Those Who Pray Together

James 5:13-20

Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are 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. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore 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. Elijah 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. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.

My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you 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.

So over these past few weeks, we’ve read the bulk of the book of James. It’s a short book, our lovely passage for today was the end of it. But the scholars who decided to put the lectionary together, who set the choices for what we mainline Protestant pastors preach on each Sunday, they made some interesting choices. And one of those choices was to skip over the first half of chapter 5, which begins, “Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries coming to you.” I… can see why the creators of the common lectionary decided to spare us from having to preach on that. Just railing on the evils of the rich and the dangers and emptiness of money during stewardship week. Sure, alienate all the folks who can keep us afloat. No thank you!

But if there’s one thing I’m very against, it’s cherry-picking passages that fit our points of view in order to fit our own agendas, or avoiding tough passages because we just don’t want to deal with them. No matter how difficult a passage is, there’s something to be learned from it. Now, I’m not going to preach an anti-money sermon during stewardship season. But I think the beginning of chapter 5 is valuable. I think it puts our passage for today into perspective.

The deeply resentful, angry, and violent rhetoric is indicative of what society was like in James’ day—it’s indicative of how uneven, how divided, how big the gap between the rich and the poor really was. Remember earlier in chapter 2 of James, he warned his audience not to be fooled by the rich, or tempted by material wealth: “Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?” he asks. So this group of early Jesus followers has clearly been having some trouble with the rich and powerful. We know early Christians were persecuted for their beliefs by the powerful because they felt threatened. The life of an early Christian was spiritually fulfilling, but practically speaking, it was quite dangerous. And so our passage today is all about how this new faith community has to depend on and deeply trust each other. They don’t have much, but they do have their faith, God, and one another. That’s why James, and also Paul, and almost every other writer of these New Testament epistles was so preoccupied with the community remaining as one, staying together, and working through their differences.

I think it’s sometimes tough for many of us more science-minded Christian folks to be open-minded when it comes to these instances of faith-healing in the Bible, and praying over someone with physical ailments. It’s something we may feel as a little backwards, something that’s not relevant to us today… that we’ve moved beyond it, that we’re above thinking in this superstitious way. But what is our prayer shawl ministry, if another version of that? We don’t expect that a few prayers or a shawl will heal someone’s physical ailment, no, but that good energy, that love that we send to people—that lifts spirits, it lifts morale; it lets the suffering know that there are people thinking about them, that there are people who want them to get better, or who simply want them to be content.

I will never, ever forget those early months of covid. I was working as a hospice chaplain, and there were some nursing facilities that were completely closed off to visitors, some that allowed select medical staff in… and I remember watching some patients, I can say without exaggeration, die of loneliness. It was their visits with their friends, family, their loved ones that kept them going. It was that social interaction that kept them excited about life, no matter how much or how little time they had left. Patients of mine who never contracted covid withered away when their family members could no longer visit them.

So when I read James’ proclaiming that prayers of faith will save the sick, I think of my time as a hospice chaplain. I think of the fact that being with people, seeing people, speaking to people, listening to people kept so many connected to the world and continuing to be a part of it. We now know, of course, that we need medical assistance in addition to that, but we need both.

Last year, the Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy declared loneliness an epidemic, on par with tobacco use. Murthy has spoken about he noticed loneliness being a common thread in many of his patients’ lives, and this was well before the pandemic. As he dug into the data, he found that loneliness is associated with not just increases in anxiety and depression, but also heart disease, dementia, and premature death.

“…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.” James says. If we are open with one another, admitting our faults, where we stumbled; and if we can be open and joyful praising one another and praising God for the good in our lives, and we can do all this together, we will be in great shape. This passage, in my reading, isn’t about magical healing powers. This passage is about the power of community, of togetherness; the power of trust. It’s about relying on one another in spite of missteps, in spite of misunderstandings. It’s about keeping one another uplifted during trying times.

Now, I know that during those first months of covid, we were in completely uncharted territory. I know it was necessary to close nursing close nursing homes to non-essential visitors. But I have to wonder, if in the panic of that terrifying time, if the importance of social interaction and connectedness was forgotten. I wonder if in trying to stop the spread of covid, the spread of loneliness and isolation was hastened. And that now, in this post-covid world, loneliness and lack of connection remains an epidemic; the world has become complacent in our isolation.

When James encourages us to confess to one another, he’s not telling us to grovel before one another, to be self-deprecating and talk about what horrible sinners we are; he’s telling us to just be open and honest with each other. He’s telling us to say, ‘you know, I’ve really been struggling this week, can we talk about it?’ to each other. And when James says that the cheerful “should sings songs praise,” that’s just another way to encourage his audience to pray together. That’s just James saying that when you’re feeling grateful, give thanks—when we ask someone how their day is going, if they say “great!” We can ask them why? What’s gotten them in such a good mood and congratulate them for whatever’s got them so positive.  For a faith community of any kind to survive, whether they’re brand new and experiencing growing pains, or they’ve been around for hundreds of years and are simply in a transitionary sort-of period, we have to really connect with one another and really be there with one another.

Now, are the rich and powerful throwing us into jail and bringing us to court for minor offenses, or no real offenses at all? No, this country isn’t quite there yet—but we are in a time of a lot of upheaval. There’s the usual list of grievances— church attendance is down nationwide; anxiety and depression is sky-high, especially among young folks, very much due to how the powerful are running things—we seem to have infinite amounts of money for war, but never enough to rebuild flooded towns, to feed schoolkids, to give adequate and affordable healthcare. We’ve reached a moment in time where we need to really think about how we want this church, this town, this country to move forward. It’s more clear than ever that we need each other. We need to lift each other up when the powerful refuse. We need to listen to one another and put that effort in to reach that perfection that James writes of. We need to really be there for one another, support each other and support this faith community during these trying times.

In those early pandemic days, while we couldn’t see people in person, I remember there was a pretty major effort during that unprecedented time, to reach out to people to check in. People were regularly facetiming and video-chatting with people they have otherwise lost touch with. We realized only when we couldn’t see physically see people, how important it was to have those social connections… but then the world opened back up, and once we could see one another again, we didn’t. Once we were free to do the things grieved during lockdowns, our busy lives, our technology, our lingering anxieties and traumas from the previous months of uncertainty stopped us from fostering and maintaining our connections. Everything just kind of went back to how it was before, except worse, because we had this lingering collective trauma to contend with in addition to everything else.

This happened with churches as well, I think. When the world opened back up, we had an opportunity. We had an opportunity to really change things and really reconnect in a bigger and better way after we supposedly realized how important connection and community was… but we missed that opportunity. I missed it. Everyone did. When I was in Philly on our mission trip, I was able to catch up with Michael, who was my pastor when I lived there. It was really eye-opening— in this relatively big urban church, they were having all the same issues and conundrums that we were having… erratic attendance, uncertainty, tech issues… it was at once validating and relieving, and also kind of terrifying! If this big church is struggling, what chance do we stand?!

Well, all is certainly not lost. We have to be creative. And we have to be think long and hard about what this community means to us. As we get our stewardship letters in the mail, we have to think about what we can feasibly give, in money, time, or ideas, so that we can continue to be a beacon of community and togetherness in a world that needs these centers of community more than ever.

“…if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save that sinner’s soul from death, and will cover a multitude of sins.” That’s not just the end of our passage today, it’s the end of the book of James. That’s how he chose to end his sermon. Now, I can’t promise you some kind of spiritual referral bonus if you bring someone to church, but there’s something really beautiful about that openness; about being open and welcoming of anyone who needs that community, who’s craving that connection… whether they’ve never been here before, or they haven’t been in years. James knows that we are powerful when we are one, when all are welcomed unconditionally.

“The prayer of the righteous of powerful and effective.” Your connection to one another, your openness with one another is powerful and effective. It’s powerful and effective because we’re living in a moment in time in which the powerful have a vested interest in keeping us isolated so that they can divide and conquer. When we worship, pray, sing, and work together, as one body, we rise above. When we are connected to each other, when we are open with one another, when we pray together, when we sing praises together, our spirits are lifted. When we welcome old friends back or new people into the fold, we grow not just in numbers, but in new ideas and new ways of thinking.

I’ve really enjoyed preaching on James. I’ve found that his message is wildly relevant to today’s world, and I’m sad that it’s over! Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked about not selling ourselves short in our striving for perfection in a broken world. We’ve talked about the fact that faith without doing good works towards that perfection is no faith at all; we’ve talked about the real and true effort it takes in a world consumed by division, ignorance, and technology to listen for and to speak the truth. We’ve talked about the heavenly wisdom that leads us to that truth in world run down on its own earthly wisdom. But it’s surely no accident that James ends his epistle with a message of togetherness—with a message of the importance of uplifting and supporting one another with prayer and praise and welcoming. So if we leave church today with any memory of the book of James, let it be the importance of listening to and connection with each other. Let it be the warmth that comes with that unconditional love. And let it be the knowledge that with that connection, we will, we must keep working towards that perfect world. Amen.