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.
(James 5:13-20)
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You've all heard of "thoughts and prayers." It's a phrase that's become kind of commonplace in the world today. When something terrible happens it tends to be the first port of call for politicians - they rush to Twitter and type "thoughts and prayers" on their keyboard, and then - seemingly more often than not - they seem to forget whatever it was that they were thinking and praying about, and they go on as if nothing had actually happened. We see it a lot every time there's a mass shooting. We're not immune to the phenomenon, but American politicians seem particularly stricken by it. "Thoughts and prayers" for the victims, followed by paralysis when it comes to actually trying to do anything about gun violence. It also happens when natural catastrophes strike. Terrible floods, killer heat waves, raging wildfires, massive tornadoes, devastating hurricanes and typhoons - all happening with increasingly alarming frequency. "Thoughts and prayers" for the victims, but not much action really. I don't want to be too hard on our politicians. I think all of us do it from time to time. I sometimes wonder how often "I'll pray for you" gets followed up on, or whether they're just words without much substance.
James would have understood my doubts, I suspect. He believed in the power of prayer, and one doesn't pray about anyone or anything unless one is thinking about them. So, "thoughts and prayers"? Absolutely? But James would have expected more. Throughout this letter, James makes the point that "thoughts and prayers" with no intention of following them up with some sort of concrete action are relatively meaningless. His basic point about “thoughts and prayers” seems to be – don’t bother thinking and praying about things if you have the ability to do something about them but choose not to. In other words, there’s no point to praying if you’re expecting God to do everything afterward. That’s a pretty common theme in James’ letter. But there’s also another way of looking at things. In this passage, James suddenly segues into a brief discussion about the great prophet Elijah. In 1 Kings 17 and 18 there are stories about a terrible drought in Israel that 1 Kings said was the result of Elijah intervening and calling the drought down upon the land because Israel had turned away from God. The drought lasted years. Finally, Israel repented, and Elijah called down rain, and the rains come. Why did James include this strange story in the letter? Maybe it was because in addition to wanting to say to people “don’t pray unless you’re going to do something about it,” he’s also saying “don’t pray unless you believe that God can do something about it.” Sometimes we wonder why we don’t get answers to our prayers (and for today at least I’ll avoid pointing out that when we say we don’t get answers what we really mean is that we didn’t get the answers we wanted.) I do wonder, though, if at least in part it’s because we’ve misunderstood the whole point of prayer. Prayer is so much more than just me speaking to God one on one. It includes that, but prayer is about establishing what I’d call spiritual relationships; prayer is about holding in balance ourselves with God and with all that God has created. Prayer is about recognizing that there’s a spiritual connection that’s established through prayer. I’ve sometime shared with people that my personal working definition of spirituality is that it is the sense of one-ness that exists between and among God and everything God has created, including us. I think James would agree with that.
The Letter of James is about how Christians should live together in community. Someone like Martin Luther actually wanted James tossed out of the New Testament. He called it “the Epistle of Straw” because he thought it was too legalistic. But – with all due respect to Martin Luther – I think he was wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. I mean – I’m just me, and Martin Luther was … well … Martin Luther. But still, I think he was wrong. James wasn’t laying out rules and regulations for Christians to obey. It’s more that he was laying out the patterns of behaviour people should expect to find in a Christian community. In a way you might call this letter a tourist guide. “If you visit a Christian community here are the things you should be looking for,” is essentially what James was saying. And, mostly, James was telling people that the word “community” is, in fact, what really matters. This passage basically gives us a vision of a caring community whose members truly look out for one another. But as I read the Letter, and especially this passage for today, I started to wonder: a community of whom? It’s not just the people in that particular church. The community is created first and foremost by prayer – and prayer binds together the community praying with God, and with all of the creation. I think the example of Elijah was included by James as a way of demonstrating the powerful impact our prayers can have if they’re offered in faith.
Truly faithful, deep and heartfelt prayer impacts not just us and not even just those around us; it has an impact on all of creation; it even impacts God in some way because we are involved in a relationship that’s in balance. The impact comes from the fact that truly faithful, deep and heartfelt prayer changes us: it becomes the engine that helps make us who God wants us to be and that empowers us to do what God wants us to do – and since we’re the stewards of what God has created that has the potential to change all of creation, just as Elijah’s truly faithful, deep and heartfelt prayers impacted the whole creation.
I said a few moments ago that prayer is about a balance of ourselves with God and with creation. I don’t think it takes much imagination to realize that things in our world are horribly out of balance right now in so many ways. Our churches are being reduced to businesses whose motivation is the bottom line rather than the mission of God. Our politics is increasingly dominated by anger and a lust for power rather than humility and a desire to serve people; our cities and towns are increasingly becoming increasingly fearful as we become more and more suspicious of newcomers and those who are different; our environment is on the verge of collapse as we see those terrible floods, killer heat waves, raging wildfires, massive tornadoes, and devastating hurricanes and typhoons in numbers and places we haven’t seen them before. I’m not suggesting that thoughts and prayers alone could solve those problems – heaven forbid I suggest that! - but I am suggesting that as the people of God we perhaps need to take prayer more seriously and more faithfully as a way not of changing the world but of changing ourselves and of making ourselves better stewards of the creation God has given us to care for.
It was Franklin Roosevelt who said that “a nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” He seemed to understand the balance. It’s equally true that a world that destroys its lands, its waters and its air destroys itself, or that a world filled with fear and anger and hatred and suspicion is no longer the world God created. It’s just as equally true that a church that stands by and watches it happen while offering nothing more than thoughts and prayers in response is destroying itself by making itself irrelevant. I don’t have all the answers to the problems plaguing the world. If I did, I suppose they wouldn’t be plaguing the world anymore. But I do know that we need to challenge one another to always be a part of the solution. Too often our thoughts and prayers are really about ourselves – we pray for others, but even so it often seems like little more than an attempt to display our piety; to show others just how faithful and religious we are – but without much follow up action. Actually, our prayers should be just the opposite: they should an admission that we have a long way to go, but also a commitment that we want to make as much of a difference as we can; that we care not about ourselves but about all that we see around us.
God will work. And God will work through us. But we have to believe that. We have to make sure that our words are more than just mere words – that they spur us to action; action that becomes a sign of God’s presence and activity in the world around us.
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