“Good Grief” – Sermon on Sept 22, 2013

September 22, 2013
Scripture: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
My grief is beyond healing; my heart is broken. Listen to the weeping of my people; it can be heard all across the land. “Has the Lord abandoned Jerusalem?” the people ask. “Is her King no longer there?”
“Oh, why have they provoked my anger with their carved idols and their worthless foreign gods?” says the Lord.
“The harvest is finished, and the summer is gone,” the people cry, “yet we are not saved!” I hurt with the hurt of my people. I mourn and am overcome with grief. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why is there no healing for the wounds of my people? If only my head were a pool of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, I would weep day and night for all my people who have been slaughtered.

Sermon: Good Grief

by Rev. Doreen Oughton
When I was in seminary there was an assignment for my preaching class to come up with a 90-second sermon. I know, right. You all like that idea don’t you? I did not think I could do justice to a scripture passage, because we wouldn’t have time to read that passage in our 90-second allotment. I was preaching to my peers, other seminarians, and so wanted my 90-second message to speak to them. There was a line I had read in a book that was new to me then – this book “Love Poems from God: – that just touched me so deeply and with such resonance that I decided to build my 90-second sermon around it. It is a mere sentence, written by a woman mystic named Rabia from the Sufi tradition who lived in the 8th century. She wrote: “ “Show me where it hurts, God,’ said, and every cell in my body burst into tears before those tender eyes.”
As I read and reread the passage you heard from the prophet Jeremiah, I was similarly touched by the deep grief he expresses – the heartbreak, the tears, the mourning. He weeps for the people of Israel, his people and God’s people. He weeps because they are so very lost and wounded, and feel so abandoned. As he gives voice to the cries of the people – “Has the Lord abandoned Jerusalem, is her king no longer there,” God cuts in with his own lament, God’s own cry of grief. “Why have they provoked my anger with their carved idols and their worthless foreign gods?” Now if you pay attention to my sermons, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t here this as God justifying abandonment by blaming the people. I don’t hear this as God saying, “You made me so angry I had to leave. You deserve this abandonment. I hear it more as God’s power to help and save being limited by the people’s inability or unwillingness to receive it.
It would be like wanting to give money to help an addict. You oughtn’t because it won’t help. It will hurt, because the addict isn’t looking at the big picture of what is good for him or her, only the short-term relief, the quick fix if you will. People wanting to help addicts often have to take a step or two back, detach, let the addict experience consequences so that they turn around, so that they begin to look at what might truly help. In the meantime, the addict often feels abandoned and believes their loved ones are no longer there for them. God, I believe, is saying, “Oh why have you turned to your carved idols and worthless foreign gods? How can I save you when you won’t turn to me, when you won’t listen to me, when you won’t follow me?” I believe that God is not angry, but mourning, right along with Jeremiah.
Jeremiah is so bereft that he wishes his head were a pool of water, and that his eyes were fountains so that he had the physical ability to weep day and night, night and day. There is so very much to be sad about, his body can’t contain all of his grief. He is grieving now, but in the passages before this he is admonishing the people. Now this is more in line with what many imagine to be the role of the prophet, to shake them up about all the sinning being done, and urge them to repent, often with threats or predictions of disaster if they don’t turn from their wicked ways. Now another thing we talked about in seminary was the roles of the ordained minister. We were to find a way to balance 3 roles – that of priest (performing sacramental functions, pointing people toward God), of pastor (providing care in times of need) and that of prophet – urging people to turn from their ways that cause pain and destruction and turn to God for righteous living.
One of the commentators I read this week talked about how his seminary students were so eager to take on that prophetic role, to point out to people all the ways our world is a mess, and why it is that way, and urge them to repent. How tempting it might be to stand up here and give you God’s word, as heard and interpreted by me, about what is broken and how to fix it. I could talk about the killing of 12 people at the NY naval yard, or the chemical weapons threats, or the widening gap between the rich and the poor, about the plans for casinos that keep popping up, about all the violence and sex and sexual violence in the media, about the fact that more of the soldiers who served in Afghanistan die from their own hand than died in combat. I could stand up here and say, “repent, repent, repent.”
But this commentator, Prof. John Holbert, says that what made Jeremiah such a great prophet was his ability to weep with and for his people. He asserts that this grief is an antidote for any would-be prophet who gets too caught up in his or her own righteousness. He goes on to point out that the Godly justice a prophet would demand is not so clear cut in this highly complex and competitive world. We can certainly point out its brokenness, encourage people to look at it and care about it, but any rush to action may be more band-aid than deep healing. It is important, he says, to go deeper, and doing so often brings tears. It is important to take time to mourn and weep.
Jeremiah asks, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Why is there no healing for the wounds of my people:” The balm of Gilead was a soothing salve, and it did heal surface wounds, but it was really a band-aid suggestion for a heart-transplant problem. And this might have been a problem for Jeremiah, who may have been preaching a heart-transplant solution to people who thought all they needed was a band-aid, a salve, a quick fix, a rescue, a bail-out. And it might be a problem for present day prophets who understand that a balm in Gilead will not do for such a wounded world. The good news is that a heart transplant is possible. Jesus has offered it to us, Jesus has shown us the life-giving power of such an operation. It is not a quick fix, there is a long recovery period, it is scary, it will hurt, it will change how we function, it will change how people respond to us and treat us.
Jesus, like Jeremiah, has earned his props for prophecy with his great compassion. He not only wept for his people, he took on human suffering, willingly, out of love. Buddhism has a term, bodhisattva, which refers to one who has attained enlightenment and could live in Nirvana, but, motivated by compassion, chooses to remain here in this world to help others reach enlightenment. I understand Jesus to have been a bodhisattva in a way – a soul that is truly and fully one with God that chooses, in full knowledge, to separate from God, to experience all the pains of that separation, the physical and soul-level pain of that, so that he can teach us or remind us that we also can be truly one with God.
Now I’d like to share my 90-second sermon with you. I wrote it for my peers who would be entering ministry, but I assert that all of you have entered ministry as well. Christianity claims the priesthood of all believers. You are all here listening for a word from God, offering care and comfort to God’s people, experiencing a foretaste of the divine banquet when we break bread or apple crisp together. You are working to carry God’s love to a broken and wounded world. And I know, because you have blessed me by sharing, that you, like Jeremiah, like Jesus Christ, weep at the suffering.
“ ‘Show me where it hurts,’ God said, and every cell in my body burst into tears before those tender eyes.” When I read this I was moved to tears myself, for I know that these are words of love. Show me where it hurts. Love also says, “Be strong, be brave, be true, you are beautiful,” but first it says, “show me where it hurts.” Love holds that hurt, kisses it, and transforms it into strength, courage, truth and beauty. This room is filled with those who have answered a call to love God’s people into growing in strength, courage and truth, to recognizing their profound beauty. So first we have to invite them to show us where it hurts. This is what we must say to the person whose loved one is sick or dying or has died, to the one who is sick or dying; to those who have been betrayed – by lovers, by friends, by life; to those who have lost their way. So much pain to be held, to be kissed.
How do we keep sharing ourselves this way – our ears to listen, our arms to hold, our hearts to break wide open – over and over again? I think only by sharing our stories of pain, by asking others to help hold it and kiss it and transform it. Shared pain is a bridge that closes the gap between us, a bridge built from both directions – receiving and sharing. Let’s help one another build these bridges, and let’s keep building ever closer to God, God with the tender eyes, the strong and gentle arms, the widest open heart who eternally invites us, “Show me where it hurts.”