If any of you are suffering, they should pray. If any of you are happy, they should sing. If any of you are sick, they should call for the elders of the church, and the elders should pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. Prayer that comes from faith will heal the sick, for the Lord will restore them to health. And if they have sinned, they will be forgiven. For this reason, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous person is powerful in what it can achieve. Elijah was a person just like us. When he earnestly prayed that it wouldn’t rain, no rain fell for three and a half years. He prayed again, God sent rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

William Hoffman, who was a writer and a professor at Hampton-Sydney College, wrote a short story called The Question of Rain, one I’ve shared a couple of times in the past, because, well, it really is one of my favorite short stories. Hoffman tells of a town and a minister caught in a theological tussle about prayer and its meaning, and especially the appropriateness of its use in asking God for those things we need/want/desire. In this short story, we have a well-meaning minister who is beset by his congregation to hold a worship service specifically calling for rain for the drought stricken farming land of his congregants. But Wayland, the minister, is reluctant, in good Calvinistic fashion, he’s simply reluctant to specifically ask God for rain, since rain may not be in God’s will for the people of that county, at least not at the moment – you see, classic Calvinists, followers of the Protestant reformer John Calvin, hold fast to the idea that God is sovereign, that God will do what God will do, and that humans have little real sway over this divine King – the spiritual world is not a democracy, but a kingdom with God enthroned as the all-knowing, all powerful ruler of the universe.

So, when Wayland was first asked by some members of his congregation about this possible prayer service, the minister promises to pray personally for rain but declines the suggestion to lead a prayer service for rain. In response to a delegation from the church, he says, “Bess, to repeat my position, let me state that I’m strong in favor of prayer, but I feel what people really want is a medicine man and I never rattle bones, do a rain dance, or wear chicken feathers.” And to another person, Wayland says, in a classic Calvinist vein, “Caroline, we can’t twist God’s arm, and all we have has is given us by His grace, and we are undeserving of even that.” Nevertheless, the congregation persists, and again and again he is asked by yet more members for a prayer service, and even people outside the church begin to ask him about a possible prayer service to ask God for rain. Eventually these request becomes a crisis of faith of sorts for Wayland, one that is echoed by an older member of his church, though he gently challenges Wayland by using the collective we when he asks Pastor Wayland, “are we afraid to put our faith to the test? “And if we fail?” Pastor Wayland replies. “Then it’s us, not God, whose failed,” the member says in turn. Now, I must say that this wiser, older member may have been wrong when he says such a thing, because I don’t know if it’s possible to “fail” at prayer – and blaming ourselves when God says “no” to us, to our good prayers, is not fair to human beings, and assumes that God will only answer our prayers if certain prayers are said in a certain way. A parent praying for the health of a child does not fail in prayer because the child never gets better. Still, there are haunting themes in this story, questions of whether or not Pastor Wayland believes that God actually does or does no intervene in the world – and his fear that if no rain comes, what will that do to the faith of his church members, and, perhaps to his own faith as well. And underneath that is a question about what prayer is for – what does it do, to God, to us, to the nature of the lived world?

So, in the text from the letter of James, we have the writer inviting us to do the very thing Pastor Wayland is reluctant to do, to ask God to do a specific thing, in hope and expectation that God will do what we ask, and in this case, a prayer for healing for the sick. Again, note the specificity of the text from James – if someone in particular is sick, they are told to call upon the elders of the church, the leaders of the congregation, and to have them pray over this person and anoint them with oil. Anointing is all over the Bible, from its use in cosmetics and its use in hygiene, to its use in a ritual where the oil is placed on the forehead, marking that person as one destined for change, in terms of status or identity, especially as seen when it comes to anointing a king to service to Israel. Here James says to anoint the sick, something that Jesus asked his disciples to do when he sent them out to share his message and be instruments of diving healing (Mark 16:17-18). And again, the specificity is all over the text – if anyone is suffering, if you and I are suffering, the elders of the congregation should gather and pray for us, for me, for you, in particular – not just a general prayer, but a prayer for Kevin in particular. And James is very confident that if we pray for those who suffer, for those who are in need of healing, God will hear that prayer and God will heal the sick and alleviate her suffering. James has great trust that what is prayed for will be given. He even uses a story of Elijah and rain, rain, where Elijah prays that God will shut the heavens up so that the people will be forced to repent and acknowledge the power of God’s messenger, the one calling the people to faithfulness and justice. Elijah prayed for no rain, and no rain came, and when the time was up, when the people were ready to repent, he prayed again, and the rain fell.

But, of course, in all honesty, texts like these, ones of that are so often put forth to show the efficacy of prayer, that if only we will pray the sick will recover, and the sufferer will cease to suffer, they come with some baggage, some complexity, something you feel in Pastor Wayland’s reluctance to pray so specifically for something. There is the reality that each of us can share when we prayed fervently for someone to be healed and it didn’t come to pass, something that seems to challenge James’ certainty about the power of prayer. And then there is the linkage between sin and health that is certainly problematic, at least partially. James is pretty clear here – he links health and confession of sin, assuming that somehow and someway our sin has caused us to become unhealthy, that sin has caused our disease. Now, to be fair, James does say that IF they have sinned they will be forgiven during the act of healing, so the connections between sin and health is not clear, though a few words later he seems to imply that if only we will repent and confess our sin, we will be healed, as if our sin was getting in the way of our healing. That is troublesome because it seems to blame the sick for their own sickness, the disabled for their own disability. Again, maybe is there is a sometimes a connection between sin and sickness, but it is rare – and frankly, there are clear indications that Jesus consistently disconnects sin and sickness because he simply he doesn’t believe they are, in fact, connected at all. In the Gospel of John, in chapter 9 Jesus is asked whether or not the blind man before him has sinned or have his parent’s sinned – you see the bad assumptions Jesus’ own disciples share with the writer of James. Jesus replies that neither the man’s sin or his parent’s sin have anything to do with this man’s blindness. And in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, Jesus says that the rain falls on the just and unjust alike, indicating that challenges that happen to people have nothing to do with their goodness or badness. Bad ideas are hard to shake, as you can see from James’ bad assumption in our text, even decades after Jesus was among his disciples, though I understand why we believe bad theology like this. These untruths help us navigate the world, poorly of course, but they help us explain why some get sick and others don’t, why some get well and others don’t. The truth is that the rain, well, it falls on good and evil among us, the kind and cruel in our midst, the believers and the unbelievers beside us, the ones who have no doubts and those who have nothing but doubts. Maybe James didn’t know of Jesus’ words – remember, there were only oral traditions about Jesus when this letter was written, and thus no written Gospel for James to check his assumptions against what Jesus said and taught, including being able to check their bad theology against Jesus’ better theology.

So, does prayer for healing make a difference? Does the anointing of the sick do anything for sufferer, the one in need of physical, spiritual and emotional healing? I think the writer of our Modern Lesson is trying to answer that question, the former Archbishop of the Anglican Communion, Rowan Williams. When we pray for others, often called intercessory prayer, we do something so obvious, so plain, that we often forget it – and that is we throw in our lot with the one we prayed for, we cast our lot in with humanity, in our prayer for them, we enter into their world of uncertainty and sickness. It is interesting that James calls for elders, plural, to gather around the sick one, plural – the leaders of a community gather around the one in need of God’s healing, and they, THEY pray for him or her. I’m very skeptical of the idea that somehow God responds more to twenty prayers for healing than one prayer for healing – this is not God won’t do a thing until a certain threshold is met and then finally God will relent because some sort of divine quota was met. But the gathering together, the praying that we do for each other, over the sick, during our times our joys and concerns every Sunday during worship, something about that we do it together, it seems to matter to us, and maybe to God as well. What Rowan Williams seems to be saying here in our Modern Lesson is that when we pray for others we create more and more space for empathy, for care, for concern – we become open to the crucifixions of others and somehow within us an empty space is cleared out where the world is not just not about me and my joy and my suffering, but a space within that can be filled with the Spirit of God that helps us recognizes that when you suffer, I suffer, than when a child is taken away from its parents at the borders, that is my child being taken from me. Somehow, when we throw in our lot with the crucified of the world, the hurting of the world, which includes all of us, at some point in our lives, somehow when we clear space in our lives to pray for others, the Spirit can change the world because we have been cracked open with our concern for this singular soul before us, this one who has asked for our prayers. We become God’s hands and God’s healing of others, when we allow our prayers for others to become embodied in our kindness and our passion for justice – and we do so as a people, as God’s people.

And, of course, we have to acknowledge that so often our prayers are actually answered the way we’d like them to be answered, more than we often recognize. It’s the ones that didn’t get answered that we remember so well, and which are so painful, so challenging and sometimes God just says no and sometimes the natural course of time and disease just take their course. Look, miracles are actually pretty rare – there is reason why people were so excited by Jesus’ ability to heal – it wasn’t something very common. Prayers for miracles do get answered sometimes, the anointing of the sick can have an effect, but remember that those prayers for others can change us, personally and as a people. You only have to look at how our story by William Hoffman concludes, because in the end the pastor says yes to their requests for a prayer service and so the community gathers and they pray together, together. And then, and then, well, let’s hear Hoffman end his short story.

[Wayland, the pastor,] would not anticipate. Rain wasn’t necessary. He and his congregation had acknowledged God’s fathership, which was the main thing. He turned his back to the window, so he wouldn’t be tempted to judge the quality of the afternoon sunlight edging the drawn shade.

Yet he felt a stillness, the absolute hush of the day. Even the locusts were silent. A distant rumble had to be a truck. He stood, went downstairs, and walked out onto the screened porch where [his wife] Mims sat. She wore her lavender church dress in case of visitors, but had pushed off her white pumps so that her heels were free.

The expression on her clean face was strange as she gazed upward. He looked at the sky and, tingling, saw the dazzling cloud growing, building rapidly into a thunderhead, the underside purplish, the crown of radiant whiteness seething as it mounted into a cathedral of a cloud. People came from their houses to stare. Then Wayland felt a coolness, a nudge of air, and knew rain must be close.

In wonder Mims watched the sky. Wayland’s amazement gave way to rapture as the majestic thunderhead conquered the heavens. He realized his mouth had opened as if to catch the rain on his lips. The pressure of gratitude brought him near to weeping.

During the slashing, luminous rain, he put on his shorts to walk in the yard. With his face uplifted, he gave thanks. Children, despite lightning, ran in the streets, and across glossy lawns. Adults too splashed through puddles. The artificial pond in his rock garden overflowed. The telephone rang so often that Mims, now wearing her pink bathing suit, took it off the hook.

Friends, I invite you to come forward if you are need of healing, any kind of healing, of any wound, emotional and physical, and receive the anointing from Pastor Megan and me. We will anoint your head with olive oil, but if you open your palm, we will anoint there instead. Come please come forward as you feel lead to.