Episode 1485: Acts of the Apostles (Part 6, Chapter 5)

Salome recalls the years between Pentecost and James's death, filling in the human story behind the few words Acts gives him. James remained the forceful, urgent man he had always been, but his encounter with the cross and resurrection had changed the direction of that strength. He preached in Jerusalem with the same intensity that once characterized his impulsiveness, while learning something that had never come naturally to him: to surrender the timing and outcome to God. Salome also recounts the later tradition that James traveled west to Spain before eventually returning to Jerusalem, where the growing Christian movement had become increasingly visible to those in power.

Under Herod Agrippa, that visibility became dangerous. Seeking political advantage, Herod began persecuting members of the church and ordered James executed by the sword. Salome recounts an early Christian tradition preserved by Clement of Alexandria in which the man responsible for accusing James was so moved by James's testimony that he confessed Christ and asked James for forgiveness on the way to the execution. James responded, “Peace be with you,” embraced him, and the two were executed together. For Salome, the story reveals the completion of a transformation she had watched for years: the son who once wanted heaven's fire to consume those who rejected Jesus had become a man capable of offering peace to the person responsible for his death.

Salome is left to confront something no mother expects to endure: she outlives her firstborn son. Her knowledge that discipleship could lead to suffering does not lessen the grief when suffering finally enters her own family. Yet grief does not destroy the faith born on resurrection morning. The empty tomb means that the sword cannot have the final word over James any more than the cross had the final word over Jesus. Salome remembers not merely an apostle or martyr, but her son: the boy who raced into the lake, the man whose thunder was transformed into mercy, and the child whose loss reminds her that the terrible cost of loving someone never makes that love less worth having.