18th Sunday after Pentecost
September 18, 2016
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 4; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke
16:1-13
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY41MBxfJxM )
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY41MBxfJxM )
If I were to ask you out of the blue, what’s a balm,
would you be able to answer? I think the place the word gets used the most
often these days is talking about lip balm, which we often use interchangeably
with Chapstick or lip gloss. So, what is a balm? What comes to mind when you
hear that word? A related word is balmy, which makes me think of a weather
forecast, you know, it’s going to be a balmy 82 degrees on Saturday. Usually it
means the weather will be nice and warm and sunny. If you look it up, balmy
means mild, refreshing, soft, and soothing.[1]
And so a balm is something like a cream or an ointment that refreshes and
soothes. It’s anything that heals, soothes, or alleviates pain.[2] It
can be medicine or a heating pad or a phone call from a good friend. A balm is
something that helps heal, that helps take away the pain.
We hear that word this morning in our Jeremiah reading. The
prophet Jeremiah lived during the 7th century B.C. If you remember
your biblical history and the kings Saul, David, and Solomon, they were kings
over Israel. However, after Solomon died, the country split in two: the
northern kingdom was still called Israel; the southern kingdom became Judah. Israel
was conquered by Assyria around the year 721 B.C., leaving just Judah, who was
smaller and weaker. Jeremiah prophesied in Judah, after Israel fell and before
Judah fell. Yet the writing was on the wall that it wouldn’t be long before
Judah was conquered by Babylon, which happened in the year 586 B.C. And so
Jeremiah cries out for his people, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Are there no
doctors there? Why, then, have my people not been healed?”[3]
Now, the other thing you need to know about this verse is about Gilead. It was
the name of “a region east of the Jordan [River, the same Jordan River where
Jesus was baptized, that was] famous for plants that were used for medicinal
purposes.”[4]
So, we have medicine, we have a balm, and we have a people who are hurting. That’s
why Jeremiah asks, “Why, then, have my people not been restored to health?”[5]
What do you do when you’ve tried all the medicine and
there’s no healing? What do you do when the wound stays open? It’s easy to give
up hope. I called my best friend from college, who’s a surgeon, to get a
medical perspective. She said you keep the treatment going. The first goal is
to get rid of all of the infection. Once you do that and the wound is clean,
but still not healing on its own, then you go after the source of the wound.
You figure out what’s causing it and address the root of the problem. If, after
doing that, the wound still won’t close on its own, then you operate and make
it close with a skin graft or stitches or whatever’s appropriate. However, my
friend did acknowledge that sometimes it doesn’t help to find the source of the
wound, and she gave the example of a pressure ulcer. She said it’s like you
have a patient who’s a paraplegic and has bed sores. Those bed sores are
pressure ulcers because the person is putting pressure on the wound, creating
the ulcer. You know what’s causing the sores, but you can’t prevent them
because the person is paralyzed from the waist down. All you can do is keep
turning the person so that they lie on different sides and not always on the
same one, aggravating the sores. The best you can do is keep the person
comfortable, because you can’t completely get rid of the pressure ulcer. You
can’t completely keep them from putting pressure on that sore, and so the wound
stays open. That’s the science behind it. However, we are also people of faith,
and so through whatever happens and whatever pain, we stay faithful. Now, what
it means to keep the faith and not lose your religion is going to look
different for different people.
Jeremiah’s
faithful response to his people not being healed was to lament. We hear it in the passage we read today, “No healing, only
grief; my heart is broken. Listen to the weeping of my people all across the
land: ‘Isn’t the Lord in Zion?’”[6] I
could probably preach a whole sermon on lamenting, and maybe I will one day. “A
lament is a repeated cry of pain, rage, sorrow, and grief” that comes out of
suffering and a feeling of alienation.[7] It
is a prayer to God that lets us express our anger and frustration that life is
not how it should be and yet this kind of prayer also helps us “hold on to the
compassion of God in the midst of [our] suffering.”[8] It
is “hope that the way things are just now is not the way they always will be,”
because the one who prays a lament truly “believes
that God has the power to rescue and redeem.”[9]
That’s the whole point of a lament. It’s a faithful response to pain and
suffering because it turns to God.
And it cries out to God, expecting and trusting and knowing that God has the
power to heal. Isn’t there a balm in Gilead? Yes, we know there is. Isn’t the
Lord in Zion? Yes, we know God is. Isn’t the Lord here? Yes, we know God is
here. So, “why then have my people not been restored to health?” How come, God?
What’s going on, God? It’s not fair, God. God, you can heal us, and only you.
And we will wait until that time when God acts.
There’s
an acronym I learned some years ago, so long ago that I can’t even remember
when and where I picked it up. It’s PUSH. Has anyone heard of it? It stands for
Pray Until Something Happens. You
keep praying, you keep crying out to God, you keep going, for as long as it
takes. You push through whatever setbacks and problems and mistakes and
frustrations and confusion until you receive God’s blessing. It’s not unlike
Jacob wrestling with that angel in Genesis.[10]
Jacob wrestled with that angel all night long and would not let go until the
angel blessed him. The angel asked Jacob to give up, but Jacob would not do it
until the angel blessed him. You pray. You push through. You don’t give up. You
don’t lose your faith. And we read in 1 Timothy this morning that we are to
pray for all people.[11]
So if you’re not in this position of lamenting and wrestling for yourself, pray
and lament for those who are. Pray for a friend, pray for a relative, pray for
a leader, cry out to God on behalf of those who are hurting. Why, O Lord? How
long, O Lord? And encourage those who are hurting to cry out themselves. Each
of us needs to struggle with God, and when we’re at a point when we can’t, then
we need others to share our burdens, and cry out to God for us. Keep praying.
Whatever form that prayer takes, you don’t actually have to be on your knees
with your eyes closed and your hands clasped. You can pray on a walk. You can
pray while throwing a bouncy ball at a wall as hard as you can. It’s important that you keep praying, that
you keep the conversation with God going, because you know what? God weeps and
laments with you.
We
believe the Bible is the Word of God, which means these are actually God’s
lamentations, too. God weeps for God’s
people. You remember the shortest verse in the Bible? “Jesus wept.”[12]
Do you remember the context? Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, had died. Jesus knew
Lazarus had been sick, and Jesus knew he was going to bring Lazarus back to
life. Yet in the middle there, after Lazarus’ death and before Lazarus’
resurrection, Jesus weeps. Jesus is the balm in Gilead, he is the great
physician, and he is the one who weeps for the wounds of his people. That is
the last verse we read this morning from Jeremiah, “If only my head were a
spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, I would weep day and night
for the wounds of my people.”[13]
We
live in this in-between time, like after Lazarus’ death and before his
resurrection. It’s the already/not yet of God’s kingdom. Jesus has come, and
ushered in God’s kingdom, and yet it’s not fully here yet. We know things are
not as they should be, and yet we know there is a balm, there is a cure. I know
we get impatient waiting. I know we get impatient waiting for God’s kingdom to
be here on earth as it is in heaven. I know we get impatient waiting for the
Great Physician to heal. We know there is a balm, and yet we don’t always feel the
relief from it. At our district clergy gathering this past week, when we
celebrated communion our interim DS, Rev. DeLong, added a few words to the last
supper part. He said as Jesus and his disciples were eating, Jesus told them, “I
am everything you have hoped for.” Jesus is everything you have hoped for. He
is the Messiah, the Redeemer, the one come to make the world whole again, the
one come to make us whole again. And so we wait, and we look forward to that
time when that happens, much like waiting during Advent for Christmas to
arrive. As we read in Luke this morning, stay faithful until that time. As we’ll
sing in our last hymn, while you wait, share Jesus’ love. Be expectant of
healing to come. We are people of the resurrection. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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