A sermon based on James 5: 13-20
By Charles J. Tomlin, DMin;
November 21th, 2021, Flat Rock-Zion
Baptist Partnership
Series: The Book of James, 12/12
James 5:13 (NRSV): Are any among you suffering? They should
pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise
14 Are any among you sick? They
should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them,
anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.
15 The prayer of faith will save the sick, and
the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be
forgiven.
16 Therefore confess your sins to one another,
and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the
righteous is powerful and effective.
17 Elijah was a human being like us, and he
prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it
did not rain on the earth.
18 Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave
rain and the earth yielded its harvest.
19 My brothers and sisters, if anyone among
you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another,
20 you should know that whoever brings back a
sinner from wandering will save the sinner's soul from death and will cover a
multitude of sins. (Jas. 5:13-20
NRS)
Today, we
come to our final message from the book of James. As we have seen, James is a different kind
of writing. It is not like Paul's
letters which dominate the New Testament. Much of Paul’s writings are deep and
theological, carefully explaining and expounding the faith. Sometimes Paul wrote about things not so easy
to understand. It was told that after
one of novelist Gertrude Stein's lectures, a friend traveling with her turned
to the someone nearby and said, "Dearie has said some things tonight
that will take even her years to understand."
In contrast
to the deep theological, intellectual, and philosophical challenge of Paul’s
letters, James single letter, written much later, is much easier to understand but is also challenging
on an entirely different level. James challenges
believers in practical ways through out his right down to the very last word. Today, James still challenges us to live out
the faith we say we believe and do the right thing As James says it best,, ‘be doers of the
word, and not hearers only.’
They Should Pray
James concludes addressing the different needs of three
different kinds of people in the church; those who are suffering, those who are
sick, and those who are struggling with sin. What these all have in common is the need of prayer. If you
are suffering, James says, then pray. If there are sick among you, you should pray
for them. If there is someone who has
sinned, if they are willing to confess their sin to you, you pray for them.
James is right. Prayer is
the most practical, consistent , and constant work the church must do. But our prayer life always needs
encouragement, doesn’t it? So let’s consider
(following Mark Trotter) how James gives two most basic reasons prayer is our most
important work as Christians, no matter what our current life situation. Whether we suffer, or know someone who is; whether
we are sick or know a sick person, or whether we know someone who is struggling
with sin, or we are struggling ourselves, we should pray.
PRAYER...WILL SAVE
Why should we pray? What
good does it do? Well, in the middle of
this passage James says that the prayer of a righteous person can do a lot. That’s
a very simple interpretation of his much quoted beautiful line from the King
James Version; ‘The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much’ (NKJV). That’s quite a statement, isn’t it? A more current way of expressing this to say that ‘the sincere prayers of a righteous
person have great power.’ In
other words, James says, we should pray because we know what prayer will do. What does prayer do? Well, most importantly, when we pray prayer changes us.
Think about it this way.
Think about those people who are considered saints and are spiritually beautiful
to us. Why are they beautiful? Isn’t
there something about their life, their quality of living, and their depth of
being—-an inner peace, an ability to approach situations with love and
compassion that aren’t just inward, but also flow outward toward other people
most freely? It is as if they had something in their lives
that is missing in many people, but is available to us, if we were just as
devoted.
When Mother
Teresa's died back in 1997, it called
attention to how she lived her life. Most
heard wonderful stories about her sacrificial service to the most abject and
pitiful creatures on earth, the poor and the dying in Calcutta. How could she do that? We tend to look upon
misery and run away from it. She looked
upon misery and moved toward it. How
could she do that? The answer is prayer.
As a nun she
devoted her life to a life of prayer. What prayer did was to empty or cleanse
her of all distractions, all that is superfluous, all that is debilitating, and
prayer filled her life with a transcendent power.
What was
seen in that tiny, fragile, frail woman, was an apparently inexhaustible and
power to love. She loved God and others day
in and day out, year after year, and through her love, she made a difference in
this world. What we didn't see was that
tiny, little, frail woman on her knees, at morning, mid-day, evening, and at
night, keeping the office of prayer, opening her life to God, inviting God to
come and live through her.
Richard Rohr,
another Catholic Christian, runs a Catholic retreat center in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. He has a wonderful word for this spiritual quality that comes comes
through prayer: He calls it "holy
spaciousness." That's what
prayer does, he says, it creates space for the holy in our lives. Prayer does this, not by adding something to
our burdens or busy schedules, but prayer removes what distracts us from doing the
good we can do with our lives. Prayer
is like cleaning the yard in fall. It
removes the debris that accumulates which we carry around with us day after day
and sometimes year after year. Prayer
creates a "holy space."
Then, as
Richard Rohr continues, if you want God to come into your life, you have to
make room for God. Prayer is the way you
make room for God. The reason that God does not come into our lives is that our
lives are so cluttered. There is too often no room for anything but ourselves
and our preoccupations. Prayer empties our lives of that which is distracting.
Prayer is a form of remodeling, making room for God. Prayer is also a form of hospitality,
preparing for someone to visit. Prayer
creates "holy spaciousness." This is what what prayer will do. It
makes room in our lives for God, and for
other people too.
Henri Nouwen
was a Christian monk who was once the most popular Christian writer in Christian
spirituality. He spent most of his
career in the secular world, teaching at universities, at Yale and at Harvard,
then going to South America living as a village priest among the poor. In the last years of his life, he spent in
Toronto, at a home for the most developmentally disabled people, called L'Arch.
Right after
he died there were lots of testimonies written about his life. They all tell
the same story, really. They celebrate his writing, which is vast, and which
will be lasting. They talk about his academic contributions, his career in the
university. But mostly, these
testimonies speak about how he gave himself in humble service to the poor and
to the least among us.
Most
interestingly, more than one person wrote, about how after an evening lecture, someone
would introduced themselves to Henri Nouwen, and how Nouwen would say to them,
"Let me walk you to your car."
That's what
happens when you make room in your life for God, God will lead you to invite
other people to join you and God there. When
you make room in your life for God, God will use you to send out invitations to
other people, because you now have room in your life for all those whom God
loves.
James says
the Church ought to be characterized by prayer, because we know what will
happen if we pray. Prayer changes us. Prayer will create a "holy
spaciousness" in our lives so God can enter your life and you will invite
others into our lives too.
Folks, we
live in a divisive and argumentative world today, but it’s always been that way. It may seem sharper and meaner because we
have many more ways to express ourselves.
The question is how do we overcome
this divide? I know only one way. We have to learn to pray for each other more
than to attack each other. Could we resolve
do that? Could we at least pray for each
other as much as we debate and argue with other?
We should pray first of all, because we know what will happen
when we pray. We will change. If we pray we may not always change the other
person, or win the argument, or change the situation, but we will change. Both as individuals, and as a people, we
will change. We will be renewed as
individuals, and as a church. This means,
just like James says, that prayer will save us from who we are and who we were.
IF ANYONE WANDERS…
The second
reason we should pray, James implies, is because we don't know what will
happen. More specifically, we
don’t know exactly what prayer will do. Which
might lead you to say, "Well, Dearie said things this morning that is
going to take years to understand." It’s can, so don’t you think it’s time to get started.
The example
of not knowing what prayer will do comes from the part of this text that lifts
up Elijah, praying for rain, as an example.
Elijah was
just like us. Elijah was just an
ordinary man. Elijah the prophet, going up against a Queen and the priests of
Baal. Baal was a nature god, so
worshiping Baal was supposed to bring a practical and positive effect to
farming. It was to bring rain when we
need rain, stop the rain when we don't want the rain. What's the point of
worshiping if you can't something
practical and substantial out of it.
That’s still
how people see religion and worship. If
you can’t get get something immediate or practical out of it, then it’s
useless. So you leave the invisible and impractical God for your own god you
can manipulate and get something from.
That’s what Israel did. It’s what
people still do. What good is praying to
God we can’t get results from?
Elijah, however,
believed His people should stay true to the true God—-results or not. So, to respond to the false priests of Baal, Elijah
prayed that there would be a drought, and there was a drought. Later he prayed to God that there would be
rain. The rain came. What James doesn't
mention is that not only did he get rain, he also got hell to pay from Queen
Jezebel. But the point is, that surprising things will happen when you pray. Elijah was just an ordinary man, like you and
me. Elijah prayed and look what happened.
That is the
most dangerous part in any discussion about prayer, is make prayer something like
magic, with us trying to use and manipulate God—-to get God to do what we think
God ought to do. The Bible doesn't look
very kindly upon that, and neither does Science. The Bible and sophisticated people object to
this kind of prayer because it is superstition to think that we can manipulate God
or the forces of nature. Everything that happens must have a natural or
rational explanation.
But the
trend now in the natural sciences not just to look for the predictability but
for the surprises in the inter-relatedness of all things. Quantum theory, as presents a more organic and
wholistic, rather than mechanical or Independent view of the world. It better understood by sciences today that
what happens in one part of the world or universe can affect what happens in
another part, far, far away. It other
words, we and everything is interconnected.
What affects on part can and eventually will have and an effect on
another.
This
realization has given rise to ecology. Ecology is how we document this organic interconnected
understanding of life, like in our recent struggle with the coronavirus and our
growing understanding of climate change. What we do or don’t do, effects many things,
both directly and indirectly, both good and bad. In fact, in both science and religion, we have neglected
this truth of ‘what we do always has an effect’ to our peril, some of which we
are already paying for in consequences right
now.
So maybe the
Medieval Christian poet, John Donne had it right. No person is an island. No one stands alone. We are all part of the whole. What you do affects me, and what I do affects
you. So, as my Catholic doctor often says to me when I leave his office, please
pray for me. And please know, that I
pray for you. We pray and who knows what
might happen. Life isn’t always
predictable, and that surprise can also be a good thing, not just a bad one.
I told you
this story recently, but it bears telling again in this context. It’s about a young pastor visiting a very old
and very sick woman in the hospital. At the conclusion of the visit he asked
her, "Is there anything special that you would like me to pray for?"
With all the strength that she had left, she said, "Of course. I want you
to pray for me to be healed."
Now he was
an educated pastor, been to seminary, all that. He knows how to pray an
intellectually acceptable prayer. So his prayer went like this. "Lord, if
it be thy will, we pray that this sick sister might to healed. On the other
hand, if it not be thy will, we pray that she might be given a positive
attitude and a willingness to accept her situation. Amen."
As soon as
he finished the prayer, the woman opened her eyes, threw back the covers, put
her feet over the side of the bed, stood up, and said, "I'm well! I'm
well!" She bounded out the door of the room, went down the corridor of the
hospital, dancing, saying, "Look at me! I'm well! I'm healed!"
Dumbfounded
by this, the young pastor left the room, went to the parking garage, stood by
his car for a moment, looked up into heaven, and said, "God, Don't you
ever do that to me again."
According to
James, the Church ought to be praying for two reasons. First, because we know
what will happen. If we pray, we'll
change. We'll be renewed. And secondly, we ought to pray because we actually have
no idea at all what might happen.
Again, in
conclusion to this great biblical book, let’s get this right. If we are are suffering something right now,
if you aren’t already, pray. If you or
someone you love is sick, again pray.
Pray for healing and pray for strength, both physical and emotional. Then finally, if you are struggling or
someone you know and love is struggling with some known or unknown moral
weakness, pray for them. Keep praying in
all things and in every situation, because not only do you not know exactly
what will happen, when you pray something always happens. Prayer will always either impact the
situation or it will at the very least, which can still be much, because prayer
will always change us. Amen
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