He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. – Acts 12:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 16, 2017): Acts 12

“Some people hate funerals. I find them comforting. They hit the pause button on life and remind us that it has an end. Every eulogy reminds me to deepen my dash, that place on the tombstone between our birth and our death.” Regina  Brett’s words remind us of the transient nature of life, and of the need to live it well, or in Brett’s words, to “deepen the dash.”

Fourteen years have passed since the death of Jesus. The Christian community was still getting stronger, something that worried the Jewish authorities. So King Herod Agrippa, to gain favor with the Jewish public, decided to begin a fresh persecution of the Christian Church. James would be the first apostle to fall. Soon after the death of James, Herod arrested Peter, who subsequently escaped from Herod’s clutches, and then Herod himself fell ill and died. According to the biblical account (Acts 12:19-24), Herod died because the people honored him as a god and Herod did not stop them, giving his praise to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The pace of the persecution seems to slow a bit following the death of James and Herod in 44 C.E., but that pause would pick up again. Over the next twenty-five years, most of the apostles would be martyred, with the exception of John, the brother of James, who, while severely persecuted, appears to have died of natural causes at the dawn of the second century. Their time on this planet may have been artificially shortened, and yet they “deepened their dash.”

We don’t really know the burial places of most of the disciples, but we have traditions and guesses. In the case of James, the place where legend says that he was of martyred is now under the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of St. James. And to the left of the sanctuary is an altar, and under the altar, marked by a piece of red marble and surrounded by six votive lamps, it is rumored that the dismembered head of James is buried. The rest of his body is traditionally believed to have been transported by the disciples to Spain, where James is thought to have preached the Gospel. The two burial spots for James represents how deep his dash was, representing the place of his death in defense of the Gospel and probably the place furthest away from Jerusalem where he ministered the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And a reminder that even though James was the first of the apostles to die, excluding Judas who committed suicide, his influence continues even to today.

 Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: James 1