Let the Whole Creation Cry...

In his book Praying the Psalms Walter Brueggemann suggests that our life of faith consists in moving with God in terms of a. being securely oriented in our faith and in life. b. being painfully disoriented by circumstances and events that push us to the edge of our humanity, and c. being surprisingly reoriented as we receive and give thanks for the gift of new life. (Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, p. 14)

Brueggemann writes; “This general way of speaking can apply to our self-acceptance, our relations to significant others, and our participation in public issues. It can permit us to speak of passages, the life cycle, stages of growth, and identity crises. It can permit us to be honest about what is happening to us.” (Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, p. 14) In addition, this way of thinking about our lives with God provides insight into particularly the Psalms but also other scripture passages as we see the people of Israel moving through this same cycle and can bring our own stories into conversation with theirs.

In my experience of this cycle, we seem to spend the majority of our lives moving between disorientation and reorientation. We don’t tend to spend too much time in a state of equilibrium but rather seem to be in a constant state of flux as we encounter situations and have experiences that push us to the edge of what we think we can handle – death, job losses, divorce, challenges with family, relationship difficulties, health crises, crises of faith, natural disasters, accidents, economic meltdown, cultural shifts and more. These realities of life come at us repeatedly pushing us off balance and in some cases dropping us to our knees in utter surrender and despair.

Hopefully, as we move through these experiences of disorientation we are surprised from time to time to notice signs of hope popping up when before there was only despair - gestures of friendship, acts of kindness, offers of reconciliation and forgiveness, the love of family and friends - remind us that God has not left the world to chaos. These surprising experiences of being re-oriented give us the opportunity to see a situation or circumstance in a new way and open the way for us to give thanks for the gifts that have come, the signs of God’s presence, and the love and care of family, friends and Christian community.

The book of Joel is one place in which movement between disorientation and reorientation comes to life in Israel’s story. The portion of this book that we read earlier illustrates the time of reorientation that follows a period of dislocation and so let me share with you some of the words of the Prophet Joel that describe the particular experience of dislocation that had brought the people of Judah to their knees.

In chapter 1 Joel describes a plague of locusts that had come and devastated the people and the land with these words:

“Listen to this you Elders, pay attention, all you inhabitants of the land! Has anything like this ever happened in your day, or in the days of your ancestors?
Tell your children all about it, and let your children tell their children, and let one generation pass it on to the next. What the bark-stripping locust left, the locust swarm devoured. What the locust swarm left, the winged locust ate; and what the winged locust left, the scavenger locust finished off….

Vast and countless, a horde has invaded my land! Flashing like the teeth of a lion, like the fangs of a lioness, they have destroyed my vineyards and splintered my fig trees; they have stripped them, and shared off their bark – their branches have turned white…(Joel 1:2-4, 6-7)

These beautiful images capture the sense of utter desolation felt by the people as everything they relied on was destroyed. The entire community and indeed the whole creation is devastated by the locust plague and a drought that followed. All has been lost.

How are God’s people to respond to this desolation? Joel says: “Mourn, you priests! …Weep you ministers …Order a fast! Proclaim a solemn assembly!” (1:13-14) Gather the people! Purify the community! Assemble the elders! Gather the children … Let the priests, the ministers of Yahweh, stand weeping between the portico and the altar and say, “Spare your people, Yahweh! Don’t let your heritage become an object of ridicule, a byword for the Nations! Don’t let the peoples say, ‘Where is their God?’” Then Yahweh will be stirred on behalf of the land, and will take pity on the people.” (2:16-18)

With these words Joel calls the people to lament, cry out to God, tell God of their predicament and to repent – to turn toward God. Joel writes: “Return to Yahweh your God, who is gracious and deeply loving as a mother, quick to forgive, abundantly tender-hearted – and relents from inflicting disaster.” (2:13)

These words and images paint a picture of an entire community, indeed the whole creation suffering and groaning together, turning to God in despair and desperation calling their selves and God back to the covenant. When we are devastated, when our systems fail to provide, when our self-reliance lands us in gloom and despair, when the world around us cannot be trusted all that is left is to turn to God, our mother, our lover, our redeemer, our friend, and to gather as a community to weep and mourn, wail and cry, rage and stomp our feet and also to trust that God does not abandon God’s people.

And God does respond. Signs of hope appear where once there was only despair. Joel writes; “Forget your fear, my beloved land! Rejoice and be glad, for Yahweh has done great things. Forget your fear, you beasts in the field! The wilderness pastures will once again be carpeted in green, trees will bear fruit again, and the fig and the vine will give you their full yield.”
And the people are called to give thanks for the gifts, to give thanks for the gift of new life out of death; “Rejoice, Children of Zion! Rejoice! Be glad in Yahweh your God, … you will eat your fill and be satisfied, and praise the name of Yahweh your God, who has dealt wondrously with you! My people will never again be put to shame! You will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, Yahweh, am your God, and there is no other.” (Joel 2:23a, 26-27)

My mother, Jean, passed away from liver cancer in 1987. She was 36 years old. I am her oldest daughter. I was 17 and a junior in High School when she died. Over the past few months I have been thinking a lot about my mom, her death, my grief process and my own life. I will be turning 40 in March and I am acutely aware that every year I get to live beyond the age of 36 is a pure gift - a gift my mother never received.

I harbored a lot of anger at my mother for things she did and said during her lifetime. We did not have an easy relationship and so her death left me with a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of unexpressed anger and sadness. But what I’m noticing lately is that I have learned a lot since 1987 about life and death, grace and forgiveness. I have learned, as I have moved through my early adult years that adults make mistakes even when they’re doing the best they can. I’ve learned that even parents stumble sometimes despite their deep and abiding love for their children. I have made my own mistakes, faced the consequences of some of my own misguided actions and had the opportunity to seek forgiveness from the people I harm along the way. All of these things have helped me to heal the wound of my mother’s death and come to a place lately where I can give thanks, not for the experience of her death, but for the way in which my movement through that experience and the people who have come to guide me, care for me, and teach me about being a woman and an adult in the world have been a gift.

Without a doubt the experience of my mother’s death has been one of the worst experiences of my life. And I’m not surprised that it’s taken me 22 years to feel like I’m approaching some kind of peace with this part of my story. But this Thanksgiving I am giving thanks for my mother who gave me life. I am giving thanks for the things she taught me and for the beautiful person she was for me and for so many others despite her shortcomings. But most of all I am giving thanks to God for guiding me through this particular chapter in my life’s story by sending people who have accompanied me and by nudging and urging me to hold on to my faith. I know now that God never left me even when I felt utterly alone in the pit of grief and I have a deeper trust in God now than I ever have before. I give thanks also for our Christian story – a story that moves always between birth, death and resurrection. A story that doesn’t shy away from the challenges of being human – our imperfections, our penchant for violence and self-destruction, our yearning for power at any cost, our limited knowledge and understanding – but embraces them and uses them as sources for grace, truth, beauty and new life.

And so I’d like to invite you to take a moment to reflect on the gifts you have received by the grace of God that have come to you through the challenges and dislocations of life. How have you come to a new awareness, a deeper sense of compassion, a greater trust through the difficulties of your life? And If you are in the depths of despair I invite you to light a candle of lament and offer your despair, your grief, your questions to God in faith that God hears them and is working for healing and new life even in the depths of the pit. Amen.