Josh Thiering 8:30 service Wilshire Baptist Church 27 September 2015 Dallas, Texas Could It Really Be So Simple James 5:13-20 Each year, more people are killed by vending machines than are killed by sharks. 1 How s that possible? Well imagine this. It s mid-morning and Joe Six Pack is feeling a little snackish. So Joe Six Pack makes his way to the company break room to buy some Cheez-Its. He eyeballs up the coordinates from the vending machine and punches the keys C and 3. Inside the glass, the dispenser ring begins to turn And the Cheez-Its bag slides forward But there is a catch. Something is wrong and Joe Six Pack swears under his breath. The top of the Cheez-Its bag is now leaning forward and resting on the glass, while the bottom of the packaging is caught by the dispenser ring. And so Joe Six Pack gets angry. BAM, BAM, BAM! He starts banging on the glass. But the Cheez-Its bag just dangles there in defiance. 1 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/shark-weekremembering-bruce-the-mechanical-shark-in-jaws/243026/
Though he was never trained in karate, Joe Six Pack, walks around to the side of the vending machine and he kicks it as hard as he can. BOOM! But the Cheez-Its bag isn t budging. Science fiction novelists keep churning out cheap paperback thrillers about dystopian futures. These are stories where robots with artificial intelligence start a rebellion against the human race. Well Joe Six Pack hasn t read any of those science fiction books. But he beats on the poor vending machine like he has. BAM! All the while, the Cheez-Its just dangle. And so Joe walks around to the side of the machine, and he places his hands on its top and begins rocking it. With each rock the machine clatters. And yet the bag is still not moving. One final time he tries to dislodge the Cheez-Its and this time, Joe Six Pack puts all he s got into it. And he pushes and pulls the vending machine so hard that the heaviest internal components clear a threshold and the machine topples back over onto him. CRASH! I m afraid it s true... 2
More people are killed by vending machines each year than are killed by sharks. 2 You know, many people think of prayer as if it were a cosmic vending machine that is broken. Broken. We were told that prayer would work. And we wanted it to work. We were told that we could ask God for things and he would give them to us. But when prayer didn t seem to work out, we were crushed. Perhaps, it wasn t so much that we were told to name it and claim it. But rather we heard the sturdy words of Jesus: Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. Jesus makes prayer sound so simple and straightforward. And then we have the words of James in Chapter 5 which appear to be all the same. If any of us were to talk to James, I imagine our conversation would go like this: James asks, Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Okay, James. Are any cheerful? Indeed. They should sing songs of praise. 2 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/shark-weekremembering-bruce-the-mechanical-shark-in-jaws/243026/ 3
Right on, James. Are any among you sick? (Deep Exhale) James says, The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. But James, could it really be so simple? If you have ever known someone with real illness then you are likely to read these words on prayer from James with disbelief. His words are unqualified. There is no if or might. There is no could or possibly. It s a straightforward will. The prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise them up. When I was 8 years old, my grandfather had a massive stroke which left him paralyzed on the right side of his body. After the stroke, my grandfather was unable to move or speak intelligibly. He couldn t bath himself or feed himself. He lay bed-ridden for seven years until he passed away. My mother would visit him regularly and on many occasions throughout those years she would take me to the nursing home to see him also. His paralysis was disturbing hellish. On Sunday mornings at church we would hear stories from the Gospels of Jesus healing people. 4
Well, during the week when we visited my grandfather, we would pray for him. There were even days where we were so bold as to ask for healing. James writes that the Prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up. But each week my grandfather just laid there. His body looked as broken as our prayers. The weeks turned into months and the months into years. James, could it really be so simple? Just who is this James anyway? And what does he know? He isn t a doctor. He doesn t have a medical degree. He hardly sounds like an expert. Was he licensed? Was he trained in C.P.E (Clinical Pastoral Education)? You tell me. James doesn t even sound like a realist, for that matter. Even the famous protestant reformer Martin Luther had serious doubts about whether the book of James should even be included in the Bible. Martin Luther called this letter an epistle of straw. Are these words on prayer here, by James, nothing but straw? Maybe. But then again, maybe not. Maybe James knows more than we give him credit for. After all, as many scholars point out, these could be the teachings of the brother of Jesus. 5
James, the brother of Jesus, was a central leader in the early church in Jerusalem which is where so much of this all began. Maybe James is not just some unqualified man with unrealistic expectations, but a person of profound wisdom and faith. After all, wouldn t James and the Christians in Jerusalem have known a lot about suffering? Jerusalem was the place where Jesus was put to death. It was the place where Stephen was stoned. Maybe James knows more than most about human suffering and the power of God. In Greek, the verbs from James 5:15 are all in the future tense: The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Future tense. These confusing words on prayer are not about the past, or even entirely about the present. They are about the future when our Lord will return in power and glory. Just before this confusing passage, James offers a parable about a farmer who waits patiently for both the early and late rains. And James concludes his parable by proclaiming boldly, strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Others translate it, the coming of the Lord is at hand. If you find yourself struggling with the words of James know this: It is because of the second coming of Jesus that James can make such claims about the power of prayer. In Greek, the word translated in verse 15 to raise them up is used elsewhere in the Bible by Paul to speak of God raising us from the dead. 6
Maybe James knows more than most: The Lord will raise them up, he says. At the end of his letter, James doesn t offer a broken theory on prayer for the present moment. He does something far better. He gives hope. Hope. Could it be so simple? These are words of hope and James sets them down right in the midst of real life. Are any of you suffering? he asks. James is no different than you or me. His words can t make the horrors of the present any less horrible. His words can t make the sadness of the present any less sad. To do so would be untruthful. But what James can offer is hope deep and lasting hope about the goodness of God breaking in on the world. His seemingly straightforward words on prayer are not broken they re signposts pointing to God s future. His words gesture over the horizon to a time when God will be all in all. Where the sufferings of the present meet the power and goodness of God. Where the blind will see, the deaf will hear and the lame will walk. Where the captives are set free and the unhealed wounds of history meet the wounded grace of God. For James, this is not a theory about prayer, it s a dream. 7
A dream. Not because it s a falsehood but because our hope is truer than it seems. It s a dream. The way MLK had a dream The way Dante had a dream. With eyes to the future, James writes a litany of hope to close his letter. Are any among you suffering? They should pray. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and anyone, who has committed sins will be forgiven. Tom Long tells the story of a reporter for the New York Times who sat down to interview a doctor. This wasn t just any interview with any old physician. The doctor had a medical degree from Yale and with that education she could have had an affluent upper east side practice. 3 But no, her medical clinic was a Ford Econoline van that she drove around midtown Manhattan looking for women caught in prostitution. When she found them, she would give them medical care and a word of liberation, saying, If you want to break free from this, there are people who will support you. The reporter for the New York Times was admiring, but skeptical. 3 Dr. Tom Long. It s About Time, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu0swz4gkwu 8
The reporter said, That s wonderful, Dr. (Joyce) Wallace, but you know many of your patients still die of AIDS or drug overdose. It must be very discouraging. Dr. Wallace said, Well, that s one way to look at it. But my mother taught me another way. My mother was for all of her career a special education elementary school teacher who taught brain damaged children. And she taught me, Joyce don t just look at the damage, look at the image. Dr, Wallace said to the reporter, I learned that best one night when the Parent Teacher Association at school asked my mother s class to provide the program. And so my mother had rehearsed her students on singing the songs from the Broadway musical My Fair Lady. She said, It never occurred to my mother that the audience would burst into tears. Because it never occurred to my mother not to let a little six-yearold brain-damaged girl roll across the stage in her wheelchair singing: I could have danced all night I could have danced all night. And if James is right, then dance she will and so will we. 9