Sermon

Jeremiad III

September 18, 2016
Jeremiah 8:17-9:1
Speaker:

We are continuing our month long exploration/slog through Jeremiah. Per the sermon title you will see that we are on Jeremiad III. For those of you unfamiliar with the term Jeremiad – it is a long, mournful complaint or lamentation; a list of woes. The term is inspired by the biblical book of Jeremiah – a long literary work that laments and critiques the culture of its day [particularly the failure of the people of Judah to live in alignment with God].

If you have been here for the last two weeks you will already have a sense of the nature of the book of Jeremiah. Or perhaps better put you will have a notion of the patch-worked confusion that is the book of Jeremiah. As Cindy has noted for us – Jeremiah is a book that is long and pieced together like a crazy quilt. There is no particular identifiable order to the construction – it is not chronological or thematic, although rhythms of themes do run through it. It is a 52 chapter tirade and lament for a culture under attack and then placed in exile by an invading superpower.

In this month long series we are also wondering, as Cindy has also helped us begin to explore, what it means for us, who live in the midst of a superpower in another time and place, to read these words? What do we relate to in the text? What prophetic messages captured within these pages might still be painfully necessary or potentially meaningful for us in this time?

As Anabaptists, our historical tendency has been to claim that we are a people called to live apart from the culture in which we reside. Yet, that does not free us from the implications that come with living in the midst of a modern day domineering superpower that justifies its use and sometime abuse of power through the title: democracy. Even if we do attempt to live our lives through a lens of faith that calls us to live counter to the broader culture in which we live – we are still accountable to live that faith into the culture in which we live and that is where we can begin to find some sense of parallel to Jeremiah.

Joy abandons me.
There is no cure for my grief.
My heart is sick.
Hear the cry of distress of my people from a distant land.

How many times have we gathered together in this place, even over just the last year with heavy hearts made sick by the suffering of others both in distant lands and here at home?

How many times have we too found ourselves crying out in grief, trying to make sense out of a seemingly senseless act of violence?

How often in those moments of struggle and lamentation have we too, like Jeremiah and the people of Judah cried out – where is God?

 Is YHWH not in Zion?
Is its ruler not there anymore?

The scripture uses language from a different time but the question is the same: where is God?

In the midst of grief it is a natural response to feel isolated and separated from God. It can be a jarring experience to be in relationship with a God whose presence can be almost palpable in some moments and feel non-existent in others.

Grief is a strange beast. It is one that our culture offers us many opportunities to experience, without inviting or supporting us to really step into the stream of grief and let it run its course. For there is a wholeness and a holiness that can come from embracing grief in an honest and present way.

In a webinar I attended last year, Bob Yoder, the campus pastor at Goshen College talked about the positive power of grief and lament in this way:

Lament helps us articulate complex emotions, creates a safe space, models faith to others, acknowledges that there is not always a happy ending, promotes honesty, and welcomes mystery and doubt.

Yet instead of being invited to step into the mystery and doubt of the grief journey, instead of being honest and comfortable with the discomfort that grief brings, we are often taught to seek a quick fix – we look for a magical God to swoop in and make us feel better. Sometimes we get confused, and even angry, when grief that we thought we had ‘already dealt with’ circles around in our lives – forcing us to wade again and again in the waters of sorrow in unexpected ways.

Within the past year I had a month and a half where I couldn’t stand the smell of the dryer sheets our neighbors use. The vent to our shared laundry room is right by where I park my car. Anytime I pulled in and the dryer was running with their laundry, I would immediately feel nauseous and have to run inside to escape the scent in the air.

I couldn’t figure it out. Then one day something connected inside and I realized that the dryer sheets smelled like the detergent that Becky’s parents used and that I was missing her dad who died two years ago. The smell of those dryer sheets was tapping into grief for me.

The longer I went without naming and honoring the reality of what my spirit was trying to process – loss, grief, pain, – the more my physical body was crying out for relief by sending me signals in the form of nausea. In the moment that I realized the grief layer, I stopped to name it. From that moment on I was back in the spiritual stream of grief in a more intense way, but I was no longer made sick by the smells of the dryer vent.

When we don’t pay attention to the health of our spirits, our physical world is affected.

This is the case for us as individuals and it is the case for the corporate body of community and culture.

It was the case for Jeremiah’s community – here were a people living their communal life without an eye towards God’s justice. Jeremiah calls them out on a whole host of specific ‘unfaithful’ actions, but it all comes around, at some level, to living in a way that didn’t care for creation or people in accordance with God’s life-giving justice. They were not attentive to their spirits in a healthy way and it created suffering in the community. And if their own self-inflicted suffering wasn’t enough, an invading super power sweeps in placing the people in captivity and eventual exile and they suffer even more – body and soul.

We too feel the strain of life lived in the midst of injustice in our culture.

When people are daily being mistreated and even killed over propriety claims of land, culture, faith, gender identity, sexuality, and skin pigmentation, it places strain on the system and in turn the spirits of the people seeking life within the body of God’s world. Violence escalates, suffering ensues and again we, like the people of Judah, ask: where is God?

While we may not always feel God, what we know of God tells us that God is a God through relationship. A relationship that walks hand and hand with justice and so while we are crying out where is God, God too is crying out – where are my people?

In the Jeremiah text God asks:

Why do they provoke me with their carved images, with their useless foreign gods?

While that may sound unappealingly condemning to our modern ears, it is also a word of heartbreak. God too is in despair, grieving that God’s own people choose to seek comfort in things that are not capable of offering life.

One of the subtle things I like about this text from Jeremiah is that is isn’t 100% clear if it is Jeremiah or God giving voice to the lament and grief at hand. And it feels different to hear it coming from God versus Jeremiah. From the lips of Jeremiah it gives voice to and validates the human experience of isolation and desperation that can be part of the grief journey. When we hear the same words as if they are coming from the heart of God we are no longer alone on that path.

Joy abandons me. There is no cure for my grief. My heart is sick. Hear the cry of distress of my people.
I am devastated, for my people are devastated. I mourn.

God mourns, not only for us, but also with us. In such close proximity, it can be hard for us to see God in the midst of grief. Yet the same God who mourns in our midst also moves in our midst showing up in unlikely and unexpected ways.

This week I saw God showing up as Dr. Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th librarian of congress. Why do I see that as a moment of God’s presence? Dr. Hayden is the first African American and the first woman to be appointed to the position of Librarian of Congress. She is the first non-white, non-male person to serve in that role since the library’s inception in 1800.  In her own words Dr. Hayden says:

“People of my race were once punished with lashes and worse for learning to read. As a descendant of people who were denied the right to read, to now have the opportunity to serve and lead the institution that is the national symbol of knowledge is an historic moment.”

This is a moment of something different in the body of our culture. It is a small opening in the stream of justice for African Americans in this country. This appointment in no way fully heals or corrects the existent realities of racism in our country. Particularly the relations between governmental bodies and people of color – there is strain and grief still actively present in our systems.

No, the appointment of Dr. Hayden doesn’t resolve racism, yet it is a small shift of change creating space and potential for further change. Change that can only happen when we set our perspectives on God’s justice and choose to join in the movement of God in the world. Without change, without a desire to see God’s life-giving justice thrive in the world – we are left in the despair and helplessness of suffering.

We are left, with Jeremiah, asking:

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my people
Not been attended to?

Jeremiah knows full well that Gilead is a place in which the storax trees grow that offer medicinal properties used to make healing balms. Jeremiah knows that Gilead is a hub of medical knowledge and that there are people there capable of attending to the health of others. With full knowledge of the presence of these resources and capacities to care for each other, Jeremiah sees, names, and feels the suffering that results from the inaction of God’s people.

Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my people!

Grief is good, it is healthy, it is unpredictable and on-going. We are invited to embrace it. To learn how to lament and mourn as individuals and as a community. We are also invited to remember God’s life-giving justice, to set our sights on it and to make use of the resources and capacities within each of us to attend to the health of that justice in the world.