How Long? (Will We Ever Get "there"?)
Lament 2015 (Nov. 8)
Psalm 13; Hebrews 5:7-9; and Matthew 11:25-30
Psalm 13 – How long O God – will you forget me? Will you hide your face from me? Shall I have perplexity in my mind? Grief in my heart? How long shall my enemy triumph over me?
Some of our life experiences are difficult, painful. In fact some such experiences literally break our hearts. I have often witnessed and experienced this. As an on call volunteer chaplain at a hospital this is part of what I saw, heard, felt: two young men who while drinking on a Saturday night decided to play chicken with their dirt bikes without any head lights. Too soon the phone rang. Both had sustained injuries. One would never recover. I remember attempting to be with that young man's parents, particularly his father, who only a few hours before had been drinking with both of them.
From that same hospital experience - almost every year, people would visit the area for a ski holiday. They would enjoy companionship, thrills and exhilaration. But then someone from their group would ski out of control or out of bounds. The results were often disastrous. Again the phone would ring. I would make my way to attempt to be with those people. Heartbreak ran over, flooding their lives. How could just one mistake be so irreparable, so tragic?
Sometimes it's another person's mistake that results in disaster for a single person or a group that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A father and two sons, one just 14, are driving on a Saskatchewan highway. It's a beautiful summer evening. They are on their way to visit the boys' grandmother who is hospitalized. Then, out of the blue they are struck from the side by a vehicle hurtling at them in speeds over 160 km/hr. The "pilot" of this out of control missile that strikes them has a blood alcohol count of nearly .20, 2 ½ times the legal limit. The 3 people who had been on their way to visit at the hospital are now themselves rushed by ambulances to the hospital. Two of them are taken directly to the morgue.
At their funeral so many people ask the gut wrenching question, "Why? How come? How could God allow this to happen to a 14 year old boy and his dad who were simply going to do something so good?" The questions abide, years later.
Such cries unfortunately are not unique nor even occasional. Nor are they "new". The Psalmist from well over two thousand years ago cries out. We can hear him. We can hear because we hear others' cries. We can hear because sometimes our hearts are shattered and we cry. Then our minds are lost, racing, drowning in anger and confusion, quasi-numbed. Does anything make sense? Does God truly care? If so, how can such things be?
In those moments, those hours, those times, we join the Psalmist in lament: "How long O God will you forget me?" How long O God will you hide your face from me?" Sometimes, I can't see, hear or feel you because my pain or the pain of others is all I can feel!
"How long O God, will I have perplexity in my mind, grief in my heart"
This November 11 I trust that we will remember not only "our soldiers" who served, many of whom died in World War 1 and II, in the Korean Conflict, in peace keeping missions around the globe and most recently in Afghanistan. I trust that we will also remember other soldiers who died, who had, some of whom continue to have mothers and fathers, sons and daughter, brothers and sisters. May we also remember the civilians who attempted to survive during these wars, thousands if not millions who died, while countless others lost their homes, their innocence, their limbs – even their minds and their ability to hope.
Yes, do remember! Also realize that such warring madness continues even in this instant. With over hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and untold African refugees, with children being conscripted to kill and maim even their own people, we must not only remember, but cry out to God, to governments, to anyone who might hear.
We can and must cry out, internally, externally, to God when there is absolutely no answer that makes any sense, or none that will ultimately ease such pain and loss. We must cry out when the others' pain is one whom we love. We must cry out when we beg God to let us have that other's pain. But it is theirs to bear. At such times we can, we must cry out, even if our cries are not audible but deeply guttural. In our crying we must hope against hope that we are being heard.
In those times logic, as important as it is, does not suffice.
As people attempting to trust and follow Jesus, we are being told even now, even in the midst of all our questions and pain that we have an amazing priest. This may seem irrelevant. BUT IT ISN'T IRRELEVANT! This priest is not some man or woman we pay, who at their best does care for and about us, but also shares our limitations. No, THIS PRIEST IS MUCH MORE. He mediates on our behalf DIRECTLY WITH GOD. He is one who has cried out Himself, with loud cries. As He is being executed upon a cross, hanging there, spat upon, we achingly hear his lament, "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?"
He knows the darkest moment of any and all life. From that He promises to send part of Himself to accompany us in all of our living. He can do this because He continued to obey God even through his own excruciating death. In and through His death He also experienced that He is no longer abandoned. He has been delivered through the power of death to new life by God.
So it is that we dare, that we can cry out from the depths of our own and other's pain to Jesus. He has walked before us in profound vulnerability and deep suffering. We can cry out because Jesus wills to share our burden, even though sometimes we do not feel that. We can cry out to Jesus because He is also gentle and humble. By God's grace we can learn from him, be mentored by him. In Him, somehow by God's grace we find rest and peace.
Dear people, do not be afraid to cry out in your pain, to be honest with yourselves and with God, individually and collectively. Internally and externally cry out without shame, expecting, longing to be heard. This is our lament. We are not alone in our cries.
But also know this: someday our crying, and all crying will end. I suspect then, that like the first disciples, we will hear God's voice saying to us, "Do not be afraid. My peace I give to you. My peace I leave with you."
O God, may it be so!
Until then, "How long O Lord, how long?" Amen.