14 - James Son of Joseph

The quiet little town of Nazareth lies in a cleft of the rocks, like a traveler sitting between the humps of a camel. One morning a young man, tall, lean, and with a face bronzed by the sun, left there with nothing but a tattered, but scrupulously clean, covering of homespun on his body with a rope tied around his waist and tattered sandals on his feet. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him because he fasted often. But the young man’s heart was filled with nothing but blessing for the children of God.

Some years had passed since his older brother had set out on the same path that wound through the rocks as it descended toward the green valley. But his brother had continued on to Capernaum, while this man turned and headed for the Jordan valley, which winds south to Jericho, and then through the Judean wilderness to Jerusalem.

He often took this road when he went to visit the Essenes in the wilderness. And though he was a carpenter in Nazareth, like his father, and was the support of his family after his older brother Jesus left on his mission, he lived like an Essene. He was scrupulous about cleanliness and never touched meat. He ate only with others of the sect and never took a wife. And he rarely went to offer sacrifice in Jerusalem, preferring the Essenes emphasis on the prophets who said that God preferred clean hands and a humble heart to sacrifices.

So he shunned worldly goods, threw in his lot with the poor, and when he wasn’t praying, he performed good deeds.

After arriving in Jerusalem he didn’t concern himself with the leadership of the congregation, preferring to leave that to the direct disciples of Messiah. He didn’t preach, or win souls, or perform miracles. His time was spent in the Temple courts in prayer, usually with his face buried in the stone of the ground.

The man’s name was James and he soon became known among the rabbis and Pharisees as a most devout man. His charitable spirit was boundless. He came to the Temple every morning with sacks of flat cakes from the common fund to distribute to the poor. While the disciples preached the gospel, James stood with the listeners. His head was lifted heavenward, so steeped in prayer that his body sometimes actually trembled. His reputation for observing every detail of the law allowed him to be a shield for the believers, for it was said that there could be no evil in any congregation that James was part of.

These mighty strengths of James, his god-fearing piety, his deep sense of justice for the poor and oppressed, for orphans and widows, and his love for all who earned their bread by the sweat of their brow, also aroused in him a deep dislike of wealth and a healthy contempt for the rich. These deep feelings were rooted in what he’d witnessed growing up in Nazareth among the field laborers. Palestine, and particularly Galilee, was covered with a network of moneylenders who ground the faces of the poor, often took what little they had, and sometimes even sold men into slavery for the payment of debts. Powerful landowners simply ignored the stern admonition of the Torah to love one’s neighbor, or its prohibition against taking usury, or for that matter even keeping one’s neighbor’s garment to pledge overnight.

Like his brother before him, James had witnessed scenes of oppression and ruthlessness that made his blood run cold. Therefore James preached to the poor laborers that they bear the yoke of suffering in patience until the coming of Messiah, who would remove all inequalities and injustice.

James was also a healer of sorts. He didn’t perform healing miracles, but he knew the art of preparing medicines, which he’d learned from his mother, who’d learned them from her mother. He knew how to prepare certain salves for bruises and boils, and he had a recipe for grinding roots and herbs to put into a plaster. As soon as he joined the congregation in Jerusalem, he made it the beneficiary of his healing knowledge.

Along with this, however, he sought to institute a more strict watch over the “serving at tables” than had been observed up to then. In keeping with his Essene teaching, he was extremely scrupulous as to whom he would sit with at the breaking of bread. He even went so far as to “annul” the conversion of many of the members of the congregation. Yes, they believed in Messiah and had been baptized, but if James wasn’t satisfied with their observance of the laws of purity, he denied them access to the tables.

In most cases it was Hellenist Jews who were affected, since they were accustomed to their native ways and didn’t take easily to the purity laws. James also demanded that the members not just observe the law in all its complicated details, but that they go beyond the law in their devotion. He demanded early morning visits to the Temple, long prayers, and Sabbath observance with all the minute details worked out by the rabbis. They must avoid all contact with Gentiles and even ignorant Jews with didn’t properly practice the laws of purity.

He was also determined to bring back the practice of selling all earthly goods by every new member, and turning over the proceeds to the common fund. James was unhappy with the laziness of many believers, who did nothing but wait for the return of Messiah. He demanded that anyone who wanted to sit at the table, women as well as men, go to work and bring the day’s earnings into the common fund. He demanded further that they leave the houses of the rich and go down into the lower city again to live among the poor. He himself set the example, making his home in the David wall, in the chamber in which the disciples had first lived.


It was customary for those without jobs to assemble in the Temple court according to trade, waiting for someone to hire them. While waiting they were subject to the inflammatory speeches so often heard there. One day James stood in the court talking to a group of men. But he wasn’t talking about rebellion or protest or even complaint. He talked about the poverty of his listeners as if it were not a curse, but rather a gift from the Lord. He said that poverty was God’s highest gift, for only through poverty can man begin to understand God. By being purified in trial, man begins to think of himself as of little worth, and learns to love his neighbor. Complaints or rage provide no relief from need. Relief comes from taking on these sufferings in love, as a gift from God.

He warned them against sins of the tongue. “If anyone among you seems to be religious, but doesn’t control his tongue, you’re just fooling yourselves, and your religion is worthless. Pure religion before God is to visit widows and orphans, and to keep away from the corruption of the world.”

He used parables to illustrate. “We put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us, and we make them go wherever we want. Huge ships are also guided by a little rudder to wherever the pilot wants to go. Even so, the tongue is a little part of the body, but when it’s not controlled, it can be like a little fire that kindles a whole forest.”

He also taught them that even as beasts are tamed and made harmless, so too must man tame his nature.

And yet this man could not in any way control his own tongue when he talked about the rich. His words about them were full of poison and death, and he cursed men who were created in “the image of God.”

“Hear me,” he said, “has not God chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you, who are rich, weep and howl for the miseries that will come on you. Your riches are rotting away, and your fine clothes have become moth-eaten.”

Then, he recovered and talked of everyone’s guilt, including his own. He followed this with the promise of the return of Messiah as a reward for the poor, and used Job as an example of patience in suffering.

“We count them happy who endure,” he said. “You’ve heard of the patience of Job, and how the Lord’s plan ended in good, for he was full of tenderness and mercy.”

He further taught them to pray for one another, to love one another, and to help each other in their afflictions.

“Cleanse yourselves from all filthiness and wickedness, and receive with humility the word that is able to save your souls.”


A woman came running up to James in the middle of his sermon, dressed in a torn sackcloth robe. She pushed her way through the crowd, her eyes filled with pain and terror, threw herself at the preacher’s feet, and cried, “Rabbi, rabbi, in the name of Messiah, heal my child!”

James stopped his sermon, lifted up the woman, and said, “Where is your child? Lead me to him.”

In the next moment he was following her, leaping like a goat down the slopes that led to the Kidron valley. They came to the courtyard of a poor weaver, and James saw there a boy of about twelve lying on a pile of leaves, his young body shaking with convulsions.

The mother wrung her hands and poured out her bitterness, “O holy man, an evil eye has been cast on my son. He’s my only son. I bought a talisman from the blind woman who sits in the marketplace, but it didn’t help.”

A woman standing nearby said, “He ate sour, unripe grapes.”

The talisman was a potsherd with some words scratched on it. James tore it from the boy’s neck, and threw it away, while spitting out the words, “Cursed be the filthy thing.”

Then he poured some oil from the gourd at his belt into his hand, rubbed it on the child’s stomach, and closed his eyes. His face became pale. He stretched up his neck, placed his hands on the child’s head, and murmured a prayer.

Seeing this, other mothers started bringing their sick children to him so that he could place his hands on them. Others asked him to come to their homes where their children were too sick to be brought to him. James went from one dark hole to another, squeezing the drops out of his gourd, and warming the people’s hearts with his words. Wherever he went he left behind consolation and hope.


And so it was with James. Without seeking it, his deeds and words lifted him to a place of leadership. The people called him a great comforter and a second Amos.

And indeed James was an Amos, a pillar for the poor and abandoned. He drew the mantle of Messiah over their nakedness. Messiah was not for tomorrow, he was for the here and now. He was life as they lived it everyday. He knew their needs; his poverty was their poverty. He would come for them in their wretchedness and execute vengeance on the wealthy while exalting the poor.

There was no man so sunk in filth and wretchedness that James wouldn’t wash the filth from him with his own hands, and apply oil to his sores. He slept on the floor with them, leaving himself uncovered so that his raiment could be used to cover the festering body of another. Nothing disgusted him, and nothing could turn him away where one of his brothers was concerned. He took his oils and salves to the human refuse of putrefying bodies, withered limbs, stink and decay of Jerusalem by the Dung Gate. He washed their sores, applied his oils and bound them up.

He only demanded one thing – inner cleanliness. His companion in the faith could be outwardly filthy, it didn’t matter; he could still dip his fingers in the same bowl. But if James considered someone unclean inwardly, then no amount of washing, perfuming, or sparkling rings would make him touch them any more than he would a reptile.

So because of all this, anyone who conformed to the law of the Pharisees accepted the leadership of James in love. This included all of the original disciples, for grace and the law was with James the son of Joseph.


The High Priests, who kept a close watch on all that happened among the disciples, knew better than to lay hands on anyone who was a follower of James. They knew this would arouse the wrath of the Pharisees and stir up the masses. The Hellenists, on the other hand, were a fairly easy target, for they didn’t have the support of the Pharisees. Their position was weak because they weren’t as strong in the law.

When enough time had passed since the death of Stephen for the people to settle down, the High Priests held a meeting at which old Annas said, “We must do like the Romans and seek out the weakest side of the fortress to attack.”

It was in this spirit that instructions were issued to Saul. He was told that he could attack the Greek speaking Jews, but could lay no hands on the followers of James.

“We have nothing against those who stay with the limits of the law,” Annas said when he gave Saul his authorization. “Let them believe in their Messiah, if they want.”