PREPARING THE WAY: “Pray for Others”
James 5:13-20
September 29, 2024
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.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
I am sure you have heard the familiar story about the man facing rising floodwaters…
The rains were coming down and the waters were beginning to rise,
so a large pick up truck pulled up in the man’s driveway, in front of the man’s house,
where the man sat comfortably on his front porch.
“Come with us, sir. The waters are rising.”
From his front porch stoop, the man yelled back:
“It’s OK. I’ve been praying. The Lord will take care of me.”
A few hours later, a rescue boat motors up to the steps of the man’s porch,
where he still sat, a little less comfortably, watching the rain come down,
observing the waters rising to just a foot or two below his porch.
“Come with us sir. The waters are rising,” the rescue workers in the boat yell.
“It’s OK,” he yells back. “I’ve been praying. The Lord will take care of me.”
Fast foward a few more hours. The man is now up on his roof.
The floodwaters are swirling around the entire house, engulfing the front porch,
washing through his windows.
A helicopter drops down between the trees, amidst the rain and wind.
A man in a basket appears from above, yelling to the man on his roof:
“Come with us, sir. The waters are rising,” they yell.
“It’s OK”, the stubborn man yells back. “I’ve been praying. The Lord will take care of me.”
The floodwaters continue to rise. The man does not survive the storm.
When he reaches his eternal home, he cries out to God:
“I prayed and I prayed. Why didn’t you save me?”
And God replied: “I sent a truck, a boat, and then a helicopter.
What more could you ask for?”
Our text for today addresses the subject of prayer, specifically prayer for others.
As human beings, most of us will find our way to prayer, eventually.
We are fragile, vulnerable creatures of the earth,
and the people we love are fragile and vulnerable as well.
Ultimately in life, most people find themselves offering up a prayer,
either for themselves or for someone they love,
because we will find ourselves at the end of our own resources and in need of help.
It may be a foxhole prayer, offered in the midst of fear and danger.
It may be an ICU prayer, offered from a feeling of utter helplessness.
It may be the prayer of a parent, offered from the anxious realization
that you cannot and will not be able to save your child every time they find themselves at risk.
We do not know how much prayer changes God,
but we do realize that prayer changes us.
Prayers of gratitude re-orient our hearts to God.
Prayers of confession can help change our minds and turn our lives around.
Prayers of joy can lift our spirits to a new and broad place.
In today’s text, James encourages the church to be fervent in prayer for others.
Again, we do not know how much prayer will change God or change the outcome.
But we do know that praying for other persons will fundamentally change us.
Praying for another person, at minimum, will impact our relationship with them.
At every wedding rehearsal that I perform,
after we have lined everyone up and walked up and down the aisle to the organ music,
after we have ensured that all the bridesmaids and groomsmen, all the inlaws and outlaws,
all the parents and grandparents, and any little ring bearers or flower girls
know what they are supposed to do and when they are supposed to do it,
we invite everyone to sit down in the front few pews for a little chat.
I remind everyone present that what we are doing is very important,
so important, in fact, that we act it out with high drama.
A wedding ceremony is so important to our human community that we don’t just use words;
we dress a certain way, we walk a little smarter down the aisle,
we are surrounded by beautiful flowers and lilting music,
because the world will take a little turn when this particular bride and groom
offer their vows to one another.
The world, at least the world of everyone close to that bride and groom,
will turn a bit and be different because these two are becoming one in holy matrimony.
Because every marriage is important to the broader human community,
I encourage everyone in the wedding party to say a prayer for that couple that night.
Before they put their head on their pillow, I encourage them to offer a simple prayer
for that couple getting married, and I encourage them to do so every night following
for as long as they can remember. Every couple getting married needs our prayers.
Indeed, every couple who is married needs our prayers.
We may not be able to measure the impact of our prayers on the health and vitality
of that marriage, but I do promise them that that marriage will be stronger,
and that their relationship with that couple will be stronger, because of those prayers.
They will feel your prayers, I tell them.
Have you ever felt the prayers of others?
Whether friend or foe, family or stranger, when we pray for another human being,
this impacts our attitude towards them and our relationship with them.
The same can be said for the community of a congregation.
As we pray for the needs of the world, generally and specifically,
our prayers will fundamentally shape the nature of this community in which we worship.
Our prayers help shape the nature of our community’s relationship with the world around us.
When we pray regularly for the unhoused on our doorsteps, those prayers will, over time,
change us and impact the decisions we make and actions we take.
Sincere prayers offered in faith make a difference.
They make a difference both for the one prayed for and for the one who prays.
We cannot quantify the effect of prayer,
but countless souls have experienced its power.
A church member shared how very important were the prayers of support received
when her husband was dying.
She shared that those prayers quite literally upheld her during long and difficult months.
Her husband was not going to recover from his terminal illness,
but both she and her husband, upheld in prayer,
nevertheless experienced some measure of wholeness, wellness of the soul, healing even.
Many of you have had the experience of being a prayer partner with another person
or with a group of people.
As a part of the Contemplative Spirituality journey that I am on,
I have peer group of pastors with whom I pray once a month.
One is a long term Lutheran from a progressive church in California.
Another is a United Church of Christ pastor seeking to navigate the divisiveness
of this political season in a small city in Wisconsin.
The other is a wise old African American Baptist who pastors a multi-ethnic church in Harlem.
We are a diverse bunch who in some ways are very different from each other,
and yet in other ways hold so much in common.
And we are being made stronger in our pastoral roles because we are engaging in prayer
for one other. During the storm, I received several emails from my prayer partners,
offering their prayers and concerns for our congregation and community.
Did you know that our young parents are now gathering on Wednesday nights
for a brief time of sharing their prayer concerns?
This time of sharing and praying for one another has already becoming important
to the participants.
We all know that the church is not a sanctuary for saints but a hospital for sinners.
We all know that we all are in need of healing and wholeness,
all in need of support and encouragement, all in need of forgiveness and new life.
Are any among you suffering hardship or experiencing troubles in life?
Find your way to one of our small groups or Sunday School classes.
Prayers offered in faith for you can help make you experience wholeness and wellness,
even in the midst of suffering.
In certain communities, in certain worldviews,
when someone falls sick, that person is considered weak and should be left behind.
The elimination of the sick person, they believe,
will leave more resources for those who are strong.
Sharing attention and resources with those who are weak will distract a community
from its own growth and will weaken its struggle for survival and supremacy.
So, the logic of this tainted worldview is to isolate the sick from the healthy.
The healthy organism is to recoil from what is sick and weak in order to protect itself.
Sickness, then, becomes an occasion for social isolation and alienation.
This is a “natural reflex” of survival, some will claim, but it becomes a form of sin
when it leads to the deliberate exclusion of the sick from communities of care and support.
Luke Johnson, who wrote commentary for The New Interpreters Bible (volume 12, page 222)
claims that in the Letter of James a basic question of Christian faith is posed:
Will the community of faith rally and support the one who is sick
and show itself to be in solidarity?
Or will it isolate those who threaten its possession of health and security?
This is no trivial question.
According to worldly wisdom, the logical response to a form of threat is self-defense.
Only the fittest should survive. Competition exists precisely to identify the fittest.
Envy pits strength against the weakness of others,
and as James has shown, can lead eventually to neglect or even murder.
In the Letter of James, the sick are empowered to summon the community’s elders.
In the Christian community, the poor are to be honored rather than scorned.
In the Christian community, we structure ourselves according to the principles of solidarity
and mutual cooperation, not envy and competition.
James called the early church to a way of life that was truly radical in its implications.
The Church will be defined by a gift-giving God who desires solidarity and peace
and not be defined by competition and scarcity, which ultimately leads to violence.
For those of you who pray daily for others, please continue.
Pray for those in need who are far away,
pray for our leaders and how they impact the needs of the world,
pray for your loved ones and pray for the most vulnerable and weak among us.
And pray for yourselves.
If you are not someone who prays daily for others, I encourage you to do so.
Just because you may have deep and sincere questions about the efficacy of prayer
does not mean that you cannot pray.
Just because you are not sure whether God hears your prayers or cares about your prayers
does not mean that you should not continue praying.
In the Gospel of Mark, the 9th chapter, there is a timeless word of grace
for all those who struggle with prayer and with belief in general.
A desperate father brought his son before Jesus.
The boy was suffering from seizures, so much so that the man feared for his son’s life.
His prayer is perhaps familiar to us: “If you are able to do anything,
have pity on us and help us.”
Jesus replied: “If you are able! All things can be done for the one who believes.”
Immediately, the honest father cried out: “I believe; help thou my unbelief!”
If you hear us, O God…
If you are able to do something, O God…
If you care about us, O God…
We believe; help thou our unbelief!
I believe that earnest, heartfelt, and specific prayer offered in faith makes a difference.
Prayer makes a difference to us; it changes us.
And somehow, by God’s grace, beyond our understanding or calculation,
many of us have been witnesses to the fact that prayer makes a real difference in this world.
Prayer can bring back those who have wandered away.
Prayer can help save those in need of forgiveness.
Prayer can bring some measure of healing and wholeness for those who are sick and suffering.
Prayer is powerful. Prayer is effective.
We do not know and cannot measure the efficacy of prayer or how prayer affects God.
We do know that prayer changes us, that prayer impacts our relationships,
and that sincere prayer eventually directs our actions and, ultimately, our destinies.
Thanks be to God for the powerful gift of prayer.
Amen.
Rev. Todd Speed
Decatur Presbyterian Church
Decatur, Georgia
