James 5: 13 – 18

It is really interesting to me to note how frequently we read the Bible with some kind of spiritual ‘blinders’ on.  We latch on to the parts that we are comfortable with, or the passages that seem to support our views on this or that, but sometimes we don’t even see some other passages that don’t fit in so… nicely. 

Just for example, take the account of the institution of the Last Supper (Holy Communion). It is found in three of the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  John, the other Gospel writer, has much to say about that same night, but he doesn’t refer to the breaking of the Bread and the sharing of the Cup; instead, he records another ‘object lesson’ that Jesus shared with those same disciples on that last night before his arrest, trial, and Crucifixion. (Anybody know what it was?)

Yes, he took off his outer cloak, and filled a basin with water, picked up a towel, and went around that room, kneeling down in front of every disciple, washing their dirty feet. 

What is interesting is that virtually every church, anywhere, offers the Sacrament of Holy Communion on a regular basis – some every week, some every day – but there are very few churches who actually follow Jesus’ example of foot washing.  “Well”, we say, “when Jesus broke the bread he said to ‘Do this in remembrance of me’”.  Yes, he did.

But in John 13 he also said, “Since I, the Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.”  This is a passage that most of the church over history has completely spiritualized – i.e., we don’t take it literally. (And, too often, we don’t take it any other way, either, do we?)  We don’t really think about it too often. We don’t see it.

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I began a group meeting the other night with a question that caused quite a bit more response than I expected.  “OK, does anyone have something that they’d like to confess?”

This was a group of mature, dedicated Christians. And when I asked that question, they laughed.  They didn’t think I was serious!  (Why they would have ever considered that I might have been pulling their collective legs is beyond me!)  One person said, “Oh, we thought you meant confess to each other.”   “But that’s exactly what I meant!”

The general feeling was “Why would we do that?”

Now, of course, anyone who might consider confessing something personal in a group that size, in a rather light moment as this was, would probably either be dealing with an incredibly heavy weight that they just had to get rid of – right now!!! – or, they would be a person with some serious boundary issues.  It was not an appropriate place for that. So, I was being at least slightly facetious.

Nevertheless, that question, which is almost never considered in any context within the Christian community, has some deep theological roots.

In the book of James, in chapter five, there is a passage that methodically describes what to do if we find that we are sick, or suffering.  And, this is a passage that we do pay attention to here in this congregation. I mean, we practice these things… mostly.

¹³Are any among you suffering? They should keep on praying about it. And those who have reason to be thankful should continually sing praises to the Lord.

Now, let me break in here.  Prayer is one of the basic values of this church.  Our ministries are covered in prayer, our outreach, our staff members are constantly lifted up in prayer.  We hold this up as a value pretty regularly, don’t we?  And we’ve seen God answer our prayers in some profound ways.  Likewise, we like to sing praises to God here as well, don’t we?  We sing our thanks, we sing our praise. OK, so far… let’s go on.

¹⁴Are 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. ¹⁵And their prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make them well. And anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.

This, too is something that we began doing here as a part of our routine something like ten years ago.  On the first Saturday night service of each month, along with Communion, we offer a time of anointing with oil for anyone who would like that. In addition, Pastor HY and I (and some others in the congregation) also do this regularly in private meetings with people who are suffering; it’s part of our ministry mindset here at 1^st UMC. 

And again, we have seen the hand of God at work through these acts – not always in the exact way that we’ve asked, but God’s hand.  We have also offered this at each of our Sunday morning services on occasion, and we’ll do that again – and you can see why: this is what we’re told to do in the Scripture.  In that simple act of obedience, God’s healing power is let loose – we can’t explain it, we can’t really understand the cause and effect relationship, but we know that it happens.  In many churches the Communion service attendance goes down, on Saturday nights at 1^st  Church, it often go up. 

We know that God works through our obedience.  It’s a basic premise of Scripture.  But here’s a question for you: why do we typically stop reading James 5 at that point?  Could it be that we just don’t know what to do with the next lines?  We’re OK with the praying and singing, and even the anointing, but what do we do with this? Let’s read on: 

¹⁶Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results.

Did you get that? ¹⁶Confess your sins to each other.” It’s really hard to spiritualize these words. I mean, they’re pretty clear. So we don’t tend to explain them away in the church of 2006… we just ignore them.  Don’t we?

I asked another uncomfortable question to that group last week. (I was on a roll, I guess!)

“How many of you have someone that you meet with on a regular basis with whom you can do this very thing?  How many of you have a person (or a group of people) that you intentionally meet with, where there is such honesty and trust that you can take off your masks, and share the truth about yourself, so that God can do something new and wonderful in your life?  

James says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”

Friends, there weren’t too many who said “Yes, I have that in my life”.  And we all know why, don’t we?  That’s really hard to do! We feel that we have to keep up appearances, we have to live up to the image. We have to be strong… And yet, even as we have experienced the therapeutic power of actually doing the rest of James’ advice – the prayer, singing, praise, thanks, even the anointing – what do you think we might be missing by leaving out this sentence; where James seems to be summing up all of what came before? 

“Confess your sins to each other.” Friends, this is not punishment, it is for our healing. It is a good thing for us.  I just wonder what God would be free to do among us; something that he can’t do now, if we just began to take this a little more seriously? What would happen to our level of faith, and spiritual power?  I think that for some – for many - it would be like cleaning out the gutters of an old house, and watching the next rain! It would be a beautiful thing.  It would be freeing…liberating.

There’s a guy named Fred Smith who loves to ask people this question: "If you were caught for drunken driving, and the headlines in your local newspaper that Sunday morning said, 'So-and-so Arrested for Drunken Driving,' would you go to church?"

Steve Brown says, “I've watched men blanch when Fred asked that question. When he asked it of me, I said: "Fred, I'm the preacher. I'd have a serious problem if I were caught driving drunk."

He asked, "Would you go to church?"

And I said, "No. I'd take a sabbatical for about a month and then try to weasel back in if I could."

And he said, "Steve, that's stupid. It's sort of like a man who's in an accident, and he's got blood all over the place, and his bones are broken, and they try to take him to the hospital, and he says: 'Wait. I'm a mess. Let me go home and get cleaned up. Let me get these bones set, let me heal, and then I'll go to the hospital.'"[1]  It sounds kind of ridiculous when we put it like that… but… isn’t that what we do?  Sometimes?

Maybe we don’t stop coming to church (although some people do that)… but how many of us come with the stoic face, or the mask… how many of us come here week after week carrying weights that we can’t seem to put down? 

You know, there are a number of words for ‘sin’ in the New Testament.  One of the main words is ‘hamartia’, a word that literally means ‘to miss the mark’.  Like, when you aim an arrow at a target, sometimes you miss.  There is another word: adikia, that literally means ‘not righteous, or not right’.    

In our human experience, when we miss the mark, or when we’re not right with God or with another person, we can confess that to God, and receive his grace. And we will.  The constant promise of the New Testament is that God is always faithful to his promises, God is always just, and will forgive us for every sin.

But – and again, we’ve all experienced this – there are times when knowing that isn’t enough!  Not that God’s grace is lacking in any way, but we find that we can’t put this particular thing down. Our failure goes with us. Constantly. We may ‘know’ that God has forgiven us, but we don’t feel that way.

We can’t walk away – maybe there are human consequences that we have to work out because of some act that we’ve done.  Maybe we are in a habitual pattern of sin, or self-destruction, and we can’t get out from under it. And we’re getting tired of running to God with prayers of repentance, and we’re getting tired of making promises that we know we won’t keep.

James says, “Confess your sins to each other… so that you might be healed”.  A weight that seems insurmountable to one person often diminishes greatly when it is shared with just one other person. 

We’ve been talking about discipleship themes since the beginning of the summer. And we’re going to be doing a lot more of this, actually, in the weeks to come.  To be a Christian is to be a disciple – it’s a life commitment of learning, changing, and growing. 

The result of that journey is not only eternal life, but what Jesus called, “Abundant life”.  It is a joyful and fulfilling thing to be a disciple of Jesus.   This is a great life! 

And there are lots of tools that we have to use that will help us in that process of becoming more and more like our Master.  One of the best tools we have is the gift of another believer who cares enough about us to listen to us, to hold us accountable, to walk with us especially through the dark valleys.

One way that this is available to all of us is through our Stephen Ministry. Stephen Ministers are not necessarily here to receive ‘confessions’, but then, in a caring relationship, because of their training in confidentiality and listening skills, they can do that.  And they do. And one of things that we want to accomplish in this service today is to let people know that when you come to a point in your journey that is too much for you to bear alone – that you don’t have to be alone.  There are people ready to walk with you.  You just have to ask.

It is my prayer that within a year or so, we will have completely changed the foundation of this congregation by helping many of you link up with a group of like minded Christians who will walk the road together with you in support, accountability, and friendship.  We’ll be talking about that much more, in the weeks to come as well.  But in those extra difficult times, we are blessed to have the extra help that we need in our Stephen Ministers.

There is someone that you can talk to without fear of being judged.  There is someone who will listen to you.  Someone who will even hear us confess. And, if James is right (and of course he is!) that’s a significant step toward our healing.  May the Lord give us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the chur