AU United Methodist Community

Mark A. Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center at American University
September 23, 2001

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 • 18 ¶ My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. 19 Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land: “Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” (“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”) 20 “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” 21 For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me. 22 ¶ Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored? 1 O 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 poor people!

I Timothy 2:1-7 • First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all — this was attested at the right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

I. INTRO

I am not a big believer in fate. I am one of those people who is likely to see coincidences instead of the deliberate ordering of events. And yet, there are those things that make me wonder.

When Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, President Clinton spoke at his funeral in Israel. He noted that the scheduled Torah reading for the week was the Binding of Isaac, when Abraham was tested by God to sacrifice Isaac. He said that “God was testing us by taking our Isaac–our Yitzhak.”

A similar convergence of our national mood and our scripture happened this week. I was scheduled weeks ago to preach this sermon in a preaching class this week. I had already decided that I would try to preach from the Old Testament when I looked at the particular text scheduled to be read for this week. The texts we heard earlier were those texts. Scheduled to be read on this Sunday when the lectionary was put together decades ago.

Both the lament of the Book of Jeremiah and the prayer for those in authority from Paul’s letter to Timothy seemed especially relevant this week, don’t they? (Now, I should point out that when Paul says to pray for the government ” sot that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life” he means so that the Roman government will not think ill of the Christians. It’s a sentiment many of our Muslim brothers and sisters are no doubt feeling this week.)

So, is it fate or fortunate coincidence that we have the scripture lessons we have for this week? Perhaps it doesn’t matter–I’ll leave that to you to decide. There is much we can learn from them either way.

II. THE LAMENT

Hear again some of the words from Jeremiah we heard earlier:

“My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick…”

“O 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 poor people!”

Those words hit a little too close to home this week.

I was born and raised in New York State–Albany is the capital, but we all know what our main city is. The only other place I have ever chosen to live is Washington, D.C. On September 11th, both of the places I call home came under devastating attack. Too often these past several days my head has been a “spring of waters”, my eyes have been a “fount of tears” as I wept for the slain of my poor people. Many of us feel the same way.

Our grief is upon us. Our hearts are sick. In a very real way, our “joy is gone.” That joyous, carefree America we knew is gone. That America where the most important thing on our minds was Gary Condit’s sex life, and who was going to quarterback the Redskins–that America where our elections were decided over percentage points in Medicare plans–that America is no more. And we grieve for her loss.

III. WHAT WAS GOING ON

So we see in Jeremiah’s words feelings that we ourselves are feeling. The same lament. The same despair. But in order to get a handle on what Jeremiah was addressing, we need to understand something about the world he found himself in.

Jeremiah was a prophet in Judah at a time of great national crisis for the Jewish people. Judah was caught between the power struggles of two empires–Egypt and Babylon–and wound up getting crushed. In the year 587 BCE, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, burned the Temple and the palace, and “all the houses of Jerusalem.” The city walls were destroyed. Many of the people of Judah were forced to flee. Many others were deported and carted off from their homeland into exile in Babylon, where they and their descendants would remain for 70 years.

This was a catastrophe. Many had believed that Jerusalem, home of the Temple–God’s throne room on earth–could not be destroyed. When it was it brought about a crisis of faith for the Jewish people.

It is a crisis of faith we are experiencing ourselves. Their destruction is not unlike ours. We have had our temples destroyed too: our temples of our economic and military power. Now, I believe that our nation is more than money and military might, but the Twin Towers and the Pentagon are symbols of New York and Washington, symbols of America. The destruction wreaked upon them shakes our faith to the core.

IV. LAMENTATION TO HOPE

According to tradition, Jeremiah also wrote the Book of Lamentations, a lament about the fall of Jerusalem. Hear some of those words from that book:

1 ¶ How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. 2 ¶ She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.

“How lonely sits the city that once was full of people…” words of profound lament and sadness. But, Jeremiah does not leave us there. Listen to these words from a little further on in that book:

19 ¶ The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! 20 My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. 21 But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22 ¶ The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

“But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love–the hesed–of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.” What we see here is a process–a moving from lament to hope. From the brokenness of despair, the prophet moves on toward hope. From insecurity and a crisis of faith to a sure confidence–a confidence in the goodness of God and in God’s fidelity and love.

This is seen in the Book of Jeremiah itself. Further on from the reading scheduled for today we read:

23 ¶ Thus says the LORD: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; 24 but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the LORD; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the LORD.

We, too, then, in the midst of our despair can have hope. Jeremiah points us toward a process, a journey by stages. We are all on different stages of that journey. Some of us are lamenting–and may be for some time. Some of us are angry. Some of us are already moving on toward hope. We should not expect that we will all be in the same place–nor should we force ourselves to be somewhere we are not ready to be. But in whatever stage of the process we are, we can rest assured in the steadfast love of the Lord. We trust in a God who acts with “steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth” and we can have hope.

When many of us ask “Where was God in all of this?” we can yet see signs of hope and God’s presence all around us. God is here in this congregation. God is on this campus, in the caring and support that has been seen here for each other. In the outreach that Christians and Jews have made to our Muslim brothers and sisters in a time of great anxiety we have seen something of the mercies of God. Even in the darkest hours of the attack we could yet see God. One person put it so poignantly by saying: “Where was God? God was wearing a fireman’s helmet, rushing up the stairwells of a burning tower.” We know God is a God of love and hope and we can see signs of that love, courage, compassion, and hope in New York, Washington, and throughout the nation and the world.

V. VOICE OF THE ONE LAMENTING

There is something else about this text worth noting. The Hebrew text of the Bible has no punctuation. (It doesn’t even have any vowels!) The punctuation, the capitalization, the quotation marks are all part of the translation and the editing. And Hebrew poetry often changes person in the middle of a text: starting off by talking about God in the second person and switching to the third: “O God of our salvation…by his strength you established the mountains…” [Psalm 65] It’s a little weird.

Now, why do I tell you this? Because given the lack of quotation marks and the changing person in Hebrew poetry, in the Jeremiah text it is not always clear who is speaking. It could be Jeremiah, Jeremiah speaking for God, Jeremiah and God, or God alone speaking. Listen to how the passage takes on new power and meaning when read that way–when we read the text as God saying “O 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 poor people!” Thus, in this we come to understand that we are not alone in our suffering. God laments right along with us. God suffers with us.

Now here’s your two-bit Hebrew lesson for the week. The Hebrew verb yada means ‘to know’ but not in a simply intellectual way. It doesn’t mean to know in theory, but to know by experience. So, when we say that God knows our sufferings and knows our pain, we understand that to mean that God experiences our lament. We who are Christians proclaim this when we say that in Jesus, the Son of God, God experiences and understands our suffering, even to death.

And so, though we may be in the darkest hours of lament, though we may be weeping over our wounded cities and the slain of our poor people, we can have hope. For this do we know and therefore we have hope: ours is a God who knows our sufferings, ours is a God who mourns with us, who walks with us on the long road from lament to hope. But this we call to mind, and therefore we have hope: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end…”

The Grace and Peace of the Lord our God be with you all.