Healing Prayer

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, September 29, 2024
James 5:13-20

“The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective,” James says in our second reading for today.  How have you experienced the power of prayer in your life?  As a pastor, I have been humbled to witness the healing power of prayer on more than one occasion. Many stories come to mind, but for today I’d like to share Pat’s story.   After being confirmed in the Lutheran Church, like many teenagers, Pat drifted away from the church and her faith.  She was pretty much fine doing her own thing until one day, in her early fifties, she suffered a massive heart attack that nearly killed her.  As you might expect, Pat had to commit to making some big changes to her physical health for this second lease on life – quitting smoking, exercising more, eating more healthily.  But in the hospital, her first priority was to restore a relationship with God.  She was forever grateful to God, as she shared with me, that she was still alive.  She promised God out of thanksgiving for her second chance in life that she would strive to be faithful.  
Like many, many other people whose story you may have heard that is similar, Pat made a new commitment to God, that she would re-engage her faith and become active in a church again.  And she did – while certainly not a perfect person, Pat enjoyed sharing her story to inspire others to faith.  She donated many volunteer hours at church, and she worked tirelessly to serve others outside of the church – helping with our prison ministry, participating in a ministry to veterans at our local VA hospital, quilting for Lutheran World Relief refugees and so on.  Her life was a prayer of thanksgiving to God. She did not want to take a single day of her life for granted. What I noticed, though, was her new life of faith became an answer to prayer for so many others as she strived to serve those in need.  God healed Pat not just for herself but for others!
Multiple research studies have come out about the power of prayer to heal people in both body and mind.  Studies consistently show that a person who has a daily prayer practice can reduce stress and anxiety, lower the heart rate and blood pressure, and improve mental focus and mood, to name a few.  Prayer is a basic, important faith practice for any Christian.  Jesus prays all of the time, and he teaches us to pray.  James, too, encourages us to trust in the power of prayer.  When we look at chapter 5, we might first focus on how our prayers for those who are sick could be God performing a miracle, just as Elijah asked and was granted a miracle in 1 Kings.  Miracles can and do happen through prayer.  However, there are also the times when we may feel like our prayers are not answered, because we know many people who pray regularly who live with chronic illness and pain, or who have lost loved ones to death despite our prayers.
As we mature in faith and strengthen our prayer life with God, we learn that prayer is not a one-way request line to God but a two-way conversation, and sometimes God’s response to us is not what we expect.  God’s healing is not always the same as a miraculous cure.  James believes strongly in the power of prayer, but he also notes that prayer includes God changing us.  “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed,” James says.  Healing includes physical AND spiritual dimensions, trusting in the power and miracle of Christ’s resurrection and eternal life when death comes instead of a cure, trusting in the power of Christ’s forgiveness to truly save us.  James includes a variety of times we can pray, not just when we need help or when someone we cherish is sick:  pray when you are suffering, pray when you are cheerful, confess when you have sinned, forgive when you have been sinned against.  We pray in sickness and in health, when we are wronged and when we are wrong, in other words, and this regular practice of prayer over time changes us to trust more in the power of God to save us than in the power of our requests to change God.
In seminary, our worship professor taught us as future pastors to craft prayers that would inspire people in Sunday morning worship to see how they are partially the answer to their prayers.  This has always stuck with me – we are so often God’s answer to others’ prayers.  Do we see ourselves as such?  James, here, too, encourages us to participate actively in our prayer petitions to God especially when it comes for caring for those who are sick and suffering.  Pray over them and anoint them!  Feed the hungry, clothe the naked!  Love your neighbor!  These are all encouragements from James’ letter.  Just as in our time, the society of James’ time thought isolation from the community was the best thing for a sick person, so as to not get others sick.  James understands that Christian community and prayer and inclusion is important even when someone is sick – that isolation and loneliness is not helpful to the healing process, but the gathered faithful community in prayer IS healing for both body and soul.  Just knowing someone is praying for you when you are down and out matters, as many of us know!
And so, several decades after Pat rededicated her life to God, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  She and we as her church did not pray for a miracle, this time.  She saw what a huge gift she had been given to live life well in service to Christ and others.  She knew she was saved by the grace of God, whether she lived or she died, she was the Lord’s.  She died peacefully.  In both her living and her dying, her life was a prayer to God.  Her miraculous recovery from a heart attack that should have killed her was an example of the power of prayer, and her acceptance of death when her time came and trust in God’s mercy and the gift of eternal life is also an example of the power of prayer.  The power of the Christian community, our church, coming together to care for her when she had cared so well for us was also an example of the power of prayer.  The Lord will raise us up, thanks be to God.  May our conversation with God through prayer open us up to experiencing again and again the healing power of prayer.  Amen.