Lament

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 130

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.

Imagination Training

John 6:1-21; Ephesians 3:14-21

How active is your imagination? Do you see things that aren’t right in front of you? Fill in the back-story when you see a single scene, or hear a snippet of story?

Let’s try it out.

I want you to imagine big.

Let gigantic, enormous, huge, roll through your mind and heart, and turn your imagination loose.

Anybody want to say something about what you imagined? 

[Mountains and open air. Sometimes I see stars, and distance; sometimes success, lights, fame  -- big can be a lot of things]

Now that we’ve practiced a little, close your eyes again, stretch out your imagination, and listen to this:
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Could you imagine the reach and size of the love of Christ?  Could you imagine how full the fullness of God must be? 

Do you regularly stretch your mind and heart so that you have the space and reach for the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s glory and God’s love?

That’s what’s going on in the gospel story today.

It sounds like it’s a story about dinner, but it’s really about Jesus stretching the imagination of the disciples and the crowds, stretching and training and exercising our hearts and minds, so that we’re ready to begin to understand the sheer immensity of God’s presence and God’s love.

We’re going to try a bit of that for ourselves.

Everybody take something from this basket. [pieces of bread rolls]

Would you say that what you’re holding is about one serving size? [No, too small!]

Excellent – now we’re ready. 

Listen:

When Jesus looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him. Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?"

Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.”

Look what you have in your hands and think about Philip and Andrew looking at the rough equivalent of two tuna fish sandwiches.  And they looked around, and saw five thousand people waiting – can you imagine that crowd?

They’re scratching their heads, straining their minds to figure out what Jesus is talking about, what he’s up to.

Listen again:

Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.  When they were satisfied, the disciples gathered up the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten; they filled twelve baskets.

Now look at what you have in your hands again. 

Look with your ears and your mind and your heart.

Who do you imagine, what do you see, when you think about bread?  How big is this bread that you hold in your hands?

This miracle of feeding that we heard about today is a big deal.  (It’s the only miracle story that’s told in all four gospels.)  It’s about abundance.  It’s about wonder.  It’s about God providing.

But even more than that, for Jesus, it’s about expanding our minds and hearts, exercising our imagination. Where we would normally see lunch, or even where we see a miracle, Jesus is teaching us to see much more:
to look at bread, and see the gift of God’s presence, right here in our ordinary lives.

To see the extraordinary scope of God’s glory, to see all those with whom we share this gift, and to understand that every single object and moment in our lives is meant to be transformed by our understanding of God.

Any ordinary object: water, keys or rock, animals or laborers, words, plants or currency, is as full of God-potential as this bread – potential for wonder and love, healing and wholeness, and mind-bending glory.

Every Sunday, when we share and eat those small tokens of flour and water, we’re here to exercise our imagination.  To train our minds and hearts, like Olympic athletes.

To practice seeing bread so that we experience with our minds and hearts and whole selves the extravagant abundance of God’s presence, the creation of community, the miracle of receiving food from God’s hand, the generosity with which Jesus makes himself known in the daily objects of our lives.

Today, we do one other training exercise in opening our minds and hearts.

In a few minutes we’ll invite God to transform ordinary water into eternal life, so that we can baptize Daniel, bringing him into the company of saints – of ordinary people filled up with God’s blessing so abundantly that it spills out to change lives far beyond our own. 

And we’ll offer ourselves to be transformed into abundant signs of God’s love and God’s presence, as we renew our own baptismal promises.

So eat the bread.

Splash in the water of baptism.

Then go out into the world and play with your food.

Look at your broccoli, your water glass, your dinner companions,

at keys and animals and rocks,

and set your imagination free.

Stretch your mind and heart to see the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s glory and love in the most ordinary of objects. In us. In you.

Open your heart and mind as far as you can to the breadth and length and height and depth – and then expect even more.  

Because God at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.

Health Care

Mark 5:21-43

I had the radio news on on Thursday morning and it sounded like the reporters were actually holding their breath. “This health care decision is the biggest Supreme Court decision since Bush v. Gore,” they kept saying.

And finally the news broke - messy and confusing at first - then with forests of analysis and comment.

It’s done.  It’s law.

You may be delighted with the news. You may be mad. You might be bored or just wish it’s over.

But the story isn’t over because the fighting isn’t over.  It’ll go on and on through the November election – and quite possibly beyond.

It’s a Big Deal.

Not just because it’s a big political fight.  Not just because the Supreme Court got involved – that happens all the time.

It’s a Big Deal because this political is so very personal,

because it’s about our bodies. 

It’s about what it means to be human, and to be whole.

That’s the story on the news, and that’s the story in the gospel.

There’s a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years.

Twelve years of physical discomfort, embarrassment, shame and limits.

She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all she had, and she was no better, but rather grew worse.

You can bet that if there’d been such a thing as insurance in first-century Palestine, she’d have been long past her lifetime coverage limits and banned because of a pre-existing condition – but it’s the simple human tragedy – both sublime and ridiculous – that resonates in Mark’s brief description.

And there’s a girl – on the brink of womanhood, on the brink of death – whose high-powered, respectable father realizes there is nothing he can do.   His desperation is evident as he falls at Jesus’ feet and begs repeatedly for a cure.

It’s not very hard to feel the gaping wound, the deep, profound ache of a parent helpless to cure his child. It’s not that hard to imagine the bitter, raw, continuous pain of chronic disability – of being forced to be the person you never expected to be, out of money, begging for any assistance, cut off from ordinary life, ordinary human touch. To imagine the holes that digs in your self-respect and hope.

You can hear those stories in the news this week, too.

I hear them often – from some of you; from the people who come to our door to ask for just a little help to fill a prescription, or pay a bill because caring for their own or a family member’s illness has cleaned them out – financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

These stories have a power beyond their facts,

because the costs of our health aren’t only measured in dollars,

but in our sense of self,

our wholeness,

our very soul.

That bleeding woman reaches out in desperation to merely touch Jesus’ clothes. 

And her bleeding stops.  She’s cured.

But it’s when Jesus speaks to her that she is healed; made whole.

She is transformed by his words from a desperate outcast, helplessly reaching for someone else’s power, to a woman of grace and faith, a woman of initiative and power. 

That's when she is made whole. 

It’s about stopping the bleeding, yes. But even more about restoring her human grace, her ability and self-respect.

And then Jesus comes to that tragic house after the child has died – when mourners have gathered to begin the funeral rites.  And he gives the parents back their ability to parent, to nurture their child.  “Do not fear,” he says, “only believe.” 
The disbelieving crowds are shut out, and only those who can be trusted to believe in the child’s wholeness witness the miracle.  

She’s cured. And then he tells them to feed her.

And her parents are made whole, restored to the responsibilities and joys of caring for their own child.

We’re fighting about this health care law not because it’s about money and access to treatment,

but because it’s about our self-respect, our independence. 

Our health is our self; our bodies shape our souls.

So often when a chronic or critical illness takes over – in the hospital, in the marketplace, doctors and insurers and sometimes family and friends see only the brokenness, the problem.  And often – not always! – that focus brings a cure.

But healing is about wholeness, about being yourself again.  Or being made new. About respect, and love, independence and deep relationships.

Whether or not there’s a cure, infusing our treatment with respect and love, guaranteeing independence and deepening relationships, is care for our health, because it’s care for our bodies and souls, and the way they make us whole.

And that’s what this conversation about health care law is, at the level of truth below the politics.

It matters that we choose to take care of our bodies.  It matters that health and healing connect us to one another, when illness can isolate and outcast us, financially and spiritually as well as physically. 

We must pay attention to health and care as a community, a nation – because we are a people committed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  We are committed, from our birth, to human wholeness. 

And you and I are committed, from our baptism, to love of our neighbors and the dignity of every human being.

Those reporters on Thursday morning were right to be breathless.  They were right that this decision and this law are enormously important. But they were wrong to compare it to Bush v. Gore, because this one is bigger.

This one is about being whole.

This story isn’t over yet.

There are more women bleeding out there.

There are more children dying.

More parents quietly, desperately helpless.

Some of them are among us this morning.

Some will never be.

The law of the land is about the details.
The law of the gospel is about wholeness.

So let the story continue,

and in every chapter, let it be said of us

– as a nation, as our selves –

“Your faith has made you whole.  Go in peace, and be healed.”