This past Sunday, September 18th, we celebrated the 40th Anniversary of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. In that time, the church has seen many members come and go. And there have been more than ten priests in that time. We planned a celebration at our outside altar, and we were blessed with a sunny albeit very warm day. I was pleased to get to meet one of the original founders of the church.
That was the communal life.
On a personal level, I was deeply saddened by the death of a young friend's boyfriend in a sudden and terrible way. An undetected tumor in the brain took Brandon's life before he was 30. This at the same time that Queen Elizabeth II of England died. I am not a big Royal watcher, but there was something about the way QE II comported herself that made her one of the few world leaders who seemed to remain steady even if everything was chaos around her.
The Sunday readings lent themselves better to mourning than celebrating. And yet I know that part of my role as a preacher is to not just talk to or about myself. And I needed to give something hopeful especially if we were going to have a party afterward.
And so... here is where I went...
Text: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
+++
Have you ever
played a game of cards—any card game—and looked down at your hand and thought,
“Ugh!”?
No pairs, no aces,
or face cards. Even if you get to discard one or two the likelihood of getting
a winning hand is pretty slim.
That’s a little bit
how I felt when I looked at our lectionary readings for today.
On this day… this
day of joy and celebration of our parish… the hand dealt to us from the
lectionary doesn’t make me wanna yell, “Joy!” but “Oy!”
Jeremiah is
weeping.
The psalmist is
decrying heathens in the temple.
Timothy urges us to
pray—that’s a good thing.
And our Gospel is
the confounding parable of the dishonest manager.
Now…normally…I’d
work hard to unpack the Gospel.
But honestly of all
these readings…
I found myself
returning to the sadness and sorrow of Jeremiah’s poem.
Even on such a day
as this anniversary… it’s as if Jeremiah is tugging at us and saying… “Yes,
and…what about me?’
These words of our
First Lesson seem to have Jeremiah standing in that awkward space occupied by
the prophets.
They speak to and
for the people as well as speaking to and for God.
It’s hard to know
exactly which side Jeremiah is representing in this passage.
That’s typical of
the whole book of Jeremiah. It’s the story of a traumatized people. And trauma…
like grief… is not a linear experience.
What we do know about
this reading is that there is deep lament.
This is a poem for
anyone who has ever felt deserted… that God has exited the building… gone off
on a coffee break… and left them comfortless.
Death seems to be
everywhere. The trap door has opened under their feet, and no one is there to
stop the free fall.
This is also a poem
reflecting upon a God who is in deep sorrow.
It might be hard for
us to imagine God expressing such a human emotion.
But the God of
Jeremiah is one who is as intimately involved with humanity.
This is the God who
knew the prophet “even before he was in the womb” (1:5). As the Jewish
theologian Abraham Heschel notes:
“God
does not stand aloof from our cries; God (lifted up in the Bible) is…a power
and a life in response (to us), not a soliloquy.” (Heschel, God in Search of
Man, 238.)
While the people may
think God has abandoned them, God is pouring out fountains of tears and
wondering, “What has happened? Why do you not search for me?”
And then both
parties have that same rhetorical question for each other:
Is there a balm in
Gilead?
Is there that balm
that can heal the brokenness, this fracture that exists causing one to feel
abandoned and the other to weep at being forgotten?
This seems an
especially important question for the times we are living in now.
I can’t imagine the
trauma of escaping oppression and violence in my home country…traveling
hundreds of miles on the promises of asylum…and instead of getting help…I get
shipped off to a tiny island off the New England coast.
I cry when I look
at Ukraine and think about what it must be to live in a sovereign country which
suddenly finds itself invaded and lured into an unprovoked war.
I was watching the
evening news the other night and there was an interview with a Ukrainian woman.
She was relieved to have her city reclaimed by the Ukrainian military after the
Russian occupation for the past several months. She said her ex-husband had been
part of the fighting… as a Ukrainian supporter of Russia. And the translator
relayed that she said this man is now “dead to her.”
Now clearly…their
relationship was already on the rocks. But that level of betrayal and
distrust—“he’s dead to me”-- reminded me so many friends that I have heard
about in the past year… even from some members of this congregation.
I’ve heard the
heartache about families splitting apart and not talking to each other because
of politics or mask mandates…or what gets taught in public schools. In the same
way that churches can be sources of deep wounds… family feuds are extremely
painful.
Our differences of
opinions have become walls that we erect between “us” and “them”…whoever “them”
is at the moment.
It’s what drives us
into media silos where we only listen to the repeated echoes of what we want to
hear and believe.
The onslaught of
misinformation has led otherwise reasonable people to harden their
hearts…sometimes to the point of taking unreasonable... and even
violent…actions.
It’s interesting to
note that a few verses later in this Jeremiah reading, we hear God wailing:
“They bend their
tongues like bows,
They have grown
strong in the land for falsehood, and not for truth.”
Is there a balm in
Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Sometimes, I have
to wonder how do we answer that rhetorical question?
Maybe the best way
is to stop.
Listen.
Pray.
Seek.
Stop thrashing about…running an endless loop of
scenarios in our heads.
Listen closely for that still small voice that has
been speaking to each of us before we were in the womb.
Hear it speak your
name on the breeze… through a song… or in a moment of silence.
Pray for guidance… for the courage to listen
closely… and for the strength it takes to be vulnerable… and not allow the ego
to assert itself to be “in control.”
Seek that wisdom… that “perfect Love that casts
out fear” (1 John 4:18)…and open ourselves to that understanding which leads to
life and the liberation of the spirit…and helps us to see clearly and respond
to what is happening around us.
I think then we are
more able to do these things we can begin to experience what it is to made
whole.
For us… wholeness comes
through the love of Jesus…a man who kept pointing us back to God.
The consistent and
constant messages we’ve been hearing in our Gospels:
“Don’t serve
wealth. Serve God.”
“Don’t act as if
you’ve got it all together; lean on God for help.”
“Seek God and find
life!”
This is the love which
binds up wounds and brings us into relationship with God and each other.
This is the love we
connect to each time we come to this table and receive the Eucharist.
In the receiving…we
bring that love into our bodies for the renewal we need to be the church… or to
look back at this Jeremiah reading… it prepares us to be “the physicians”…
before we go back out into the clinics of our jobs and our communities.
The ministries we
are fostering here at St. Barnabas…whether it is feeding the hungry… creating
intercessions that reflect more specific intentions of this community in our
prayers…or doing book studies of difficult questions… those are all the makings
of the balm that we offer to our friends and neighbors.
Our collect for
today… which also serves as a daily prayer for this week… reminds us not to
remain anxious about earthly things that are passing away… and to remember the
things that endure.
If we stop, listen,
pray, seek, we will have the resources to stay calm amidst the chaos of the
world.
Maybe then we can
say, “Yes. There is a balm in Gilead that heals the sin-sick soul.”
In the name of God…
F/S/HS.
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