Neglecting James

For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page, which includes Bubar's current Living by the Word column as well as past magazine and blog content. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.

I don’t know about you, but I find it challenging to preach on non-narrative texts. It’s easy to make a good story from the Gospels or the Old Testament come alive in a sermon. It’s a lot harder to do that with a theological treatise, so I tend to neglect preaching on the epistles.

The book of James is particularly challenging: not only is it not a narrative, but it’s mostly one moral exhortation after another. “Do this.” “Don’t do that.” It can be a little hard to find the gospel in all of that. Which is why some people have never cared much for James.