O God of healing grace,
cure our sin-sick souls and make us whole that we might serve the world in your
most holy name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician
there?” The down-trodden prophet Jeremiah asks that question of lament. This
past Holy Saturday, in the homily I mentioned that we often overlook lament as
a type of prayer. The Prayer Book
lists adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and
petition as the different types of prayer, but, in an error of omission, they
forgot lament.
A
prayer of lament is about expressing a sense of doubt, pain, grief, despair,
hopelessness, or Godforsakenness. It is a prayer of brutal honesty and
truth-telling with, or, even, against God. These laments are offered because
there is a faithful assumption that when we boldly tell the truth that God will
hear us. So often we avoid lament though – we don’t want to burden others with
our problems, we want to appear strong and put together, we don’t want to admit
our pain even to ourselves because we know that if we name it, we might fall
apart. But as we will see through our faith and this Scripture, it is through
naming the truth of brokenness that we receive the healing balm of God’s love.
Jeremiah
is sometimes called “the weeping prophet,” because much of book that bears his
name is a lament. Jeremiah’s ministry occurred between the years 625 and 585
BC, which was an incredibly turbulent time in Israel’s history. The Assyrian
Empire had occupied the nation, but its power was fading. So King Josiah was
able to restore the religious life of Israel and made restorations to the
Temple. But Josiah died in a battle and was replaced with King Jehoiakim who
abandoned all of these reforms and Israel was plunged into a time of idolatry,
of ignoring widows and orphans, of making political alliances with idolatrous
nations, of abusing the resources of the earth for quick economic gain, of
abandoning the covenant with God. The end result of all of this is that by 587
BC, the Babylonian Empire would invade and crush Israel. Indeed, there was much
to lament over.
The
reason why we still read Scripture that is 2,500 years old is because there
really isn’t much new under the sun. There is much to lament in our world right
now – whether it was the 9/11 remembrances earlier this month, bullying in
schools, the destruction in the Bahamas, a cancer diagnosis, an opioid
epidemic, the plague of gun violence in our nation, the waning of church
attendance across the country, or the impending environmental doom. Now I’m not
suggesting that we should ignore the positive things in our lives because there
are many things to be thankful for. But we’ve forgotten how to lament. Lament
is not the same thing as complaining, or being hopeless, or blaming others for
our situation. Lament is truth-telling, it is about acknowledging the fact that
we are broken, that there is injustice and we do not possess the means of
healing in ourselves.
Lament
is a necessary and healthy part of faith because it prepares us to receive the
restoring and healing grace of God. There’s a particular phrase in Christianity
that I really don’t understand, even though I hear people use it all the time.
When someone is struggling with something, you’ll often hear them say “I’ve
turned it over to God.” I have no idea what that means. Maybe other people have
more discipline than I do, but I can’t control what I think about. If I’m
worried about something, I don’t have the ability to just say “That’s God’s problem
now, so I’m not going to worry about it.” Again, if you’ve got the willpower to
do that, God bless you. But for those of us who still struggle, prayers of
lament might be the medicine that we need.
Lament
involves us not pretending that the problem is gone because we’ve told God to
take care of it, but lament is about continuing to name the fact that things
are broken. Lament insists on God’s justice. Lament is about anticipating that
God will heal us. And lament is about taking an active role in this salvation –
now we might not actually be doing much to cause the healing, but by continuing
to acknowledge the pain instead of pretending that everything is okay, we keep
ourselves open to God’s gracious healing. Without lament, we might either
forget injustices or abandon hope. The steady drumbeat of lament is crucial to
our faith and prepares us to receive God’s healing balm.
I
truly don’t know why it is this way, but healing comes through pain. The
central message of Christianity is that God loved us so much as to become
vulnerable and come among us as one of us, enduring the shame and pain of
rejection and Crucifixion and then rose from the dead to open to us the way of
everlasting life. Pain is central to the story of faith. So any version of
Christianity that purports to be about receiving blessings, happiness, or
living your best life now doesn’t understand the first thing about Jesus.
Acknowledging pain isn’t being pessimistic, it’s being real. Lament helps us in
receiving that healing balm of God.
But
what is the balm of Gilead? Gilead is a region just across the Jordan River,
it’s in modern-day Jordan. It was a place where medicinal herbs were grown and
there was some sort of ointment that was made there that had healing
properties. But what is interesting in Jeremiah’s question of lament is that he
knows that he cannot look towards Jerusalem for this healing. Nor does he ask
the religious or political leaders for their assistance. Some problems just can’t
be solved by the people who created and are perpetuating the problems. And so
Jeremiah turns his hope away from the authority figures. It’s a reminder to us
that we might be looking for salvation in the wrong places. Jeremiah isn’t
trying to find someone to make the problems disappear, he just wants a balm to
soothe the pain and start the healing process.
The
thing about a balm is that it doesn’t erase our wounds, rather it heals our
pains and promotes healing. Redemption and healing will come from the balm of
Gilead, but the scars will remain. The healing balm of God’s grace will not
erase the fact that we have reasons to lament, but it does promote healing. You
all have heard me quote the famous line from Julian of Norwich before – she
writes that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things
shall be well.” At the core of my faith and hope is that sense of trust in
God’s love to be a balm that will make all things well.
But in
a conversation with one of you about that line, I clarified that even though
all will be well, it doesn’t mean that all will be easy. Central to Julian’s
writing is an abiding trust and hope that is rooted in the Passion of Jesus.
Throughout her writing, Julain notes that healing comes despite and through
pain. At one point she writes, “God wants us to know that he keeps us equally
in joy and in sorrow, and loves us as much in sorrow and joy.” It’s not that
God loves us when things are going well and ignores us when things are going
poorly, but God is always with us. And then she writes that “The love that made
Jesus suffer his Passion so far surpasses all his pain as heaven is above
earth, for his suffering was a deed performed at one time through the working
of his love, but love was without beginning, and is, and ever shall be without end.”
The
thing about love is that it doesn’t always fix everything, it doesn’t take away
pain, it doesn’t erase wrongs, but love promotes healing and transforms despair
into hope. Of the things that Julian heard Jesus say to her in her visions was
that he willingly and joyfully endured the pains of the Cross and would have
suffered more gladly had it been necessary. Only love can do that. And this is what
makes Jesus our great physician and what makes lament effective. The person who
hears our lament is none other than Jesus Christ who suffered on the Cross out of
love for us all. As we see in the Cross, his love is limitless, and while not
all pain can be avoided, all pain can be transformed. But it takes bold and
honest lament to open ourselves to the power of love to heal us.
We all
need the balm of God’s love in our lives and in our world. Perhaps one of the
greatest examples of the power of this healing balm of God’s love is found in
the African-American spiritual “There is a balm in Gilead.” You’ll notice that
Jeremiah asks a question: “Is there a balm in Gilead?” and this hymn proclaims
that, indeed, there is a balm in Gilead. The hymn dates back to a song sung by
enslaved Africans in this country. There were under no illusion that slavery
would end overnight or that the whips would stop cracking at their backs. But
they had such tremendous faith in the power of God’s love to make all things
well that they were able to sing, in the face of pain and persecution, that
there is a balm in Gilead. They knew more about the power of the healing balm
of Jesus than I probably ever will. We also see this spirit of hope that comes
through lament in what is sometimes called the “Black National Anthem,” the
hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It includes the inspiring line, “Stony the
road we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had
died… we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, out
from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last where the white gleam of our
bright star is cast. Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring, ring
with the harmonies of liberty.” The witness of our brothers and sisters in
Christ who have endured so much shows us the power of lament to name injustice while
anticipating God’s redemption, and that ability to lament with hope is what
sustained a people who endured so much pain.
It is
with their example in mind that I want to say something about the process of
lament that we’ve been undertaking at St. Luke’s over the past year. We haven’t
called it lament, but a lot of the work that we’ve been doing around Becoming
the Beloved Community is lamenting. We’ve been naming the sin of racism and
anticipating that God will transform our hearts and heal our sin-sick souls as
we seek reconciliation. The Beloved Community framework that was given to us by
Presiding Bishop Curry’s office has several components to it, and the place
that we’ve begun is a phase called “telling the truth.” This truth-telling is
where lament begins.
Over
the next several months, these laments will be voiced. On October 20, we’re
going to premier an incredibly powerful video series that we produced which captures
the voices of five African-Americans, three of whom are members of this
congregation, telling the truth about their experiences of growing up in
Salisbury in the Jim Crow era. I’ve watched a first draft of the video and I’ll
tell you that it really is lament – there were moments when I was on the verge
of tears to hear the pain that people I love experienced, there were moments
when I was angered that such injustices were tolerated, and there were moments
of hope where I saw the balm of Gilead healing wounds and doing the work of
reconciliation.
Then
on November 8, 9, and 10 we’re going to have two national leaders, Catherine
Meeks and Will Willimon, at St. Luke’s to help us in lamenting the role the
racism has played in our society. And on January 19, the Sunday of Martin
Luther King weekend, we’re going to have a presentation by a historian that
we’ve commissioned to explore this parish’s history as it relates to slavery
and race. In all of these events, truths will be told. Some of these truths
will be inconvenient, some will be uncomfortable, and some will be disturbing.
A
crucial part of truth-telling is truth-hearing. I ask you, starting today, to
start praying for the Holy Spirit to prepare our hearts to hear these truths as
the laments that they are. Some of the truths you hear you might not agree with
– and that’s okay. Someone else’s experience of truth doesn’t have to be your
experience of truth, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s their lament
and we need to be prepared to hear those laments. Many of the Psalms are psalms
of lament, so in preparation for these events, you might start reading through the
book of Psalms and see the power of honestly naming what is broken as a means
of preparing those wounds for the healing balm of God.
This
work of Becoming the Beloved Community begins with telling the truth and lament
because there are wounds that are still festering, that are not yet healed.
This injury cannot be ignored, but has to be named with the expectation that
God’s love can make all things well. We lament as a commitment to the process of
reconciliation and healing. Never underestimate the importance and power of
lament, of naming what is broken, because with God as our healer, indeed,
“there is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.”
