Sermon Notes: James 5:13-20

Together James 5:13-20

Togetherness

It is important in life if we are going to make a bold claim that we have our story straight. One night four college kids stayed out late, partying and having a good time. They paid no mind to the test they had scheduled for the next day and didn’t study. In the morning, they hatched a plan to get out of taking their test. They covered themselves with grease and dirt and went to the Dean’s office. Once there, they said they had been to a wedding the previous night and on the way back they got a flat tire and had to push the car back to campus. The Dean listened to their tale of woe and thought. He offered them a retest three days later. They thanked him and accepted his offer.hat time. When the test day arrived, they went to the Dean. The Dean put them all in separate rooms for the test. They were fine with this since they had all studied hard. Then they saw the test. It had 2 questions. 1) Your Name __________ (1 Points) 2) Which tire burst? __________ (99 Points) Options – (a) Front Left (b) Front Right (c) Back Left (d) Back Right
It is important as the Church that we have our story straight. If someone unfamiliar with the Church were to ask what are you about? What do you do down there at New Chapel? What would your story be and could you stick to it?
What would you say? A common purpose statement in the United Methodist Church today is, ““Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.” But what does that mean? In our passage today, James gives us some direction on the central purpose and work of the church. He helps us get our story straight, so that we are all on the same page.
Three words or ideas stand out to me in this passage that help formulate what the Church is about: Struggle, Togetherness and Prayer. James suggests that all three are central parts to factor when formulating what the Church is about.
First, notice that struggle is assumed. We will suffer. We will get sick. We will sin. We will wander off the right path and pay the price in the course of our life. But joy is assumed also. Are any cheerful, James asks? Sing songs. Life will be a struggle but with real experiences of joy along the way.
Second, notice that while life happens, while the struggle is real, the struggle and suffering are best faced in the company of friends, of your Church family, of your spiritual network. All of the activity in this passage is done in community, not as individuals. Our work in the Church is a work done together. In the Church, you are not alone. You are not alone in Christ, because Christ is inextricably connected to His Church.
Third, notice that the Church is to be a people of constant prayer. Prayer for the suffering, physically sick, sin sick, the wandering.
And so we have a template for understanding life as a Church: Serious struggle along with joyful playfulness together in fervent prayer.
The good news is we have this template for what works. Form a spiritual network that will pray for you and walk with you in your life journey of struggle. Get into a faith community that will pray for you. Find a place of togetherness. Ecclesiastes 4:12 reads, “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
Now for the bad news. More and more people do not know the experience of togetherness. James’ template of a community of people who experience serious struggle along with joyful playfulness together girded in fervent prayer, is foreign to many people today.
We have become dangerously atomized in society over the past century. We have transitioned from a community of belonging to a people of displacement and loneliness. Up until about 50 or 60 years ago, the majority of people in society grew up in one community (born, married and buried there; hatched, matched and dispatched). Today more and more people are mobile, families are spread out across the nation and even the world. People are estranged, geographically and culturally. At one time, people had a broad social network of family, friends, shared memories and values, a common identity. For many that is no longer the case, people find themselves uprooted, ungrounded and without a sense of belonging or identity.
In our uprooting and separation, we have become atomized. We become merely workers, consumers, taxpayers, a number not a name. And when we become atomized we Separated from one another, we lose our common identity, our heritage, our pride in our people, our beliefs, our values. We are instead fed the values of consumerism and statism.
When we lose our identity as a community, we suffer immensely – emotionally, psychologically, physically and spiritually. We become sick in our minds, hearts and bodies. This sickness has been well-documented.
You wonder why so many people in your life are inexplicably emotionally and psychologically sick? For the past several decades there has been a concerted effort to get you to deny everything that you are. You have been told you cannot be who you have always been. You cannot be a Christian. You have been told that your western values and heritage are evil and that you are all oppressors. Men have been told they are toxic. Women have been told motherhood is a second-class occupation. You have been told that if you hold traditional values regarding family, morality, and loyalty to your heritage and community that you are out of touch, intolerant or evil.
And you wonder why 1 in 4 women is now on anti-depressants. You wonder why suicide is among the leading causes of death among men. This garbage narrative that the traditional western, Christian way of life is evil and must go has been fed to us for decades now. And it has been internalized in the our psyche and is having devastating effects. We have accepted this garbage and have found ourselves psychological victims in our own land. 64,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2016, most of those in rural states such as Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio, where western, Christian way of life is under cultural attack.
James ask are there sick among you? You bet there are. Are there suffering among you? You bet there are? Are there those who are wandering, lost , confused, disenfranchised from their heritage and culture and identity? You bet there are.
The solution? James says come together and pray. Come together and regroup. Come together and lift each other up. Come together and rebuild.
So the Church becomes a place of regrouping and reconvening as social creatures. A quick word about that word “Church.” The word Church is not actually in the Bible. In the New Testament, every time the word Church appears it appears as the Greek Ekklesia. What does Ekklesia mean? Ekklesia means a called out assembly. It is a gathering of people united by common identity and purpose. Ekklesia was a common word in Koine Greek. We might call it a gathering.
So, Christ’s Ekklesia (the people called out of the world to follow Jesus) gather here and proclaim that we will not let the forces of society separate us. Our ancestors, our people, fought too hard for the values that have made this culture and society the envy of the world. They gave too much for their faith. They sacrificed too much for us to allow the evil forces of society to rip us apart and alienate us.
The people of our culture are alienated, broken, suffering, lonely, addicted, defeated, we must invite them to find strength in the healing community of Christ’s Church. They need to hear the good news that traditionalism and western values of courage, responsibility, hard work, family and pride in Christian identity are still alive and well. It is okay to be Christian. It is okay to be a man who is strong and has convictions. It is okay to be a woman who is strong and has convictions. It is okay to honor family. It is okay to be proud of your heritage.
There is an awakening taking place in the West today. We no longer have to feel guilty for being Christian. We are tired of being denigrated and demonized. The Christian west built the greatest, most free, most tolerant, safest society in human history. We are the envy of the world. But our Christina and moral institutions, our way of life, our values are under constant attack.
And this attack has left us sick and suffering and lost. There is a power-hungry, post-modern cultural elite and their loud, shouting minions that want you to feel atomized, lonely, defeated, hopeless. They want you weak, quiet, defeated and lonely. They want to destroy your values and replace them with a world that you don’t want. Look at the world outside of the Christian west and tell me if you want a world other than what the Christian west has built. We are foolish if we listen to the radicalized voices that want to destroy our way of life.
But we are the ekklesia, the called out, the gathering. We refuse to be atomized, divided, separated, denigrated, demoralized. Let us come together, pray and speak out with the loudest voice that we can muster that we will not see our western, Christian life taken from us.
Fundamentally, you are not a consumer, a taxpayer, a viewer, a subscriber, a voter. Your identity goes much deeper you are a child of God who is the member of a beautiful ekklesia, the called out. Called out by God to be light unto the world. Called out to create a community of togetherness and prayer.

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