Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Sing a New Song - Easter Sunday April 4th, 2021

Sing a New Song

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

                Text: Mark 16:1-8

Early yesterday morning, as I climbed the stair to my writing chair, the light of a waning moon shining brightly, a single, solitary bird’s voice sang: sing it out, sing it out, sing it out, will you? The melody is familiar, though one I’ve missed. It hibernates, or migrates—I don’t know birdsongs well enough to know which bird was belting out her bright song in the dark—but it appears this time of year, a herald of spring in its fullness, announcing a new moment, a passage from one season to another.

This image reflects my experience through this year of pandemic, singing my song in a defiant, determined commitment to hope in a new moment, new life—all the while, surrounded by the night and shadows, within and without. It may come as a surprise to some, but my cynicism can be as sharp as any. I call my cynicism Shirley (not referencing anyone except the play on words: as in, “surely, you don’t believe that.”) And with each new reflection gone viral on the interwebs early in the pandemic about how we were going to come out of this thing renewed, changed, chastened, wiser and better, I found myself in a near-constant dialogue with Shirley. She really is a broken record of “don’t get your hopes up” ditties. On days when I’m caught between my hope-filled, prophetic self and my Shirley self, I simply flip on autopilot, put up buffers and compartmentalization systems for grief, uncertainty, and trauma, and try to just get through this thing unscathed and doing as little damage as possible.

With each new challenge, each new loss, assault, tragic headline, new number of cases, deaths, shootings, each new instance of injustice over the past year…with each new revelation of how truly broken things are in our lives and relationships and churches and institutions and nations and world, whether I’m in “God’s up to something good,” “we’re doomed,” or “put your head down and get through it” mode I still root about trying to discover what Spirit wants to share. It’s kind of a habit. This past year, a consistent theme is summed up in John Wesley’s last words: “Best of all is, God is with us.”

Some may roll their eyes at so simple a statement, because, after all, what difference does it make for God to be with us when things continue to be so jacked up? Shirley asks that question on the regular, joining the chorus of the Israelites in the desert who complained saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” (Numbers 21:5) Shirley sings alto in the chorus of the disciples who woke Jesus from his sleep on the boat in the storm yelling, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mk 4:38) And she would have wondered the same thing as the Marys and Salome that early morning in the cemetery—“Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” (we’re probably on our own!)

Of course, in each of those jacked up moments of wilderness, storm, and the heaviness of death, God was there, leading out of slavery, providing manna and wellspring waters from a rock, soothing the storm with a word, and rolling the stone away so that life might emerge. That’s the story we tell, anyway. Are you buying it? 

Casey Gerald, in his beautiful, painful, artful memoir, There Will Be No Miracles Here (a book I read at some unidentifiable moment in the haze of the COVID pandemic) shares this:

It’s hard enough to get used to a crappy life. But once you do, you see that even crap can be cozy and the coziness becomes important to you. And even the slightest change—in the name of progress or healing or uplift—feels like a threat to your existence, so you ignore it as long as you can…The story has to change, you see, and that’s not only a great deal of work to undertake, but also a real risk, as the new story might not be as marvelous as the old sad one. But the greatest risk [is] hope.” 

It’s not just whether we will believe the stories of God in scripture, but whether we will believe God is anywhere at all. Gerald confesses that his journey led him not to hopelessness, but to “anti-hope.” He writes:

This anti-hope seems to be in vogue, mind you, especially amongst those who consider themselves too brilliant or too secular to believe in silly things like unicorns and hope and God. They say that anti-hope is the natural order of things, that the most obvious stance for the man and woman of reason is the stance of Cool Customer, leaning against the wall of the world while the moral arc of the universe bends down to crush them, as it must.

In any moment of life, we have choices to make about how we will receive and be in the moment, what we will believe about the moment. The oppressive powers of the world want us to believe that every moment is dog-eat-dog, want us to think that hope is for the weak, that crushing others or being crushed by life is inevitable. That the old story is all there is. That people will never learn and that we ourselves are forever stuck. These are the powers of death and control and fear. Choosing to acquiesce will have predictable consequences.

The alternative is to choose even the tiniest bit of openness to the assertion of “God with us,” openness to Spirit’s movement deep down in all things, through all things, under and within our own skin—even when all things appear despairingly broken. 

You may find it ironic that I would focus on “God with us” when, in the Easter story from Mark we received today, Jesus is nowhere to be found. No appearance, no comforting word from the risen Christ. And even the commissioning of the women by the mystery man in white doesn’t lead to the first announcement of Jesus’ resurrection. There is only alarm, terror, amazement, and fear.

Most scholars agree that this is where the original text of Mark ended—fleeing in fear without any assurance that the message given the women was true. And, as much as I love getting to make an Easter quip about women being the first preachers, I also really appreciate this version of the story that leaves all of us standing together at the edge of life and death and new life with nothing but a promise of an unseen Christ beckoning us to follow into uncertainty, daring us to carry on without easy and quick comfort, calling us to grapple with our own fear of something that is truly new and unexpected, encouraging us to come to terms with whether or not we will believe that something so wonderful as resurrection is possible, and whether we will welcome it when it happens.

Casey Gerald tells this story:

[There’s] a village that I heard of not too long ago. The village, somewhere in France, sometime in the seventeenth century, became the site of frequent miracles, according to the peasants there, who were so struck by symptoms of the supernatural that they put down their plows. This, of course, [ticked] off the local officials. They tried to reason with the peasants, to quell the mass hysteria, to no avail. At last, the officials sought an intervention from the highest power in the land, who sent them back with a sign. An actual sign, which was erected in the village square for all to see. It read:

THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE

BY ORDER OF THE KING

Isn’t this the way things go since forever? The proverbial “kings” of the world pass orders and laws, write books and reviews, create budgets, make rulings, and build structures, all the while thinking that they have the power and authority to control the people of God, the movement of God, the freedom of God: “NO MIRACLES HERE!” And, more often than most of us care to admit, they get away with it. Because, after all, human desire, overwhelmingly, is to leave things exactly the way they are. 

We can all talk a big game about hope and new life, but as soon as something really new, a bona fide change gets underway, people race out to buy their yard signs in support of the king: “No miracles here!” The body isn’t where it’s supposed to be! Who voted on movement of the body? Who said that the mystery man could be in the empty tomb? Did Jesus sign off on that before he died? Who ordered a resurrection anyway? There’s no protocol for this and we don’t know what to do. This new situation is not the way we do things around here! So let’s bring the dead body back stat and restore things to the way they’re supposed to be.

Oh, it is tempting to want to stay in the old, familiar ways… We love a new thing as long as it has a perceivable, measurable, reasonable explanation and doesn’t make us uncomfortable. We long for a new life as long as no sacrifice is required of us. We advocate for justice as long as it doesn’t mean that we have to foot the bill. Familiar death is so often more preferable to us than disruptive, costly newness.

And yet that’s not all that is within and among us. If it was, Amanda Gorman’s words wouldn’t have emanated from the podium with such soul-stirring electricity:

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true,
that even as we grieved, we grew,
that even as we hurt, we hoped,
that even as we tired, we tried,
that we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat,
but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time,
then victory won’t lie in the blade.
But in all the bridges we’ve made…

In truth, these words are simply a powerful, of-the-now remix of the old vision, the dream of Rev. Dr. King assassinated this day 53 years ago, the dream of Micah and Isaiah, the dream of Mary and her son Jesus, our resurrected Lord. 

Will we continue to defer the dream? My inner Shirley is only so sharp and persistent because she’s trying to help me keep from being hurt and disappointed, she knows that some people in the world have no interest in new things, they want to keep the old, broken, hurtful, hateful things—want to keep ALL the fig trees and vines for themselves and pay less than living wages for others to tend them. Shirley also knows the small and wishful thinking that I sometimes try to pass off as faith and hope to myself.

But as much as I may falter and as much as the powers that be may try, no one gets to forbid miracles, no one gets to control new life, no one gets to kill the dream, no one gets to cancel Easter—not with a sign, not with a virus, not with a cynical eye-roll or self-satisfied smirk or fearful, hateful policy or a noose or a gun or a cross. Today we praise God because Jesus has been set free, let loose, is out in the world, risen, shiny, new—bearing the scars and having sung the laments of this life—but alive and with us—all day long and the whole night through. And where Christ is, miracles happen. Anything is possible…We will get through this. Things can be different and better. We can be different and better. The dream doesn’t have to be deferred forever.

And we stand together at the edge of life, death, and new life and have to choose. Gerald says, “I have a radio. It picks up only two stations: Life and Death. I turn the death off, now that I know the sound.”

What station will you play? What song will you sing even when it is still night and difficult to see? Why not sing together the new song already, eternally begun, the dream of poets and prophets from the beginning, recently sung in Amanda’s key? 

…our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid,
the new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Sing it out, sing it out, sing it out! Will you? Alleluia!

https://foundryumc.org/

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.

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