THE FULLNESS OF GOD’S HEART
II Samuel 1:17-27
Psalm 130
Mark 5:21-43
Rev. Gary Paterson
July 15, 2012
Had a great wedding
here, yesterday... eight bridesmaids, and seven groomsmen along with the
starring couple; a lot of happy energy at the front of the church. And to top it all off -- two Junior
Bridesmaids, sisters, almost bursting with pride and excitement! So, after everybody except the bride had
gathered at the front, the Junior Bridesmaids launched forth, carrying a
banner, “Here comes the bride!” Then, at
the end of the service, everybody marched down the aisle, pair by pair, with
the last groomsman smiling immensely as he escorted two bridesmaids down the
aisle; followed by those Junior Bridesmaids again, bringing up the rear; only
now they had reversed their banner, so that it read, “They lived happily ever
after.” And we all cheered.
Knowing it wasn’t
true, of course, although the day had a fairytale feel to it; this was a day
for romance and best wishes, not a reality check. But we all knew that nobody lives happily
ever after; there are ups and downs, struggles and hard times. That’s what life is all about; it’s joyous…
and it isn’t easy. Sometimes things end badly, with tears and sadness. That’s
what it means to be human.
Yesterday
afternoon… a birthday party for my grandson Ben, turning three! Who would have thought it! So, Ben opened his first present, a train
engine called Belle; he was so thrilled that he wasn’t interested in opening
anything else, oblivious to everything except Belle, the perfect present. Meanwhile, his five month old sister, Amy,
had fallen asleep on my chest; our hearts were beating together. A circle of family – and I wanted to yell
out, “And they lived happily ever after!”
Though I knew that the circle included two widows, one eighty, the other
thirty; and that most of the adults had buried their parents; and that Ben and
Amy would have their inevitable struggles in life… that’s what it means to be
human.
Now, one of the
many things I like about Scripture is its honesty. There is a willingness in the Biblical stories
to talk about what’s really happening in the world, what’s truly important in
human life. And in those stories I find
clues about how to live with the human condition; how to live into reality. For instance, today’s first reading… there’s
David, crying out his grief in the face of national disaster, in the aftermath
of war, young men slaughtered upon the hills.
And among the dead, David’s best friend Jonathan; heart ache and heart
break. “Jonathan lies slain upon the
high places. I am distressed for you, my
brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was
wonderful, passing the love of women.” We
know what’s he’s feeling – “We are the dead, short days ago we lived, felt
dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved and now we lie… in Flanders Fields,
on the hillsides of Mt. Gilboa in ancient Israel, in the cities of present day
Syria.
What we recognize
is David’s pain – he doesn’t hold back.
Not some stiff upper western lip, that keeps it all down; no, for David it’s
full on lamentation. And maybe that’s
the clue -- a first step in living into our human condition is to name our
reality, to honestly speak about what’s happening… and then, to weep. Perhaps
sometimes we think that God can’t handle our tears, that if we were truly
faithful, we would be able to live by such platitudes as “It’s God’s will,” or
“He’s in a better place.” None of this
pap for David; he laments; and cries. It’s like singing the blues --when the
bad times come, sometimes the only thing we can do is sing about them. Tears are not an unfaithful response. One of my favourite theologians, Frederick Buechner,
defined grace as “the taste of fresh raspberries and cream; a good night’s
sleep;” and finished by saying that “most tears are grace.” Perhaps David already knew that “most tears
are grace” – maybe that’s something we
need to hold on to.
The same thing is happening in today’s second reading,
in Psalm 130 -- another lamentation --
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice! Let your
ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!” No specifics about what’s actually happening,
but anyone of us could create several scenarios; times when weeping and crying
out to God is all that we can do. But
this psalm goes a little farther, for the poet – and maybe it’s David himself,
who knows – is not just articulating his sorrow, but is actively expressing his
faith in God: “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my
soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning, more than
those who watch for the morning.” So… waiting…
maybe that’s another clue. We wait, hoping that our cry will be heard; that
circumstances will change; that God will respond. The
Hebrew is interesting, because the words for “wait” and “hope” are so
intertwined as to appear as synonyms.
So… we lament; and we wait; and we hope.
Waiting… we humans do a lot of that.
Of course, (as the songwriter Jim Strathdee says)… “What you do while
you wait depends on what you’re waiting for… .” The psalmist is clear… he is
waiting for the God of steadfast love to show up and act: “O Israel, hope in
the Lord! For with the Lord is steadfast
love, and with the Lord is great power to redeem.” It’s God that we’re waiting for; the God of
steadfast love; the God who cares for us; the God who is present¸ no matter how
it appears to be otherwise. Here’s
another definition of faith – the act of remembering what God has done in the
past, trusting that God will do the same in the future, even though God doesn’t
seem to be doing much in the present moment;
not, at least, that we can see.
So let me list
those clues again: lamentation and expressing our grief; waiting and hoping in
God. And then… well, our next reading,
this time from the Gospel of Mark, gives us another clue. It’s the story of Jairus, whose daughter was
sick unto death. Jairus was a man of
standing in the community; a leader of the synagogue; someone close to God. But his daughter was dying; and there was
nothing he could do about it. I have
three daughters. There is nothing harder
than to watch your child suffer, and not be able to do anything about it. I can’t imagine … though I know some of you
can… what it feels like to lose a child.
Years ago, up at
Naramata Centre for a week long programme in the summer, I heard this gospel
story set to music. Fred Kaan wrote the
words; Ron Klusmeier composed the music; and Jim and Jean Strathdee sang the
song. No, don’t worry, I’m not going to
sing, but still…
The house was full of
sadness,
A little girl had died.
Her father ran to Jesus
And like a man he cried.
He pleaded for his
daughter
Before the Son of Man,
“O lay your hand upon
her
And she will live
again.”
The house was full of
mourners,
The street was dark with
gloom,
When Jesus came and
entered
The stillness of the
room.
He touched her with his
speaking,
He took her by the hand.
He gave the girl her
Easter
And helped her live and
stand.
I remember crying when I heard the song; I was thinking about my
daughters; I was thinking about everybody’s sons and daughters.
Now, this story
about Jairus and his twelve year old daughter is intertwined with another
story, in typical Markan fashion, where one story gets stuck right in the
middle of another. In this case, in the
middle of the story about Jairus and his daughter, Mark tells us about a woman
who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years; nothing has brought her any
relief. I suspect she’s tired of
lamenting; tired of waiting and hoping. I
can’t begin to imagine what she must have felt like, with her life’s blood
draining out of her, every day; blood, the source of energy, vitality, life. Hemorrhaging; but it could be any number of
illnesses -- depression; chronic fatigue, HIV/AIDS. And then, of course, two
thousand years ago, this woman lived in a patriarchal society that believed
that a woman’s bleeding, either menstrual or illness, rendered her “unclean,”
which meant that she lived on the edges of society, shunned, not accepted, on
her own, no community, no belonging.
So two stories
about people in desperate straits… out of the depths they cried out their lamentation;
waiting and hoping, endlessly. But here,
in this story, there is a further clue about how to live into this human
reality, for both father and woman come to Jesus asking for help; they reach
out and take action. It’s an embodiment
of Jesus’ own instructions to “Seek… ask… knock on the door” or of St. Augustine
It’s hard to keep
on hoping – indeed, as Jesus and Jairus are heading to the latter’s home, they
receive the news that they are too late – Jairus’ daughter is already
gone. And that’s when Jesus turns to
Jairus, and says the strangest thing, “Do not be afraid; only believe.” But believe what? That the messengers are wrong? That his
daughter isn’t dead; maybe she’s just in a deep sleep, or perhaps a coma? That with God anything is possible? Believe in Jesus? Believe in miracles? Believe that if you pray really hard and
faithfully, then you’ll be saved, cured, rescued? Except we know that in most cases that
doesn’t happen – children die and are not raised up to live again; and serious
illnesses don’t usually disappear, and exhaustion and desperation
continue.
So what does Jesus
mean? Is he, perhaps, pointing to something more basic… to an
ultimate trust in God’s goodness, despite evidence to the contrary? Is he inviting all of us to believe that the
power that sustains the universe, and each and every one of us, is benevolent
and beneficent? That God is best
understood as steadfast love – and that’s what we can count on; that’s what we
are invited to … not just believe, as if it were some rational concept… but to
trust; to trust our lives on. When the
chips are down, when we’re in the depths, when we’re crying out… this is when
we bank on God -- God’s love, God’s presence.
If we were to use psychological language, we might suggest that this is
what Erik Erikson was pointing to when he claimed that the first stage of human
development is the establishing of basic trust… trust in life, in the world, in
the possibility of love.
Some years ago, I
discovered that the Mayan people have a wonderful name for God; I can’t
pronounce it, but the translation sings: they call God “Heart of Heaven, Heart
of Earth.” I love that -- God as the
heart of all being, of the universe, of all life, of you and me; as if God is
the heart which pumps the lifeblood of the universe. This is a God you can count on, who is always
present. Now, let me push the metaphor
even further and suggest that Jesus is the heart of God… revealed to us, shared
with us, loving us. The Heart of Heaven,
the Heart of Earth is revealed in the life and person of Jesus, who says to
each one of us, “Don’t be afraid; only have trust.”
Fear or faith… those are our choices. Lately I have been
trying to breathe this reality, the dance of fear and faith. With all the uncertainty about my future,
with the possibility of being chosen as Moderator, I have found myself dealing
with some anxiety. And so I breathe…
breathe in faith, and breathe out my fear.
In… out. God’s presence and love
is what I breathe in; and all my worries and fears, this is what I surrender, I
breathe it out, I let it go. Breathe in;
breathe out. I invite you now to do this
with me… just for a minute or so… breathe in… and breathe out… will you do this
with me? In… and then out; faith… and
let go of the fear; God with us… worries released….
And as you continue
in this breathing, listen to these words from Leonard Cohen. Many of you know my passion for his poetry…
one of the frustrating things about not knowing what will happen after General
Council in August is that I can’t buy a ticket to hear Cohen when he comes to
Vancouver in the fall… November 18th to be exact. “Old Ideas” is the name of his new album… and
I think to myself… there’s a man who has discovered how to trust, and let go of
fear. Listen to “Come Healing”…
O gather up the
brokenness
And bring it to me [God]
now
The fragrance of the promises
You never dared to vow,
The splinters that you
carry
The cross you left
behind
Come healing of the
body,
Come healing of the
mind.
O let the heavens hear
it
the penitential hymn,
come healing of the
Spirit,
come healing of the
limb.
Behold the gates of
mercy
An arbitrary space,
And none of us deserving
Of cruelty or the grace;
O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined,
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the
mind.
O see the darkness
yielding
That tore the light
apart,
Come healing of the
reason
Come healing of the
heart.
O troubledness
concealing
An underlying love,
The heart beneath is teaching
to
The broken heart above.
Let the heavens utter
And let the earth
proclaim,
The healing of the
altar,
The healing of the name.
The longing of the
branches
To lift the tiny bud,
The longing of the
arteries
To
purify the blood.
O
let the heavens hear it,
The penitential hymn,
Come healing of the
Spirit,
Come healing of the
limb.
The fullness of God’s heart… in the midst of our human
condition. And so we lament; we sing the
blues; we cry out, “Come healing of the body, come healing of the mind.” We wait; we wait with hope; we experience
God’s “underlying love” and we discover that the “heart beneath” is healing the
“broken heart above”. We take action; we
wait for the Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth to act; we trust that the dawn
will come, when we will know the healing of the Spirit and the healing of the
limb. May it be so. Amen.
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