When I was in school Dr William Masselink was one of my teachers. He was a very compassionate person.  In fact, he was so clear about his feelings that we students nicknamed him “Weeping Willy.”  While we all deeply respected him, we serious students – tuned into the intellectual pursuit – didn’t always know what to do with his emotions.  I suspect Jeremiah ‘s contemporaries had a similar problem.  He has for years been dubbed “the weeping prophet” for his lament over Jerusalem and God’s people.  It remains debatable just how much of this book is actually written by the prophet Jeremiah. But this passage may well reflect Jeremiah the prophet’s heart.

At least this scripture reading leads credence to such a characterization as 9:1 says: 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 my poor people! 

This follows a description of his sense of anguish and isolation that the people are experiencing.  There seems to be no end in sight, and a frustration that God is absent and uncaring.  All hope seems to be gone.  I wonder if that is how many in Sudan are feeling?  They have been driven from the farms, many killed, and women and children abused. 

This too could be how many in Iraq and Afghanistan are responding.  Will it ever end?  How can all this be happening?  The cry of the people goes out, and is anything changed? 

We don’t have to go half way around the world to hear that cry.  Listen to Mother Teresa (The Joy in Living, p.317) One night in London I went out visiting people with the Sisters.  We saw a young boy with long hair, sitting in the street with others.  I spoke to him and I said: You shouldn’t be here, you should be with your mother and father, this is not the place for you.  The young boy said: “My mother does not want me.  Each time I go home, she pushes me out, because she can’t bear my long hair.”  We passed on.  When I came back, he was lying flat on the ground.  He had overdosed himself.  We had to take him to hospital.  I could not help but reflect: Here was a child hungry for home, and his mother had no time for him.  This is great poverty.  This is where you and I must make the world a better world. 

While this occurred in London, we could hear similar stories in our own back yard.  The despair and sense of hopelessness is very real.  One only has to look at the faces of many who walk the streets here or in Over the Rhine to see the look of being trapped: Those who feel they will never escape the claws of poverty and its destructive forces on the human psyche.  They are caught in low paying jobs, or no jobs at all, without any hope of significant change.  

There is much to lament, whether that be Sudan, Iraq, Hurricane Alley and its destruction of property, or the hardness of attitude that destroys the heart and soul of people.   All of these makes us ask, Is there no balm in Gilead?  To some extent it may be easier to lament the hurt of the people out there than to deal with our own.  But we too have hurt here.  We have gone through painful times, and while we do not need to rehearse all that, we nevertheless need to own that we are still effected by it.  We are wounded and need the balm that will heal.  This passage may be more contemporary than we want to admit.  There is a level at which we can say with Jeremiah my joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick…for the hurt of my poor people I am hurt.  Just this week the editorial cartoon in the Cincinnati Enquirer depicted a scene of a couple standing in the site of a destroyed home and rubble of a hurricane and he says to her

There’s only one person to turn to in times like these,  and she responds, Oprah !

We can identify with Jeremiah regarding the despair and pain, but we can also recognize the importance of community.  Jeremiah was a part of the people he was hurting for.  He did not separate himself from them but was drawn in by their pain.  And in that pain he called out to God.  He poured out his heart and his tear-filled eyes to God.  He felt it so intensely he wished he could keep it up day and night.  Maybe that would help.   Then as he mourns for the condition of his  community  he  discovers  he  is   not   alone.   His mourning is being synchronized with another.  His plaintive cry is being echoed.  And to his surprise he discovers that the words are no longer his but God’s.  And God is saying, 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 my poor people.  The Divine One is touched.  The Divine is saddened by the condition of the people. 

It is no longer a prayer to a far away deity, or a God who is absent.  It is now a shared weeping.  A pain that permeates both creature and Creator.  Prayer is no longer abstract or rote memorization of right words, but a joint expression of all who are in pain.  This truth is reflected in the Timothy passage we read earlier, which encourages us or urges us that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for everyone….  This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be whole and to come to know the truth.    God is very concerned about our condition.  God will stop at nothing to enable us to discover that wholeness.  Yes, God cries.  Yes, God hurts.  God is able to be moved by our plight. 

But the balm that is needed in Gilead is not simply an ointment that will make us feel better.  The physicians in Gilead tried to heal the hurts but couldn’t.  But intercession that recognizes the hurt of the community, the reality of “we”  is that which will begin to lead us to the ultimate ground of that we-ness.  Or to say it a little differently, the love and care of the community reveals and makes real to us the love that is God. 

A comment here from The Dalai Lama may help   (Rambo and The Dalai Lama, Gordon Fellman, p. xi):  Our own success and happiness are closely related to that of others.  Therefore being of help to others and being considerate of their rights and needs is not just a question of duty, but also has a bearing on our own happiness.

So when we claim the pain, when we are able to lament with the weeping prophet, will it lead us to hope?  To know that we are not alone, not only do we claim our relationship to community, but in our cry, our mourning, will we discover there is a balm in Gilead? 

Many of you have found that to be true. Some have shared that this has been your Gilead.  Others of us may still be looking; the pain may be too sharp to be able to trust the community to be with you.  Or to recognize God’s cry of anguish on your behalf.  Wherever you are on the journey, know that you are not alone, and that the divine wants you to be whole and healthy.  We ARE a community of health seekers, in the process of being restored by a balm that can make us whole.