9/18/22 “Sanctifying our Grief” by Nancy E. Petty

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Grief, one of my mentors taught me, is like standing in the ocean with your back to the water. Sometimes you find yourself in the shallow waters, and feel a wave brush against your ankles. Other times, you are standing in knee deep water and a wave will come and the wave will cause your knees to buckle a little. Yet, other times you are waist deep and a wave will come and knock you down to your knees. And yet still, there are those times when you will find yourself in the deep waters and a big wave will come along and take you all the way under causing you flail around and gasp for your next breath. Sometimes our grief brushes up against us reminding us that it’s still with us and a part of us. While other times, it swallows us up, even long after the initial grief.

It seems that the prophet Jeremiah finds himself in the deep waters grief in our text this morning. “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick…I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.” he cries out. The big wave—the all-consuming wave—of grief has swallowed Jeremiah. It has taken him to the depths of despair. What is this grief in the prophet’s life? He is mourning for his people. His people, long to be the people of God, have substituted their devotion and commitment to God, for false images and foreign gods. His grief has left him feeling both despair and anger.“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?” From grief to anger and anger to grief Jeremiah flails around like a dying fish. It is interesting, and worth noting, how often at the base of our anger is grief.

In his grief, Jeremiah holds nothing back in his prayer to God. And I appreciate this about how Jeremiah is handling his grief. Too often, we edit our prayers to God or we spend too much time “composing” them. Maybe that because we are not actually sure God is listening. Or maybe it’s because we are afraid of saying the wrong thing, or worse still, saying something that will get us on the “wrong” side of God. Not Jeremiah. He is honest in his grief. “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” In other words, where are you God? My heart is breaking for my people, things are not good, and you are nowhere to be found. He speaks from his broken heart. His grief has left him no other choice than to lay it all on the line with God.

Earlier this year, I attended the funeral service for Rabbi Steve Sager, long time rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in Durham. I had long heard about Rabbi Sager but had only gotten to know him more personally just before the pandemic hit. I had been invited to be one of the speakers at Wild Acres, an event held in the NC Mountains each year focusing on interfaith dialogue, along with a young Muslim woman. We had had about three meetings together before the pandemic hit and the conference was canceled. Just weeks after the cancelation of Wild Acres, Rabbi Sager was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. At his memorial service, upon entrance into the synagogue, each person was handed a piece of material and instructed to pin it to our shirts. I was attending with Rabbi Dinner and she explained to me that as part of the funeral service we would participate in the ancient practice of tearing our clothes as a tangible expression of grief and anger in the face of death. This practice or ritual follows the example of when Jacob believed his son Joseph was dead, and in his grief, he tore his garments. As we began the ritual, then rending of our piece of cloth, we were told that the pieces of cloth that we had been given to tear came from some of Rabbi Sager’s favorite shirts. A practice that allows the grieving to lay it all out before God. How do we sanctify our grief?

This grief that consumed Jeremiah had been building for some time. He had watched his people’s arrogance and entitlement deepen. They expected God to always be there for them, even as they strayed from their covenant with God and put their trust in false images and foreign idols. One scholar writes:

Ultimately, we can see this as how popular religiosity can go terribly awry…We get a sense of people turning everywhere for some way to leverage their relationship with God. First, they try Zion. Next, they try idols. They seem to be turning everywhere except to God and each other. Even in verse 20, there is some sense that something magical would happen at the end of the summer harvest…

Jeremiah forces us to confront idolatry in our own lives. We can easily laugh at the Israelite worshiping wooden idols, but what really controls our life? Are we obsessed with the latest technology and consumer goods? We can see Israel’s unhealthy obsession with Zion here, but what do we fail to see in our own lives.

 Jeremiah can see this catastrophe coming. We see his mood becoming more and more desperate. The alarm increases in verse 22. [Is there no balm in Gilead?] Gilead was some of the richest and most fertile land historically possessed by Israel. Now, nothing even in Gilead can offer this people healing and salvation. Jeremiah seems to have recognized that Israel has gone past the point of no return. (Garrett Galvin, Franciscan School of Theology Berkeley, Calif.)

It is almost as if Jeremiah is standing in the public square of the 21st century speaking to us. Jeremiah grieves. And he grieves deeply.

Like most scholars, I have interpreted Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 as though Jeremiah is the speaker. But there are a few brave scholars out there, one being our own Lisa Grabarek, that suggest that it is NOT a weeping Jeremiah speaking these words but rather a weeping God. These theologians raise the question: What do we learn about God if we read our text as though it is God speaking and weeping? The Exploring the Bible Sunday group considered, this morning, the theological implications of a weeping, mournful god; a god in anguish over what the god is going to do; a god who questions whether the people’s health will be restored; a god who wants to cry “for the slain of my poor people”; a god who wishes the god could be in a different position and leave the god’s people. They considered questions like: Is God limited by integrity (ethical and religious standards/expectations, compassion)? Did God have a choice? If there is a balm in Gilead that will not come from God, where will it come from?

Are we listening to a weeping/grieving prophet or a weeping/grieving God? As if this question of who is weeping and grieving is not already confusing enough, I want to suggest yet a third option. What if what we have is a grieving/weeping covenant? A covenant that brings and holds together the people, the prophet and God, but that is fractured in this moment in time, and so plunges into grief? What if the covenant cries for what has been lost? And what is being lost?

In this world of ours, we often focus on the subject – the “it” or the “who” that we perceive to be the actor, the agent, the hero, the do-er. In this world of ours, we perceive that the most real things are the solids – the person, the thing, the object. When it comes to what goes on between things, what we might call relationships, we see those things as less tangible, less measurable, less real. And we are sure, that the “things” exist first, and the relationships develop after – the primacy is always on the stable form of matter over the exchange of energy and meaning. 

There is another way to consider this. Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist and brain researcher who argues that relationship actually comes first, before the “things” that are in relationship. McGilchrist explains:

The only world that any of us can know, then, is what comes into being in the never-ending encounter between us and [whatever-it-is that is not us.] What is more, both parties evolve and are changed through the encounter: it is how we and it become more fully what we are. The process is both reciprocal and creative. Think of it as like a true and close relationship between two conscious beings: neither is of course “made up” by the other, but both are to some extent, perhaps to a great extent, “made” what they are through their relationship.  

The relationship comes before the relata – the “things” that are supposed to be related. What we mean by the word “and” is not just additive, but creative. 

So what does this mean for this text? It means that the people of Israel, Jeremiah, and God are all in the process of creating one another through their relationship. The relationship, the covenant, always changes – in one verse the people of God are pledging undying commitment, in the next they have thrown God overboard and are worshipping whatever might bring rain, or food, or victory. But like a rubber band, the relationship doesn’t break – it stretches, it may strain, but it ultimately pulls the players back together. The covenant has life, it has contours, it has flexibility, and it has persistence. And maybe, just maybe, it has a consciousness of its own. 

I’m asking us all to consider this morning that while God loves us, and seeks us, and wants to be in communion with us, there is something more, something fundamental to our cosmos – a relationality between us and everything there is, even between us and God. This relationality might be called love – a force that calls us into bonds that by their very being shape and mold and fire us into more and more of who and what we truly are. 

In the end, it is the covenants we make with each other that sanctifies—makes holy— our grief, and for that matter our joy. Relationship is where God is. Relationship is the balm in Gilead. In relationship we find the physicians we need for our healing. Our covenants with one another is how we are restored. For the past two years, we have been in a time of grief. Our covenantal relationships have been stretched thin and strained. Sanctifying our grief will, in part, require a new commitment to reestablishing our covenants, our relationships with one another. Because ultimately, our relationships are the rubber band that pulls us back together to do the work we are called to do.

One does not have to have “church” to do this sanctifying work. But I can’t think of a better place—within a community with people who share common values and commitments, who show compassion and welcome and inclusion—to do this holy work. There is a balm inside this place. There are physicians here. This place is a place of restoration. Here, our relationships hold the promise of sanctifying our grief and restoring our joy. May it be so!