Jake had a big family; he was the second of five brothers, and he had three sisters too.
They lived in a small village with mum and dad, until Jake was about thirteen, when suddenly his father died in an accident on a building site – then life got difficult.
Jake’s older brother tried to carry on the family business, but he was only a teenager and didn’t have the skill or reputation of his father, and so business started to fall off.
His widowed mother was doing her best to bring up her brood, but it was a struggle to make ends meet, to put enough food on the table and to find clothes for all the children.
What saved his family (not to express it too strongly, Jake would reflect later) was the people around
- the local people who put their faith into action and came around that family,
- who looked out for when childcare was needed,
- who gave time and love to his mother in her lowest times,
- who walked alongside the children as they grew up to adulthood, and who encouraged the boys to take up their father’s trade such that Jake’s older brother regained his father’s reputation for good work.
That community knew the God of Psalm 68 who, even as he rises up against his enemies, is acknowledged as ‘A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows … in his holy dwelling”.
They knew that Deuteronomy 14 set up a social welfare system that specifically aimed to provide for the fatherless and widows, as well as foreigners and others with special responsibilities.
They remembered that part of the righteousness of Job was shown in his treatment of fatherless children and widows.
These were the people and experiences that made a difference to Jake’s childhood and early adulthood and changed their lives.
And so, later, when Jake’s older brother turned the world on its head, calling together a new family of believers whose bonds were stronger than birth family ties, and Jake had become one of the first leaders of the gathering of those believers, he wrote from personal experience, in what we know as the letter of James (who was known in Greek as Jakobus or Jacob, or Jake):
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Of course, that’s something of an imagined tale. We know from the gospels that Jakobus / James was one of Jesus’ brothers, probably the next oldest. The gospels paint a picture of Mary and Joseph having other children after Jesus, their firstborn – four brothers are named and sisters are mentioned too.
It is noticeable that in Jesus’ ministry years there is no mention of Joseph – Joseph appears in the Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke, and also when Mary & Joseph take Jesus to Jerusalem when he is twelve, but does not appear later, although Mary and Jesus’ brothers and sisters are mentioned. So, I’ve imagined that Joseph, who was probably more than a carpenter – maybe more like a master builder, died in a building site accident when Jesus and James/Jake were teenagers.
This would have been incredibly difficult for Mary and her family – in those days the husband & father was the main breadwinner for the family, and mothers who were left as widows and children left as fatherless were very vulnerable.
But, I suggest, James’ and Jesus’ experience of that community care during their childhood was hugely significant in their later lives.