We belong to a Bible Study/fellowship group which meets on Tuesday nights. The majority of members on any given meeting come as expatriates working in Mthatha as missionaries or in NGOs, both in long and short-term stints. The people come from "mainline" churches, Anglican and Presbyterian primarily. We hold down--or is it hold up?--the Anabaptist wing of the Church. For the past two years or so, we have been using the readings from the lectionary to guide our conversations.
As we read James 1:17-27 recently, one of our members gave expression to my own thoughts in her puzzlement over James's analogy of a mirror in vv. 23-24. We never really attempted to answer her query that evening; the conversation quickly took another turn. But as I continued to read James through the week, culminating in a sermon the next Sunday, I decided that the mirror was analogous to the word of God (see previous post on James's teaching about the word).
James says that those who hear the word but do not do it "are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like" (v. 24).
My initial puzzlement was around the assumption that we should want to look at ourselves in the mirror and then try to remember what we looked like. It seemed narcissistic. Why would James be encouraging us to spend time in front of the mirror for the purpose of dwelling in the image of ourselves? Why should we be so keen to remember our appearance?
If, on the other hand, the mirror stands for the word of God, that which it reflects back at us is not strictly a picture of our appearance. It is rather like the "two-edged sword" which the writer of Hebrews used to describe the word (Heb. 4:12). It sends back to us a picture of ourselves in comparison to that which it describes: God's will for human life, revealed to us in its stories and commandments fulfilled in Jesus, the very Word made flesh (Jn. 1:14). The mirror is not one-to-one; it is one-to-two. The word reflects our image as we are--marred by sin and imperfection--and the image of God. In light of God's image, it shows us who we are, what we will be, and how we might get there.
If the mirror's reflection is not of our own but in the light of Jesus, then truly the appearance of ourselves is not a thing to be forgotten. We must not forget what we look like, for we look like Jesus. To forget is to remain in sin. To remember is to become like him.
-Joe
