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take care with our time and resist the temptation to waste it on "wanton sin."
James gives us a horrific image of the consequences of those wanton sins. In this passage the
sins are those that arise in only looking after the only comforts of oneself. If the journey of salva-
tion is one of shared toil and shared jubilation, the journeys of the rich in James' Epistle are iso-
lated in self-seeking acquisition, and deliberately insulated from the life of the broader commu-
nity. Wealth, in this scheme, is frowned upon because it is principally gathered and hoarded only
for the benefit of the individual. The kind of wealth that is celebrated in scripture is abundance
that is primarily shared for the good of the whole community. This reading strikes a sensitive
nerve in the affluent high ground of our post-industrial age, but it charges us not to abandon the
efforts that have created such a concentration of wealth here, as much as it encourages to reex-
amine our ties to the communities left out of that prosperity. We can enjoy our own prosperity
only if we follow the perennial scriptural mandates of shared fortune. No one of any rank in bibli-
cal texts is ever given license to ignore the extensive daily pain of those less fortunate.
The Gospel attacks the social tendency to find fault with others without profoundly examining our
own lives. Jesus makes it quite clear that we are to spend a lot more energy fixing our own multi-
tudinous faults without wasting time challenging the orthodoxy of someone who has found an un-
familiar path to do the work of building the Kingdom. The work itself is proof of their alliance with
the Lord, while our own efforts are too often half-hearted or misdirected. The language of Mark
is hard and seemingly brutal, but the core of the message is to be alert to one's own weaknesses
before looking for scapegoats. On the cross
Jesus presented himself as the ultimate
scapegoat to demonstrate the utter evil and
futility of that mode of social problem-
solving. His Resurrection exploded forever
the myth of any value in such projects.
P
RAYER
Lord, "Cleanse me of my unknown
faults"...and of my known.
_______
D
ON
M
ILICI
Parishioner