Mark or James?
Mark or James?
by Rochelle Stackhouse

I have been pretty clear since I planned my preaching schedule in August that I was going to work with the beginning of the Mark text this week, talking about the dangers of exclusivism in the Christian community. And I may still go there as I think it is a real issue that the church, even churches like mine who think they include everyone, has to face.

But then I read the James again and found myself stuck on verse 14. I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone in my parish who was most distraught that a friend of hers "insisted on suffering in silence". Apparently this friend was going through a difficult time with a physical illness and family problems, and when my parishioner and others tried to reach out to her, she simply withdrew and insisted she was fine. How do you reach out to care for someone you know is hurting when they reject the caring?

And why do so many people choose to suffer in silence, and alone? Even, sometimes, members of churches! Not only in this little letter, but in Paul's writings, one of the gifts of the church continually lifted up is that in community we rejoice together and we hold each other in suffering, "rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep" as Paul puts it. Yet it happens too often that we as clergy notice that someone has not been in worship for awhile and we find out they have had some kind of illness or other trouble and didn't feel they could come to worship and be with people: even with the community that is supposed to be there for them in these times!

So I wonder if we as the church have not always done a good job of building the kinds of relationships of trust tha would make it okay for people to come to church to cry?

Then I began to think about the fact that James indicates that the call to pray and care for the sick is not just for one pastor, but for "the elders". The use of this term in the New Testament is vague, sometimes seeming to refer to what we would call "clergy" (specifically bishops) and sometimes to leaders in the church. At any rate, in James it is in the plural. So now I'm thinking about how we might discuss what it means for us to be a caring community and not just have a "professional carer" in a paid pastor.

(from www.goodpreacher.com/blog/)