Sermon 092098,

I would like to begin with a parable that may strike you as mundane, trivial, and perhaps even familiar. For the last few years my wife Lois and I have been saving our pennies for a patio and screened-in porch. We have longed for a nice place to sit outside on a hot summer’s evening. We had grown tired of the odious cement slab outside our dining room doors. It was a pretty dismal sight. The basement was leaking because the slab had broken away from the house exposing a long, unsightly trench, which I had repaired with a home improvement project of fourteen bags of Sackrete concrete mix. The result, though effective, was not, believe me, something that you would see in "Better Homes and Gardens."

At long last we decided to bite the bullet and act. We carefully selected a well-recommended firm. We met with their representative one bright spring morning in May. We approved the plan. The starting date: June 22nd. The project itself would take about six weeks. I counted that out on my fingers. We would be enjoying our porch and patio by August 1st. I imagined the party we would have.

Now cut to the Labor Day Weekend. The patio is mostly done. The framing for the porch is done. What remains is screening, painting, installing the door, electrical work, and what to do about the mud washing down over the patio. Neither the August 1st party, nor the Labor Day party happened. I sat there brooding as I surveyed the piles of dirt, the ladders and drop cloths, the old gutter dumped in the backyard, the workers’ empty soda cans, etc. Now, when I read the Old Testament scripture from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, those particular words jump out at me:

Now, I fully admit that amidst all the uncertainty and suffering in our world, near at hand and afar off, whether or not the Todhunters’ screened-in porch gets done on time is really pretty insignificant. I know that. So, see it as a parable, a story that points to things that are infinitely more important. I see it as a story about what it feels like to sit in the midst of a process over which you have little control, a process whose outcome you are asked to trust; a process which appears, for all intents and purposes, to be going nowhere fast. It doesn’t feel great. What would be on your list of matters like this? How about a grown-up son or daughter that can’t quite get around to leaving home? How about a national political scandal that threatens to drag on forever, getting worse before it gets better? How about watching yourself apparently going nowhere on the organ transplant list? How about a church building program that we seem to have been discussing forever! How about a marital relationship that seems stuck in an unsatisfying rut?

What does all this feel like to you? In the sixth century B.C.E. the Prophet Jeremiah cries out to the people of Judah to repent and change their ways. They don’t and continue in their sins of social injustice and religious hypocrisy. His words are ignored. Jeremiah is capable of tremendous rage and can rail against the people in the name of God with great fire and zeal. Here, however, we see the tender side of the prophet. He sees that their rebellion from God is bringing them tremendous suffering. He feels helpless. The consequences of their sin are having an impact. But even as Jeremiah rages against them, he still loves them tenderly. His lament is not for himself, but for his people:

My joy is gone, grief is upon me,

my heart is sick.
Hark, the cry of my poor people

from far and wide in the land:
"Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King not in her?

The harvest is past, the summer is ended
and we are not saved."
For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.

Is there not balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
not been restored?

God has said, "I will be with you. Trust me. All will be well." And yet we look out at desolation, illness and suffering, at people hurting and helpless. Where is health? Where is the physician? Where’s the cure? Less profoundly, I just want my family and me to sit on my little screened-in porch one evening and not get eaten by mosquitos. And yet what I see is heaps of dirt, soda cans, ladders, dropcloths, and mudslides. Why is nothing happening?

What happens when you are in this state of mind? Whether it is the immensity of a struggle with serious illness, or the triviality of Jim and Lois’s porch? What happens to me is that I lose touch with past and future and sink into the gloom of the here and now. I feel that it has always been like this and always will be. Things never get better. It is so unfair. Nothing changes. Sure, they say things will shape up. They say that in the end it will be good and I will be happy with the outcome. The patio lady even comes by to tell me how happy she is with how it is all going. I think the current moment is all there is, with no past and future. Only gloom.

Jeremiah reports that the people wonder aloud if there really is a God at all. "Is the Lord not in Zion?...The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." And we know that, in his heart, Jeremiah is feeling the same thing. It is a terrible, terrible feeling, this despair, this emotional suffering. But it must be recognized. It must be acknowledged, owned and felt. It is a great comfort to me that someone as faithful as Jeremiah, indeed he was about the only faithful person in Judah at that time, could also exhibit the most profound despair. I believe that the more faith in God we have, doesn’t mean that we have less doubt about God’s goodness and power. No, the more faith we have, the more doubt we may have to struggle with. I got a letter from a visitor in church a few weeks ago. He was kind and appreciative of our worship service, but in it he said that it was clearly easier for me, as a minister, to say "Let go and turn things over to God," than him, a lapsed believer and scientist. I wrote him back and said that probably it was easier for me to say it, but harder than ever to mean it.

So we sit looking out over the desolation of our lives and our world. We are perhaps a bit like those characters in Beckett’s "Waiting for Godot." - waiting for someone to come, for something to happen; waiting for things to get better, knowing there is nothing we can do. Not really believing, but not knowing how to not believe.

Jeremiah has the courage to ask "Is there no balm in Gilead?" But the paradox is that in the courage of his doubting, he finds the courage of his faith. They are not two different kinds of courage, but one in the same courage - the courage to believe, the courage to doubt. For the Gospel answer is waiting there, not on the other side of doubt, but at the very heart of it. "Yes, there is a balm in Gilead. Healing will come. You have only to wait and to trust."

There is a remarkable encounter described in Luke’s Gospel. The disciples of John the Baptist have come to John with stories about Jesus. John wonders if, in fact, Jesus is the Messiah, the one who is to come? They go to Jesus and ask him this question. Luke writes:

"In that hour he cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many that were blind he bestowed sight. And he answered them, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me."

Jesus says to them, "Look around more closely. Don’t you see what is happening? It is not just a question of who is to come; it is a question of what is happening now, if you look with the eyes of faith. You look at the suffering and injustice and see only the absence of God. But look more deeply and you will discern the presence of God."

If I could do anything at all to alleviate the suffering of my friend Steve Gilbert as he awaits his lung transplant, I would. I am helpless. And yet I have never felt closer to him. He has never seemed more alive to me than now, and it is clear that he is cherishing what it means to be alive, even though he clearly understands and has accepted what it is he cannot do, which is more and more, things as simple as walking up a flight of stairs. Yet the deeper his suffering has become, the more life I experience in him. It is a mystery.

One of the most poverty-ridden countries in the world is the Dominican Republic. Urban centers and rural villages of unremitting economic stagnation, lack of education and backwardness are familiar to us. Our eyes glaze over and we wonder if it is almost even meant to be so, the poor with us always. Depressing and discouraging and never-ending, with no economic or social cure in sight. But look more closely. About the only happy news in the press these days is the home-run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. These guys have grace and class. When Sosa says that he hopes that he and McGwire will end the season tied in home-runs, because it would be good for baseball, I think he means it. And look at this guy’s story. Look at San Pedro de Macoris, his hometown. The poverty and squalor he grew up in are still there. But look more closely. Look at the boys raised in poverty like him, who are being taught at the Sosa Escuela de Baseball. Look at the computers he’s donated to the schools and the water systems he’s installed. Look at the new businesses he’s bankrolled. Look at the new health clinic taking shape in the downtown plaza he built. Look at the new house he built for his mother and the one for his 85 year old grandmother, Rosa. She says "I feel proud because he was a humble boy and today he’s become a great professional." The Washington Post reports that in her living room hangs a huge portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which "far outshines an 8-by-10 color photo of Sammy. But on the front exterior of her house, Rosa Julia Sosa glued a magazine article about Sammy and his family with the headline that reads, in Spanish, ‘Money Isn’t Everything.’" Of course, we all know that wealthy baseball players are not going to save Latin America. But look what the generosity of one man who hasn’t forgotten where he came from can accomplish. Look and see what human beauty and profound joy and gratitude can be found in the very heart of a suffering people. And it is happening now. Go tell John what you have seen and heard.

Well, in light of all this I am embarrassed to talk again about our porch. Montgomery County is, after all, not exactly San Pedro de Macoris. I felt a little sheepish as I sat gloomily on that Labor Day Weekend, surveying the desolation and the screened-in porch that wasn’t yet. But as I brooded over all this, I began to see differently. I began to notice things. The patio that had been completed so far, was really beautifully constructed. They had taken our ideas and come up with a few new ones that were a welcome improvement. They had corrected the mud problem and the solution ended up looking even nicer. The carpenter, as it turns out, is really a master craftsman. He takes his time and devotes himself fully and carefully to his task. The lady from the company did in fact say, we may have to wait a bit to get him, but it is worth it because he is their best carpenter, and she wanted this job to be really nice. Could it be that she really meant that, and wasn’t saying it just to placate us? Have I become so jaded as to think that totally impossible? So I began to think, "What is important here? Getting the job done on some schedule I had engraved on my brain? What if the truth is that to get it done right takes longer, and puts demands on my patience, testing my ability to trust?" Yes, we all know the some builders are chiselers who can’t be trusted. But the fact is that many are not. And God, the greatest builder of them all, cares. God will get the job done and done right. And it will be done in God’s good time. And in the end, all will be well. AMEN.