James the brother of Jesus

He grew up in the same house as Jesus. He ate meals with him, argued with him, watched him grow up. And for most of Jesus's ministry, James did not believe.

The gospel of John says plainly that Jesus's brothers did not believe in him. They mocked him. Told him to go to Jerusalem and do miracles in public if he really wanted to be known. The familiarity bred the same contempt it always does.

Then Jesus rose from the dead, and Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians that the risen Christ appeared specifically to James. What that conversation was like — what Jesus said to his brother, what his brother said back — we are not told. We know only the result: James became the leader of the Jerusalem church, the most important single congregation in the early Christian world.

He was known in Jerusalem simply as James the Just. He prayed so much that the skin of his knees, people said, had become like a camel's — hard and calloused from years on the stone floors of the temple.

In 62 AD, the high priest Ananus used the gap between two Roman governors to move against him. James was brought before the Sanhedrin, condemned, and thrown from the pinnacle of the temple. He survived the fall. They stoned him. He was still praying for them when they finished.

Lord, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.

He had heard those words before.

James didn't believe in his brother until his brother rose from the dead. And then he gave his life for it.

There is something important here about the nature of doubt and the nature of faith. James had every reason to know better — and still didn't, until he couldn't deny it anymore. And when he couldn't deny it, he couldn't stop.

The calloused knees are the detail that stays with me. He spent thirty years on the floors of the temple, praying for the city that would eventually kill him, the way his brother prayed from the cross for the people killing him.

The family resemblance, in the end, was unmistakable.