Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

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Sermons

September 2003 (click here to return to "September 2003 Sermons" page)

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 28, 2003)

“The Answer Is: Prayer” James 5:13-20

Dr. Julie Adkins

SERMON

This morning we come to the end of our journey with James,

and we find him saying some things that are a little uncharacteristic.

Really, Paul could have written the seven verses

that you heard Tom read for us.

They wouldn’t sound out of place in the epistle to the Romans.

For that matter, they wouldn’t sound out of place

coming straight from Jesus’ mouth,

if one of the gospel writers had recorded them as doing so.

But James?!

For the past several weeks,

we have heard James saying in various ways,

“Don’t just sit there, do something!”

“Be doers of the word, and not only hearers.”

“If your faith has no works, it is dead.”

“Watch your mouth!”

“If you want to live the good life,

you have to be doing good works for others.”

James sounds like one of those people

who is entirely unable to sit still.

He’s always got to be up, doing something.

In fact, we wants the rest of us always to be up, doing something.

The world is full of people who are hungry and cold,

full of injustice, partiality,

conflicts and disputes …

and it’s our job to do something about it!

That’s James, in a nutshell:

Get up and do something!

Today, he sounds different.

Maybe he woke up one morning and his arthritis was bothering him,

or something,

but in today’s reading he is much less wound up,

much less insistent that we all get up and get marching.

Incidentally, these are the last seven verses of the entire letter,

and they are preceded by predictions and prophecies

of woe for the rich,

and then an interesting plea for his brothers and sisters in the faith

to be patient until the coming of the Lord.

It’s as if he has finally just about written himself out,

and calmed himself down,

and said all that he really wants to say,

but then he realizes that there are some things out there in the wide world

that we can do nothing about.

Some things that we can’t fix,

no matter how many good works we do.

Some wounds that we can’t heal,

some injustices that we can’t make right,

some suffering that we cannot ease.

It is important for Jesus’ followers to be doing good,

but what do we do when our doing is doing nothing?

When our efforts bear no fruit?

When the problems are just too big, and too entrenched?

“Be patient, beloved,” he says,

“until the coming of the Lord.”

And the seven verses that are our text for this morning,

have to be seen in this context.

What do we do while we are being patient?

What do we do while we wait for the Lord?

What do we do when there is no more that we can do?

The answer is: prayer.

Note, first and foremost, that for James,

prayer is what you turn to only when

there is nothing else you can do.

He only gets around to taking it seriously

at the very end of the epistle.

That doesn’t mean he thinks of it as second-rate somehow,

only that he never wants it to be a substitute for action.

If that brother or sister in chapter 2 is naked and lacks daily food,

you’d better not just say “I’ll be praying for you.”

You’d better find them some clothes and a good hot meal!

But what if it’s a brother or sister far off somewhere?

What if it’s two billion brothers and sisters

who are naked and lack daily food?

What if they also lack housing, and clean drinking water, and health care?

You do what you can … and then you pray.

What if your brother or sister is sick, or suffering?

You pray.

Prayer is never allowed to become an excuse

for not acting, when there is something we can do.

But prayer should also never be forgotten,

especially in situations where we feel helpless.

“The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective,” says James.

Which is good news, and it’s even better news to remember

that God hears our prayers even when we are unrighteous!

Something else very important to take note of, however:

As with everything in the book of James,

it is the community of faith that is the primary unit,

not the individual believer.

It is in the community of faith that we do our good works.

It is in the company of the faithful that we live “the good life.”

It is the community that we destroy when we forget to bridle our tongues.

And it is the community that is to be in prayer

when there are needs to big for us to handle.

Verse 14: Are any among you sick?

They should call for the elders of the church

and have them pray over them …

Verse 16: Therefore confess your sins to one another,

and pray for one another,

so that you may be healed.

Verse 19: if anyone among you wanders from the truth

and is brought back by another,

whoever brings back a sinner from wandering

will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

We are praying not for ourselves,

but for one another.

We confess our sins not to God alone, and not to a priest in a box,

but to one another.

When we wander from the right path,

we are brought back not by a divine lightning bolt,

and mostly not by making our own way back,

but by someone from the beloved community

coming to find us, and leading us back.

I think we live in a culture in which

that’s really hard to swallow.

We expect that we are supposed to

achieve for ourselves.

To solve our own problems.

To get ourselves out of the messes we got ourselves into.

To heal our own sickness,

and to hear our own confessions.

Wrong.

We have allowed a deeply individualistic culture

to infect us here in the church,

and we’ve got to lay that bit of our culture aside.

When good ol’ Martin Luther talked about the “priesthood of all believers,”

he did not mean that each and every person

should function as priest for him- or herself.

Yes, he was trying to take away some of the inappropriate power

that priests in the Catholic church had taken upon themselves

at that point in history.

But he meant that we are all to be priests to each other,

not every man or woman or child for his or her own self.

Luther was far too aware of human nature

to believe that we could ever effectively

confront some of our own sins, without outside help;

and forgive ourselves for others, without an external reminder.

Luther didn’t like the book of James, as we have mentioned,

but they’re right with each other on this point.

The community is where we pray, and work, and receive the gift of faith.

For all its flaws, the Christian community is where God places us,

and where God comes to find us.

For both James and for Martin Luther,

you cannot be a Christian person in isolation;

that’s a contradiction in terms.

It’s also scary, if we take it seriously.

Are any among you sick?

They should not stay home until they feel well,

keeping it from everyone so they won’t be a bother,

and praying alone that healing will come sooner rather than later.

They should not go into the hospital

and swear their family to secrecy so that no one will know.

They should call for the elders of the church,

and have them pray over them …

either in person, or over the phone, or with the entire congregation.

Here’s the scary part:

Confess your sins to one another …

not just to your self, not just to your therapist …

confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another,

so that you may be healed.

It’s going to be hard to confess our sins to each other

until we get that part right in chapter 3 about holding our tongues! …

that is, if we can’t trust one another to keep silent about what we confess,

we’re never going to let go of it.

Another scary part:

If anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another …

that is to say, we are responsible for one another’s journeys,

to the extent that any one person can be responsible for another.

If a community member is bound and determined to take the wrong path,

you can’t very well stop him or her.

But you’d better be sure you have at least

said, “Hey, you’re on the wrong path there!”

and maybe, “Why don’t you come over here instead.”

and if even that doesn’t work,

“We love you anyway, come back soon.”

And then you go and pray for them.

And you invite the entire community to pray.

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.

Yes.

Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Yes.

Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.

Yes.

What do you do when there are no works left that you can do?

The answer is: prayer.

Righteous prayer …

not alone, but together.

As a community of God’s people,

we are, and will be, powerful and effective.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.