A Thought For The Week Of November 20, 2017

"Come near to God, and God will come near to you. You are sinners. So clean sin out of your lives. You are trying to follow God and the world at the same time. Make your thinking pure." (James 4:8) As I reflect upon this verse I find that it challenges some of my basic assumptions about the nature of our relationship with God. I build a lot of my theological understanding around my perception that the initiative in he divine-human relationship always belongs to God. In other words, it is always God who acts and we who respond to God's actions. That seems pretty clear to me. Indeed, when you think about it everything has to be a response to God because God acted first in the work of creating. And yet, as obvious as that seems I'm suddenly confronted with James' formula in the opening words of this verse: "Come near to God, and God will come near to you." At least from a literal perspective that seems to imply that in some way we have taken the initiative.We have made the choice to come near to God and God has responded by coming near to us. Very challenging, indeed. Many find James to be too works-oriented, and in some ways he does appear to put faith and works at some level on relatively equal terms. So perhaps this simply represents James' bias. And I'd interpret this verse in any event against the clear teachings of Jesus and really of most of Scripture that God is always present with us. Is it really possible (in any tangible way) for us to "come near to God," since God is already with us. In fact, in some real way, God is present everywhere, and if God is everywhere then God is already as close to us as God can possibly be. So the opening verse of this passage can't really be about literal distance, because there is no distance between ourselves and God. So perhaps the issue isn't one of nearness or proximity; perhaps it's a question of openness. Perhaps what James was saying was that if we open ourselves to God's presence, we will be aware of God's presence. Indeed, if we're truly open to God's presence we can't miss it. That's how close God already is to us.