Scripture: James 3:18 – “And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (NRSVue)
When I look at the world around us, I think one of the biggest problems is the need for instant gratification. We turn to short-term thinking and believe that buying the next miracle product will solve all our problems. Our impatience makes us chase things that make things worse in the long run, but we keep chasing them because that is all we have been taught to do.
I am sure you can think of many ways in life in which this kind of reinforced impatience ultimately makes life worse, but today I am thinking about how it applies to something that by definition should make life better: righteousness. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” We see something wrong with the world and we long to fix it. We see people making selfish choices and we burn for a way to change their minds, to repair the things that were broken, to show the world a better way, a way to wisdom, a way to the truth.
But if we live in a world of instant gratification, we want our hunger for justice to be filled now. And we become “hangry.” We are short with others and reject people who cannot see the world as clearly as we do. We put forward purity tests to be in our movement, or even to be our friends. And when we are resisted by those we see as unrighteous and begin falling into a “one step forward, two steps back” pattern in our fight for justice, we get angry and burnt out. We put our own perspective in front of other possibilities, and eventually we begin to believe it is more important to be right than to be righteous.
But Jesus also said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Peace is more than the absence of conflict; it is an inner state that silences the need for instant gratification and even of victory over the forces of unrighteousness. Going into the fight for justice without having inner peace ultimately leads to neither justice nor peace. There is a slogan often shouted at protests: “No justice, no peace.” It is a distillation of ideas put forward by leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pope Paul VI. You cannot have true peace unless it is supported by justice and righteousness. But you cannot begin the quest for outer peace, without an inner peace to guide that quest. I would argue you must know peace before you can know justice.
The author of the Letter of James understood this. He saw many people in his day fighting for what they thought was the truth. But too often it was motivated by what he called, “bitter envy and selfish ambition.” Too many of our justice movements have envy and ambition eating away at their core. James offers an alternative: finding the peace that comes from faith and then bringing about a world of peace by living out a life of righteousness.
Such a life moves against everything we are taught in our instant gratification culture. And it may seem counterintuitive to seek quiet prayer and patience when people are suffering now. But what we sow in anger, even righteous anger, will bear fruits of anger, and what is sown in peace will yield the fruits of peace. Never forget the need for justice and mercy but begin with peace and patience if you really want things to change.
Prayer: Dear Lord, grant us wisdom and grant us patience as we ever seek your truth. Amen.
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