Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Colossians 3:12-17
Presented June 14, 2009, by J.D. Kline
The Second Sunday after Pentecost/Music Sunday
In her book Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott tells the touching story of a young man named Ken who began attending the small Presbyterian congregation where she worships in the San Francisco area. Ken was dying of AIDS, disintegrating week-by-week before the eyes of the congregation. Anne writes of Ranola, a devout African-American woman in the congregation, who from her seat in the choir loft looked askance at Ken, raised as she had been with the conviction that Ken’s way of life was an abomination. But Ken continued to come and worship with the small congregation week after week, and in a year’s time had won much of the congregation over. One Sunday, after having been so weak that he was unable to attend for several Sundays, Ken was back. Though looking more emaciated than ever from the disease, Ken nevertheless spoke joyously during the sharing time of his life and faith, and of the wonder of God’s grace and redemption. And then, as the congregation sang the old hymn, God’s Eye is on the Sparrow, reaching the chorus, “Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall?” Anne noted that Ranola, who had been looking skeptically at Ken, suddenly altered her perspective. Ranola’s face melted, and she hurried to Ken’s side, lifting him up, holding him in her arms as together they sang with tears falling down their cheeks.
Observes Anne Lamott about that experience:
I can’t imagine anything but music that could have brought about this alchemy. Maybe it’s because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, your breath. We’re walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn’t get to any other way.
Meeting in places we couldn’t get to any other way. Have you not experienced this power of music to touch hearts, to overcome differences, to heal hurts, to lift spirits? Periodically someone will say to me, somewhat apologetically, “I appreciate your sermons, but often it is the music in our worship service that most speaks to me.” There’s no need to apologize, for music may well be the means by which you encounter afresh the healing gift of God’s gracious love.
Tom Troeger teaches preaching at Yale Divinity School, and at the Festival of Homiletics I attended recently he lectured on the theme, “Preaching in an Age of Spiritual Hunger and Religious Violence.” The word religion, Troeger reminded us, at its Latin roots means “to bind together.” And yet, as we well know, religious faith can readily be distorted into a message of hostility, hatred, and division. Only days ago an 88-year-old member of a white supremacist group, convinced that the Holocaust is a lie, entered the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and murdered a museum guard, all in the name of a perverted faith spewing racial hatred. And not long before that, a doctor who performed abortions was murdered in church, while serving as an usher.
You may be wondering why I would choose to talk about the horror of religious violence, the taking of human life and the wrenching destruction of human community in the name of God, on this day we have set aside to celebrate the gift of music in the life of our congregation. But as I listened to Tom Troeger base much of his lecture on this morning’s lesson from Jeremiah, with its heart-felt lament, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no word of healing to soothe our souls?”—I found myself thinking of our upcoming Music Sunday. In these recent years when I have journeyed through grief, when I have cried, “Is there no balm in Gilead,” it has often been music that has most touched my soul.
Consider the text from Jeremiah, set in the days in ancient Jerusalem when the prophet is compelled to speak words of judgment and doom. The people had rejected their covenant with God. Earlier in the chapter Jeremiah cries out, “from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wounds of my people carelessly, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. They acted shamelessly…yet they were not at all ashamed” (8:10-12). And then Jeremiah adds the telling phrase, “They did not [even] know how to blush.” Life in ancient Israel had become out-of-kilter, with religious faith no longer binding things together, but rather, one more justification for selfish behavior. In such a context Jeremiah cries out, “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick,” and then he questions, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?” (8:18, 22).
This is no idle question, but rather an anguished cry. Some commentators suggest that, in truth, the speaker in this passage is God, not simply the prophet. Therefore, it is God crying out, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no one who might bring a message of healing, who might breathe peace and new life into my broken people? Is there nothing that might begin to turn things around once again, that might encourage faithful living?
It’s an odd sort of good news, but here it is—ours is a weeping God, a God who grieves with us in the midst of our brokenness and pain, a God who hears our cries for healing and wholeness, a God who aches for us to discover a balm that might soothe our wounds and empower us to clothe ourselves, in the words of the apostle Paul, “with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,” and “above all, …with love” (Colossians 3:12, 14).
Did you notice that the old spiritual based on this passage from Jeremiah 8 turns the question, Is there a Balm in Gilead, into an affirmation, There is a Balm in Gilead. This is no naïve optimism, but rather a deep and abiding conviction on the part of those African-American slaves who first sang the spiritual that ours is indeed a God who is able to make a way out of no way, a God who is able to bring about healing even at those times when we wonder if there is any reason for us to carry on, a God who surprises us with new light and empowers us to become bearers of that light, a God who softens the hearts of faithful people such as Anne Lamott and her friends Ranola and Ken.
Sometimes we feel discouraged and think our work’s in vain; sometimes we feel despairing and wonder if we have the strength to move forward, but then, as the old song puts it, “the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.” There is a balm in Gilead—the kind of balm that would lead the apostle Paul to urge the Colossian Christians to cultivate thanksgiving. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God every step of the way (Colossians 3:15-17, The Message).
There is a balm in Gilead that leads to healing light and love, that plants a new song of hope in our souls, that empowers us to proclaim of that light, “I’m gonna let it shine.” So even in our brokenness and grief and pain, we can sing. We can sing our hearts out to God!