How well are we doing during the pandemic?

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. ¹⁴ Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵ And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. ¹⁶ Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.¹⁷ Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. ¹⁸ Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

James 5:13-18

One purpose of a test is to find out if we pass or fail. Of course, there are other grades from A to F, not just pass or fail. For the past two+ years now, the body of Christ globally has been in the midst of what feels like a gigantic mid-term or maybe even final exam that will determine our graduation status. It feels really important and consequential. The good news is that the final bell hasn’t gone off, telling us that our time is up and we are done with the exam—no further attempts to get it right.

This exam has not been made up of a series of true and false questions where you have a 50/50 chance to get every one right. It’s not even made up of multiple-choice questions where again, you have certain odds of getting one right. This exam has been 100% essay questions with no hints at correct answers and no chances to get it partially right just by luck. In this test, we have had to march out our answers from the depth of our convictions of our understanding of how to live a life of obedience to God and his word when under pressure.

How are we doing?

This exam is testing us at several levels. Let’s start at the most obvious and basic. How are we doing in our response to mass sickness?

It dawned on me today as I thought about what the Lord would have me write about today that I don’t believe I have heard a single sermon/teaching on what our obedience to the Word looks like during sickness and suffering. There has been no instruction on the most pressing issue of the day. Jesus lived a life of healing the sick, and James wrote to the church instructing us how to respond to people in our midst who are sick and suffering.

I know lots of individuals who have called on the Lord in their suffering as James instructs us to do, pray. I have not observed (and this is purely my observation) anyone calling on the elders of their church to come, anoint them with oil, and pray the prayer of faith so they could be healed. I have also not been aware of any elders instructing or reminding their flock of the liturgy James is advocating of calling on the elders to pray for healing.

I have to confess that I’ve not noted this disobedience either and reminded my elders of the need to teach the flock how to respond to sickness in our midst. We should have practiced James 5:13-18 many, many times by now over the past two years or more.

My subjective scoring of the church is that we have largely done rather well as individuals in our obedience to pray when suffering (James 5:13). However, when it comes to the scoring of the corporate body of Christ, we appear to me to have done rather miserably. We have majored in secondary issues rather than the main thing if we focused at all.

I have observed very little compassionate ministry of divine healing to the sick. We have listened to the mandates of the public health agencies to “quarantine” and isolate. We responded with the fear the world has wanted to foster. We have not been strong and courageous and reached out even to our own with compassionate and power-packed prayers of healing as groups of elders represent Jesus to their flocks. I am sure there are some examples of strong, courageous healing ministry I am unaware of. Again, I am writing today about my observations. I confess that while I did ask for lots of prayers when I was down with COVID-19, I didn’t call for my elders to come and anoint me with oil and prayer a prayer of faith that I might be healed. I screwed up too.

The pandemic (or some claim it is down to an endemic) is not over yet. The final bell hasn’t rung on this exam. We still have some time to get this more correct.

What we did do

Several courageous church leaders have stood in the face of tyranny and refused to bow to Caesar. I commend them for their brave obedience as they were called to stand for religious liberty in America. That has been a good and needed thing, but it is not the main thing. It is secondary. When we look at the ministry of Jesus, how often did we see him standing up to the tyranny of Rome? I think we didn’t. We saw him meeting the needs of the sick and suffering, the sinners in need of grace and mercy. Religious liberty doesn’t appear high on the priority list of Jesus’ ministry.

Don’t get me wrong; I favor standing for the free exercise of obedience to Jesus, which includes worshiping God in the gathered assembly in obedience to God’s word. I’m just saying that when grading our mid-term, we have one quite long essay exam answer under the question about religious liberty and not much to say under the question about compassionate healing ministry to the body of Christ.

When I observe the big exam paper of the church, a huge contingent is failing. Too much of our family in Christ has gone underground in disobedience to Jesus and cowered in fear under the heavy hand of the beast. These test papers are failures.

Are these not Christians? I dare not say they are not, but I do dare say they are disappointing brothers and sisters. We require Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12.

 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. ² Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:1-2

We are not to be conformed to the world; that is, we are not to be pressured into its mold by external pressures of pronouncements, mandates, and calls for sheepish obedience to those things that are not good. But we have been conformed to varying degrees. I recognize where I have been shaped somewhat by these forces and have repented when I have seen it. The exam isn’t over, and the great thing about essay answers is that we can erase and rewrite our essays.

Since we are still in the midst of the exam, can we pray for the Lord to reveal our hearts? Can we pray for the Lord to reveal our failures of obedience to his word so we can repent? Can we make mid-course corrections and follow Jesus afresh? I believe we can and we must. Let us be faithful followers of Jesus, courageously obedient. May we cry out to God for right hearts toward our brothers and sisters whom we believe have failed us and failed the Lord? We, too, have failed the Lord at some point and are either in need of or are recipients of his forgiveness.

Let’s go back into this mid-term and crush it!