But then something happens which would have extraordinary consequences. Today, they see a man walking along the shoreline with two others – Simon Peter and Andrew - whom they knew, for they too were fishermen. And there is something about the man who leads them, something that draws the eye, stirs heart – and he calls to the two younger men in the boat. They immediately jump from the boat, leave their father, and follow. Perhaps they had heard Jesus speaking on some earlier occasions and were inspired to follow, perhaps it was simple curiosity – we simply do not know – only that they responded to something deep within them which urged them forward. But whatever it was, I wouldn’t mind betting that none of them had any real idea at that point what was ahead of them, what the outcome would be. Today we are keeping the festival of one of the two brothers in the boat, James, Apostle and Martyr, whose shrine is to be found at the church of Santiago de Compostella – but more of that later.
James was a son of Zebedee, called by Jesus, and became one of the twelve apostles. He is sometimes referred to as James the Greater to distinguish him from James, the son of Alphaeus, and James the Just, the brother of Jesus.
It would appear from the New Testament that James, together with Peter, and John, had a particularly close relationship with Jesus. We know from the gospels of Mark and Luke that Jesus allowed no one to accompany him to the home of Jairus apart from Peter, James and John where they witnessed the raising of Jairus’s daughter. It was Peter, James and John who accompanied Jesus on Mount Tabor and witnessed the Transfiguration with its vision of glory, and the command to listen to Jesus as God’s beloved Son; and it was the same three who went to the Garden of Gethsemane, but promptly fall asleep and repeatedly fail to remain awake and keep watch with Jesus in his time of anguish. Probably physically and emotionally exhausted, we see the frailty of their humanity, our humanity. Yet other stories also indicate a fiery and impetuous temperament – St. Luke recalls the occasion when the Samaritans refused to receive Jesus. Indignant and outraged James and John ask ‘Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?’ They were firmly rebuked, but one can imagine that such outbursts are what gave rise to the nick name - ‘Sons of Thunder’ – given to them by Jesus.
Perhaps that forthright temperament was inherited from their mother, for according to Matthew’s gospel, she comes to Jesus to ask a favour – “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” St. Mark, on the other hand, has the request coming from the brothers themselves. Now, you might have expected that with the particular closeness to Jesus that they have had, and with the strong clues he had been giving them in his teaching and in their life together, that they might have had some real insight into what Jesus is calling them to do. But no – they appear to have missed the point completely. “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” Their reply is filled with confidence – Yes we can – we are able. They are it seems, ready, eager to pay the price of glory – and indeed they will pay it, but they have not understood what that glory means. The assumptions behind the request would seem to be based on a worldly understanding of power and glory; but the ways of God’s kingdom are very different – where greatness is found in service and humility; where power is revealed in weakness; where ultimate love is revealed in self-giving, suffering and death. The brothers, it would seem, are looking for some kind of control, certainty about the future. Discipleship, on the other hand, calls from us a letting-go of self, and a willingness to trust in the divine providence of the One who calls, and who will never let us go.
The sons of Zebedee are specifically mentioned as being present at one of the post resurrection appearances on the lakeshore of Tiberias, and among those gathered in the upper room after the ascension. The only other certain fact recorded of James after this is his martyrdom at the hands of King Herod Agrippa in an attempt to appease the Jewish opponents of Christianity, the first of the apostles to be martyred.
In the absence of fact, legend grows, and according to legend, James made an apostolic journey to Spain before returning to Judea where he was beheaded. After his martyrdom, his disciples carried his body by sea to Iberia where they landed on the coast of Glaicia, and took it inland for burial at Santiago de Compostela. Other legends recount the arrival of James’s body in a boat of stone. Less appealing is the story that in 844 James was seen in a vision to ride at the head of the Christian army which defeated the Moors, slaying all before him, and it is that image of James we see represented in art. “ Santiago y cierra España” (St. James and strike for Spain) became the battle cry of the Spanish soldiers. His shrine was and is a major place of pilgrimage, third only to Jerusalem and Rome, especially in a Holy Year such as this when the Feast Day falls on a Sunday. 250,000 pilgrims are expected this year, and while many of those pilgrims may not believe that the Apostle James arrived in Spain in a boat of stone, plenty still want to visit his reputed remains in the stunning Romanesque and baroque cathedral in north-west Spain. Pilgrims will choose to undertake their journey for different reasons; some will be people of faith, others not sure, uncertain, searching; some will travel many miles over several weeks, others will travel much shorter distances. For most it will be a challenge – the challenge of living life at a different pace; of living alongside strangers; of blisters, sun-burn, insect bites, tiredness and the longing for home comforts; the challenge, as one pilgrim put it, of seeing yourself as you really are. But God willing, the experience may grant to those same pilgrims a heightened awareness of the value of inter-dependence, of humility and graciousness, of awe and wonder – values which speak of the kingdom of God, values with the power to turn the ideologies of the world upside down.
And so today we celebrate the man called by our Lord as he mended his nets, a man who repeatedly failed to understand, whose fiery temperament earned him a rebuke from our Lord, a man of very human frailty who succumbed to tiredness and exhaustion. But a man through whom our Lord worked to further the building of the Kingdom – a man of courage determined to witness to the one who called him on the shores of Galilee, a man who lived his faith for which he paid the ultimate price.
To celebrate is also to remember that we too are called by virtue of our baptism; called perhaps to a particular task in the middle of our ordinary everyday, called with all our gifts and in spite of our many shortcomings; called as people through whom our Lord will work great things if we are only willing to open ourselves to those amazing possibilities in Him. And we too are sent – sent to bear witness to our faith, a faith which speaks of that new life which is the kingdom of God, a kingdom where all are valued, all are loved; a kingdom which speaks of peace; a kingdom whose values challenge the values of our world. A blade of steel may not await us, but our work, our pilgrimage, will be costly. Do we have the courage?
Canon Lesley McCormack, The Feast of James the Apostle, July 25th, 2010
