“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes.”
– James 3:1-2

And a very happy first day of school to you, too, James!

Many of us start a new school year today with a mix of emotions: elation to finally have somewhere for the kids to go after a long summer at home; exhaustion at the prospect of a third school year shaped by circumstances beyond our control; anxiety about saying goodbye to our parents and excitement about saying hello to new friends. We start with new backpacks in bigger sizes, new cups of coffee (perhaps in bigger sizes, too), and the hope and prayer that the school bus will eventually arrive.

Not all of us, of course, are kids or have kids in school. But all of us are students, and all of us are teachers, whether we know it or not. All of us are still learning what it is to be Christian, what it is to be human, what it is to be a creature of God in this world; and all of us, every day, teach these things to the people around us through our words and our deeds.

James’s warning to teachers in our epistle for this coming Sunday makes me laugh. It is, you might say, a classic no-win situation. Each one of us, every day, is an example to the people around us, for better or for worse. Hopefully, this is mostly a positive example, an example of what we should do, how we should talk to one another and care for one another and love one another. And yet we all know it’s sometimes a negative example. “For,” after all, “all of us make many mistakes.”

But this can be a gift. We try to model goodness. We strive for perfection. And yet we are imperfect, and we constantly need to learn how to respond to our own imperfections, not to mention those of others. And in a way, learning to fail well is the most important lesson of all.