September 23, 2001
Jeremiah 8:18 to 9:1
Psalm 79: 1-9
I Timothy 1: 12-17
I had been hanging out on the internet trying to find deep meaning and answers through chat rooms with other clergy and internet websites to help pastors find things to say at such times.
I was so inundated with words -- words --words. My ADHD went wild and I was frantic. What can I say? Last week, at worship, I chose to just read a story because I could NOT think of one insightful word on my own.
Frantically, this week, I looked for some insight from others on the internet-seeking that conclusive, sacred, succinct, Holy Word that someone else had discovered and would share it with me in cyberspace. I searched in the wee hours. I stopped at my computer every time I finished an errand.
Then, in desperation---just Thursday this week, I decided to go back to the texts that are printed in the Lectionary for a USUAL Sunday morning. A point of info---in all mainline Protestant and Catholic churches---on any given Sunday we are grappling as pastors with four texts that have commonly been agreed upon and printed in advance for our study They coincide with Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. I try not to stray far----it gives me great security and comfort to know that from Australia to China, to England to Russia, from California to Boston, the church of Jesus Christ is focused on the HOLY WORD-in just about the same spot. We have our fingers on much the same line of texts. Can you picture that? I just love it!
So, I went back to the TEXT that was assigned for this week. I was astounded. It read like a newspaper.
The Jeremiah text is about the destruction of Jerusalem. The Psalm text is a Hebrew Song written ABOUT the destruction of Jerusalem. It was and is, read in Temple by our Jewish brothers and sisters to remind them of the constant possibility of TERROR and exile. Then, our brother Paul-or maybe someone using Paul's authority, in the epistle that we read today writes to churches regarding how to BE the church of Christ. The Letters to Timothy are concerned with leadership offices and pastoral oversight of the churches. Well, I sure could use some of that.
From an ancient terrorist attack and the surrounding grief, to reading the SONG/Psalm written for worship-likely in exile, to the question of what a church should do in such times--The Holy Scripture brought me home today.
As I read it---I got mad. I don't want to believe that we have NOT learned one thing since the writing of these texts. We have been destroying holy places and shrines and towers and buildings and each other since the beginning of time. AND-in the name of God?
And so, I let my anger fester and kept experiencing the text.
I tried to BE Jeremiah as he stood just outside the city and watched the Assyrians level Jerusalem. I wondered if he felt like we are feeling today-watching the towers burst into flame.
Following the leveling of Jerusalem the Jews were exiled in Babylonia and for centuries have tried to "come home." In the "coming home" in 1948 to Jerusalem, there were generations of Arabs who had lived and farmed and loved and married, who were already there in that land. How might life have been different if those Assyrian terrorists--- expansionists and power mongers----had NOT drove the Jews out. Then, these past generations could have been so different.
Without that exile and terrorizing of Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs might have been sharing the land forever. The difficulty of dividing shrines and property and power that is occurring in the middle east, started with this ancient act of terrorism. AND THAT happened to be the Lectionary text for the day. The internet simply could not compete!!!!
In Bible Study this past Tuesday, folks asked me if the same service for last Sunday was done all over the world last week----I asked why. They said that they had heard from neighbors and friends and colleagues that Lamentations seemed to be the overriding Holy Biblical text of choice last week. Catholics read it-imagine! Presbyterians and Jews and many houses of faith! Did we all get together on the internet?
Well, let me tell you something---Lamentations is RARELY a part of our assigned Lectionary. And if it is thrown on the list---I skip it! It is JUST TOO HARD! But, last week, anyone of us who had studied the Bible EVER - even just in Sunday School--had NO WHERE ELSE TO GO to resonate so clearly with the pain of the events of September 11, 2001.
Scholars are not absolutely sure that Jeremiah wrote Lamentations---but, it is clearly about the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent exile and searing grief. I did a little research on Lamentations and I want to read you an editorial by scholars edited by Wayne Meeks, for the publication of the NRSV version of the Bible. And I quote,
"Lamentations consists of a series of five mournful poems. Lamentations is first and foremost an eloquent expression of grief that helped survivors come to terms with the historical calamity that they had gone through. Here, the poet gives expression to the belief that whereas God's wrath is limited, (3.31) God's mercy and compassion are without limit (3:22-24) This message has continued to reverberate through subsequent ages and calamities to the present day."
You got that right, Wayne!
The astonishing thing is that it was published in 1989.
That is why clergy persons went to Lamentations to help us ride out our own grief. We did it on the backs of history and the humanity who had already gone through it. We cried with Jeremiah, known as the weeping prophet-Scholars argue about that---but, I KNOW that he wept. You see, he was single. And I am single. And I KNOW being single through some of these nights of terror have brought hours of weeping and (in the Biblical terms) gnashing of teeth!! I now, understand what that means---gnashing of teeth. Being alone in cosmic upheaval is a frightening thing.
So, I walked through the texts, right through the grief, right into the remembering and then to the admonition of how to BE the church.
The Bible brought me home today. When will I EVER LEARN that it always does?
We may never rid ourselves of terrorist attacks on this sinful place. I keep hoping for the reign of God through Jesus to begin. But, we may have to live in exile---the exile of economic fear---the exile of panic that we never knew to this extent before---the exile of sleepless nights when we awaken from a horrifying dream of biological warfare. Yes, that may be ahead of us. But read the Bible, folks. It has happened before and this is what our assurance is---GOD DID NOT LEAVE THE PEOPLE! NEVER! Mercy is new every morning.
And I Timothy's final words in this text says it---"Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all."
The Christian story is that God saw that this exiled, terrorized world needed ultimate love from Heaven. And Jesus, the son of heaven, was sent to SHOW that "God so loved the world that the son was given……..that whoever believes in this MIGHTY and MAGNIFICENT and EXTRAVAGANT love of God will NEVER die but have eternal life."
That's what God did when tragedy struck creation. God LOVED HARDER. GOD got closer in the form of a tiny baby born to terrorized young parents in a dark and dingy cave.
The issues we are facing are NOT political though the political decisions will enormously effect our lives. The issues we are facing are NOT economic ones, though economic fall-out will enormously effect our lives. The issues we are facing are NOT religious ones, though ideologies seem to be the premise for bombing and destruction and DO enormously effect our lives.
The issues we are facing are spiritual ones.
And we are the God-people in this tragedy. We are the ones who MUST love harder and get closer. And we feel the burden and we think that we might die under the weight of it-the weight of the "Jesus-job" of loving.
But, not really.
Think about it.
I get my energy renewed---not when I watch the plane crash into the building, but when I know that a pint of Texas blood is flowing in a New Yorker's arm. I get my energy renewed when I see huge burly men powerful enough to weep and dig for the love of a stranger that might still be breathing in a twisted metal tomb. I get my energy renewed when I saw the offering plate at Hadwen Park church last week----and know that we DO know our priorities, we just sometimes get waylaid. I get my energy renewed when I hear that Loretta took a flag tied in the purple of peace, a basket of white flowers and a loving note to Mohammed to tell him that she knew he was afraid and she was sorry. He hugged her! Hard.
I get my energy renewed when I see other countries weeping for us and I want desperately to learn how to do that-- to wave another country's flag and to cry when they are terrorized.
I get my energy renewed when there was NO space at the last youth group
meeting because our church was packed with kids, holding hands, weeping, crying
asking questions and LOOKING TO this place to teach them how to be Jesus to
this world.
I get my energy renewed and have a mighty will to go on when I see LOVE-God's
love that will always be stronger than evil.
We will make it. We will continue to love when we do NOT think we can squeeze one loving word out of our terrorized hearts. We will find a Mohammed and love them through our fear. We will seek peace and a willful justice.
We will do it because we are people of the greatest story of love. We will do it because we know that God did it for us. God never left us. And God needed to be closer and sent Jesus.
I need to hang out in this Holy and Redeeming Word of a powerful and loving and relentlessly redeeming God. I hope you hang out with me. Please do, I need you. AMEN
Pastor Judith Hanlon
Hadwen Park Congregational Church