What, How, and Why: James 5:13-20 - 18th Sunday after Pentecost

¹³Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. ¹⁴Are 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. ¹⁵The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. ¹⁶Therefore 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. ¹⁷Elijah 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. ¹⁸Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.
  ¹⁹My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, ²⁰you 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.

Pray by Esteban Chiner on Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0

I was driving with my family in a road trip when we all started getting hungry. When we saw a billboard that said “KFC: 2 miles ahead,” we agreed that this would be our dinner stop.

When we arrived, the restaurant was completely empty, except for two young employees, standing behind the counter, doing absolutely nothing. As soon as I walked up to the counter, the one employee said “sorry, we’re out of chicken.” “But we do have biscuits!“ the other employee said. 

I’m glad the three of us could share laugh with these two bored employees. What good is a fried chicken restaurant without fried chicken? That’s why it exists! 

Just the same, we exist as a church in order to pray for ourselves and each other; to sing songs of praise in times of cheer; to confess our sins to one another and support one another in our battles against the devil; and to grow together in faith, hope and love so that we can proclaim Jesus to the world.

But do we do these as much as we could be? I fear that we have developed some bad spiritual habits—and have neglected these fundamental spiritual practices for the sake of other things. I also fear that the ways of the world to have too much influence on our common life.

Thank about it:

Do you believe you are morally obligated to put on a happy face and act as though everything is wonderful, even when you are broken inside? Have you ever felt it selfish to ask other Christians to pray for you, since you know that other people are suffering more than you? 

Do you consider it boasting to speak openly about all the good that God has done for you?

Are you uncomfortable praying aloud with other people? 

Are you burdened with shame because you’re unemployed, because you’re struggling in your faith, because you have done things in your life that you are not proud of?

I have huge news for you: you are not the only one! These are things that we all have in common: brokenness. Sinfulness. Pain. Mortality—and not just with other believers, but with people of other faiths and people of no faith: 

The Church is not a members-only club for the righteous but a hospital for sinners; a refuge for the rejected; a lighthouse for the lost and lonely souls. 

I fear that American Christians have personalized and privatized our faith, and thus forget that faith isn’t just beliefs, it is about relationships. We’re not a house of individuals worshiping God but a community worshiping God together! And even though your spiritual journey is uniquely yours, God is leading every single one of us to the promised land. 

Today, we are being challenged to get back to the basics of why we exist together. We can’t allow ourselves to get so busy and distracted that we don’t make time for what matters.

If you are suffering, we are here to pray for you—and we are here to pray with you. You’re not burdening us by asking for our prayers. Prayer is the simplest and best gift that one Christian can offer to another. And it is in praying that the Spirit will call and empower us in whatever ways we can to bless you with the love of Jesus. 

If something good has happened to you; if a prayer has been answered, a goal has been accomplished or a victory has been won, we need to hear about it! If we believe that God is good, then God‘s goodness ought to be the topic of a lot of conversation!  

If, on the other hand, you are weighed down with sorrow, if you struggle with doubt, if you are scared to death at what life in this world is becoming, you must not keep all that pain to yourself.  

Everybody hurts. Everybody struggles. Everybody sins. Jesus builds his Church so that tired bodies, weary minds, and sin-sick souls can be healed and transformed together. 

But the praying, celebrating, supporting, and forgiving community James describes just doesn’t happen. It demands something great of everyone. 

It demands that you put off any false fronts. It demands courage to speak honestly and openly about your struggles. It demands humility to own up to your own sinfulness. It demands grace to receive those most different from you as co-travelers on the same spiritual journey. If we are to be spiritual caretakers of one another, we must prove worthy of that incredible trust—by not gossiping or talking about others’ struggles without their permission. And it most especially demands a willingness to offer to each other the best of what you have: your time, talents, and treasures. Otherwise, spiritual transformation cannot happen. 

Church is not a place you go to on Sunday morning. Church is who you are and who we are. It’s not a building but a living, breathing Body of believers journeying together with Jesus through the trials and travails of this life, caring for those who hurt, feeding those who are hungry, seeking out those who are lost, and keeping one another in faith and truth.

And what we have in common is greater than our brokenness, sinfulness, and mortality: it is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, with us always, even until the end of the age.