From chills to thrills
Commentary
There are words and phrases in our culture that are guaranteed to send chills up and down
your spine. Often, they spell a shift in place and status in our lives that will bring
significant change to our sense of self. You take the family or group of coworkers to
dinner at a fine restaurant and it comes time to pay the bill and you whip out the gold
credit card. Then tragedy strikes as the waiter returns speaking words of career-ending
public humiliation, "Your card has been declined." You discover that the tickets you
managed to wrangle for the hard-to-get latest Broadway production entitles you to a
seriously obstructed view from across the street. You drive down the road with more
horsepower under the hood than pharaoh's army could muster, only to spot the flashing
lights in the mirror that says soon they will be searching through the system for any
outstanding wants or warrants. The presidential candidacy of the late senator from Maine,
Ed Muskie, took a turn for the worse when his mother muttered to an interviewer that she
always liked his brother better. That has to hurt. What a come down.
Life is like that. It seems to be filled with ticking time bombs, sudden revelations, hitches that have a way of instantly changing our self-identity. Jesus had such moments in mind when he said, "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." Life will be filled with those kinds of moments where self-understanding is challenged. Those moments are made all the more difficult by the fact that they are often played out on a public stage. Surges of growth in wisdom and stature are not bad things. It is just that we don't want everyone within earshot to know that we need such a high-voltage moment.
Each of the scripture selections for this Sunday gives us a moment of challenging self- discovery acted out in a public forum that gives us some insight to the activity of God in our lives.
David always seems to be bumping into humiliating, humbling, humanizing moments in his life. Public struggles with his sexuality, personal loss that he publicly grieves, family issues that become national issues force David to face the less than kingly side of himself.
Read the words that Paul uses with the Corinthians and you know that they are headed toward some bruising self-discovery: "I am testing the genuineness of your love," "I am giving my advice," and "It is a question of a fair balance." When folks start using phrases like that you know it is not going to be good. There is growth ahead and growing pains in your future. When Paul carefully measures his words lest he be misunderstood you know that you could find yourself facing a loss of face before a gain in faith.
In the Gospel Lesson, a ruler of the synagogue falls at the feet of Jesus begging in the midst of the great crowd that had gathered. Such a moment of personal public pain cannot be a good thing for a leader of any kind. Interwoven with this story is the account of the women who, having had the resources to spend much on many physicians and meeting with nothing but failure, now in the midst of a large crowd, reaches out one more time for healing. It must have been painful to hold oneself up to the potential for further humiliation.
Most of us like to keep the kind of moments described in these biblical passages as private, personal matters between us and God. Yet all these cases remind us that in such moments of painful, public humiliation we might find hope. The places where we get humanized in this fashion can be the places where we will be exalted.
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
As David utters "How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle," we know that he could be talking about himself. David, the man with a future is publicly an emotional mess grieving in the midst of loss, realizing those things that ought not to have been taken for granted in our lives. Like many of us and many of our public figures, life has been about our calculations more than our deep connections to one another.
How we are fallen when we have lost those with whom conversations came naturally and easily. We are fallen when we lose those with whom we do not have to spend time explaining ourselves or how things used to be. We are fallen when we lose people whom we know will be less about judging us than loving us, and knowing how it was; they affirm us because they share our story. I long to be around people that will not hurt me, because they know where it hurts.
Could this be what David means when he says, "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." Certainly an explosive phrase guaranteed to get the prurient and the perverse going.
However, with all due respect, my wife loves me, but the guy in the running store who will outfit me, not hurting me because he knows where it hurts, understands things about me that she will never know. I have a fondness and appreciation of folks who weekly sit down in front of a blank computer screen asking what the Lord wants to say through them this week, which I do not have for others who do not share in the honor.
The grief I have for the loss of those who remember the 1961 New York Yankees, the elevated train in New York City, coal chutes, the 1962 New York Mets, and the full mainline churches of the 1950s knows no end. If nothing else those folks were living testimony that I have not made up these things. They did happen.
David will now face a life where there will be two fewer conversations of the kind we cherish and there will be too many people to whom you will have to explain the way things were.
The thing that astounds about David's grief is that it is such a public grief. A church consultant friend of mine notes a peculiar phenomenon. In doing time lines with congregations he has noted an uncharacteristic dearth of recollections in the years between 1964 and 1972. Of course, those years span the most intense time of the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy as well as some of the most turbulent cultural change in American experience. It is as if the sense of unresolved grief and loss in the national experience and the desire to forget had blotted out all memory including what was going on in local churches.
When I hear talk of our activities in the Middle East putting an end to the "Vietnam Era" or restoring lost national prestige, I suspect unaddressed grief may be part of our national motivation. David models at the very top of the societal pyramid that the vulnerability and weakness that comes with grief is normative of the human experience. Paul's words that suggest that God's power is made perfect in such weakness suggest an alternative to denial as our path through grief. That sounds like gospel to me.
Grief claimed and shared has a way of getting me in touch with the grieving places in my life. I remember the loss as gift that in reflection keeps on giving. My attempts to contain or control grief carry me away from others and beyond the ways that God might roll away the stone of my grief.
When I grieve, I come to the truth that you had to have been there to experience the full depth of the moment or the fullness of those I mourn. That focuses me on truly being there as a source of vitality and blessing in my life. In David's loss, he is fully there in mourning for those with whom in being fully there he found life. David, having fallen for the lives he knew and fallen into grief at their loss, raises me up. Falling to rise sounds like gospel to me.
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
There comes a time in life when the bank examiner shows up to see if we have measured up and whether we can own up to how we have tried to balance things in life. In my life, they show up about Thursday asking me if I have enough of a sermon in my head that on Sunday during worship it will give glory to God and blessing to anyone. They show up as I make my way to the scale to see how I have balanced my intake and my outgo of exercise. They show up after I have done my training for my next 10k race. Have I balanced the books between stamina workouts and enough sprint training?
I look forward, by and large, to the examiners showing up. For the most part, the various audits I face tend to confirm that I am sufficient enough of a decent person that I need not fear being cast into the outer darkness: at least not yet. I do not expect to find like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, that Uncle Billy's irresponsible behavior has left me open to financial ruin.
I have seen several audit reports on different organizations. There is usually some sort of preference to the document to indicate that the appropriate accounting standards are being used. At this point, I usually kick back and relax, expecting basic confirmation of my personal responsibility. So impervious of this kind of moment am I that I fear no IRS audit. I purposefully never go out on a limb in my deductions lest my sense of self comes crashing down. I fully expect the examiner to say, "What a patriot, and thank you for your support."
It must have come as quite a shock to the Corinthians to find themselves under the microscope of Paul's cost-accounting methods. We don't even get beyond the first page of the document and we know we are in trouble here. "For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has -- not according to what one does not have. I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance." Now this is a new way of balancing the books and getting to the financial bottom line.
Good intentions are not good enough here. Finishing the job here is not showing effort or a profit. Maintaining fiscal balance is tied to maintaining spiritual balance. I understand that the question is that not only is it not good to have too little, many corporations have gone to great lengths to hide the fact the cupboard is bare. Paul is saying here that the answer is not going to the money lenders but in going public with the needs of the church. In doing so you are doing others a favor because they can now respond faithfully to your situation. This is going over in no corporate board room that I am aware of. If the apprentice comes up with this solution, he or she will soon be ushered off the television program by the same name.
Yet, Paul is saying that the kingdom of God will come closer if people can respond to your need. Have you been keeping this off the books? Keeping your need off the books may rob others. I hear this and I find myself shocked at the thought that I or the church I serve might not pass muster in this audit.
This is bound to make for very interesting quarterly reports. To a very real degree our social status can be claimed and maintained by hiding or denying our needs. If I understand this thinking rightly it is better to have enough to live for than to have more than enough to live on. It must have been quite a come down for the Corinthians who seemed, as it were, to excel in everything and who seemed for the most part to be able to balance life's books according to the usual standards. Of course, we are not talking about the usual accounting standards, but what adds up in the sight of God.
Mark 5:21-43
In the midst of the great crowd that had gathered to hear Jesus, the ruler of the synagogue makes a decision that many of us have made. It is time for out-of-the-box thinking for trying the alternative health approach and to reach out to the new teacher and healer on the scene. It could not have been an easy thing in the face of the gasps of the crowd. It has come to this -- whatever faith he had in the old ways, they were not bringing the miracle that he knew his dying daughter needed. It must have taken a lot of emotional energy to reach out, for in reaching out he was going into unfamiliar territory. It must have taken soul-wrenching energy to reach out as Mark says repeatedly, begging Jesus to turn things around. What is Jesus waiting for here? Would anyone in their right mind not act as quickly as possible to relieve the man's heart-rending pain? I know it is part of the Markan narrative technique to intersperse one story within another. Yet, Jesus' words, "Do not fear, only believe," ring hollow and remain unsatisfying.
Mark begins by identifying the man as a ruler of the synagogue. Who knows exactly what office he held but we can assume that personal endurance, competence, prominence, and personality dominance had something to do with it. Such qualities produce the poise and confidence that gains and maintains such positions. Here we have something that can only be described as desperate and driven by the love that will not let things lie.
Yet, just such a moment might be the thing that is required to bring about the healing of the world. Chills go up and down your spine as the ambulance with flashing lights nears the West Bank check point carrying a child hurt in a school yard accident. Will this be the day that the soldiers will demonstrate their authority by entangling the driver in an unending flood of questions and document verifications? Or will the driver say, "Little one, go through." The rebel battalion arrives at the village looking for soldier recruits. Will this be the day that the sergeant says, "This is not for you little ones"? The international conglomerate is plotting its advertising campaign; if they can just get the kids hooked on their product they will have a lifelong customer. Or is this the day that someone says, "arise" in hopes that they will walk away from a lifelong addiction?
The father has it right; his status as father might lead to more healing than his role as elder. When all elders can look at the children around us and the child within us and say, "Arise, you are not to be pawns in our political struggles, or objects of our commercial enterprises, or bear our warring madness," we will have achieved something approximating the kingdom of God.
The woman at the well reaches out for the kind of healing that up to now the system cannot provide. Reaching for something beyond the system with some risk became a public event. In both cases, those who knew how to work the system and had resources to make the system work find themselves on the outside of the box. In both cases, they found themselves with a new status as people who had been healed.
Application
At first glance these texts don't seem to have much in common. However on second reading we discover people finding their sense of self being radically altered and that they are acting in surprising ways. People know the blessing that can come to those whose grief becomes public, shared, and ritualized. The bottom line is balanced needs and opportunities in the community of faith knowing that life has a way of switching roles on us from time to time. Healing and wellness come from reaching outside the usual channels and humanely defined possibilities. We must ask ourselves, have our congregations made it easier to process personal and public grief or are there gaps in our work? Do we see the bottom line -- the balancing of our needs and resources with other's resources and needs? How do we look at the children around us and the child within us? You find yourself asking such questions when you are grieving, when you are pondering what you have in your spiritual bank, and when you are facing the loss of a child. Of course that is really who we are after all -- people who are in the midst of grief at many levels, those who have been off course because we have been unbalanced, and those who have looked on children in ways that increase mourning. In the discovery there is hope.
Alternative Application
2 Corinthians 8:7-15. It all hangs in the balance according to Paul's letter to the Corinthians. There are just some things where we never reach the tipping point. Paul in appealing for missionary dollars reminds us that "Think globally, act locally" did not just get its start in our day. We could just as well say, "Think locally, act globally." There is a need to balance both ends of the equation no matter in what context we are living. It calls to mind other New Testament balancing acts, "In, but not of, the world," "As wise as serpents, innocent as doves," law and love. In some ways, our task is to keep our balance, taking a bipolar stance as our starting point. Our work is keeping our balance while helping others maintain theirs which gets us in the race for which a crown is awarded for all those who have loved the appearing of the Lord.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 130
"Patience," the old ditty goes, "is a grace, and Grace is a little girl who doesn't wash her face." There is, it would seem, more truth to the rhyme than first occurs to one loosing it flippantly from the tongue. Patience is indeed a grace. It is a gift, a charism, if you will, which is not found in great supply these days.
Waiting patiently for anything is a challenge. Whether it's in the supermarket line or sitting still on the freeway, we don't much like waiting. We want what we want, and we want it now! Wait? No thanks. I'll just go someplace else. These situations can be tough enough, but what happens when we must wait for God?
When a relationship shatters and we are broken and alone, how do we wait for God? When illness takes us and we are but a shadow of what we remember ourselves to be, how is it that we wait for God? What happens when justice fails or evil triumphs? What can be done when a nation drifts slowly but most certainly into the maw of religious travesty while torture and maltreatment of the poor become business as usual? How, when powerlessness sweeps over us like storm-driven surf, do we wait for God?
The answer is simpler than one might think. We cry. This is not the whining cry of a child who doesn't get what he or she wants. It is wailing that emerges from deep within the soul. "Out of the depths," we cry to God.
Some would say that this does no good. But life would beg to differ. After a good cry, we do feel better. After a gut-wrenching session of keening, our bellies are emptied out, and a kind of calm envelops us. Even the medical community will tell us that our tears serve to carry toxins out of our systems. So it seems that crying out does help after all.
And then, when the crying's done; when we are spent and calm, we can practice the gift of patience as we await God to come in God's time, not our own. And in the waiting, hope is born. In the waiting, we surrender our egos and our agenda. In the waiting we give ourselves to something far beyond our ability to comprehend. In the waiting, we give ourselves to God.
Life is like that. It seems to be filled with ticking time bombs, sudden revelations, hitches that have a way of instantly changing our self-identity. Jesus had such moments in mind when he said, "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." Life will be filled with those kinds of moments where self-understanding is challenged. Those moments are made all the more difficult by the fact that they are often played out on a public stage. Surges of growth in wisdom and stature are not bad things. It is just that we don't want everyone within earshot to know that we need such a high-voltage moment.
Each of the scripture selections for this Sunday gives us a moment of challenging self- discovery acted out in a public forum that gives us some insight to the activity of God in our lives.
David always seems to be bumping into humiliating, humbling, humanizing moments in his life. Public struggles with his sexuality, personal loss that he publicly grieves, family issues that become national issues force David to face the less than kingly side of himself.
Read the words that Paul uses with the Corinthians and you know that they are headed toward some bruising self-discovery: "I am testing the genuineness of your love," "I am giving my advice," and "It is a question of a fair balance." When folks start using phrases like that you know it is not going to be good. There is growth ahead and growing pains in your future. When Paul carefully measures his words lest he be misunderstood you know that you could find yourself facing a loss of face before a gain in faith.
In the Gospel Lesson, a ruler of the synagogue falls at the feet of Jesus begging in the midst of the great crowd that had gathered. Such a moment of personal public pain cannot be a good thing for a leader of any kind. Interwoven with this story is the account of the women who, having had the resources to spend much on many physicians and meeting with nothing but failure, now in the midst of a large crowd, reaches out one more time for healing. It must have been painful to hold oneself up to the potential for further humiliation.
Most of us like to keep the kind of moments described in these biblical passages as private, personal matters between us and God. Yet all these cases remind us that in such moments of painful, public humiliation we might find hope. The places where we get humanized in this fashion can be the places where we will be exalted.
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
As David utters "How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle," we know that he could be talking about himself. David, the man with a future is publicly an emotional mess grieving in the midst of loss, realizing those things that ought not to have been taken for granted in our lives. Like many of us and many of our public figures, life has been about our calculations more than our deep connections to one another.
How we are fallen when we have lost those with whom conversations came naturally and easily. We are fallen when we lose those with whom we do not have to spend time explaining ourselves or how things used to be. We are fallen when we lose people whom we know will be less about judging us than loving us, and knowing how it was; they affirm us because they share our story. I long to be around people that will not hurt me, because they know where it hurts.
Could this be what David means when he says, "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." Certainly an explosive phrase guaranteed to get the prurient and the perverse going.
However, with all due respect, my wife loves me, but the guy in the running store who will outfit me, not hurting me because he knows where it hurts, understands things about me that she will never know. I have a fondness and appreciation of folks who weekly sit down in front of a blank computer screen asking what the Lord wants to say through them this week, which I do not have for others who do not share in the honor.
The grief I have for the loss of those who remember the 1961 New York Yankees, the elevated train in New York City, coal chutes, the 1962 New York Mets, and the full mainline churches of the 1950s knows no end. If nothing else those folks were living testimony that I have not made up these things. They did happen.
David will now face a life where there will be two fewer conversations of the kind we cherish and there will be too many people to whom you will have to explain the way things were.
The thing that astounds about David's grief is that it is such a public grief. A church consultant friend of mine notes a peculiar phenomenon. In doing time lines with congregations he has noted an uncharacteristic dearth of recollections in the years between 1964 and 1972. Of course, those years span the most intense time of the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy as well as some of the most turbulent cultural change in American experience. It is as if the sense of unresolved grief and loss in the national experience and the desire to forget had blotted out all memory including what was going on in local churches.
When I hear talk of our activities in the Middle East putting an end to the "Vietnam Era" or restoring lost national prestige, I suspect unaddressed grief may be part of our national motivation. David models at the very top of the societal pyramid that the vulnerability and weakness that comes with grief is normative of the human experience. Paul's words that suggest that God's power is made perfect in such weakness suggest an alternative to denial as our path through grief. That sounds like gospel to me.
Grief claimed and shared has a way of getting me in touch with the grieving places in my life. I remember the loss as gift that in reflection keeps on giving. My attempts to contain or control grief carry me away from others and beyond the ways that God might roll away the stone of my grief.
When I grieve, I come to the truth that you had to have been there to experience the full depth of the moment or the fullness of those I mourn. That focuses me on truly being there as a source of vitality and blessing in my life. In David's loss, he is fully there in mourning for those with whom in being fully there he found life. David, having fallen for the lives he knew and fallen into grief at their loss, raises me up. Falling to rise sounds like gospel to me.
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
There comes a time in life when the bank examiner shows up to see if we have measured up and whether we can own up to how we have tried to balance things in life. In my life, they show up about Thursday asking me if I have enough of a sermon in my head that on Sunday during worship it will give glory to God and blessing to anyone. They show up as I make my way to the scale to see how I have balanced my intake and my outgo of exercise. They show up after I have done my training for my next 10k race. Have I balanced the books between stamina workouts and enough sprint training?
I look forward, by and large, to the examiners showing up. For the most part, the various audits I face tend to confirm that I am sufficient enough of a decent person that I need not fear being cast into the outer darkness: at least not yet. I do not expect to find like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, that Uncle Billy's irresponsible behavior has left me open to financial ruin.
I have seen several audit reports on different organizations. There is usually some sort of preference to the document to indicate that the appropriate accounting standards are being used. At this point, I usually kick back and relax, expecting basic confirmation of my personal responsibility. So impervious of this kind of moment am I that I fear no IRS audit. I purposefully never go out on a limb in my deductions lest my sense of self comes crashing down. I fully expect the examiner to say, "What a patriot, and thank you for your support."
It must have come as quite a shock to the Corinthians to find themselves under the microscope of Paul's cost-accounting methods. We don't even get beyond the first page of the document and we know we are in trouble here. "For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has -- not according to what one does not have. I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance." Now this is a new way of balancing the books and getting to the financial bottom line.
Good intentions are not good enough here. Finishing the job here is not showing effort or a profit. Maintaining fiscal balance is tied to maintaining spiritual balance. I understand that the question is that not only is it not good to have too little, many corporations have gone to great lengths to hide the fact the cupboard is bare. Paul is saying here that the answer is not going to the money lenders but in going public with the needs of the church. In doing so you are doing others a favor because they can now respond faithfully to your situation. This is going over in no corporate board room that I am aware of. If the apprentice comes up with this solution, he or she will soon be ushered off the television program by the same name.
Yet, Paul is saying that the kingdom of God will come closer if people can respond to your need. Have you been keeping this off the books? Keeping your need off the books may rob others. I hear this and I find myself shocked at the thought that I or the church I serve might not pass muster in this audit.
This is bound to make for very interesting quarterly reports. To a very real degree our social status can be claimed and maintained by hiding or denying our needs. If I understand this thinking rightly it is better to have enough to live for than to have more than enough to live on. It must have been quite a come down for the Corinthians who seemed, as it were, to excel in everything and who seemed for the most part to be able to balance life's books according to the usual standards. Of course, we are not talking about the usual accounting standards, but what adds up in the sight of God.
Mark 5:21-43
In the midst of the great crowd that had gathered to hear Jesus, the ruler of the synagogue makes a decision that many of us have made. It is time for out-of-the-box thinking for trying the alternative health approach and to reach out to the new teacher and healer on the scene. It could not have been an easy thing in the face of the gasps of the crowd. It has come to this -- whatever faith he had in the old ways, they were not bringing the miracle that he knew his dying daughter needed. It must have taken a lot of emotional energy to reach out, for in reaching out he was going into unfamiliar territory. It must have taken soul-wrenching energy to reach out as Mark says repeatedly, begging Jesus to turn things around. What is Jesus waiting for here? Would anyone in their right mind not act as quickly as possible to relieve the man's heart-rending pain? I know it is part of the Markan narrative technique to intersperse one story within another. Yet, Jesus' words, "Do not fear, only believe," ring hollow and remain unsatisfying.
Mark begins by identifying the man as a ruler of the synagogue. Who knows exactly what office he held but we can assume that personal endurance, competence, prominence, and personality dominance had something to do with it. Such qualities produce the poise and confidence that gains and maintains such positions. Here we have something that can only be described as desperate and driven by the love that will not let things lie.
Yet, just such a moment might be the thing that is required to bring about the healing of the world. Chills go up and down your spine as the ambulance with flashing lights nears the West Bank check point carrying a child hurt in a school yard accident. Will this be the day that the soldiers will demonstrate their authority by entangling the driver in an unending flood of questions and document verifications? Or will the driver say, "Little one, go through." The rebel battalion arrives at the village looking for soldier recruits. Will this be the day that the sergeant says, "This is not for you little ones"? The international conglomerate is plotting its advertising campaign; if they can just get the kids hooked on their product they will have a lifelong customer. Or is this the day that someone says, "arise" in hopes that they will walk away from a lifelong addiction?
The father has it right; his status as father might lead to more healing than his role as elder. When all elders can look at the children around us and the child within us and say, "Arise, you are not to be pawns in our political struggles, or objects of our commercial enterprises, or bear our warring madness," we will have achieved something approximating the kingdom of God.
The woman at the well reaches out for the kind of healing that up to now the system cannot provide. Reaching for something beyond the system with some risk became a public event. In both cases, those who knew how to work the system and had resources to make the system work find themselves on the outside of the box. In both cases, they found themselves with a new status as people who had been healed.
Application
At first glance these texts don't seem to have much in common. However on second reading we discover people finding their sense of self being radically altered and that they are acting in surprising ways. People know the blessing that can come to those whose grief becomes public, shared, and ritualized. The bottom line is balanced needs and opportunities in the community of faith knowing that life has a way of switching roles on us from time to time. Healing and wellness come from reaching outside the usual channels and humanely defined possibilities. We must ask ourselves, have our congregations made it easier to process personal and public grief or are there gaps in our work? Do we see the bottom line -- the balancing of our needs and resources with other's resources and needs? How do we look at the children around us and the child within us? You find yourself asking such questions when you are grieving, when you are pondering what you have in your spiritual bank, and when you are facing the loss of a child. Of course that is really who we are after all -- people who are in the midst of grief at many levels, those who have been off course because we have been unbalanced, and those who have looked on children in ways that increase mourning. In the discovery there is hope.
Alternative Application
2 Corinthians 8:7-15. It all hangs in the balance according to Paul's letter to the Corinthians. There are just some things where we never reach the tipping point. Paul in appealing for missionary dollars reminds us that "Think globally, act locally" did not just get its start in our day. We could just as well say, "Think locally, act globally." There is a need to balance both ends of the equation no matter in what context we are living. It calls to mind other New Testament balancing acts, "In, but not of, the world," "As wise as serpents, innocent as doves," law and love. In some ways, our task is to keep our balance, taking a bipolar stance as our starting point. Our work is keeping our balance while helping others maintain theirs which gets us in the race for which a crown is awarded for all those who have loved the appearing of the Lord.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 130
"Patience," the old ditty goes, "is a grace, and Grace is a little girl who doesn't wash her face." There is, it would seem, more truth to the rhyme than first occurs to one loosing it flippantly from the tongue. Patience is indeed a grace. It is a gift, a charism, if you will, which is not found in great supply these days.
Waiting patiently for anything is a challenge. Whether it's in the supermarket line or sitting still on the freeway, we don't much like waiting. We want what we want, and we want it now! Wait? No thanks. I'll just go someplace else. These situations can be tough enough, but what happens when we must wait for God?
When a relationship shatters and we are broken and alone, how do we wait for God? When illness takes us and we are but a shadow of what we remember ourselves to be, how is it that we wait for God? What happens when justice fails or evil triumphs? What can be done when a nation drifts slowly but most certainly into the maw of religious travesty while torture and maltreatment of the poor become business as usual? How, when powerlessness sweeps over us like storm-driven surf, do we wait for God?
The answer is simpler than one might think. We cry. This is not the whining cry of a child who doesn't get what he or she wants. It is wailing that emerges from deep within the soul. "Out of the depths," we cry to God.
Some would say that this does no good. But life would beg to differ. After a good cry, we do feel better. After a gut-wrenching session of keening, our bellies are emptied out, and a kind of calm envelops us. Even the medical community will tell us that our tears serve to carry toxins out of our systems. So it seems that crying out does help after all.
And then, when the crying's done; when we are spent and calm, we can practice the gift of patience as we await God to come in God's time, not our own. And in the waiting, hope is born. In the waiting, we surrender our egos and our agenda. In the waiting we give ourselves to something far beyond our ability to comprehend. In the waiting, we give ourselves to God.
