Powerful Prayer (James 5.13-20) Sept 26, 2021
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A pastor was visiting a member of the congregation in the hospital. The member was there with heart issues and the outlook was rather grim. As the pastor was getting ready to leave the member asked if she would lay her hand over her heart. She had heard that the laying on of hands during prayer was sometimes effective. The pastor did not feel that this was necessary, but why not? What could it hurt? So, the pastor laid her hand over the member’s heart and began to pray for healing and wholeness. As she did so she began to feel heat rising from the woman’s body. This was not body heat, but heat like that from a furnace. The member could feel it too. The pastor hurriedly ended the prayer with her member thanking her profusely. When the pastor got to her car, she got in, gripped the steering wheel and placed her head on it. Then she prayed, “God, don’t you ever do that to me again!”
Now we may laugh and enjoy this story but I believe that we would all be in the same boat as that pastor. We say that we believe in prayer and that we pray, but sometimes we go into prayer without thinking about the prayers being answered in a way that we understand or want. Prayer is something that we sometimes do without thinking of the outcome.
James tells us to pray. In the first two verses of the text for today we find three imperatives. We are told to pray. We are told that if any of us is suffering then we are to pray. To pray while suffering is a common theme throughout the bible. Look at Job. To really see prayers while one is suffering, a person only has to turn to the book of Psalms and read the psalms of lament. There one sees the people praying to God to end their suffering. And sometimes there is an end of suffering but more often it is comfort given to help get through the suffering.
And what to do if one is cheerful or happy? Then that person is to sing psalms of praise. There are psalms of celebration that are appropriate to express praise and to give thanks for the good things that have come about in one’s life. When we sing the psalms of praise, we are brought closer to God just as those who suffer are brought closer.
Now we come to a verse that was meant to be encouraging but has caused much suffering. It is about prayer over the sick. Many of us have prayed for those who are sick asking for healing only to see that prayer not answered, at least in the way that we want it to be answered. This verse is meant to be encouraging due to the fact that it calls the community to be a part of the prayer. The elders are to be called for by the sick person, another imperative. And the elders are to lay their hands upon the person and to anoint them with oil. Oil in the ancient Mediterranean was used for medicinal and other purposes. It was used to soothe wounds and bruises (see the story of the Good Samaritan). But here is a community coming together to pray over one who is sick. And the reason that the person is to call the elders is to bring the sick person back into the community. Then, as today, the sick were isolated from the community around them. They were the ones who were bringing the community down. They were the weak and the least of the fittest in a society that valued survival of the fittest. And so, they are to call the elders to bring them back to the community, to help make it whole.
James says that the prayer of faith will save the sick and that the Lord will raise them up. But he adds another phrase that is peculiar but is tied to the fact that the community is called to pray. He says that anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven them. Now, this does not mean that he equates sin with suffering or one being sick. Sin would, as did sickness, cause the person to be cut off from the community around it. If there is a prayer of faith, then the one who is sinful will be brought back into the fellowship.
And then there come more imperatives. The community is called upon to confess their sins to one another and to pray for one another. Have you ever wondered why we pray a prayer of confession? We are called to confess our sins to both God and each other. But James is not really speaking of a prayer that is communal and confession that is unspecified. He is speaking of the community confessing their specific sins to one another. In this verse the you is plural and is meant to be that the community is what is to be healed by the confessing of sins.
The prayer of the righteous person leads to the story of Elijah. James notes that because of Elijah’s prayer that the rains did not fall for three and a half years and that when he prayed for rain it came in abundance. Now there would have been some in the audience to whom James is speaking that would have thought that this was normal as Elijah was the one who was thought to come before the messiah and who would have more power than other people. James notes, however, that Elijah was a human being just like those reading the letter are. Therefore, their prayers should have as much affect as Elijah’s.
We all pray. We pray for things that, as Nanette Sawyer says, are not likely to come about quickly, if at all. But still we pray. We pray because we have a sense of communion with God and with each other. We pray because we know that when we do things change. Not that we change God with prayer, but that prayer changes us. How many times have we prayed for an enemy to find that we end up loving our enemy whom we hated before?
We are told to pray, says Paul, without ceasing. In this context it is as with a hacking cough, a cough that is persistent and never lets up. And sometimes our prayers can be as simple as the Anne Lamott book Help, Thanks, Wow. James tells us to pray and to pray with faith. We are to pray to heal the sick and to bring healing to communities that have been torn apart by sin.
Finally, prayer is most effective not when it is understood (there are many books on prayer) or believed but when it is practiced. There was a community suffering a drought and the local church called for a special prayer meeting for rain. As the pastor looked over the congregation, he saw a young girl in the front row with an umbrella. The rest of the congregation came to pray with hope. She came looking for results. May we pray with the same fervor and power. Amen.