Tag Archives: apostle James

Apostolic Invitations

Posted on by
Reply
Apostle James, brother of St. John the Theologian (the Divine)


We celebrate the feast of the Apostle James on Tuesday, July 25th. He was a very popular saint in the Middle Ages and his shrine at Compostela in Spain was one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in Europe. (The pilgrimage has become popular again in recent decades and several Episcopalians from New York have made the pilgrimage—some, several times!—in the last few years.)

St. James was an apostle, a preacher of the Good News of Jesus Christ. He spent his life traveling and sharing the message of Christ with others. He was killed because he would not deny his faith in Christ. We are likewise called to share our faith and in Christ with other people—not necessarily by traveling around the world and talking to strangers but by talking to the people we already know who live right around us already.

Our faith is important to each of us in personal and unique ways. We might feel foolish or embarrassed to discuss these reasons with people we know but we should not be embarrassed to invite people to come to church with us. If we want our parishes to grow and thrive, flourish and outlive any of us who are currently alive we need to invite people to join us on Sunday morning or at a weekday event. There are plenty to choose from.

We don’t need to wait for a special event. Every Sunday is special in some way—the music, the sermon, the fellowship at Coffee Hour. Who might you invite to join you on Sunday?

We should be praying for our neighbors as well as inviting them to come to church with us. Our prayers for the welfare of those around us can help us—and our neighbors—be more open and responsive to opportunities for sharing faith.

We believe “in one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.” That means the Church is directly connected to the apostles and shares the same calling as the apostles. That means that each of us personally—because we are members of the Body of Christ, that one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church—also share that same calling among our neighbors and friends. We can use the feast of St. James as a reminder of our callings to be apostles just as he was. 

Read previous blogs about more of the Apostle James’ adventures in Spain here.

Then He Appeared to More Than 500

Posted on by
Reply
Christ appears to the Twelve and displays his wounds after the Resurrection as St. Thomas makes a prostration before him. (6th cent. mosaic from Ravenna, Italy.)



Christ died for our sins… was buried and raised on the third day according to the Scriptures and appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve; and then he appeared at one time to more than five hundred brothers and sisters… then he appeared to James, indeed to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me…. (1 Cor. 15:3-8)

St. Paul quotes a brief statement of belief–a creed–which underscores that Christ died, was buried, and rose from the dead. To underscore the reality of the Resurrection, the apostle reminds the Corinthians of the people who saw Christ after the Resurrection.

We would have no idea of these people who had seen Christ after the Resurrection if St. Paul had not mentioned them here; none of these appearances are mentioned in the Gospels or other New Testament texts except the appearances to “the twelve” and St. Paul’s description of his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. We have no record of a private appearance to Peter, who is referred to by his Aramaic nickname, Cephas. We have no record of a private appearance to the Apostle James. We have no record of a crowd of 500 people seeing the risen Christ. But we take the word of St. Paul that all these appearances happened.

Christian folktales developed as people told these stories and filled in some of the details. Most of these details simply underscore what we already know from the gospels: Peter is charged with looking after the other apostles, James is charged to look after the Jerusalem community, the 500–perhaps in Galilee, gathered by the apostles after the women at the tomb were told to send the apostles back to the countryside where Christ would meet them–were witnesses as the crowds who heard the Sermon on the Mount or were fed by the five loaves and two fish.

There are other stories of Christ meeting people after his Resurrection. Although there is no written record of these meetings in the New Testament, there is no reason to doubt that these meetings occurred; these meetings are just as likely as the meetings we would be unaware of if they had not been mentioned by St. Paul.

One of these other meetings that was not recorded in writing was said to have been when Christ met his Most Pure Mother on the morning of the Resurrection. Christ is said to have reassured his mother that it was truly him, not a phantasm or ghost. He also underscored the importance of St. Peter in the community.

Many of these appearances of Christ after the Resurrection–including those we know about in the New Testament, especially to St. Mary Magdalen and the other Myrhhbearing Women–became important to the Church as various people claimed to be apostles and began preaching messages that did not agree with what the core community believed. Fundamental to understanding who was an apostle was the question: Did this person meet Jesus after the Resurrection? Without such a meeting, the person’s claim to apostleship was unlikely to be recognized.

Read more about the importance of these post-Resurrection appearances in determining whether someone was an apostle or not here.

Nativity of Christ in Early Christian Literature

Posted on by
6
The Martyrdom of St. James, who was thrown from a parapet of the Temple (where Jesus was tempted by the Devil) and then clubbed to death—Mosaic from St. Mark’s in Venice.

Much early Christian literature, the so-called “apocrypha” of the New Testament, are collections of Christian folktales and sermonettes that are meant to make connections between the Old Testament and the experiences of the early Christian communities. The audience of these collections were not stupid people; they knew what was an exciting novella based on the experiences of the martyrs and what were the scenes made up to fill in the gaps of the story.

One example of such “midrash,” the homiletic-style of telling a Bible story with commentary included, is the Protoevangelium of James which tells the stories of the birth and childhood of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. The Protoevangelium is said to have been written by the Apostle James, the author of the epistle with his name in the New Testament. James was the step-brother of Jesus; he was the youngest son of St. Joseph, who was an older man who had been married before. The stories in the Protoevangelium make explicit what the New Testament implies and underscore-reiterate what the Gospels tells us of Christ.

The Protoevangelium was written approx. AD 150 but incorporates much older material, including the memories of the Jerusalem community of Christians. Long thought by Western scholars to be a complete fiction because of its unusual details, many of these details in the Protoevangelium have been proven correct by recent archeological discoveries (such as the dormitory of a women’s community that lived adjacent to the Temple) and the discovery of other manuscripts that reveal previously unknown 1st century Jewish practices. So, rather than making up fairy tales about Christ and his mother, we now know that the Protoevangelium has preserved long-forgotten details that the original readers would have been familiar with.

Beginning next week, and continuing for the next three-four weeks, we will examine some of the stories in the Protoevangelium about Jesus’ birth and discover what these old stories, meant to supplement the Gospel accounts, can tell us about Christ’s nativity.