Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Lonely Lament - Palm Sunday March 28th, 2021

Lonely Lament 

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, March 28, 2021, Palm Sunday, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.

              Text: Mark 11:1-19

Oh, we do love a parade! We do love a rally! And even those who dislike crowds can be stirred to join the throng by the right cause or person as the draw! Give me something to wave, teach me the chant, “hey hey ho ho-sanna!” and let’s march! And when we gather for the annual Palm Sunday parade, we are traditionally given delightful images of children—in various states of confusion, disarray, or glee—being shepherded into sanctuaries with palms; and even in this virtual space, there’s a sense of playfulness and hope and anticipation as Jesus enters Jerusalem, as we ourselves enter Holy Week. 

The original parade on this day, best we can tell, is what advocates call a public action. And our story begins by detailing preparation for the event, including securing Jesus’ ride and marking the parade route with cloaks and leafy branches. The chant was taken from an old favorite, the victory song we call Psalm 118: “Hosanna—Save us! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” The parade was carefully planned, the allusions to Zechariah’s prophecy of a new king riding a donkey, humbly bringing peace in a time of war were deliberate and provocative. Its route led to the temple, the power center of Israel’s religious and political life. And all this energy culminates with Jesus entering the temple and then…“when he had looked around at everything” he left. (?? Wah Wah…) And, according to the lectionary, the story for today ends right there. 

But the so-called “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem wasn’t just that day. The point of the palm Sunday public action wasn’t just to have a parade and “look around” as if on a fact finding mission. Though evidently what Jesus perceived in church policies and behavior, in congress and state legislatures and courts and precincts, triggered a nasty mood. Because on the way back to Jerusalem for day two of the action, Jesus takes out his frustration on an unsuspecting fig tree that had the audacity to not have figs available in the off season. Jesus returns to the temple and this time it’s about more than taking a look. 

Jesus comes in hot to disrupt the system, overturn the status quo, dismantle tools of injustice, reveal how things are chatá, Hebrew for missing the mark. Jesus speaks words of scripture, runs people off who aid and abet an unjust system, and flips the money tables—all to challenge and reveal codified systems that benefit the few and marginalize and disenfranchise the many and the most vulnerable. (e.g. Mk 12:38-40) Jesus’ palm Sunday action was not a fact finding mission but a life-saving mission. And its procession route led him to reveal in no uncertain terms how religion was missing the mark, how politics was missing the mark, how economics was missing the mark. Because all of these things were failing to produce the fruits that sustain life for ALL in and out of season. And that is what they are supposed to do. No excuses. //

Our tendency in the American Church is generally to jump from Christmas to New Years Eve to Super Bowl to Palm Sunday to Easter (a few of those are not officially in the liturgical cycle, FYI). We jump from celebration to celebration, big day to big day. And it makes sense, of course. Life is hard—and we all need things to look forward to. 

But here’s the thing: the things we look forward to can become nothing more than distractions and props for the status quo if we fail to attend to what happens in-between. For example, if we’re not careful, Christmas can become about how to pile more money on the tables of the rich while making the poor feel guilty that they can’t do more for their children—and this for a story about a child who came into the world to turn those tables (and more!) upside down and to bring relief to the poor. If we take a short cut on the Holy Week parade route we might be lulled into believing that Jesus wants no more than adulation one day and brightly colored hard-boiled eggs and bottomless mimosas the next. That kind of Jesus doesn’t challenge us or anyone. Isn’t that handy?

Our tendency to jump from celebration to celebration misses the lamentation. It glosses over, denies, tries to avoid the suffering. The palm procession didn’t end with adulation. It didn’t end with a triumphant Jesus dismantling injustice with one prophetic sign-act and public witness. If we jump off the route at that point, allowing our palm procession to take a different course, we can move the party to another venue, feeling good about how we showed up to support the big event, but really just leaving Jesus to go it alone.

Of course, Jesus knew that’s what would happen. He knew he was alone—or would be—he knew this even as, early on the parade route, the crowds hailed him as their hope. Jesus alone knew where the palm procession would end, knew what was coming, knew that the path to liberation is not through short cuts or distractions, party favors or pills. Jesus knew as he rode in on his donkey that he would travel the lonely road of prophets before and since—to speak truth for the sake of justice; to put himself in harm’s way to advocate for those denied place or provision in the community; to break unjust human laws in order to reveal the higher law of God’s love and compassion; to unveil the hypocrisy and cruelty of the status quo. 

Where does your palm procession take you? 

Today Jesus enters the gates of Jerusalem and invites us to follow his lead. Jesus shows us how to step into the pain, to stay on the route that leads to newness. Jesus can show us because Jesus knows what it’s like to feel alone and unseen in a crowd; Jesus knows what it’s like to be targeted and misunderstood; Jesus knows what it’s like to look around at the way things are in the world and feel grief and rage; Jesus knows what it’s like to grieve the death of a loved one; Jesus knows what it’s like to be given an impossible task, the weight of it, crushing; Jesus knows what it’s like to be betrayed and hurt by those closest to him, to be ignored and denied by those who once looked to him for guidance and care. Jesus knows what it’s like to experience physical pain; Jesus knows what it’s like to cry out to God asking for things to be different, railing against feeling abandoned. Jesus knows and so is with you in your lament. You need not be lonely there.

Will you accept Jesus’ invitation to bypass the detours and stay on route with him? Jesus’s Palm Sunday parade doesn’t end with shallow celebration or the emotional satisfaction of one table flipping action. Jesus’ Palm Sunday parade leads through deep, soul and universe-shaking lament. It leads all the way to Calvary. Some things end there at the cross. Life doesn’t. But that’s a story for another day. Promise.https://foundryumc.org/

Lament as Prophecy - March 21st, 2021

Lament as Prophecy

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, March 21, 2021, Lent 5, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.

                  Text: Psalm 10

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off, allowing the proliferation of hate, hate speech, hate crimes, champions of hate spouting hate and violence, spewing bigotry and hatred through airwaves that flow into living rooms, limousines and dive bars, the hateful rhetoric seeping into minds that move bodies to do more violence? 

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off, allowing the proliferation of legislation and legislators that do harm, that redline and manipulate, that pander to profit margins and power brokers, that ignore what makes for peace and instead rally around the worship of weapons, that make it possible to buy a gun and use it for murder that same day, but impossible to register and vote on the same day?

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off, allowing your beloved, vulnerable children to be objectified, terrorized, marginalized, demonized, stalked, targeted, assaulted, and killed? 

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—…

Their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
    under their tongues are mischief and iniquity.
They sit in ambush in the villages;
    in hiding places they murder the innocent.

Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
    they lurk in secret like a lion in its covert;
they lurk that they may seize the poor;
    they seize the poor and drag them off in their net. (Ps 10: 1-2a, 7-9)

Our human capacity for oppression and violence knows no boundaries; it exists in multiple forms and falls upon persons of every kind and color. Each country, culture, or community will have its own flavor or nuance of oppression based on all sorts of factors—from Myanmar to Israel to Zimbabwe to the U.S.—from kitchen table to board room table. But some common threads, clearly identified in our scriptures, appear wherever humans are found: those upon whom violence falls are consistently the vulnerable, those on the margins of mainstream, white-bread, fit-in-a-box society, the poor, the outsider, the person who looks, sounds, or acts outside of any culturally, socially constructed “norm.” Oh—and also women and children. Basic rule of thumb for oppression: if the person can be used, abused, or taken advantage of, they’re fair game.

 

Our own country and culture continues to be exposed for the tapestry of human cruelty, neglect, and injustice that mark both our history and our present moment. This past week we’ve been reminded, through deadly attack, of the anti-Asian bigotry that is part of that tapestry. The ongoing push in so many states across the country for legislation that suppresses voter access is part of that tapestry. The litany of strands that make up the blanket of injustices covering our land could stretch from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam. 

Injustice is not all of who we are, but it is part of who we are. Denial of this doesn’t make anything better. It makes things worse. And so prophets through the ages cry out in lament, naming the pain and injustice in their context in order to wake people up. And we need prophets because from age to age those crying out from the margins or gasping for breath under the boot of the oppressor are ignored, devalued, or dismissed as the noises of ingrates, traitors, whiners, weaklings, slackers, or criminals.

We know how easy it is to ignore or make up excuses to dismiss injustice when we’re not directly taking the blows. And the whole system in which we live is designed to help us do just that. Walter Brueggemann’s scripture-based definition of empire describes our context in the U.S.: “rule by a few, economic exploitation, and religious legitimation.” This reality leads to a “numbed consciousness of denial.” Even if we don’t mean to, everything around us trains us to ignore the cries of the oppressed and focus only on our own, daily rounds. Brueggemann says, “Imperial economics is designed to keep people satiated so that they do not notice. Its politics is intended to block out the cries of the denied ones. Its religion is to be an opiate so that no one discerns misery alive in the heart of God.” In other words, the imperial reality distracts, rationalizes, and drugs the populace so that the awareness of suffering and human pain won’t get in the way of business as usual and a healthy bottom line for those in the top 1%. //

We have explored lament as naming our own pain, suffering, and guilt. Today, Psalm 10 provides an example of a lament that names the pain of injustice against the poor and vulnerable. The complaint and charge is hurled against God, “Why do you stand far off when wickedness, deceit, oppression, and iniquity run roughshod over your children?” In verse 11, the Psalmist says of the wicked, “They think in their heart, “God has forgotten, / he has hidden his face, he will never see it.” Then, as in other lament prayers, there is a turn. In verse 14 we hear: 

But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief,
    that you may take it into your hands;
the helpless commit themselves to you;
    you have been the helper of the orphan.

The prophetic voice cries out in lament not only to name the pain and wake people up, but also to shake loose memory of God’s liberating, new-life giving presence and power. Again, Brueggemann writes, “Newness comes precisely from expressed pain. Suffering made audible and visible produces hope, articulated grief is the gate of newness, and the history of Jesus is the history of entering into the pain and giving it voice.”

Prophet Howard Thurman calls out the perversion of Christianity by the powerful and dominant who make it an “instrument of oppression.” Thurman clarifies “that Christianity as it was born in the mind of the Jewish teacher and thinker [Jesus] appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed…Wherever [Jesus’] spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”

Prophetic lament is a way people of faith follow Jesus, enter into pain, and cry out against the injustice in our lives, communities, church, nation, and world. We lament not because we are seeking attention, or because we enjoy complaining, or because we seek anyone’s destruction—but rather because members of our human family are hurting and, instead of allowing ourselves and others to remain in a “numbed consciousness of denial,” we are determined to wake up and do something about it. Perhaps in our lament we’ll begin to hear God asking us, “Why do you stand so far off?” 

We lament not to stay in sorrow or bitterness, but to claim the good news of Jesus, to hold fast to hope, to remember the liberating power of God’s steadfast love, to participate in the new thing that God is always doing, to live our lives committed to a future where no more backs are against the wall. 

Let us pray:

Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us, we pray. Free us for joyful obedience, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

https://foundryumc.org/

Lament as Release - March 14th, 2021

Lament as Release

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, March 14, 2021, Lent 4, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.

                  Text: Psalm 22

Many things look different today than they did this time last year. One of those things is our basement. In the midst of a major overhaul and repurposing of the space, I’ve learned more about BTUs and the need for outside air than I ever cared to know. Evidently, for someone to safely sleep down there, we need to install an air vent valve. If this isn’t cared for, toxic fumes can build up and do damage to human bodies!

This came to mind as I thought about the spiritual practice of lament as “release.” It’s common these days to hear someone say, “I just need to vent!” There are times when we need to get energy or feelings or frustrations out so they don’t do damage to our bodies and spirits! A good “vent” session is appropriately shared with someone trustworthy who understands you need to get something out of your system. And venting is not an edited essay, but rather flows unfiltered right from the place of pain. 

Psalm 22 and all Psalms of lament are like that; sharing with God what we need to get out of our system—when something is not right, when there is pain, grief, injustice, fear, persecution. And, as we’ve been learning, the practice of lament invites us to speak freely to God, literally to liberate ourselves from any pretending. 

When we speak freely with God, not controlling everything in an attempt to feel, sound, or appear “together,” then our words are no longer held hostage and can begin to name things that shift our trajectory. Perhaps you have experienced something like this; when you let go of your politeness with God and allow your words to flow unhindered, sometimes new insight or forgotten wisdom emerges and you catch at least a glimpse of hope or new life.

Some of you may remember a couple of weeks ago when we discovered in Jeremiah 20 one verse of “praise chorus” (verse 13) sandwiched between two absolutely brutal laments of complaint. I suggested that in giving voice to our pain without trying to clean it up, our speech might turn from complaint to praise. And biblical scholars say this is not at all unusual. The lament prayers in scripture consistently make such a turn. Most Psalms of lament include not only complaint and pleas for help but also words of trust and praise. 

Psalm 22 may be one of the best-known Psalms of lament, because it’s quoted by Jesus from the cross (Mt 27:46, Mk 15:34): “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The opening complaint in the Psalm is followed in verses 3-5 with words of trust. This pattern of complaint then trust repeats in verses 6-10. In verse 11 we receive a petition for help: “Do not be far from me.” Then back into complaint (verses 12-18) followed by another petition “But you, O Lord, do not be far away!...Deliver my soul…my life…Save me!” (19-21a)

Then there is a final turn in the prayer. Beginning in verse 21b, the psalmist breaks into a song of praise that carries the prayer to its ending. Notice that the praise is not because all things have been made well. Most of the language is future oriented—things that “will” happen. And a key word is “remember.” People will remember God’s mighty acts of salvation and “future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.” (Ps 22:30b-31)

Memory and hope are intertwined here. Some of you have heard me say before, “in the present we can hope for the future because we know what God has done in the past.” This memory of God’s activity liberates us in the present moment. It keeps us from being bound by despair, from becoming stuck in pain and resentment. 

But sometimes we may need to rattle our cage in order to shake loose memory that’s been crusted over with pain, humiliation, or rage. The Psalms of lament show us how. They illustrate that to get free requires the release of what we think we have to keep bottled up. Hiding or holding on to our pain can lead to deep resentment and bitterness in our hearts and spirits. And resentment and bitterness are poison for relationships, for joy, for any hope of newness. There are two options: some kind of release that is intentional and healthy or a blow-up that causes lasting damage.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sharing with my friend Randy some of the grief I’ve been feeling—the stacked-up griefs of the past number of years, this last year of pandemics, and the most recent grief over the death of my friend and colleague, Junius. Randy shared with me the story of a woman he came to know when she was his child’s pre-K Montessori teacher. As with most practitioners of the Montessori approach, she is a peaceful presence, careful with her words, patient, and beloved by the little ones she teaches.

One day Randy went to visit her at her home. She was going through a painful divorce and was caring for her two children. At one point he went into the backyard and saw a large stack of assorted, brightly colored plates. When he asked one of the kids about them, he was told, “Oh, those are my mom’s plates.” “What are they for?” “Look…” And there, where the fence formed the corner of the back yard, was a pile of shattered shards of brightly colored plates. Randy asked his friend later, “What’s up with the plates?” She said, “Whenever I need to let something go, I come out here, close the door, and throw plates.” She then demonstrated; she really hurled them…really let it rip. Randy said her countenance changed, the act allowed her to access her fire, her pain, her anger and to release it. When he probed further, he learned that she had learned to do this from her mother back in Puerto Rico where she had been raised. 

What beauty and power there is in this practice. This woman knows how to identify when her energy is getting toxic and needs some outside air, how to direct and release her difficult and painful emotions in a visceral way that isn’t aimed at others. “Sometimes,” Randy told me, “she will gather shards from the pile and create mosaic art for her yard, making something beautiful from the broken pieces.”

For most of my life I struggled with the thought of Jesus being “forsaken” on the cross. In the moment he cried out, quoting Psalm 22, he was indeed experiencing the fullness of human suffering—physical, relational, vocational; he gave voice to that deep pain through lament. But some years ago, I remembered that Jesus knew all the words to the Psalms…he knew that verse 1 isn’t the whole prayer. He knew the movement from despair to hope in Psalm 22. Jesus models for us the importance of crying out to God in our suffering, of naming what is real without trying to pretend the wounds of pain and injustice haven’t landed on our bodies and in our spirits. Jesus, on the brink of death, hurls his voice against the heavens like brightly colored plates hurled against a fence, releasing his words even as he releases his spirit, all the while clinging to the promise that God will yet make of his broken body something beautiful and new.

This is the promise from God for all our brokenness and pain. Lament is one way to shake loose that promise in our memory. And so we are invited to pray with Jesus:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
    and by night, but find no rest.

Yet you are holy,
    …In you our ancestors trusted;
    they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved…

All the ends of the earth shall remember
    and turn to the Lord;…

  …and I shall live for him. 

(Ps 22:1-5, 29)

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Lament as Confession - March 7th, 2021

Lament as Confession

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, March 7, 2021, Lent 3, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.

              Text: Psalm 51:1-17

Lament is what we do when bad things happen to us or those we love. We’ve been focused on that kind of lament the past couple of weeks. But what about when we do bad things to ourselves or to others? This also inspires lament, when guilt at the damage we’ve done causes us to experience anguish, that terrible weight of realization that you can’t undo the thing, that it’s just out there in the world. It might be public. It might be just between you and the person you’ve hurt. It might be secret. But in any case, it’s happened and it’s in you. What will you do with it? As with any suffering, difficult emotions, or reality, we are invited to bring it to God in prayer.

The so-called “penitential psalms” of lament are models. Today we received Psalm 51, the Psalm traditionally included in the Ash Wednesday liturgy. Every year these lines land in my being with a thud:

…I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
    and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
    and blameless when you pass judgment.
Indeed, I was born guilty,
    a sinner when my mother conceived me. (Ps 51:3-5)

Another, perhaps less familiar prayer, Psalm 38, includes these lines:
For my iniquities have gone over my head;
    they weigh like a burden too heavy for me.

My wounds grow foul and fester
    because of my foolishness;
I am utterly bowed down and prostrate;
    all day long I go around mourning.
I am utterly spent and crushed;
    I groan because of the tumult of my heart. (Ps 38:4-5,8)

These lament prayers in scripture give us words that viscerally describe the experience of suffering both the guilt and consequences of our own iniquity, sin, and “foolishness.” In that often railed against verse, Psalm 51:5—the verse that makes it sound like babies are horrible sinners—what we receive are words of pain and grief at the unavoidable participation in sin even from our earliest moments of life; because none of us, even as children, are free from the capacity for self-centeredness and ignorance and doing harm. 

There is a difference between such awareness of human sin, true remorse, and confession and words spoken or actions taken in an attempt to evade responsibility or do damage control. For some, what really makes them upset is not that they’ve hurt someone, but getting caught in their wrongdoing. They may do a press conference or release to issue a public apology to try to cover their backsides. But at the end of Psalm 51 it says:

For you (God) have no delight in sacrifice;
    if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (51:16-17)

Going public with your transgression will be deeply painful, but notice here that the public act of making a sacrifice is nothing more than hypocrisy unless that public act is attended by a true acknowledgement of the harm done and a heart broken by the pain of it. 

At this point, some of you may be tempted to check out of this conversation, turned off by all this sin and guilt stuff. So let me acknowledge that, for ages, there has been an unhealthy and unbalanced emphasis on sin and judgment in Christian preaching and teaching. Whether intended or not, the message received by thousands upon thousands of the faithful is that we are born bad and that God is mostly interested in judging us, giving us grades based on performance, and deciding who’s “in” and who’s “out” of heaven. As a result of this long imbalance, lament as confession will likely feel much more familiar and “traditional” than the rage and searing accusations against God we’ve encountered from Jeremiah the past couple of weeks. 

Wanting to balance “original sin” with “original goodness” (Gen. 1:31) and out of an impulse to bring healing to battered spirits schooled in fire and brimstone theology, many protestant churches stopped praying prayers of confession in public worship and stopped emphasizing human sin in preaching. As with most pendulum swings, there is danger of throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. For grace to mean anything, we have to acknowledge why it matters. In short, it matters because, as the apostle Paul says clearly, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) We do things that are destructive and harmful to others, to the planet, to ourselves. We do these things personally and systemically, by choice and by being part of a culture infused with sinful systems. Sin is what separates us from God and from others. It takes the form of all kinds of actions that cause broken places, fractures, distance, disintegration, separation. Sin is a real thing. And, if we have caring hearts (as I believe the vast majority of people do), it feels awful to know we’ve done harm.

The purpose of penitential prayers of lament is not to cause suffering or to rub in that we are separated from God or to draw us into a place of self-loathing. Rather, the confessional laments give us space to be with God in the suffering we feel because of our sin, to acknowledge how our actions have created separation, and to be honest about the ways we beat ourselves up for our transgression. In other words, as with all lament, we are encouraged to turn toward God and to be honest. Psalm 51:6 says, “You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.” As anyone in recovery will tell you, the first step is admitting there is a problem—to yourself and to your God. The first step is to stop trying to keep secrets from God, to tell the truth; to name the harm you’ve done, name the pain you’re feeling, know you can’t undo it, and acknowledge you need help. 

In Psalm 32 we receive the invitation clearly: 

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
    and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
    and you forgave the guilt of my sin. 

Therefore let all who are faithful
    offer prayer to you;

And in our Psalm today, Psalm 51, the whole prayer pleads with God for mercy and forgiveness, for cleansing, restoration, and deliverance. 

Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
    blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
    and cleanse me from my sin.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and put a new and right spirit within me. (51:1-2,10)

Lament as confession invites us to trust that God loves us even when we have messed up and done harm. That doesn’t mean God will magically remove consequences of our actions or that we will magically be relieved of responsibility or pain. But it does mean that our failure and foolishness and cruel mistakes are not the full measure of who we are. It does mean that we are assured of meaningful life, new life, a fresh start as a beloved child of God. No matter what. God doesn’t cancel us. God will walk with you through humiliation, retaliation, loss, illness, and any other consequence of your sinful action. And God will give you freedom and power to do better in the future.

Once you experience the way God is present to you and remains with you in the destruction and disorientation wrought by your sin, things like steadfast love, grace, and mercy are no longer just pleasant words. Those gifts from God are finally understood as the only firm foundation to stand on, they are liberation from despair and fear, they are hope and life. 

Brilliant lawyer, author of Just Mercy, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson, says this: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” 

Hear that: You are more than the worst thing you’ve ever done. 

In my heart I know it’s true. But, wow, it’s hard to really believe. 

Life with my dog Harvey teaches me. Harvey is an 80 pound Clumber Spaniel. He is hilarious, adorable, and our angel. There was a time, however, when Harvey became obsessed with the cat’s food and would go to any length to get the cat’s dish once he realized he could reach it. He could get very mean about the cat food. It came to pass that, before I’d discovered a solution to the cat bowl access problem, Anthony and I took a trip and had a sitter stay with Harvey, Daisy, and AnnieRose. While we were gone, the sitter startled Harvey when he had gotten ahold of a cat food dish and he reacted from his primal protective-of-food space and bit her hand, causing real damage—like needed surgery damage. It has only ever happened that one time in all his 10 years, but my angel of a dog did real violence to one reaching out in care. 

That moment was awful and did real damage, lasting damage. That is part of what’s in Harvey, part of Harvey’s capacity in certain scenarios. But that is far from all of Harvey’s being. He is more than this worst thing he has done.

I can see that in him. Our spiritual practice of lament as confession is a way to try to see that in ourselves. 

The wonder of this practice is that you will be humbled, but not in a way that makes you feel like less, but in a way that reminds you just how much you matter, just how much you are loved, just how much God believes in your capacity for goodness. Lament as confession doesn’t leave you in sackcloth and ashes, it frees you to rise from the ashes with a clean heart and a new and right spirit, ready to try again in the power of God’s grace. 

 

Silent Prayer of Confession…

Jesus, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us.

Jesus, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us.

Jesus, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Grant us peace.

https://foundryumc.org/

 

Lament as Trust - February 28th, 2021

Lament as Trust

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, February 28, 2021, Lent 2, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.

            Text: Jeremiah 20:7-18

If you were to flip through the pages of the Bible I was given by my church in the 3rd grade, you’d see that I spent some time as a child, marking passages I thought were especially important. Some I remember in particular are from Proverbs, and the topic is anger and how important it is to speak “pleasant words” if you speak at all. For example, Proverbs 29:11 says, “A fool gives full vent to anger, but the wise quietly holds it back.” 

I was determined to try to be patient and wise and to speak pleasant words, kind words, gentle words. I was what? 8 or 9 or 10 years old? Since those early days of my life with God, I’ve come to understand that holding back quietly isn’t always the way of wisdom. There “is a time to keep silence and a time to speak,” (Ecclesiastes 3:7) a time for anger and for peace. Last week, we began to explore the spiritual practice of lament and were reminded that we are not limited to only “pleasant words” when we speak to God. We are free and, in fact, encouraged to bring it all—and that includes our most raw expressions of pain, rage, and grief. The encouragement is simply to be honest. Though it isn’t always simple or easy to do that.

Just this past week, I spent time with a beloved friend who is experiencing a time of deep suffering. Significant losses and challenges in his life have left him feeling alone and deeply depressed. Through his tears, he talked about how he wears masks every day, never letting others see what he’s feeling. He has always been the one to take care of things, to manage the details of life for himself and his loved ones, to be strong and confident. He feels like a failure right now. This is an all-too-common experience for men in particular, though of course “fake it ‘til you make it” is a sometimes dangerous strategy employed by persons of any gender identity. Thank God, my friend found it within himself to trust me enough to reach out and say he needed a hand. But here’s the thing: if no one teaches you or gives you resources to ask for help—or to tell you it is allowed!—then tragedies of all kinds can and do occur. Many people literally do not have the language to give voice to their pain or know how to ask for help. 

This is one reason it is such a gift that the prayer and practice of lament is part of our faith tradition. When our congregations utilize the language of lament in prayers, sing words of lament in Spirituals and other sacred music like we’re receiving today in worship, and create the kinds of brave spaces in which people feel free to be honest, we collectively learn the language of pain and can practice naming the pain and suffering in our lives and the pain we observe in the world around us. And we also learn that it is OK to bring it all to God.

Last week and today we have received words of lament from the prophet Jeremiah. In chapter 1 of the book, we are told that Jeremiah’s calling as a prophet was upon him “in the womb.” When Jeremiah becomes aware of this call, he protests that he’s too young for the task. And, in response, God promises to be with him, tells him not to be afraid, puts God’s words in Jeremiah’s mouth, and appoints him “over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow…” (Jer 1:10) Yeah, that always goes well… There’s a reason for the  saying “don’t shoot the messenger…” Jeremiah sets about speaking truth to power and calling the people out for their idolatry and breach of covenant with God. Persecution ensues.

One example is found just prior to our scripture passage for today where we are told that Pashhur, a priest in charge of the temple police whose job it was to keep order in the sacred space, had arrested Jeremiah, beaten him, and put him put him on display in stocks. (Jer 20:1-2) // Jeremiah has some feelings and some choice words for God.

In fact, the laments of Jeremiah include some of the most brutal charges against God in the entire Bible. The first of the two laments Shelley read for us, verses 7-12, the lament we heard echoed in the presentation from the Heritage Signature Chorale, accuses God using the metaphor of seduction or enticement and sexual violence—overpowering. When Jeremiah cries out about the “violence and destruction” done to him by God there is no one to hear or to help. Jeremiah’s “close friends” are characterized as plotting the same kind of violence against him that God has committed.

The second lament, found in verses 14-18 hearkens back to the words Jeremiah received at his calling. He curses his own existence, wishes he had never drawn breath, wishes both he and his calling had died in the womb.

Keep in mind that Jeremiah is not here spewing hate speech against a stranger, making these claims against a known enemy or a foreign threat. This isn’t Jeremiah namelessly, facelessly bullying someone through social media. This is Jeremiah crying out to the God who was with him in the womb, the God who’s been with Jeremiah all along, the God with whom he has a close, intimate relationship. And as much as some may have the impulse to remind Jeremiah of this, to try to talk him off the proverbial ledge, it is important to just let Jeremiah have these feelings, to let him use all his words in his moment of deepest anguish and to turn the sharp, biting power of prophetic speech back upon the God who had given him that power. We don’t need to protect God or God’s feelings. God can take care of herself. 

I am reminded of what a colleague said to me once after he witnessed a particularly anxiety-ridden and brutal event in which I had taken some direct hits in a very public way. He said, “Sometimes when my children say cruel things to me, I have to remember that they feel safe enough with me to process their feelings that way, trusting my love enough to hang in there with them.” It might have been one of the kindest things a colleague has ever said to me. It certainly came right when I needed it. And I think of God like the parent who takes so much and understands why the complaints and charges and laments are coming. God knows what a mess we’ve made of so many things in the world. God knows the injustice and suffering within the human family. God knows why we cry out. And God’s love is steadfast no matter what.

Even Jeremiah, in the midst of his most scathing diatribe against God, signals something that contradicts his attack. Did you notice how, like an unexpected green shoot appearing in the slightest crack in hard and cold pavement, a little praise chorus emerges between the laments? “Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord! For God has delivered the life of the needy from the hands of evildoers.” (20:13) Even in the midst of the deepest suffering and lament, after accusing God of the worst kind of abuse, Jeremiah praises God as deliverer. Here all that is managed is that one little verse, verse 13, that smallest thread connecting Jeremiah to something beyond the pain, to someone beyond the suffering. It is a sign that Jeremiah hasn’t been completely swallowed up by the abyss.

Sometimes we may think that lament is an inherent rejection of God or reveals lack of faith or trust in God’s goodness, mercy, justice, and love. But, consider: if with God we are willing to take off all our masks, to stop faking being “fine”…if we stop going it alone, cleaning ourselves up, and using only pleasant speech, and instead just open up and vent everything we are feeling, right, wrong, or completely over-the-top, that might just be a sign of the deepest faith and trust. And it may be that in giving voice to your pain, your own “verse 13” may emerge.

But, even so, in the moment—and perhaps for many moments to follow—there is disruption in relationship with God. “The prayer of lament is the language of the painful incongruity between lived experience and the promises of God.” As one author writes, “The lament prayer is…full of tension and paradox. On the one hand, it signals the breakdown of previous ideas about God that have foundered on the harsh facts of experience, with the result that God seems utterly hidden and frightening. On the other hand, it expresses a trust in the goodness of God so profound that is continues to cry out for God in the agony of God’s apparent absence and silence and looks for redemption in the midst of God’s terrible hiddenness. Paul Ricoeur rightly speaks of ‘the enigma of a lament that remains…caught up with an invocation.’”

Sometimes one verse of invocation is all we can manage in the flow of curses and complaints to God. Today the invitation is to trust that whatever you can manage is enough. God knows. God understands. God can take it. Try to trust that, whether you can speak or feel it, there is a “verse 13” truth, a lifeline, a love, that will never, ever let you go, there is a God who will deliver and bring you through.

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