James 5: 13 - 20

Oil and Water

October 1, 2006

World Communion Sunday

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

What is the prayer of your heart?

It’s a vitally important question.

What is the prayer of your heart?

I ask it as I stand at the bedsides of those who are anticipating surgery or longing for healing. I ask it as I sit with those who are struggling for the healing found in forgiveness. I ask it in many ways through my travels and sometimes I even stop long enough to ask it of myself.

What is the prayer of my heart?

We have spent the last month or so reading the writings of James. This writer to the early community trying to live the way of Jesus is so very pragmatic and clear about what it takes to be the Body of Christ.

It takes an awareness of ourselves. The power we have in our words and actions.

And it takes an awareness of others. Of their pain and glory both.

Being a community of people who seek to follow Jesus means we are aware of our needs and aware of the needs of others.

There is a story told of a Rabbi who leaned the lesson of what it means to love. He didn’t learn that lesson in a temple, through wading through elaborate religious writings and through the minds of brilliant thinkers.

He learned the lesson of what it is to love in a bar from some drunks.

The story is told that he went to an inn and heard one drunken peasant ask another, “Do you love me?”

Certainly I love you,” replied the second. “I love you like a brother.” But the first shook his head and insisted, “You don’t love me. You don’t know what I lack. You don’t know what I need.”

The second peasant fell into sullen silence, but the Rabbi who was overhearing this exchange understood the lesson he had just been taught:

“To know the need of men and to bear the burden of their sorrow, that is the true love of others.” (Retold by, among others, Friedman, Dialogue with Hasidic Tales, p. 86)

In order to be a community grounded in the way of Jesus, we need ways to come to know from each other, what does the other lack, what does the other need, and, what is the prayer of our hearts?

These questions need asking in all of the communities we participate in:

The community of our families.

The community of our church.

The community of our world.

When we can ask and listen to the questions: what do you lack, what do you need, what is the prayer of your heart? Then we will be living the wisdom grasped by the Rabbi in the bar and the Rabbi we call Jesus: we will be living the way of love.

The reading from James would have us know that our call is to be people who know the prayers of each other’s hearts.

Know them, respect them, and honor them with the attention of our own hearts. Know them, and know them to be somehow our own, because we are part of a community that is intimately connected through the Holy Spirit.

It’s World Wide Communion Sunday. It is a Sunday set aside when we are compelled to ask the question: what is the prayer of your heart.

To ask the question: what do you lack, and what do you need?

And hear the answers:

From Africa: Relief from the scourge of AIDS, so that children grow up with parents.

From Palestine and Israel: Relief from the tinderbox of war that has long broken our hearts.

From North Minneapolis: Care, in the form of social supports, so that our three year olds are not brought to hospitals because of alcohol overdoses.

From members of our church: A safe place to speak the pain of divorce or the challenge of raising healthy children or the ways of growing old with grace.

The prayers of our hearts are sacred and the gift of being a community of Jesus is that they are meant to be shared. Shared so that we can reach into the places of ache and touch with the power of Jesus: the power of community, the power of love.

So what would keep us from being the kind of community that is saturated with prayer? Why do we not open ourselves to the power of prayer and our ability to be in a community in which our needs are heard and honored?

This is a true story. Told by the General Secretary of the Uniting Church in Canada.

A hunting party in Northern Canada was all set to get into the autumn woods.

One year, as their hunting party set up camp, two firefighters from a large American city wandered off with their gear, to scout the area. It was a clear, warm, day. Northern Canada at its best. These two men were captivated by the beauty and the topography and found themselves very fully lost.

Back at their camp, when they did not return, an emergency protocol went into effect. By the next day, a large military helicopter from the Search and Rescue Center in nearby Prince Edward Island had flown in. Local trackers were summoned. No one had panicked, but the weather had already turned into the sort of cold and snowy thing that autumn can be in Northern climates. Time was critical.

The search continued for eleven days until finally the two men tumbled into another group of hunters who gave them shelter. Tragically, during the night, one of the hunters died of hypothermia.

Two days later, the General Secretary, a pastor in the community, was asked to meet in the local hospital with the survivor. He was so grateful to be alive, but clearly grieving the death of his friend.

He was most devastated when he recounted to the pastor that on the second day of the search, he and his friend had heard the helicopter coming towards them, and hid from it. They were embarrassed by the obvious trouble they were causing and were still convinced they could walk back to their campsite, claiming they had not been lost at all.

That decision had cost his friend his life. (As told in General Secretary’s Monday Message, UC of Canada 25 September 2006).

Listen. The power of opening ourselves to the power of Christ centered love.

In the care of our community.

In the speaking of our needs.

In the sharing of the prayer of our hearts.

It’s the helicopter, my friends.

And it can save our lives.

Amen