The Right Picture: Being
There for Each Other
Dr. Larry Thorson
James 5:13-16
13 Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy?
Let them sing songs of praise. 14 Is anyone among you
sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them
with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer offered
in faith will make them well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned,
they will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other
and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous
person is powerful and effective.
Today’s New
International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
This is the fifth week of Lent, the season when we
try to remember the reasons why we need a savior as we get ready for
Easter. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the
day we remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into
But Easter only has meaning for us if we know we
need a savior. If we think we’re pretty
good then what’s the big deal about Jesus dying for our sins? If we think we can get to heaven on our own
why did Jesus have to rise from the dead?
If God doesn’t hate sin then why did he go through such a big deal to overcome
it for us?
My intention is not to make you feel worse about
yourself than you already do. You have
enough problems on your own without my having to add to it. My intention is to make you more grateful for
what Jesus did for you and me so that on Easter Sunday you have more to be
excited about than the Easter bunny.
If you’re more grateful for someone then of course
you’ll produce some action to show it.
For example, sometimes I say to my wife “I’m so grateful to have you as
my wife”. She says, “Are you really grateful, then rub my
shoulders.” Our words are meaningless
without our actions. Our actions always
carry more weight than our words.
In the fifth chapter James gives us three
situations. “Is there anyone among you
in trouble?” “Is anyone happy?” “Is anyone among you sick?” Those three pretty much cover the folks at
the First Presbyterian Church of Hemet.
On any given day fifty two weeks of the year, we’ll have someone in
trouble, someone happy and someone sick.
I’d say that most of the problems in our church
family I hear about are illness oriented.
But often someone will be in trouble financially and can’t pay their
bills. This week is “Progress Report”
week for students in the
Is anyone in trouble at the First Presbyterian
Church right now? Most likely. James’ advice to them is simple; pray.
Is anyone happy?
I hope so. James says “let them
sing songs of praise”. Singing songs of
praise is a form of praying. I
personally don’t do that enough. I pray
for healings. I pray for results but
when I’m filled with joy because a problem has been solved instead of singing
praise to God the next problem I have in my life is the next one that gets my
attention. Pastors are notorious for
focusing on problems and seeking solutions probably because we so often hear of
new problems. We need to sing songs of
praise.
Is anyone among us sick? With a membership having an average age
exceeding 72 are you kidding? We’re a
walking, breathing American Medical Association manual on sicknesses. You name it, we probably have it somewhere in
our midst. That’s just part of getting
old and I think we’re doing pretty well with our aging.
James says for those among us who are sick to call
on the elders to pray over them and anoint them with oil. Oil was one of the most common medicines of
biblical times. They would give oil
baths to the sick in the hope of bringing about a cure.
What James was saying is that two things go hand
in hand to bring about healing; the prayer of the elders along with an
anointing of medicine. Sometimes people
are healed through the prayer of the elders and no medicine. Other times people are healed using only
medicine. But to diminish the value of
either is not biblical and it’s not wise.
My doctor in
In my last two churches I served the elders always
came up and stood near the communion table and offered to pray with the people
who came for healing after a worship service.
That apparently has not been the custom here but a concept that we need
to visit.
Next James
says that those prayers of the elders offered in
faith will make the sick well. He says “the
Lord will raise them up.” In other words
the sick person will be able to get up from his sick bed as proof that he’s
been healed.
James then says if it was sin that
caused the illness the sick person will be forgiven. Another way of putting that would be that not
all illness is caused by sin. Some
illness just happens. But if you did something
that brought on your illness those sins could be forgiven.
Therefore, James says, confess your
sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. That’s the biblical ingredient for healing;
confessing your sins to each other and praying for each other. Most of us have little problem mumbling off a
little prayer for healing for ourselves or someone we love. We’re used to that. Less people will be willing to write a prayer
request on a little blue prayer card and put it in the offering plate to be
prayed over in the worship service. Even
less people will be willing to walk down this aisle and ask to be prayed over
after the worship service. But
confessing our sins to each other, not many will be willing to do that and what
does that have to do with healing?
There are times in life when we screw up and we
need to confess and to deal with it, not just run away. Two times in the last
three weeks I’ve asked to see two different people and they said to me they
felt like they were being called into the principal’s office.
The attitude that I hear is that church should be
a place of pleasure with no pain. Work may
be a place of pain but we’re getting paid to be there. The hospital is a place of pain. But church is somehow up there with the multiplex
movie theater, a place of no conflict and no pain. If you experience a rude employee at a movie
theater our cultural norm now is to not go back. We’ll go to their competitor. If a spouse messes up rather than confessing
the sin to our spouse our cultural norm now is to go get a new spouse.
What we lose in this practice is intimacy even in
marriage and especially in church. If
you sit by yourself in the balcony or you sit by yourself at the edge of the
pew you’ll probably never have a conflict with anyone in this church, ever,
unless you’re sitting in somebody’s favorite seat. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
By avoidance you may not have much conflict but
you’ll also not have any intimacy.
Intimacy is one of the ingredients to healing. Intimacy comes from being vulnerable to other
human beings. You can experience prayer
and community in a small group, but not necessarily vulnerability.
It’s so interesting to watch small groups
develop. For the first six months
everybody in the small group keeps everything at a safe distance. For example a typical prayer request would go
like this: “Pray for my great aunt’s
next door neighbor’s son in law’s step daughter who’s going into surgery next
week.” That’s the typical depth of a new
small group intimacy.
Meanwhile the very person making that request is
about to be laid off from their job and nobody knows it. When he gets laid off from his job he doesn’t
come to the small group because he’s ashamed.
Yet that’s the very time and the very place where he needs the
healing.
Some people are willing to be vulnerable with me
their pastor which I appreciate and it helps me to know how to better pray for
them each week. But if you don’t have a
community connection out there day in and day out, week in and week out healing
is going to be difficult.
Praying together builds community. Community
encourages vulnerability. Vulnerability encourages more prayer and that becomes
a way and a means of healing. How different from the message of the world which
says basically, I don't need you. If things don't work out we are going to
leave and go elsewhere.
Recently I read a testimony by a pastor in
Baltimore who had been told by people from time to time when he was in an
entrusted environment that sometimes he could come across as somewhat distant
or aloof or too independent. Twenty
years before in seminary training, he had enrolled in a clinical pastoral
education program which involved ten weeks working at a psychiatric hospital.
One day he was sitting down with his supervisor
and she said, "George you know you need other people. You really could be
more open to what other people are trying to provide for you. We need each
other." He looked at her right in the eye and said, "You know what, I
really don't need you."
He met in small groups two times a week for those
ten weeks and one particular week trust had been building up. The leader was talking about sharing with
each other a sense of shame that they had experienced in their life.
His story of shame came from a math problem in his
sixth grade. The teacher was having all
the students go up to the board and solve a math problem. When George got up there it was a time in his
life when his parents were divorcing and his mind wasn’t really with it at
school. He went up to the blackboard and
froze. He didn't know what to do. So the
teacher started harassing him a little bit for not knowing it and then
everybody started to chuckle in the class.
At that moment he wished there was a trap door he could just drop
through. To make matters worse, the door of the classroom was open and his
brother was in in the third grade lunch line and they stopped right outside the
door where his little brother could see him in that situation.
He was sharing all of this with the group as an
adult and started to lose it because it connected for him all of the stuff that
he went through in his family life growing up.
He was getting in touch with having been abandoned by his dad. He was getting in touch with feeling alone or
unprotected. In that moment when he was
telling it twenty years ago, and emotionally losing it, the leader said,
"Well how about if we re-parent you?" George was startled and said, "What?
Re-parent me, what does that mean?" The leader said we just want to come
up around you, put our arm on your shoulder, tell you that you are loved and
accepted. So he said "Well what the
heck, let's go ahead and go for the whole nine yards." And the whole group
came around and supported him.
He
said he felt dis-integrated and you can only handle that for so long so he said
to the group that he had to leave for a little bit. Reflecting on it later on he realized
something significant had happened. It
was not just a catharsis. It was not just an opportunity to vent. Because of
the combination of vulnerability, prayer and community, something psychologists
call transmutation took place. Transmutation means that something has changed
in form or substance or nature. With transmutation one emotional state is
changed to another through interaction and connection.
It's a mystery for quantum physicists and
psychologists to grapple with, but the combination of these three things,
vulnerability, community and prayer in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ affects
our reality.
Now the key is keeping the right balance of
ability and vulnerability together, because what we really need to understand
is that God wants us to be there for each other, to trust each other when we
have a need. But if no one is
vulnerable, if we are so alien that nobody can relate to us, if there are no
cracks in the armor then people won't be able to approach us and express that
need. They won't want to depend on us. But at the same time, we have to heal
from all this stuff and have a certain strength and ability because we can't
just sit around with open, gaping wounds before one another. We have to know
that someone is strong enough there to be able to hear what we have to say and
can receive it.
So that ability and vulnerability being in the
right mix is what starts to create a healing path. It's why we love Jesus so
much. He was the strongest ever, but he came down to us in our weakness. He
condescended to us and he suffered all things as we do and he is able to empathize
with every need, every thought, every situation. By faith, when we trust him, either for the
first time or we trust him again in our lives and we humble ourselves in
community, we receive his power through others. Then our life gets transmuted
more in to his image. That’s when we see the true picture of God in the
mirror. Amen.
Sermon based on a sermon preached in 2007 by
the Rev. George Antonakos
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145. Used with permission.
www.centralpc.org