Scripture: James 5:13-20
James
writes, “Therefore confess your sins to one
another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”
“Confess your sins.” In recent years,
sin has gotten a lot of bad press. Listen to the fundamentalists and the
evangelists – if we were to believe the mass media, these are about the only professing
Christians there are. It’s easy to see why many of us and especially the
younger generations associate the word sin with guilt and general bad behavior.
Some of you may recall, many years ago, the televangelist who got caught in a
zipper issue. He then famously threw himself at the mercy of his TV audience, weeping,
“Lord: I have sinned!”
Well … yeah! And yet, this
televangelist’s promiscuously public confession does not represent the heart of
the biblical understanding of sin – not even close. For sin is a given of the
human condition. Sin may not be necessary, but it is certainly inevitable. For
sin is separation – we cannot avoid it, in the closest of our relationships. For
sin means brokenness – we see it all around, in the holiest of the whole. Sin
represents how we are driven away from relationship with God, with others, with
God’s creation, into that separation – and into brokenness. We are driven: meaning, we are not in control.
All of which means – again – that sin is
a given. Which means locating a particular cause for a particular brokenness in
our world – as important as it is to know that cause, to ferret out that
injustice – is not the ultimate goal of the community of faith and the kingdom
of God.
For as important as a particular cause
for a particular brokenness might be, when we don’t know what it is – when we
can’t know what it is – when we can only guess at what the cause is … it is
important for us – it is imperative for us – it is essential for us to do two things:
1.
Admit
that sin is at work in the world in all things; and therefore,
2.
Move
where the Holy Spirit moves. Meaning, move our discipleship energies on over.
Over, from caring overly much about the cause to creating and cultivating an
environment of care.
I wonder if often, too often, our
cause-oriented diagnostic conditioning – many of us are professionally trained in
that way – prompts us to move from an acceptance of the inescapable and
immutable condition of sin in the world, into a direct engagement, and then ranking, of the particular
sins in our world. And because we
confuse sins with sin, I have come to wonder that perhaps -- just perhaps -- the ranking of sins could be
the rankest of sins. In an ironic manner of speaking.
We get lost in the particulars of “sin”
in our world. But James could seemingly care less about ranking sins, when he
writes, “Confess your sins to one
another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” Confess your sins –
after all, we all have them. Confess your sins, that this church might become God's vision for us: A Place For Healing.
Not, confess your sins if you sin. Not, confess your sins only
after we have determined that that sin needs to be confessed– though some
confessions need to be handled with more care and discernment than others. “Confess
your sins,” James says, because: Sin is a given. Our brokenness is a given …
But our honesty about our sins – our
brokenness – is not a given. In some
way – in some fashion – they must be shared.
If our sanctuary is to be indeed a sanctuary: confessed sins and all. If our healing is to take place at all!
Perhaps we can take a cue from the
Cornerstone United Methodist Church in Naples, FL. In her book Christianity for the Rest of Us, Diana
Butler Bass writes this about that church:
A preppy-looking retired man is talking to a man covered
with tattoos. Senior citizens … and single people mingle in the entryway. There
are several people from other ethnic backgrounds, too … Three black-clad
teenage girls with pierced noses and Goth makeup approach an elderly woman in a
wheelchair. One by one, they lean down, kiss the woman on the cheek, and ask
her how she is doing.*
Such
hospitality, I would imagine, can only be exercised once questions about the
nature of our sin – our brokenness – are set aside. Only then can our focus fall on creating
the caring community of social healing the letter of James envisions today.
“Therefore
confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another … so that
you-plural” – in the original Greek, it is you plural – “may be healed.”
That’s
a plural you: that y’all – or the Southern plural of y’all, “all y’all” – may
be healed. For when individual confession over our inevitable sinning, and then the
prayer surrounding it, are exercised, it’s a community healing, and not simply an
individual one, that transpires.
Scripture
is huge on that!
Go,
and do likewise.
*HarperOne, 2006, 78-79.
