Fifteenth Sunday of Pentecost: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 79:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13
For the past few weeks, we have heard Jeremiah passing judgment on the failures of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. Repeatedly he has told them of the disaster that faces them because they have not been faithful to the Lord. Two weeks ago we had the image of the potter, who would reshape the pot if the people of Judah did not mend their ways. Last week there was less hope, as Jeremiah described the environmental disaster that would soon come. Now we have a shift in tone. We learn that while the Lord passes judgment, such judgment does not come with joy.
“My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.” Jeremiah’s lament is the Lord’s. Lament is important. When you lament, you sit with pain and sorrow. You do not offer comfort, and you do not try to fix things. You sit or stand and weep. In many places in the world, loud wailing is an important part of the process of grieving, often a role given to women. Such ritual mourning allows us to acknowledge loss, to register the human feelings of despair.
Much of the lament is in questions: Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her? Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored? What is wrong? Why are things still wrong? These are the questions we ask when grieving: they don’t erase they pain, but articulate its impact.
What I find comforting about Jeremiah here is that the Lord is with us in the abyss, when we are absorbed in loss. Like us, Jeremiah asks questions: why? Isn’t there anything that will fix it? Jeremiah doesn’t say, “See, I warned you”. He is not reminding people of why they deserved this, but is just sitting with them, joining their grief. The psalmist is the same: “How long will you be angry, O Lord?”
Those who live through terrible things find ways to hope. But always, they need to lament first: to name their suffering and the pain it has caused. In the midst of their enslavement in the southern US, enslaved people developed a vibrant musical and religious tradition. They knew pain: on Good Friday, when I hear, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”, I know that they had been there. But they also found hope. They answered Jeremiah’s question, “Is there no balm in Gilead? ” with the confident assertion that “There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole/ There is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sin sick soul”. They turned to the Holy Spirit.
Jesus’ presence with us is the center of Christian hope. But we often forget Holy Saturday in our rush from Good Friday to Easter. There was a long day of grief and despair. The apostles and the men on the road to Emmaus did not know the end of the story that we live with. If we rush too fast to the hope offered by the Resurrection, we cannot be with people in the time between. Sometimes, with Jeremiah, we need to experience the pain, to lament. And later, may we proclaim that “There is a balm in Gilead.”