Battle Lines: James, the Elusive
In the gospels, three names appear together repeatedly: Peter, James, and John. Peter had a highly visible and colorful time with Jesus from his call to leave his nets to his martyr’s death in the Roman Coliseum. Two letters in our New Testament are credited to him, and, according to tradition, he provided much of the material for the Gospel of Mark.
John has a lot of space given to him. He wrote a gospel, three letters, and the deeply mysterious book of Revelation. He appears often in the stories of Jesus’ ministry, and was also called at the seaside. He alone of the Twelve was at the cross when Jesus died, and he was one of the few to run into the empty tomb. Tradition says he is the only one of the Twelve to die a natural death after a long life.
But then we come to James. He was in that inner circle with Peter and John, yet not one of his words is recorded in any of the gospels. Although there is a letter from someone called James, it is universally agreed that this was a brother of Jesus by the same name, not the James of that trio of apostles. Here was one so close to Jesus, but seemingly had nothing to say. Or if he did, no one wrote it down or considered it worth quoting. So much was poured into James directly by Jesus, and what does he have to show for it? Peter produced. John produced. James? Nada.
We know James had a pushy mother because she asked Jesus to reserve special seats for her two boys in the Kingdom. The one thing that distinguishes him (outside of Judas who took his own life)—he was the first of the Twelve to be martyred, the victim of the evil egomaniac, Herod. But even in this, the account is maddeningly short: “It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword” (Acts 12:1-2). Nothing more. No famous last words. Just the Bible’s way of saying, “He’s dead now.”
Seemingly rubbing salt in the wound, Luke, the author of Acts, then goes into great detail describing how God miraculously delivered Peter out of the hands of this same Herod. James dies, Peter the Showman gets to carry on.
What do we make of the life of James? Jesus carefully selected the Twelve and then with even more care selected the three that were closest to Him. Wouldn’t it have been better if He had chosen someone like Thomas or Andrew? They lived longer, travelled further, and at least said something worth recording. But Jesus chose to keep James close to Him, knowing that his life wasn’t going to last very long and that beyond his generation, we would scarcely know he was even alive.
James placed his life into the hands of Christ. He did not know what would come of that, whether he would live for a moment or if his life would stretch across the decades. He did not know if he would ever leave Galilee or if he would take the gospel to places unmarked on Roman maps. When Jesus said, “Follow Me,” James followed. When a heart is fully abandoned to Christ, career plans and dreams of what might be are left on the altar as a sweet-smelling sacrifice. James’ life might have been elusive for us, but it was effective for Christ.
Perhaps the greatest lesson we have from James is that he gave his all, and in doing so, there was nothing left. Nothing to mourn. Nothing to go back and pick up. Christ is all, yes, all in all.