I’m something of
a news junkie. On a normal day, I wake up to the every-10-minutes radio news
and switch to National Public Radio while I eat breakfast and get ready for the
day. And while the national news
is on the air, I skim print headlines online and find out the news from family
and friends via facebook. The first 90 minutes of my day are pretty much solid
information loading.
I can’t resist
it. But too much of a good thing can be toxic.
Especially this
year’s news.
There’s the
markets – job, housing, financial.
Campaign news (which is mostly about how miserable each of them says
we’ll be if the other gets elected in November). Syria gets scarier every day. We’re still fighting two wars, and then some.
There’s a
drought. People get shot. In the streets of Chicago and the suburbs. At the movies. And at worship.
And then there’s
the news in my facebook feed and my email. People get sick; babies go to the hospital. Families come apart, through death or
anger.
It’s not all
tragedy of course. There are
unexpected Olympic medals, delightful things kids do, wonderful healing - and
some of the stuff those candidates do is just plain funny.
But it’s a
messy, complicated world. It makes
me mad. There’s so much that goes
wrong amid the right, so many big things that can’t be fixed, it seems. It
makes me tired.
Does that ever
happen to you?
If not,
excellent. You’ve mastered the
spiritual exercise of detachment, and you probably sleep okay at night.
But if it bugs
you; if anxiety about the fate of the world – or the fate of your children or
closest friends – keeps you awake at night or distracts you during the day, then some of
the David and Absalom story will sound familiar.
Not the way you
heard it a couple minutes ago – the lectionary people have surpassed themselves
in presenting a nonsense excerpt – but the whole story, the one hinted at this
morning.
You see, after
David got in trouble over Bathsheba, things just got messier and more
complicated in his nation and his family.
David had a lot
of kids. More than he could really
keep track of, probably. And his oldest son, Amnon, got the hots for his
half-sister Tamar. There’s a lot
of plot in here that would make Days of
our Lives look simple, but ultimately Amnon rapes Tamar. Tamar tells her
brother Absalom – who stews over it for two years then kills Amnon – which
makes David mad, and he kicks Absalom out of the country.
Trouble in the
king’s household spills over into unrest in the country, so a few years later
David tries to patch it up. Absalom comes back – and becomes a celebrity. He’s handsome, he’s the kind of guy
you’d have a beer with – meanwhile David’s getting out of touch – and it’s not
too long before Absalom throws his hat in the ring and announces his candidacy
for king.
Now it’s open
rebellion. People are getting
killed all over again.
But when the
army marches out to put down the rebellion, everyone hears David saying, “Be
gentle with Absalom – he’s still my son.”
But war is war,
and things happen. Absalom gets
stuck in a tree – it’s apparently some very dangerous terrain they’re fighting
in – and David’s general does a very thorough job of killing him.
And when the
word at last gets back to David that his troublemaking, treasonous son has
died,
well, it’s the
end of the world, and he pours out a bitter lament:
Absalom, my son.
If only I had
died instead of you.
Oh, Absalom, my
son!
It’s a time of war. A political conflict that makes our
election look like a disagreement over potatoes and potahtoes. Economic uncertainty. Violence. And family tragedy.
It’s our morning
news and our inbox, piled up and topped off with the indescribably bitter grief
of a parent who’s lost a child in the middle of a broken relationship.
If there’s ever
been a time for lament, it’s now.
A time to weep
and mourn.
To pour out
grief and anger, fear and despair.
To give voice to
all the pain inside that comes when we hear about another mass shooting, and
the hundreds of casual drive-bys that never make headlines; that comes when
cancer returns, when a child is injured, a marriage dies, and the bank account
bleeds red.
Lament matters,
because God
didn’t design us to suffer in silence, to smother our hearts and ignore the
pain.
If we do that,
you see, our hearts shrink.
So the lectionary
people did one thing right today.
They gave us
lament.
Out of the depths have I called to you, O
Lord.
Lord, hear my voice.
Listen well to my complaint.
God didn’t make
us to be silent.
God made us to
be fruitful.
We should wake
up in the morning ready for abundance and joy. We should come to church celebrating, with our hearts full
of gratitude and generosity, wide open for love. And we do.
But we also live
in a world that is messy, and complicated, and painful.
We wake up to
that world and come to church in that world, (and sometimes we skip church, in
that world) and in that world, we sometimes find ourselves in the depths.
And so, along
with our prayers, our celebration and praise,
there’s a time
for lament.
Lament is a rich
spiritual resource,
a tradition that
reaches back to the early days of our history with God, when Israel lamented
their slavery in Egypt, and God heard.
That’s the deep
spiritual truth of lament.
It’s not just
crying.
When we pour out
grief and anger, fear and despair, into God’s ear, and give honest voice to the
pain, when we open up those depths to God,
we come to the
point where the only thing we can do
is lean on God, to trust that God really, really hears us.
And listen to
what happens in Psalm 130:
Out of the depths have I called to you, O
Lord.
Lord, hear my voice.
With all that is wrong, who can stand
before you?
Your forgiveness is awe-inspiring.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for
him.
In his word is my hope.
Lament creates
trust.
It goes hand in
hand with prayers for healing, prayers for peace, and prayers of thanks.
Lament opens up
despair or even indifference,
so that in the
midst of war and politics,
loss and grief,
anxiety and fear,
there is living,
breathing hope.
Hope enough to
love the people far away in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and as close as
Wisconsin, Colorado, and Chicago.
Hope enough to
love through family tragedy.
Hope enough to
love both candidates.
Hope enough to
hear the news – David's news; our news; all the news – and still rejoice in the morning.
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