God Who Weeps
God is good (all the time). All the time (God is good). But it doesn't always feel like that, does it? I want to read the first scripture again, the one we heard earlier from the prophet Jeremiah so that we can hear it with fresh ears and dig into that one to wrestle this morning. Here it is:
My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick. Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people from far and wide in the land: "Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not in her?" ("Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?") "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken, I mourn, and horror has seized me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? O that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
This is God’s word for God’s people. Thanks be to God.
Oftentimes in our prayer and sacred music traditions, we love to focus on praise. Which makes sense. In our lives, we love to focus on the good things, on the happy times, on our joys. On our celebrations. Last night I went and had a great time at a grape harvesting party in Troy. And it was a time of joy, of celebration, of making jelly and eating good food and being with fun people and having a good time. We love to capture those moments to feel those over and over and over again. And to thank God for them when we think of it. We also love to lift up the good things about God. Even when we acknowledge the brokenness of our own mortality. When we acknowledge the brokenness of the world around us. Still we sing of the goodness of God. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But there are entire musical traditions in the church, in particular what’s known as contemporary Christian music, that fixate entirely on this one element of prayer and sacred music at the expense of all else.
There's a tendency towards toxic positivity. This idea that we always need to focus on the good things and that we can sort of manifest goodness by only focusing on the good things. Seldom do we voice our frustrations and really talk about the things that we find challenging. Sure, in our silent prayers and our prayer concerns that we lift up, oftentimes, yes, we do talk about suffering, about sickness, about loss. But so many of our songs, so many of our prayers are just us talking about how wonderful God is. How wonderful we want to present our lives. And it’s not simply an issue with today’s prayer habits or contemporary music. My favorite hymn has long been oh for a thousand tongues to sing. That's a praise hymn. Oh four a thousand tongues to sing. My great redeemer's praise. The glories of my God and king. The triumphs of his grace. That's a praise hymn, more than anything. And yes it does talk about the brokenness of the world. The brokenness of our humanity. But even in the midst of that it reverts back to the goodness. The glory of God in the midst of it all.
But in this passage from Jeremiah, we're reminded that there are multiple kinds of prayers. There are multiple ways that our ancestors of faith have talked about God, have talked with God throughout the generations. I’ve already spoken about prayer as a form of protest, as demands that we make of God as God calls us to be advocates for one another in the world. But we're reminded in this passage and throughout the Psalms, and in the Book of Lamentations, that when we talk to and about God, we don't just praise. We don’t just make concrete demands. Sometimes we just complain. Sometimes we just need to express our sorrow, our frustration, our hurting—and God is the one we trust will listen. There's a genre of Psalms called plaint psalms, which are about voicing our anger or dissatisfaction and lifting up the things that we might blame God for. In his dying moments, some of Jesus' last words are a quotation from the book of Psalms. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Something else I love about this passage from Jeremiah though is that there's some ambiguity about who exactly is speaking here. The section title in the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, is “The prophet mourns for the people,” but it’s not always clear with the prophets when they’re sharing their own words or messages from the divine. Are these the words of the prophet Jeremiah or are these the words of God? Is it Jeremiah whose heart is sick, whose joy is gone? Is it Jeremiah who feels the pain and the despair of the people around him? Or is it God? Is this the word of God whose heart breaks, whose body breaks, when ours do?
Last week, my sermon more than anything else was about empathy. It was about feeling the pain of others and allowing our hearts to be broken when we see suffering. It was about feeling the pain of another and being moved by it. But empathy doesn't necessarily mean action. You know sometimes when people come to us and bring their anxieties, their brokenness, their complaints they're not necessarily looking for a solution. Sometimes what's best is to simply sit with another, to offer presence, to be a tangible witness. I think of the book of Job—which I’ve designed a pretty cool study around, if you’d all be interested in that sometime. Job who experienced immense suffering, who had his entire life—his livestock, his family, his wealth—stripped away from him in an excruciating fashion. And when his friends came to offer their assistance, before they ruined everything by offering their two cents, before they voiced their opinions about why this might have happened and how Job might make it right with God. They find the weeping Job lying in the dust and they sit with him in silence.
Our God is a God of solidarity. A God of radical empathy. A God who not only calls us to be moved by the suffering of others, to have our hearts broken, but who themselves is moved by the suffering of others, who has their own heart broken. This idea has been echoed throughout the ages. The black theologian James Cone identifies Jesus with those who are lynched throughout America, even today. This idea that God suffers, whether through Christ or as communicated through the prophets. These words from Jeremiah, and indeed the climax of the gospel narrative, point to our God as one who suffers with us. Who hears our cries not only of joy and of praise and of pleasure. But our cries of despair, of loss, of loneliness. Who moves us to sit with one another in our loss, in our pain, in our discomfort if that's what we need. Who moves us also to action when action is needed. Our God weeps with us. Feels our pain. Bleeds and dies with us.
These are the places where God makes Godself known to us in the times when we wish God would do something to make it all better. And so this is how we are to love. Feeling the pain of our neighbors as if we were one body, as if there were not two. Trusting that in the times when we feel we have run out of praises and don’t want to force any more from our lips, God still hears us and remains present with us. And God responds, lamenting, praying for us, that we might be moved as well. May we be God’s presence, God’s breaking heart, God’s radical solidarity for one another. May this be the Kingdom in our midst. May it be so. Amen.