Pastor Christa von Zychlin

Our Savior’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

Hartland, WI. 53029

September 28, 2003 Pentecost 16B

James 5:13-20

“Your Family is Not Enough”

Seminary professor Mary Hinkle asks, “Is there any congregation in the whole Christian church on earth that you don’t have to leave when you’re having a problem that you can’t hide?”

Think about the people who have disappeared in the last 6 months, two years, 5 years from the pews of this church, or maybe you can consider the pew in another church that you have disappeared from in the last 6 months, 2 years, or 10 years time.  What’s going on?  Sickness?  Lost a job? Family troubles?  Hardly anyone leaves church because things are going well for them.

 And for those of us still in the pews, have you ever heard yourself lying when asked at church how things are after your little problem?  How you’re holding up while someone close to you looks for a job? Or how those kids of yours are doing… when they’re not doing so well…  Sometimes, you don’t want to go and be where people are going to ask any questions.”  (Mary Hinkle)

 In fact, in the over 2,000 member church Wayne & I served in Iowa, we several times had people in our new members classes who said, “We’re joining this church because it’s a big church and not everybody knows everybody else’s business.”  Well, actually, that’s as it should be.  If your church is a church where everyone knows each other’s business or even if it’s small enough so that the pastor knows everybody’s business, then your church is too small, and your pastor is heading straight for burnout, or God forbid something worse, like Moses in the reading from the book of Numbers today (Numbers 11)

 That’s what you call a “family sized church” and the trouble with a family sized church is that it looks, works & sometimes smells too much like a close-knit family!  Everybody has their particular roles, there’s Aunt Bea who serves the coffee and makes the missionary quilts, there’s Uncle Jay who takes care of the lawn and counts the offerings, there’s Suzie who always teaches Sunday School and it’s awfully hard for a new person to really come in & exercise their talents & risk following their calling.

 On the other hand, in this much larger church in Iowa, sometimes people didn’t tell anybody else anything.  I’ll never forget the co chair of our staff support committee who mentioned that she was going to go take a trip with her daughter out to Colorado next month.

“Oh, So your husband isn’t going along on this one?” I said.

 “  Oh”, she laughed, “we got divorced 6 months ago so he doesn’t care what I do.” 

 Nobody on this church support committee had known anything about it. Everyone just came for the meetings and we never asked each other how things were going in our lives.

 Now this actually has little to do with the size of the congregation –it is my hope and prayer that this church can become a 2,000 member church and even larger.   A woman hiding her divorce from the rest of her small committee group actually has to do with a fundamental lack of experience in what a Biblically functioning church is all about.

 “ It’s not anybody else’s business.  I ‘m taking care of things by myself”, she may have thought.

 But listen to God’s Word “Are there any among you suffering?” asks James, She should pray.  Are any cheerful? He should sing songs of praise.  Are any among you sick? (and actually the word translated “sick” vs. 14 simple means WEAK.  That’s very important.  There are more ways of being weak than of being sick)  “That person, that weak person”, says James,  “should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over him anointing him or her with oil in the name of the Lord.”

 What would it take for Christians to tell the truth to each other and to ask for company, for God’s sake?

 I think there are few things that will help this or ANY church grow in God’s grace more than, believe it or not, for a few sick people, a few hurting people, a few rejoicing people too who will be willing to take the risk of being a Biblical church, and call up NOT JUST for the pastor, but also for 2 or 3 other wise people from the church, ( maybe the parish nurses, maybe a Sunday school teacher, maybe a choir member) to come and pray with you… in your home or in our beautiful, mostly underutilized chapel.  And yes, why not ask for anointing with oil while you’re at it?  We can & have done that in the Lutheran church, believe it or not we actually have special little Lutheran book of worship occasional services book that tells us just how to do it.  Physical touch – in a safe group – let’s be open about this, a prayer anointing should never be just a one on one thing – but shared prayer with the physical touch of an anointing with three or four people from the church community… this is a powerful experience of being the church.

 Every Wednesday night our 7^th & 8^th graders in confirmation are getting to experience this way of being the church.  Sure, we goof around, we have funny quizzes with prizes, we have skits and vocabulary words and Bible memorization, but then, in the small groups, at least two vitally important things happen:   1) The kids share their highs and lows of the week and pray for each other, and then 2) at a minute before 8 o clock all of our kids  are learning to flock around their adult small group guide & they receive an anointing – not usually with oil, tho we’ll try that next time-- but with the sign of the cross and a blessing.  These kids aren’t just learning in their heads what it means to be the church, they are having a Biblical experience of being the church, receiving the totally unearned grace of Jesus Christ. 

 James says in verse 5:15&16“The prayer of faith will save the sick and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another & pray for one another so that you may be healed.”

 Now there’s another word we (curiously) don’t like much in our modern church: sin.  But the word for sins: amartia simply means missing the mark.  Maybe that way of talking about our sins is easier --  It’s hard to say, “I have sinned” but we can confess to one another how we’ve missed the mark.   A group of us Moms were out between services last Sunday talking and I won’t say who won the prize for “Rotten mother of the fall Season”  but  one of us had totally missed her kid’s soccer game, one of us got a call from the principal, and one of us had their poor kid held in for recess because his not-to-be–named mother had thrown away his carefully completed homework before he had a chance to hand it in.   You know what?  We were confessing our sins, our weaknesses, our ways of “missing the mark” to one another.  And then we went into worship and received God’s forgiveness together.

 Today at the  10:30 service Our Savior’s Church will  have the privilege of hosting the baptism of   Brynn Delaney Patrick, who will be baptized by her grandfather, an ordained pastor of the Church.

 We’re so happy that they are doing this baptism in public.  They could have chosen to do it privately:  There’s an unfortunate tradition in the Christian church of sometimes doing private baptisms:  you got a pastor, you got a baby, you got water, what’s the big deal?  It’s a family matter, just between your family & God.  But when Brynn is  baptized,  you know what?  She’s getting baptized right out of her little biological family (as wonderful as I’m sure they all are) but God has chosen to do salvation – being born again – differently than through biology or family connections.  Little Brynn’s getting baptized into the whole huge global church of the people who know we are in need of prayer when we’re hurting, sharing when we’re happy, we need company when we’re weak, and we practice standing in  shared confession at the foot of the cross when we know we’ve missed the mark and sinned again. 

 What would it take for Christians to tell the truth to each other and to ask for help, for God’s sake?

It only takes God’s Word shared freely, and today, St. James shows us how.    AMEN

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