James 5:13-20
If any of you are suffering, they should pray. If any of you
are happy, they should sing. If any of you are sick, they should call for the
elders of the church, and the elders should pray over them, anointing them with
oil in the name of the Lord. Prayer that comes from faith will heal the sick,
for the Lord will restore them to health. And if they have sinned, they will be
forgiven. For this reason, confess your sins to each other and pray for each
other so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous person is powerful
in what it can achieve. Elijah was a person just like us. When he earnestly
prayed that it wouldn’t rain, no rain fell for three and a half years. He
prayed again, God sent rain, and the earth produced its fruit.
My brothers and sisters, if any of you wander from the truth
and someone turns back the wanderer, recognize that whoever brings a sinner
back from the wrong path will save them from death and will bring about the
forgiveness of many sins.
After the past four weeks, which I am sure at times felt
like one was getting beaten up by James, --- we come to the end of his little
letter and suddenly the tone shifts.
If I were to try and sum up the overall message of James it
is quite simple: That Christians should
be easy to pick out of a crowd by how they live their lives.
Now the way that James does this, is often with a knife,
rather than coddling us.
James likes to tell it how he sees it, and to be honest ---
most of us are not too sure we really like his message --- or at least his
method in telling it.
Throughout this letter, James mentions several specific ways
we have opportunities to demonstrate our faith in the ways we live our lives.
We began by looking at how James believes that our faith
must be exhibited in our works (in other words --- how we live our life). And that plays out in whether or not we
exhibit the fruits of the Spirit
Believing certain things is important --- But James would
tell you it is not THE most
important thing.
What is most important? --- Do we demonstrate --- through
our lives --- those same things we claim to believe
He continues to challenge us by asking: can people see we
are a Jesus follower in
·
How we handle trials and difficulties in our
lives
·
How we handle success
·
How we handle temptations
·
Recognizing that we have the power to heal or
destroy with our words and are we seen as a uniter with them
·
Do we have concern for the widow and orphan
·
Do our prejudices effect our words and actions
·
Do we help those in need
·
How we approach the future --- do we seek God's
kindom or do we seek one of our own creation?
·
And then last week --- with I am sure everyone's
favorite sermon --- what we do with our wealth
If you have been reading along at home, you probably noticed
that this change in one actually took place a little earlier in chapter 5.
Starting with the 7th verse, James begins to exhort us to
patience
But then he shifts
James again affirms, what he has been saying all along ---
that ALL OF YOUR LIFE --- every single part of it must flow out of the richness
of our relationship with God.
·
If you’re in trouble pray to God about it
·
If you’re happy – praise God in your prayers
·
If you’re sick (on any level: physical,
psychological, emotional, spiritual) call the elders and have them pray over
you and God will heal you, God will set you free.
And these practices that James is describing might best be
summarized as elements or hallmarks of a caring community.
They include prayer, the singing of songs of praise, and the
ministry of presence and touch in the laying on of hands and anointing, all
while invoking the power and promise that belongs to the community in the “name
of the Lord.”
All of these actions assume a community that surrounds and
sustains each other in their individual and personal needs.
At the very beginning of the letter James encouraged us ---
that if we don't understand this message (and the word he uses is wisdom) ---
that if we don't understand --- we should turn to God in prayer.
anyone who needs wisdom should ask
God, whose very nature is to give to everyone without a second thought, without
keeping score. Wisdom will certainly be given to those who ask.
In these concluding words to the community of the followers
of Jesus, James returns to this same theme, --- but now, James, notes that the
power of prayer holds out some rather telling content and promise.
James speaks of its power to “save” the sick, to “raise them
up,” and to occasion the “forgiveness of sins”.
James is saying that in the community’s exercise of prayer ---
the very promise and power of the resurrection remain not just some future hope
but now impinge on, recreate, and sustain a living and active community of faith.
And I want to reiterate, because it is easy for us to miss
(and I will come back to this in a couple of weeks) that the exercise of prayer
that James is referring to is neither by nor for persons in isolation.
Because what is the central theme from his brother Jesus’
life that James is constantly emphasizing --- that we are to LOVE GOD and LOVE
OTHERS.
It goes without me even saying it that we live in a very individualist
oriented culture.
Self-help books proliferate on our bookshelves.
And even so-called “social media” is often structured or
utilized primarily to focused on exalting individual identities and chalking up
the greatest number of “friends” on our tally sheets (friends for whom the
greatest insult might be that I might “unfriend” them at any moment).
For James --- this community that he is espousing is ---
well --- it is communal, especially in its faithful exercise of prayer.
Twice he charges that confession should be “to one another,”
and that we should pray “for one another,” if we have any expectation that the
promised healing is to take place.
Such prayer exercised within and on behalf of the community
has power -- James says it is “effective.”
It is effective because it is exercised within the context
of a community endowed with God’s gifts in creation, and because it belongs to
ones who have been forgiven and empowered by the implanted word of promise in
Christ Jesus.
In James’ language it is the prayer of ones who are
“righteous.”
What James really seems to be saying --- is we need to care
for one another.
We need to build a community.
Greg Jones, in an article in Interpretation wrote:
Each of the activities that James
describes—singing, truthful speech, praying, anointing, confessing, and
engaging in mutual admonition—is difficult to learn to do well, much less to
learn to do in relation to the others. But part of the gift of Christian life
is that we do not learn to do any of them alone. We learn them as we learn any
craft, with the assistance of mentors—"saints"—who help us, over
time, to discover the fullness of God's gracious and forgiving love by shaping
us to become active recipients of that love.
The capacity to discover what it
means to be forgiven and to forgive depends, in part, on the richness of one's
communal habits, practices, and disciplines. If we want to be faithful in our
witness to God, then we ought to focus more attention on cultivating and
crafting communities whose practices are marked by the crucified and risen
Christ and bear witness to the eschatological work of the Holy Spirit.
In other words --- it is all about community
James then wraps up this letter with this easily misquoted
verse.
My brothers and sisters, if any of
you wander from the truth and someone turns back the wanderer, recognize that
whoever brings a sinner back from the wrong path will save them from death and
will bring about the forgiveness of many sins.
Luke Timothy Johnson in The New Interpreters Bible
remarks:
James concludes this section and
the letter with an encouragement to mutual correction. Such correction was a staple of ancient moral
teaching, both in Hellenism and in Judaism. . . . Mutual correction is a form
of edification that takes the construction of a community of character
seriously.
We live today in a culture that says --- if I don't get my
way I am going to take my stuff and go somewhere else.
I think James would be appalled.
Looking at the current fight in the UMC --- wow --- James
would have a few things to say.
He would plead for us to put first things first
And
throughout this letter, he has tried to demonstrate what that is all about.
But in the end --- it all takes place within community
Family
Promise
FreeWheelin’
Habitat For
Humanity
MLK &
School 43
House
Groups/Bible Studies/Ministry Teams
Community that cares for each other
Community
that prays for each other
Community
that shares with each other
Community that loves each other
enough that they can work to seek forgiveness and not escape
James calls us to the radical lifestyle that Jesus
proclaimed and that we have experience when we embrace the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus.
Only when we allow the Holy Spirit to change us
To bring us together
Can we find this radical community that Jesus spoke of and James affirms?
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