Bible reading: James 5:13-20.

We often read the Bible, especially the New Testament, in a very personal way. When Jesus says. or when Paul (or any of the other authors) writes, “You should do this” or “You shouldn’t do that”, we tend to think that they are speaking to us as individuals. Indeed, we may even believe that God himself is trying to tell us something – and perhaps he is! We need to make sure that we are listening to him.

But, while all that is true, we need to remember that the Gospels and Letters were mostly written to Christian communities (there are some exceptions, such as Paul’s personal letters to Timothy and Philemon). Some of these communities were well-known to the writers as they were churches which they had founded and visited. Others (such as the church in Rome, where Paul only went as a prisoner) were not. The Gospel stories, or parts of them, circulated around the churches and were later brought together in the forms we know today. And, as far as the Letters are concerned, I can easily imagine the elders of the church in Corinth or Thessalonica announcing to their congregation, “We’ve just received a new letter from Paul (or Peter, or whoever), so we’re going to read out to you. Please listen; we’ll talk about it later”. Is that wishful thinking? Possibly – but possibly not.

It’s clear from reading the letter of James (and I know I said this last week) that it, too, was written to one or more churches. The problem is that we know nothing more; indeed some scholars believe that it was written from Jerusalem to groups of Christians with a Jewish background who were dispersed around the Mediterranean region. Much of the letter, including the section we’re looking at today, is concerned with the ways in which Christian communities behave. In the first chapter James told his readers not to fawn over wealthy visitors while ignoring folk of lower status, as all are valuable in God’s sight. Last week we thought about the chaos and disorder which arise when people try to selfishly push their own agendas rather than humbly listening to each other and submitting themselves to God. Today we’re thinking of how the community members should care for each other, with a particular emphasis on prayer. James exhorts his readers to share their burdens, their sorrows and their joys.

At first sight, James’s exhortations seem fairly random or disjointed. “Are any of you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise”. These seem to be fairly obvious things to do – but how should they be done in community, to what extent can or should we share our sorrows and joy? Our own tendency is to put a smile on our faces when asked, “How are things?” and reply, “Oh, fine”; James clearly doesn’t hold with such shallow conversations.

He goes on: “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”: I realise that James was writing at a time when medical science was still undeveloped, but I can’t believe he felt that oil would in itself have any healing effect, it’s clearly a symbol of faith. However the next verses open up more than one can of worms: “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”. Is James saying that the kind of prayer he’s describing will automatically bring about healing? – we know that it often doesn’t. And was he reiterating the commonly-held view that sickness is caused by sin? – a view which Jesus himself had trashed, years before. These aren’t easy verses to accept; yet this practice of healing prayer is still one we could adopt, and not only in special “healing services”.

I’m sorry to be giving you a “running commentary” on these verses; it’s not my usual style but it seems to be the best way of looking at them! And we now venture into even more problematic territory, for James illustrates his teaching on prayer with the story of Elijah and his prayers for both drought and rain. Do we really believe that God controls the weather in that way, and uses it as an instrument of both judgement and blessing? And are we happy with the suggestion that one man’s prayer could bring starvation, hardship and death to so many? I suspect that we all enjoy the drama of Elijah’s tale; but, however much we believe in the power of prayer, it does throw up some awkward and unanswerable questions. Finally James moves away from the topic of prayer and talks about Christians who “wander from the truth” but who are later “brought back by another”: would any of us be prepared to reprimand or reprove someone who, we felt, was in danger of “going off the rails”? Even I, as a minister, would be wary about doing this, and be worried that I was going to be told to “mind my own business”. It would be even harder for the rest of you.

What we must realise is that James’ encouragement to share deeply, to expose our troubles and struggles, to pray meaningfully, to correct each other we stray, are not born out of a desire to create an intense or manipulative community; he’s not wanting to create a cult. What he is trying to do, though, is create a community, bound together by faith and love, in which everyone supports, respects and cares for everyone else. One commentator says that we should read these verses as a description of how an ideal Christian congregation ought to behave. It should be harmonious, mutually concerned and characterised by deep and meaningful relationships. This is very different from Mrs Muggins and Mr Jones slipping in and out of their pews each Sunday, muttering their prayers, and leaving without saying anything more than a hasty “Good morning” to the Vicar. These good people may profess a deep personal faith; but they have failed to understand that church is a communal activity. They are shutting themselves off from both the support they may need and the help they can offer others. One might even dare to say that their faith has become self-centred. 

This concept of Christian fellowship is not unique to James. Paul uses similar words when he writes to the Thessalonians: “We urge you to warn the idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that no one pays back wrong for wrong, but at all times make it your aim to do good to one another and to all people. Always be joyful, pray at all times, be thankful in all circumstances”.

Moving forward to the year 1607, John Smyth, the founder of the very first British Baptist church, conveyed his thoughts in much the same way: “The chief care of every member must be to watch over his brother in bearing each others’ burden, admonishing the unruly, comforting the feeble minded, admonishing the excommunicate, restoring them that are fallen”. A century and a half later, when Methodism started, its members met weekly in small groups “to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they may help each other to work out their salvation”. This was achieved by “inquiring how their souls prospered; and by advising, reproving, comforting or exhorting, as occasion may require”. (I ought to add that, at these meetings, they also had to pay their weekly subs!)

This level of Christian fellowship sounds supportive (very necessary for the early Baptists who were constantly under the threat of being arrested for treason) but it also sounds intrusive (do we really want to undergo the spiritual examination or interrogation that James, Paul, John Smyth and those Methodists seem to have been advocating?). Certainly some supposedly Christian communities have gone too far down this line, notably the “Oxford Groups” of the 1930s which made the mutual confession of sins, especially sexual ones, a priority (although it did also lead to the founding of “Alcoholics Anonymous”). Some of the so-called “house churches” of the 1970s, realising that much of what passes for Christian fellowship is superficial, fell into the same trap. It’s clear that there must be a balance between over-sharing our struggles and woes, and Mrs Muggins’ faith which is so personal that she keeps everything to herself. James tells us how to do this.

I suspect that life in James’ day was far less private than ours is – although that has changed radically with the advent of social media and people sharing (and taking pictures of) every tiny event in their lives. Most of us would not, I think, feel comfortable in the kind of church described by James: we’d be embarrassed by the personal details that were being shared, we could find it hard to be the subject of sudden spontaneous prayer, we’d be angry with anyone pinpointing an area of our Christian life which, they felt, needed correction.

This is a good, loving and caring church; yet we still need to ask if our fellowship together, our willingness to become vulnerable, our commitment to each other, are as strong and deep as they ought to be? As someone has written: “Most congregations have not been as comprehensively transformed as James would wish for them. But rather than writing off this letter as unrealistic or impractical, we would do well to begin experimenting with the kinds of community practices he proposes”. It wasn’t easy to be a Christian in the early days of the Church: the believers had to stick together. And in some ways it’s harder to be a Christian today than it was 20 or 50 years ago: so perhaps we need to stick together more closely than we do – always, of course, with the essential glue of genuine Christian love.