Sermon 10/23/16
James 5:13-20
James: Prayer and Healing
Some of you know that I own my own
home in Liverpool. It served me well while I was pastoring in the Syracuse area
at a church without a parsonage, but now I find myself in a different
situation, and I’ve been looking at my home with an eye toward selling. Thanks
to a thoughtful parishioner here, I have some folks from Gouverneur, actually,
renting from me for a while, and in the meantime, it is giving me time to
slowly begin making repairs. I have to admit, that when I look around at the
house, I have a tendency to get overwhelmed with the things I think need fixing
up before it’s ready to sell. I need a new front door. Some landscaping. The
porch needs to be painted. There’s that spot where my brother Todd tried to
hang a rack for pots and pans, but did it wrong, and tried again a couple of
time before getting it right. The pet door we installed that never closed quite
completely. And everything I try to repair seems to take twice as long to fix
as I hoped for and cost twice as much as I budgeted for. So overwhelming, and that’s just a sliver of the to-do list.
For some reason, this is what popped
into my mind when I was thinking about what needs healing in our world, in our
lives. Sometimes, I think the need for healing can overwhelm us. Think of those
who are struggling physically – with illness, with cancer, with disability,
with some persistent ailment. I think of the people I know who are struggling
with addiction of one kind or another. People who are trying to absorb the
grief of a tragedy, who are mourning and grieving and broken from loss. I think
of the struggles of our community – unemployment and poverty. Children in need.
I think of our nation – there’s so much fear that is driving us as a country
right now. Around the world, war, and refugees, and disease.
In the face of all that we might say
needs healing, it is easy to get overwhelmed, isn’t it? The list of broken
people and places and situations can seem just – too much. Too much. So what do we do, as people of faith, when we’re
overwhelmed with looking at the hurt of the world, or the hurt in our own
lives, the lives of the people we love?
Recently, I’ve seen some pushback
when people offer their thoughts and prayers after a tragedy. It’s not
uncommon, after a national or international tragedy, for social media and news
sites to be filled with images and facebook statuses and tweets and blogposts
all saying: “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” After the shooting at
Pulse in Orlando, after the bombing in Paris, after the hurricane and floods:
“Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” We say this because we really are thinking about and praying for
people caught up in tragedy. And we say this because we feel helpless. What can
I do about a hurricane? What can I do about gun violence? What can I do about a
war in a far off country? And I’ve seen people push back a little, saying, “We
need more. We need more than thoughts and prayers. We need action. We need
people working for change. We need strategies and solutions.”
And I think: Yes – yes to all of it. We need action and
change and strategies and solutions – and thoughts and prayers. We need a way
to experience and be part of healing in people’s lives, and in our world. We
need to pray for God’s healing action, and be part of God’s healing action. I think trusting in God’s healing,
and believing that God has a place for us to be part of the healing of the world is the only way we can keep from
being overwhelmed, crushed under the weight of our troubles, offering words
that are empty, instead of full of promise, in the face of hurt and pain.
I think that’s where James comes in.
We’ve taken a very brief walk through the book of James. There are other great
passage in the five short chapters that make up James’ letter, but we’ll have
to save that for our next time around. In today’s text, James talks mostly
about prayer and healing. Suffering? Pray. Cheerful? Praise. Sick? Let the
church community prayer together, anointing with oil in the name of Jesus. A
prayer of faith “saves,” says James, a word that means healing, being “made
well.” It gives the sense not just of mending a wound, but of complete health,
wholeness. Prayers of faith also bring about forgiveness. So, James says,
confess your sins to each other, and pray for each other, because the prayer of
the righteous – that is, the prayer of those who are in right relationships
with God and one another – is powerful and effective. James gives some
examples, including the profound significance of someone being brought back
onto the path of discipleship because of the actions of a brother of sister in
the faith. There’s another whole sermon series waiting for you eventually on
prayer. And a study group or two. My heart’s desire is that prayer, which is
just fancy-church language for opening our hearts to God, would be as easy for
us as breathing. We get so scared of it, as if God will reject our words. But I
think God is waiting for us to strike up more conversation. When we open our
hearts to God, James says it is powerful and effective.
Today, after the sermon, we’re going
to spend some time in prayer, praying for healing. Whatever healing you need in
your life right now, and whatever healing you see that the world needs right
now. You’ll have an opportunity to receive anointing oil and a prayer if you
choose to come forward, or if you ask for someone to come to you in your pew. Praying
for healing, using anointing oil, which has long been used as part of rituals
of faith – these aren’t magic words that we say, magic ceremonies. Praying for
healing doesn’t mean praying for God to fix
everything. Ask anyone who has healed
from an injury, recovered from surgery, had a wound slowly heal – they’ll
tell you it is a process. It takes time. It doesn’t happen all at once, and
doesn’t always happen in a smooth, orderly way, and doesn’t always happen how
you want it to.
We’ll pray for healing, and healing
means that we have to be vulnerable. We have to offer ourselves for healing. To
be healed, we have to be willing to go to the doctor sometimes. To be healed,
we have to be willing to share with others what is hurting us. To be healed, we
have to be willing to accept help. We’ll pray for healing, and that means that
we’re responsible for each other and for our world. James tells us this means
sometimes we have to confess to God and one another – sometimes we’re broken
because we’ve participating in breaking ourselves, and breaking others. We have
to share with each other, share with God, in order for healing to take place. We
have to be invested in each other’s healing. Healing isn’t a solo act. It’s an
act of community. In the gospels, when Jesus healed people, he’d usually send
them to the religious leaders, who would confirm that a healing had taken
place. Why did they need to do this? Wasn’t just being physically healed
enough? No – that was only part of it. To be healed would mean to be reconciled
to the community. People who were ill, or diseased, or otherwise struggling
would have been apart, separate from the community. After Jesus healed someone,
visiting the religious leaders would be the formal step of being reconciled
with the community. James never talks
about praying for healing on an individual basis. His assumption is that
healing is something we experience together.
How have you experienced healing? I know we long for God’s healing to be at
work in our lives, in our community, in our world. Our thoughts and prayers,
and the actions and responses that spring forth from them, mean that we can
work with God for healing, as we make ourselves vulnerable to each other, as we
lift each other up and hold each other accountable, and as we make ourselves
vulnerable to God, letting God work on mending our hearts.
The prayer of the righteous is
powerful and effective. And the prayer of faith will make us whole. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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