Sickness in the Community

The last five weeks at Boston Square, Elizabeth and I have been preaching from the book of James. James is a hard book to preach in part because James jumps around a lot. It’s more of a collection of proverbs and wisdom sayings than it is a letter that has a developing argument or a clear progression of thought. Because of this, it’s challenging to get a clear understanding of context with any particular passage.

There are, however, themes that repeat throughout the book that are helpful to keep in mind when reading the whole book, and there are a few principles that are clearly important to James. One of these is community. James opens by addressing his letter to “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.” The “twelve tribes” conveys a sense of shared identity while the fact that they are “scattered” implies that there’s a togetherness that is missing—or maybe rather a togetherness that exists despite the challenge of geographical distance. Similarly, James ends his letter, seemingly abruptly, by talking about the importance of bringing back into the fold anyone who has strayed. Community is important to James. 

So then as we read James, it’s important to keep his emphasis on community in mind. When he talks about welcoming both the beggar and the rich person into our meeting place, without showing the rich person favoritism, there’s both an individual and a collective meaning that’s included. You yourself should not show favoritism, but the community you’re a part of, together, should not show favoritism either. Likewise with the tongue—it causes you in particular to sin, but it’s the damage that it does to the community that really concerns James.

It’s also true of the passage we looked at this past Sunday, James 5:13-20. If anyone among you is struggling, they should pray. If anyone among you is happy, they should pray. If anyone among you is sick, they should call the elders to come pray. And if you’ve sinned, confess to one another that you might be healed…. All of this is dripping with communal language—James isn’t writing to us just as individuals about how we should pray, he’s writing about how we should pray together.

I mentioned on Sunday that this is a difficult passage, especially in the midst of a pandemic, because James seems to say that prayer will “work”—it will heal the person who is sick—if we have enough faith or if we are righteous enough. Yet we know, often from personal heartbreak, sometimes the person dies, no matter how hard we pray or how much faith we have.

But this passage becomes at least a bit easier to make sense of when we think about it in terms of community. What happens when someone is sick? They often become isolated. They are unable to enter into society and sometimes they are shunned. Community is broken and their place in it is often destroyed. Just think about the early days of this pandemic—remember when visitors were not allowed to go into hospitals? Remember when families were dropping off loved ones at the ER, unsure if they’d ever see them again? Remember when nurses were holding phones by patients so family members could facetime with them before those patients died? It was one of the most destructive aspects of the pandemic—dying alone, separated from loved ones.

So James says—if you’re sick, call the elders. Have them come pray. It doesn’t have to be the elders—there’s nothing magical about them. But what happens when a group of believers come and visit the person who is sick? When they pray for that person? The community expands again and embraces the person who has been isolated. The community patchwork that was broken is restored. Healed even.

Sin works the same way. Our sins often drive us away from the community. They isolate us from others. So what does James tell us to do? Confess to God, the one who has power to forgive sins? No—rather, James tells us to confess to one another. Enter back into the community. Clear the air. Be healed.

There’s still plenty that’s challenging about this text. It’s one that we need to keep struggling with, and it’s okay if we don’t fully resolve all of our questions about it. But it’s also a reminder of how important community is. How we’re in this together. How we’re healthier when we make sure no one is isolated, when we lean on one another, when we don’t keep our struggles to ourselves but rather share our lives with one another.