Quinquagesima Sunday, Evening Prayer

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

I firstly want to say a big thank you for welcoming me here to Holy Trinity. I’ve very much enjoyed the times I’ve been here over the past six months, immersing our souls in the voices of your wonderful choir. But now for some less sweet-sounding words from me! I would like to direct our attention to the first verse in our reading from James: “You must understand this, my belov-ed: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” (Jas 1:19). Please, if only for the next 10 minutes, do remember to be slow to anger!

Today’s reading from James comes from the end of chapter 1 and the verse I quoted is a verse which, arguably, summarises much of the letter of James. The first of the three exhortations, “You must understand this, my belov-ed: let everyone be quick to listen,” this first exhortation summaries the content of James chapter 2. What does it mean to listen or to hear?

The letter of James is written to the “Twelve tribes in the dispersion.” Echoing the twelve tribes of Israel, the letter has the context of ancient Israel in mind. When James exhorts his readers to be quick to listen or to hear, what James almost certainly has in mind is the words of the Jewish Shema.

The famous Jewish prayer called the Shema is found at the start of Deuteronomy 6 and it was and is a prayer prayed twice a day by observant Jews, a practice which Jesus was very likely to have grown up doing. The first word of the prayer in Hebrew is the word “Shema” which is normally translated as “hear”. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

The Hebrew does not mean hear in the passive sense. It means an active obedience, allowing one’s identity and actions to be shaped by what is heard and so the word Shema is sometimes translated as “obey.” To this prayer, Jesus adds a second commandment this he finds in the scroll of Leviticus, “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

The rest of James chapter 1 and James chapter 2 implore its readers to be quick to hear the word of God in each other and, as the Hebrew word shema implies, to do, to take action: “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers;” “Care for orphans and widows in their distress; hear their distress and act;” “Listen, my belov-ed brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom?” “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself;” “Just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.”

You must understand this, my belov-ed: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak.”

James chapter 3 draws out some of the difficulties of the second exhortation, be slow to speak. Throughout the chapter we read that “We all make many mistakes,” that “The tongue is like a small fire which sets ablaze a great forest. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse each other;” “If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.”

Chapter 4 then takes us through some of the effects of not living out the third exhortation, be slow to anger: “What causes wars, and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war.”

It’s difficult to consistently love each other in the way that we know we can be capable of. We all make many mistakes.

Be slow to speak, slow to anger, let everyone be quick to hear, the Lord is our God is One Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself. Easier said than done.

This is a difficult task. Do we love God or do we love our own identity, projected onto eternity? It is easy to turn the particular purpose or way of being, through which we encounter God into the totality of who God is. Who or what is God allowed to love? Do we love our neighbour or do we draw them into our own fantasies? As friends, as parents, as employers, as Christians. What does it mean for us, in our particular contexts to obey God? What does it mean to love our enemies? What does it mean to truly listen to somebody? What does it mean to love ourselves?

After the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, the Israelites are told to “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart ... Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead.” In the book of Revelation, when God’s people live in intimate proximity to God ― the Father and the risen Jesus, in the unity of the Holy Spirit ― in the new creation, “They will see God’s face, and his name will be on their foreheads” (22:4). On the temple of their heads, they will not bear the name of God in vain. They will be sealed by the one who is the end, the end of the law and the prophets, the goal of Israel’s story, the one who loved God and his neighbour completely in his death, a death over which, along with the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints, we weep, this death being the labour pains of the glorious resurrection, the birthing of the first truly human one.

As we come to the sacrament of the Altar, know this, my beloved brethren. Let everyone be quick to hear. To hear the revelation of who God is and to live in the freedom that comes from that, and to hear the promise that we will be conformed to his image, able to love God and to love each other, in this life and the next, sealed with his name.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.