Unanswered Prayers: September 26, 2021

 Year B, Pentecost 18                                                               James 5:13-20                                                                 

     Since we have had 5 weeks in the Book of James, I had hoped to preach my three Sundays on James.  Then I looked at the text for today.  “Are any among you suffering? They should pray…. The prayer of faith will save the sick.”  On the one hand, that probably sounds like a preacher’s dream text.  For some it might be, but not this one.  After I looked at this text the first time I thought, you know the Old Testament reading is a good one, maybe I will go with that.  But then as is so often the case, it’s always the texts that I don’t really like that are the most important to preach.

                What I found particularly irksome about this text is it seems overly simplistic.  And frankly, wrong.  We all know we are supposed to pray.  Hopefully most of us do pray.  But we also have experienced praying for someone who is sick and being disappointed when they did not get well.  They did not heal.  In some cases, they died.   So how can James say that the prayer of faith will save the sick?  Does that mean that anyone who isn’t healed doesn’t have someone truly faithful praying for them? Of course not.  This is one of the hardest things to reconcile as a Christian.   We are told to pray and so we do. Yet occasionally, even when we pray for something good and holy, perhaps even righteous, our prayers go unanswered. 

            Since it’s something I have never been able to reconcile, it seemed like something that I should probably avoid preaching about.  So I looked at that Old Testament text again, because it really is a great text. Moses is complaining to God about this ungrateful group of whiners he is stuck with.  This was not the first time the Hebrew people had complained.  Earlier in the story, they had complained about how hungry they were, so God provided them with manna from heaven.  Now they are sick of manna, they want some meat.  It’s kind of understandable.  I love bread, but not even I could eat just bread for 40 years.  So they are complaining again which leads Moses to complain to God about this ungrateful rabble.

God was not upset that they were asking for meat.  What really ticked him off was that they were reminiscing about Egypt, the place that God had freed them from.   Their deliverance from Egypt was an answered prayer.  They had prayed to God that God might free them from their enslavement in Egypt. God had gone to great trouble to free them from their oppressors.  God brought plagues upon Egypt.  God parted water so they could safely pass.  He sent them a leader in Moses, who they then abused.  And now, they want to go back.  This is the thanks God gets for their answered prayer?

            As confounding as it is to us when God doesn’t answer a prayer in the way that we think is good and appropriate, it must also be confusing to God when we have our prayers answered and then end up complaining about it.  I am sure we can all think of a time when we prayed fervently for something and were granted that, but then later found ourselves complaining about the very thing we desperately wanted.

            I think it all comes down to the way we treat prayer.  Do we perceive prayer as a tool to get what we want out of life?  Or is prayer a gift that God has given us, a gift that allows us to create and sustain a relationship with God and one another.  In the previous chapter, James wrote, “Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you” (4:8).  By speaking to God, we grow closer to God.  Because even when we are complaining to God, at least we are in dialogue with God.  Remember, it wasn’t the complaint about the lack of meat that irritated God, it was the desire to return to Egypt. It was the lack of gratitude for their answered prayer.

            The other thing that James is emphasizing in this text is the need for a community of faith.   James wrote, “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.”  James was encouraging people to reach out to those in their faith community to pray for them. 

Remember, a lot of what James has been talking about in this book is the action of Christians—how to live a Christian life. Here he is explaining that one of the actions of a Christian is reaching out and asking for help.  Another is responding to that cry for help.  Prayer isn’t merely about our relationship with God, it’s also how we relate to one another. 

One of the things that we had to stop because of COVID was the healing prayers we offered every Sunday.  It was usually a non ordained person providing prayer in the chapel.  People shared their need and one of our healers prayed over them.  Now, I never asked Jane or Laura or Linda how many people they really healed.  Because I think we all knew, that wasn’t exactly the point.  The point was that people felt the care and compassion of another Christian in the community, in the context of Sunday morning worship.  It was individual prayer enfolded in community of prayer.   I believe that is a perfect illustration for what James is talking about.

Of course the problem with this interpretation is that it still doesn’t explain what the text means when it says, “The prayer of faith will save the sick.” I wish I could tell you.  I really wish I could explain why so many good and worthy prayers go unanswered.  And I also can’t explain why we humans occasionally act like the Israelites complaining about a prayer that God answered that we now wish he hadn’t answered. What I do know is this, giving up on prayer never helped anyone.  I have never spoken to anyone who said, “Yeah, my life really turned around when I stopped praying.”  Because when you stop praying, you give up.  You isolate yourself not just from God, but from your brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Now there might be times, when you simply  don’t have the strength.  That’s ok.  Don’t beat yourself up about not being able to pray at times.  That is where the clergy and the church come in.  Many people stop coming to church when they can’t pray because they think they are being insincere.  But please, please don’t do that.  Keep coming, so the community can hold you up.  Keep coming and if you can, ask for someone else to pray the prayer that is eluding you.  That is what we are here for.  Someone once said that a church isn’t a museum for the saints, it’s a hospital for the sinners.   As beautiful as this church is, I don’t want it to be a museum for super holy people to display their holiness. I hope it can be a place where wounded souls find healing and even the unanswered prayers find some solace.

The America of 9-12: September 12, 2021

 Year B, Pentecost 16                                                                      James 3:1-12                     

                                Recently one of our parishioners posted a meme on facebook that said, “I would never want another 9/11, but I miss the America of 9/12.”  It went on to explain how unified we were the day after our country was attacked.  I remember that as well—going to give blood and being turned away because the line was around the block.  I recall churches full for weekday services that usually averaged 10-12 people.  We weren’t arguing about politics, at least not nearly as much. There were countless stories of heroism and selfless acts.  Now we argue about masks and we can’t even agree on what news station to watch.  At times it feels almost like a different country.

Occasionally I will hear a person lamenting that they have seen someone’s true character after that person has displayed cruelty or weakness, as if all the good they had previously seen was just a façade.   I have fallen into the same trap—choosing to judge someone by their darkest moment, rather than their finest, or even an average moment.  I thought of all this as I looked at that meme.  Which America is real--the America from 9/12 or the America of vitriolic school board meetings and people insulting one another from behind their computers?

            We are reading from the book of James for the third week in a row.  As I told you the first week, James is perceived as one of the more practical books because of the relatable topics he covers.  In today’s reading, it’s about how important the words we use are.  We all know what it is to experience pain because of the words of another.  Often cruelty is not the intention.  It’s just the result of words that were carelessly chosen.   We’ve heard, maybe even said the childhood quip, “Sticks and stone can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”  Yet both children and adults know that could not be farther from the truth.  The spoken and written word can torment someone far after a physical injury has healed.

            Yet while James warns us of the injury our words can cause, he doesn’t give us any advice on what to do about it.  He admits that no person can tame their tongue. We can try, but even at our very best, we fall short.

            What seems to concern James most about words is not the effect that they might have on another person, but what it means about the person who speaks the words.  In the first chapter of James, he warns of being double minded and thus unstable in every way. He returns to that theme in our section for today, “With (the tongue) we bless the Lord and Father and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.  From the same mouth comes blessing and curse.” James goes on to question whether salt water can produce fresh water or whether a fig tree can produce both figs and olives. No, obviously not.  The implication is that a Christian who praises God cannot be genuine in that praise if that person also curses the person who is created in the image of God.  The question is: which is the true and genuine part of the person?

            Some would say, you can’t be both. You can’t be both snarky and faithful at the same time.  I would disagree. I would say at our best, we worship and serve God as well as loving and serving our neighbor. Yet we also sin and fall short of the glory of God.  However, if we are all created in the image of God, than our true self is always the best of us, not the worst of us.  Therefore, even if we use our mouth to praise God and curse those made in the image of God, our true purpose (our true identity) is praising God.  Yes, we will fall short, we will make mistakes.  And some will veer so far off course that all of their intentions will seem evil.  But no person is beyond God’s saving help.  No person ceases being a child of God. 

            I have noticed that one of the most common things people say of newly born child is that they are “perfect.”  Even newborns who might not be perfect by outside standards, are still perfect in the eyes of their parents.  Now, I don’t know any parents—who while their child is in the midst of a tantrum--- looks at them and says, “Isn’t she perfect.”  Frankly, I don’t think very many people describe others as perfect after infancy.  Because we are not.  Our flaws come out.  We say things we regret.  We do things we regret.  But—we never cease being God’s beloved children. We always have a purpose, not merely as children of God, but as disciples of Jesus.

            Now some of you might be wondering what this has to do with a facebook meme about the America of 9/12.  And for those of you who are new or visiting, this is the first time I have ever highlighted a meme in a sermon.  I believe that our country is still a country of people who care and want to be united.  I believe that we as a nation have made countless mistakes and there continues to be injustice and pain.  But there are even more examples of goodness today.  It’s just harder to see.  So on this day, Sept 12^th, let’s try to find the good in one another as opposed to the flaws. Maybe, more importantly, let’s be the good and compassionate person God has created us to be.  Let’s praise God more than we curse the children of God.  And one day we might find that our default is praise and the other stuff just pops up occasionally. 

Today we had a baptism.  My favorite part of the service is when I put the oil on the baby’s head and say, “Anna you are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.” I want us to burn that into our heart and mind so that when we find ourselves judging another, we can also remember that they too are Christ’s own.  They too were once without sin.  They too (hopefully) had a parent who considered them perfect.  They and we will always have a God who chooses to claim us as his own.