13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, 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 heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.
James began his collection of meditations addressed to the 12 dispersed tribes counseling his brothers and sisters to pray: let him ask God who gives generously. He concludes with the same theme: in all seven of our verses, prayer is mentioned. Summoning the church to prayer bookends these meditations that are sourced in the Spirit delivered by the servant of Jesus Christ. God says to his church: pray! Pray! Pray! Pray! Pray! Pray!
Moreover, in our passage James says, pray at all times. Live all the seasons and swings of life in communication to God. When you’re suffering, externally or internally, don’t head for the bottle or pick up your phone, but hope in God by praying. God made some people with great emotional range who experience deep highs and deep lows. Don’t let your first or second instinct be to medicate that, numb that, bring all your chemicals to some stasis – – but rather pray. The psalmists felt deeply and sometimes sorrowfully, and prayed. Our Lord was depressed near to death, and prayed.
This is the testimony of Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century evangelical ministering in London: I find myself frequently depressed – perhaps more so than any other person here. And I find no better cure for that depression than to trust in the Lord with all my heart…
Pray when life has laid you low…and pray with music and praise when the skies are clear and your joints are lubricated and your barns are full. Don’t waste time feeling cocky or getting nervous that it’ll get taken away – rather, sing and celebrate before God. Be thankful!
In highs and lows, live in reference to God. The life in Christ that we’re resurrected unto is a life toward God. Not silent before God. Not dreading God. Not suspicious of God. But a life befitting an image bearer: living toward God, loving God, in communication with God. Always.
He loves you! Is for you!
If someone is sick – especially sick, physically sick, spiritually sick – don’t merely pray on your own but take the initiative to call the church to join in your prayers. Call the elders as representatives of the church and they will pray over you. Of course you know who youe elders are and they know you! So here we have another of the many passages that assume that the life in Jesus is a life in structured community…not a free-floating existence!
Sometimes the elders should add some atmosphere to their prayers for God’s healing by anointing the ones-prayed-for with oil. The oil isn’t for medicinal purposes, and most certainly isn’t a magical or spiritual potion, but is a symbol of God’s healing and encouraging Presence. And as with all God-ordained symbols, it is calculated to strengthen faith, to highlight that in Jesus-Christ-the-Temple we are straddling the natural and supernatural worlds, to add some oomph to our dealings with God and then in God’s response to us.
Inspected by themselves – symbols, atmosphere, aesthetics don’t add up to much. They shouldn’t matter. They are only powerful in real life! “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” (Churchill)
Confirming that the oil isn’t magical, James says it’s the prayer of faith that will save the one who is sick. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick Oh, brothers and sisters, let’s reason together. He says prayer of faith will save the sick – that sounds absolute if I’ve ever heard an absolute phrase. Yet we know that in James’ congregation and ever since Christians have stayed sick and died even after they were prayed for. This must mean that there is a saving unto wholeness that could go deeper than being healed from the physical malady.
And why would we have a problem with that concept, when Christianity 101 teaches us that death and life are complicated, even mysterious terms?
Point being, there is something positive that happens somewhere in the whole self of the person – a deliverance! – when the church prays for him/her. Sometimes that something positive is being raised out of the sick bed; sometimes it’s being further prepared to be raised up at the resurrection. Sometimes our prayers are the difference makers between the sick person being able to get back to work or not; sometimes it’s something just as real, just as important, but not that. So pray, church, because God answers in important, deep ways. And sometimes important, surface ways.
With and if he has committed sins he will be forgiven, James implies that someone’s sickness could be linked to, perhaps even caused by, his sin.
Could be! The whole story of Job – especially considering the smugness of his friends – warns us against assuming that someone’s sickness is due to his sin. Our Lord’s words recorded in John 9 also make this clear.
But hasn’t your own experience reflected the fact that some health problems – perhaps many – are what we call psychosomatic? That sometimes the physical weakness is the expression of some distortion within our non-physical part?
I’ll elaborate on James’ point by saying some things that I think are obviously true:
- All sickness and every disorder has arisen from humanity’s falling short of bearing God’s image.
- Sometimes, perhaps often, our physical sickness is due to some habitual expression of sin: lack of self-control, over-indulging, intemperance, loving pleasure in a way that’s disordered.
- Sometimes we go to bed at unnatural times or fake sick or exaggerate sickness or actually get sick because we’re fearfully avoiding something or because we’re dealing with some spiritual pain.
- Sometimes we feel like we cannot work – that our body is too weak or sleepy – because sloth has tricked our brain and body into feeling such.
- Sometimes actual physical sickness is a presentation of the shame arising from guilt due to some transgression, usually a secret transgression.
- Sometimes after getting sick our behavior – saltiness, self-pity, worry, cowardice, and any other expression of sin – keeps us unhealthy longer than the original sickness would have.
Anyway, none of those points require much depth of thought and none is that surprising. I think we all realize that sometimes, perhaps often, sickness is linked to sin. We are, after all, embodied spirits.
But James points out the possible sickness-sin connection not to humiliate us but to encourage the prayer of the church. As the church prays for those who are sick – sick in body or sick in soul – God addresses the sickness of the person prayed for. He addresses the sickness of the sick one in all its depths, including in its relation to sin. He saves the sick, he raises up the sick, he forgives them their sin.
An important note: James does not give us a timetable for this. Keep asking, seeking, knocking.
It is God who is at work in us as we pray. And as a way, in turn, of the church working out their salvation with fear and trembling, James tells us to confess our sins to one another.
It is God who works in us… so then let us work out our salvation. God works in the depths of sickness, and so then let us join his work by confessing our sins to one another. God heals embodied spirits by forgiving us our sins; why not cooperate in his healing work by confessing the sins that would otherwise remain secret… that sit in our minds and secrete toxic shame that hurts us in all kinds of ways?
A few words about this:
- This isn’t Pentecostal stuff. This isn’t Roman Catholic stuff. The Roman Catholic variation of this is confession to professional clergy. For Martin Luther, the Christian life without confession of sin to brothers was unthinkable: Therefore when I admonish you to confession I am admonishing you to be a Christian.
- James isn’t suggesting that we have regular struggle sessions where one-by-one we stand in front of the microphone and admit our darkest secrets.
- Neither is he saying that we should in casual situations make it a practice to air our dirty laundry to members of the church… and we all kinda revel in the fact that we’re all such travesties of human beings. This produces loser, sloppy culture.
- However, the culture of the church should be in keeping with 1 John: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Our manner with each other shouldn’t be put on, pretending like I’m a colossus of virtue or pearl-clutching at the glimpses of darkness that we see in one another. We shouldn’t be angry at or frustrated by church folks who express their lack of faith and immaturity. We shouldn’t be uncomfortable around rough-hewn, weathered-by-hard-living-people that find their way into the congregation.
- Sometimes in 1-1 conversation or in testimonies we should aver to the fact that we’re struggling with something, that we have experience with the sin that lies at the door, that sometimes we have failed.
- And it is healthy to have a few or even one deep Christian friendship in which your friend knows the career and details of your struggles with and failures at bitterness, lust, anger, resentment, greed, intoxication.
- We want a culture that doesn’t wear our sin on our sleeves but also a culture that breathes, that isn’t repressing the darkness.
- We acknowledge our specific sins to one another not to be celebrating sin or tolerating it…but because we’re fighting it… especially at its root of pride.
How should one hear the confession of his brother or sister? That’s such an important question with so many issues needing to be brought up in answering it that that’ll be one of the subjects of next weeks’ sermon when we finish our reading the book of James.
But let’s allow James’s summary statement to return us to our topic of prayer: The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. That’s the main point of this passage: prayer isn’t an aesthetic, a relaxer, a pointless religious activity: it has great power! It gets projects done. It solves problems. It moves work forward. This is what the Spirit claims! Do you think God exaggerates? Or is it actually the opposite case? Pray with expectation!
Well, someone who has limited his sins to 3/day on average. Who is bearing spiritual fruit at least 15% of his waking moments. And whose TV screen is no more than 48 inches.
No, no, that’s not what James means. Neither does he mean righteous in the sense as Paul sometimes uses it: a sinner who has legally been made right by being united to Jesus. And even though it’s a great preaching point, I don’t think he means to say no one is righteous except Jesus and so…
No, he means it in the standard Hebraic sense of someone who is operating properly within the covenant. A righteous person under the old covenant, like Simon who held baby Jesus in the Temple, wasn’t someone who didn’t sin or necessarily sinned less than average. Rather he was someone who dealt with his sin in a matter prescribed by the covenant as laid down in the Torah. So that’s the key: the righteous person is the one abiding by the conditions of the covenant: which back in the day meant circumcised, temple pilgrimages, Torah observance, sacrifices for sins… and all with integrity because he believes and loves the God of Israel. He’s thinking certain thoughts within the framework of the covenant.
So what is a righteous person today? Again, not someone who doesn’t sin or sins less than average. But someone who operates within the conditions of the new covenant: baptized, aligned with and accountable to a church, actively learning to do all that Christ commands, confessing his sin, and all with integrity because he believes the God of the gospel of Jesus Christ and loves his Lord. He’s thinking certain thoughts within the framework of the covenant.
To be clear: the righteous person isn’t the one earning his salvation or otherwise crassly currying favor with God. Anyone who understands the new covenant has grasped that he is a sinner desperately needing the mercy of God and that God has graciously offered up Jesus’ life as a penalty for his sin. And that in the resurrection of Jesus he has been justified, called into God’s Presence forever! Hallelujah! Jesus saves! Hallelujah!
But believing this gospel isn’t merely allowing thoughts flit through your head. Christ wakes you up, the Spirit makes you alive, you are brought from the domain of darkness into God’s Kingdom – you’ve been brought into a whole new arrangement, you are called to make that your public identity, the rest of your days are now learning learn to observe all that your risen Lord commands alongside fellow disciples.
Friend, if you are someone who has taken the name of Christ and thought a few thoughts but haven’t submitted to the structures of this new covenant cut open in the blood of Christ – – well, then, I can’t see this verse applying to you. It’s above my pay grade to say whether the life of God is in you, but it appears you are that doubleminded person that James started his meditations with…the one not committed to the faith as it’s been delivered. So even though in many ways you might be a stand-up guy, you’re not a righteous man. I honestly don’t know what happens to your prayers but just know this sentence doesn’t apply to you. Let not that man suppose he will receive anything from the Lord.
But to you righteous (not of yourself, not sourced from your works) – those who guided by the Bible have structured your life as a Christian – the assurance is that your prayers have great power. So, pray! Pray with expecatation!
James concludes this call to pray with the example of Elijah. In one of our adult Sunday Bible studies we’ve just completed 1 Kings in which Elijah plays a big part. What a colorful character and complex man! Courage, zeal for God and his covenant, sometimes gruff, sometimes sarcastic, a man who at least sometime thought of himself as all alone, who carried around a sense of failure and doom… I could keep going.
James makes two points about Elijah, the first one we just touched on: 1) he had a nature like ours. This observation is intended to encourage us. How is it encouraging? We could think that there’s a praying type: unusually focused, quiet of spirit, an uncanny bent toward faith, steady, a holy smile always playing around the lips, wholesome, positive…whatever it might be. And when we hear that we should pray because God hears and answers prayer, there’s a little voice in the back of our mind: but not prayers from people like me.
But James says, Elijah had a nature like ours. And a statement that sweeping implies that all humans must have the same nature. And that means, if you want to understand Elijah – the man who prayed and was heard and answered – just examine yourself. I examined myself and this is the nature I came up with: Impatient. Prone to sloth. Rarely content. Distracted. Not that deep. People pleaser. Crowd follower. Selfish. Wooden of mind and expression, perhaps especially so in prayer. Worried…
And James says, this is exactly the sort of person who should pray, because this is the only kind of person there is.
And James’ second point is strikingly simple: when Elijah prayed, things changed. Big things: climate, weather, economy, societal habits, migration patterns, policies. Then he prayed again and, again, a huge change. These great negative and positive alterations were the results of prayers of an average man to a God who works so many wonders his name is “Wonderful.”
Hey, average Christian: get to praying. There are wonderful things in store. Pray with expectation!
Church, we have an unusually high proportion of congregants that are first-generation Christians…or at least first-generation-taking-things-seriously-Christians. There are a number of us who are reliant on the church’s prayers if they’re going to be prayed for at all. If you didn’t pray for Tess, she still has her dad and mom and brothers and cousins and aunts and uncles lifting her up to God. But there are plenty among us who if we don’t serve them by praying for them their names are never brought before the throne of grace.
Look around and commit – I’m not going to be annoyed by my brothers and sisters but I’ll pray for their discernment, their faith, that Christ would be formed in them. Pray for all individual church members but focus on those who utterly depend on us.
AMEN