A Cry for the Kingdom

 September 5 2021

James 5:13-16

         When I was growing up we didn’t have cable channels and streaming services; no, it was the dark ages. All we had were three channels that we could pick up on something called an antenna all of which came out of Cleveland. So, it goes without saying that we became familiar with many of the Cleveland personalities. One of the biggest thrills of my life was getting a signed picture of Captain Penny who made an appearance at downtown Dover one year. As I recall he was friends with a guy called Mr. Jingleing but that’s another story for another day. I also remember Big Chuck and Little John and their antics as well. But the one that sent me down this memory lane was a televangelist by the name of Ernest Angley. Do you remember him being on TV? He was pretty wild. I mean, I belonged to a pretty uptight United Methodist church and when you see Pentecostals in action its kind of mind blowing. One of the things old Ernest was known for was his healing ministry where people with all kinds of ailments would come forward and Ernest would lay his hands upon them and in a loud shout proclaim,” Be healed in the name of Jay-sus! That was something you just never could imagine would ever happen in any church I knew of. Yet what is interesting, way back in our Nazarene history, there were those who very much just like Ernest, were laying hands on people, crying out in the name of Jesus. Yet even though these spiritual ancestors of ours believed quite strongly in the healing power of God through the work of the Holy Spirit they also knew that God also can bring healing through the use of modern medicine. The reason why they did not choose one way of healing over the other was that very much like in the case of baptism, the founders of the Nazarene church had come from very many and different streams of belief, yet in spite of their differences the one thing that was of utmost importance was the key doctrine of entire sanctification. The one belief that had to be upheld was the doctrine that Jesus Christ, through his life, death, resurrection and ascension has made it possible for everyone to experience freedom from original sin in the here and now. This belief they were unwilling to give even an inch but everything else, including the different beliefs about healing, they were willing to allow a lot of leeway. With all this in mind lets have a look at the fourteenth article of faith found in the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene. Divine Healing: We believe in the Bible doctrine of divine healing and urge our people to offer the prayer of faith for the healing of the sick. We also believe God heals through the means of medical science.

         So, there is our belief on divine healing. What is important whether one is prayed over or whether one is being treated at the hand of a doctor, all healing comes from God. As a wise old pastor once explained to me, doctors can treat our ills but only God can heal them. We see God’s healing hand in the stories of Jesus who once walked beside the Sea of Galilee healing those with infirmities. While I am always amazed when I read how Jesus brought healing and relief to so many people what we have to also be aware of is that even though Jesus did cure the ills of many people there were many people that did not receive healing. And of those who had been healed, in the end they still all succumbed to death perhaps at the hands of an illness. So, while the healings we read about in the gospel accounts were important there was something more to them than just a public demonstration of the ability of God to restore wholeness to a person’s life.

         It might be difficult for us to wrap our minds around the fact that the healings we receive from God are meant to point at something greater. It goes without saying that in our world health is a very big deal. Health is just what we consider the normal state of being. What is often forgotten in our endless pursuit of health is that all health really is is staving off death for as long as possible. As Paul says in the eighth chapter of Romans, all of creation, which includes all of us, is subject to corruption. So, yes, it is good to be healthy, but as Redd Foxx points out health nuts are going to feel pretty stupid someday, lying in the hospital dying of nothing. So, yes we can’t forget that being healthy has a limit. When we know this then we have to also understand that there is something more going on when we ask for prayers for healing.

         Well, not only do we think of health as the normal way of being but in the same breath, if we are honest, we also can say that, yes, suffering and death are part of the deal of life here on Earth. Yet what we cannot forget is that suffering and death reveal a defeat of who we are as people, that these have their origin in our sinful state. This is a defeat that no amount of medicine can overcome.The only one who has overcome the defeat of sin, suffering and death is Jesus who is fully human just as we are, he was clothed in our flesh yet without sin. Through his death Jesus defeated sin and death and three days later Jesus was raised in power through the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus we know that our hope is found not through denying death as we frantically attempt to hold on to our health but rather our hope is found in the life without end which awaits us as our reward beyond death. You see, as some of us know all too well, when we are sick what we need most of all is hope. When we are suffering and hurting we can begin to feel defeated, to surrender to darkness, despair and solitude. I am what they call a long-haul Covid survivor which means that I never have a day when I don’t hurt, there’s never a day when I’m not fatigued. So, when I read of someone who also had this and they committed suicide because of it it is a tragedy that is so terrible yet it is understandable if what a person is placing there hope in is endless days of health instead of placing their hope in Jesus Christ whose grace awaits us beyond this life. We have to believe with Paul who writes in the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians that “though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” You see it is our afflictions, the afflictions that Jesus tells us that we will have in this world, it is these that is what gets us ready for the glory days ahead. Paul goes on to say it is God, working through our afflictions who prepares us for the glory which is ahead and it is God who has given us his very Spirit as a guarantee that what we believe in will be a certain reality.

         This greater reality which waits ahead of us is the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed was at hand. The healings that he performed were signs of power exclaiming that the long awaited kingdom of God had at last come upon the Earth in the person of Jesus. So, the healings Jesus brought forth were to not only give release from suffering in the here and now but they were to also bring hope for the future because now the one has come who can bring a sin-sick world back to wholeness. This summer series is entitled Confident, and the reason we are confident is that Jesus has overcome this world with all of its sufferings, and afflictions. In Jesus we have found that hope is found beyond death, beyond the cross because it is there that there is resurrection. Paul in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians tells us that what is sown is perishable; what is raised will be imperishable. What is sown in weakness will be raised in power. This is what life will be when the kingdom of God is no longer a veiled reality.

         You see, all of this has to be understood for us to get the full impact of what James is teaching us about the power of prayer. James tells us that when we are suffering first on our list is to pray. In other words when the world is at its worst we need to go to God who is always the best. If someone is sick, James continues, they are to go and call the elders of the church who will come and pray over them. This prayer over the person who is sick is to be done, James tells us, “in the name of Jesus”. Now, what we must not do is to believe that this means that we are to use the name of Jesus in a superstitious way as if his actual name had special powers. No, what this phrase, “in the name of Jesus” means is that when we pray we should pray just as if we were Jesus, in the same manner and way that Jesus did. What is interesting is that this is easy to figure out because the teachings of Jesus about prayer are pretty limited. The one place that stands out is when the disciples of Jesus ask him to teach them how they were to pray. The prayer he taught them is the prayer we know of as being the Lord’s Prayer and is found both in the sixth chapter of Matthew and the eleventh chapter of Luke. As you study this prayer it is easy to figure out that it is a cry for God’s kingdom to come. It is for a reality to arrive where life is understood to be found only in the provision of God, that we are forever indebted to his mercy and therefore mercy must be found in us. What must also be kept at bay is anything that would keep us from entering into that coming kingdom, the evil which only God can deliver us from. So, as we pray “in the name of Jesus”, it is not hard to understand that it means that we pray with a longing for God’s kingdom in our hearts. It is to pray for the presence of the Holy Spirit because as Paul teaches us in the fourteenth chapter of Romans, the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy which only the Spirit can bring. 

         It is knowing that the prayer that James is expecting is to be a kingdom prayer that helps understand why when someone is sick that as James teaches, they are to call the elders. The elders, as the name implies, were the older mature believers of the assembly and they would be representative of the local church. As we remember, the coming kingdom is a unity that Christ has brought about by his blood. When the elders arrive it is easy for the one who has been taken ill to understand that they are not going through this illness alone but instead the whole church suffers as they suffer. When the words can not form on the lips of one who is overcome by pain there are those whom Christ has united to that person who will cry out on their behalf. The elders cry out for healing but more importantly they cry out for God to make real the hope that those who are suffering so desperately need. James also tells us that the elders are to anoint with oil the person who is sick. The word in Greek that is translated here as “anoint” is not the normal word translated in that manner. The word normally translated as anoint is “chrio” from which comes the word Christ which means the anointed one. So, what James was referring to was not an anointing as we think of it but rather James was most likely thinking of how oil was used in those days to help bring healing. We see this in the story of the Good Samaritan where the Samaritan pours his oil into the wounds of the man who had been robbed in order to help heal these wounds. James throughout his letter, stresses that faith without works is dead so perhaps what he is indirectly stating is that not only should the elders pray but they should do something, such as rubbing oil on the one who is hurting in order to bring relief. Now, in our day, having friends from the church show up wanting to pray over you and while they are there insist on giving you an oily massage may not help you focus your heart on the kingdom of God. No, the point I believe James is trying to make is that in addition to praying try and find something that will communicate the love and mercy of God to the person who is hurting. The kingdom of God must not only be spoken of and cried out for but the kingdom of God is something that must also be experienced.

         James continues his teaching on healing prayer by saying that the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. The word used here which is translated as being “sick” is a different word than was used before to speak about the one who is sick. Here this word is translated as “sick” is a word that means to be tired to the point of exhaustion, to be weary and discouraged. This understanding helps us then to figure out why James states that the prayer of faith will save but not necessarily heal the person who is sick. James is telling us that when a person is sick to the point where they have been just beat up, wore out from the fight they are in, they are so susceptible to giving up on everything including God. The prayer of faith is there to counter the cloud of doubt that hangs over the sick bed. As James goes on to say, it is the Lord who will raise them up. One of my pet peeves is when people post that prayer works. It is not prayer that works; it is God who works just as Jesus tells us in the fifth chapter of John that his Father is at work and he is working still. We have a God who is at work, raising us up. This means that God, through the Holy Spirit lifts us up from the life of this world into the life of the next. It is the Holy Spirit who comes, as our foretaste, our down payment, our guarantee of the life to come so that when our hope is lingering the sweet grace of God comes to us to stir within us anew the freshness of faith.

         You see, God knows that it is when we find ourselves laid low by the ailments and afflictions of this world that this is when God gets our attention. As the author C.S. Lewis’s writes, it is in our pain that God speaks to us with a megaphone. So, our pain as awful as it may be, serves a purpose and that is it awakens us to our own fragility and morality otherwise we may keep on believing that life is possible apart from God. Yet, as important as it is that we allow our pain to awaken us to the necessity of God we also need the church, the people who serve God, those who come in his name, to come to us in faith that can counter our doubts. We need those who can cry out for the Kingdom on our behalf, praying that the Spirit may come and bring into our life the life that is to come so that we do not lose hope and find ourselves turning away from the God who longs to reach us with his promise of glory.

         It is when we understand that in our despair we may begin to doubt God, to turn inwardly upon ourselves and give up fighting the good fight that this is when we also can figure out why James turns to speaking of committing sins with the promise of God’s forgiveness. Often the commentary centers on these sins somehow being the cause of the sickness being addressed but I wonder if rather James is speaking to the sin that occurs because of our sickness, our anger at God for the trial that we face. In our pain and our hurt we can seek solitude rather than communion with God and our brothers and sisters in the church. James pleads that if we find ourselves doing so that we come back to where the love is because forgiveness is always held out for those who come home. 

         Let’s face it, the difficult part about speaking about praying for healing is that the healing we desire does not always come. We, as redeemed people yet still prone to sin are simply unable to demand anything from a holy, almighty God. We must accept that sometimes the answer God will give us is, “No”. Part of placing our faith in God is understanding that God knows best. Even Jesus when he prayed for the cup of suffering to be taken from him was denied in his request. Paul in the twelfth chapter of Second Corinthians prayed that the thorn in his flesh be removed but he too was denied in his request. What Paul was told was that God’s grace was sufficient for him because God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. Perhaps Paul’s discovery is what we must hold on to when our requests seem to go unanswered. We must know that they are instead answered with an answer of “No” in order that the life of this world will be weakened enough so that the life of the next world might be more clearly seen in us. Perhaps this is when we will be surprised to find a greater confidence in Jesus, not apart from our afflictions but right there in the midst of them. To God be the glory! Amen,