Today is our last Sunday with James. One of the things we have learned reading this Epistle is that James puts a strong emphasis on the works of faith. And so, it could come as a surprise that this last paragraph is all about prayer – because of our own tendency to oppose contemplation and action. When we talk about the “works of faith”, we usually believe that it is all about practicing charity and helping people in their concrete circumstances. And there is certainly a lot of that in James! Yet if you remember, we have also noticed how much James insists on the value of our words:
In chapter 3, James has warned us against the dangers of the tongue, how we can hurt others and ourselves by what we say, when we slander or gossip. In Chapter 2, James has warned us against speaking empty words to people in need, or giving words of praise to people we value because of superficial judgment, because of their appearance, and then we ignore those who don’t look so good…But what happens in this last chapter is that we learn that if words can bring some hurt and negative effects, they can also bring some good and be redeeming, and especially in the acts of confession and prayer – which are of course two important practices of the church.
So the question for us today is: How are we to practice confession and prayer so they would bring those positive effects?
– First of all, James reminds us to pray “in all circumstances”, which is an idea that is not foreign to the New Testament. We have to pray whatever our emotional or physical state. James says we need to pray whether “suffering, or sick, or cheerful” – because prayer is never easy.
For example, we generally assume that it’s easier to pray when something is wrong (and we need help and guidance). Yet we know that we can also get stuck in those times of suffering, and despair about not being heard and not receiving God’s help. Sometimes when life throws too much at us, it can be difficult to have a sense of God’s goodness and we can be tempted to stop talking to God. But James tells us to pray anyway.
Then, we could also assume then that it would be easier to pray if everything is well is our life, yet we also know that it can be in those times when we forget about God because we don’t need anything. James asks us to pray, to thank God and to manifest our joy.
Finally, we could also assume that it would be easier to pray when we are sick, because we obviously have to ask God for healing – and sometimes we have no other recourse than to ask God. Yet it can also be difficult to pray in times of physical weakness. When our energy is diminished, we can be tempted to become passive. Again, James asks us to pray.
It’s not only that we need God at all times…I think it’s also because – and it’s a very important thing to notice – that for James, prayer is to be practiced in community. We lift each other up and help each other by praying together. The prayer of the cheerful comfort the afflicted, the prayer of the sick brings compassion to the hearts of those well satisfied with their lives…Contrarily to what we generally assume today, faith is not the possession of one individual, it is also the practice of our community. I am tempted to say that our prayer will be as strong (or as weak) as is the faith of our community. Certainly, you have in mind those passages where Jesus performs miracles because of the faith of friends or parents asking for a favor for their loved ones. We also know that at times Jesus encountered so much opposition that he couldn’t perform any miracle.
– This does not mean that the visible outcome of the prayer is an indicator of our faith (whether communal or personal). To James, prayer always brings positive outcome, but those outcomes are mainly spiritual. When James says that the Lord “will raise up the sick”, it can be a physical healing, but he also talks about the Resurrection of the dead of course. He could also talk about giving everyone the strength to carry on…The power of resurrection can take many forms in our lives. Today we call that “resilience”. And certainly supporting each other as a community help us to build that resilience.
– Yet if we go even deeper in our reading, we will realize that when James talks about healing, he talks about the healing brought by the confession of sins, and the confession of sins as a community. Sickness is not an indicator of personal moral failure, but we cannot ignore that people get sick in many different ways when they are morally hurt or rejected. The most important to James is that we first heal our community spiritually, heal of the hurt that we so often inflict on each other, whether on purpose or not. If you remember from last week, James asked us to pray with truthfulness, coming to God with pure intentions…Well, we have also to be truthful to each other when we pray together, and to acknowledge our wrongs, so we can be a healthy and faithful community. We talked about that last week as well. James says that we get caught in conflicts because we are too self centered. Only self awareness of our motives can heal us. We see today that this self awareness can be brought by our community, by gently correcting each other and working on our misunderstandings. This requires from all great humility and a deep desire to change.
– Yet, I think that overall, James’ main idea in this passage is that we need to enter prayer with hope end even optimism because prayer will certainly bring changes. Remember from Chapter 1 that “God is the giver of all good gifts”. When we pray we all expect good things to happen…yet generally what we expect are physical or material advantages. Without denying God’s providence in our daily lives, according to James the main good thing that prayer provides, if we pray in trust and truth, is that we will be saved from sin, whether it is the sin to wander away from God or the sin of the conflicts in the community. In this, we don’t have to worry whether prayer “works” or not, because prayer will always bring victory and peace. When James takes the example of Elijah who could withhold the rain for years or making it come down from heaven, it’s not because James suppose we can control the weather with our prayers (we wish!). It’s an image to tell us that a sincere prayer has the power to open heavens and pour down blessings, not only on us but also on the world: “[Elijah] prayed and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest”. James is asking us to believe that it can be true for any of us because Elijah was a “human being like us” who only “prayed fervently”…and received the blessing.
– This is the conclusion of James’ Epistle…If you remember the main question throughout his letter is “How do we treat each other?” – to me, the answer James gives to that question is not only that we should treat each other with respect and fairness, but in whatever we do, whether caring for each other, supporting each other, or correcting each other, we have to be a blessing – we have to be a sign of God’s love for one another. The works of faith are to make God real to one another, to bring God’s presence to one another.