Deleted Scenes: James 4:1-10. Grieve, Mourn, and Wail.

There was a moment on Sunday while I was preaching that I said something I didn’t plan on saying. That’s always potentially dangerous. Sometimes those impromptu thoughts are from the Lord and need to be shared, but other times they’re half-baked attempts at humour that fall brutally flat. This was the latter. After reading James 4:9 (“grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom”), I said, “you know how we sang about there being joy in the house of the Lord this morning? Well, how dare you! How dare you be joyful!” Nobody laughed. I guess that’s because it wasn’t funny. Some people might have even taken it as a sincere admonition to get rid of joy. After all, that sure sounds like what James is telling us to do, right?

Not quite. However, is it not true that our laughter and “joy” can at times cover up the reality of our lives? That laughter becomes a distraction to keep us from facing up to our own brokenness? That we settle for a superficial happiness that masks a much deeper sadness? Is it not true that some people turn to partying or to addictions that promise a quick fix in order to avoid less pleasant emotions?

In the spring here at The Bridge, we walked through Daniel 1-6 in the Old Testament. In Daniel 5, the Babylonian king Belshazzar is throwing a huge party for all his court officials. His kingdom was falling apart around him, his father had just been defeated, and you wonder if the party was a distraction from that reality. However, that night as everyone revelled in their drunken stupor, Persian forces infiltrated Babylon and overthrew the empire. The Babylonians should have been alert to the dangers around them. They should have repented of their sins. Instead, they sought empty joy and lost everything.

One other biblical example: in Matthew 24, Jesus is warning about cataclysmic future events. He compares this to the events of Genesis 6, where we read about the great flood. Here’s what Jesus says: “for in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.” Disaster was at the door and their sins were about to catch up to them, but they were blissfully unaware in their empty celebrations. And once again, they lost everything.

See, I’m learning that honesty is to mark God’s people in more ways than one. As in the examples above, laughter can in some senses be a lie. Honesty means being real and honest with God, with ourselves, and with trusted others about the parts of life we’d rather keep hidden. Read Isaiah 63:7-64:12 for an example of what that honest confession looks like. As James says in 4:9, this kind of honesty and authenticity will often initially result in things like grief, mourning, and wailing. Most people don’t want to do those things. That’s why we distract ourselves with empty so-called joy. But embracing those unpleasant actions is what God, through James, calls us to.

However, the journey doesn’t stop there. Keep reading to verse 10: “humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” See, this is a key biblical theme. You’ve got to go down in order to go up. Life- real, abundant life- often comes through death. Victory comes through suffering. That’s Philippians 2. That’s the Gospel. That’s the cross and resurrection. And it’s played out in our own lives with the Lord. Real, deep joy is absolutely what we desire. James isn’t telling us to avoid that, not at all. He’s telling us how to get it. He’s telling us to quit eating the empty calories of superficial laughter and seek deep glory through confession and repentance.

Finally, for those of you who have read this far and want to lean more into the kind of thing I’ve written about: I want to invite you to consider Freedom Session. It’s a discipleship healing ministry our church offers, and a significant focus is on facing the truth of our brokenness in the light of the Gospel. On Monday nights from September to November, we’ll be offering “Authentic Living”, which is a bit of an intro to the Freedom Session material. You can sign up below.

Grieve, mourn, and wail- not as an end to themselves, but as the means to being lifted up by God, who desires to give us real joy (Romans 15:13).