“There Is a Balm”
Jeremiah 8:19-9:1
Luke 5:1-10
Hear now some news headlines from the past several days:
President demands Justice Department move now to prosecute his opponents.
Environmental Protection Agency tells scientists to stop publishing research.
Trump administration shuts down the war on cancer.
Thousands of Palestinians try to flee Gaza City before Israeli military assault, but they have nowhere to go.
United Nations inquiry concludes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Pentagon requires journalists to pledge not to report all the news.
ABC takes late night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for monologue remarks.
President Trump suggests stations and networks that air programming that critical of him should lose their broadcast licenses.
Centers for Disease Control rolls back childhood immunization recommendations and limits access to Covid shots.
ICE seeks hundreds of new office spaces as it prepares to hire more than 10,000 people to execute mass deportations.
President Trump announces skilled foreign workers seeking entry to the United States must pay $100,000.
Under orders from the president, U.S. military forces destroy a third boat in international waters.
Wildfire smoke is killing Americans.
Under orders from President Trump, the U.S. Park Service is reviewing more than a thousand park displays for possible “negative” portrayals of U.S. history.
President demands Justice Department move now to prosecute his opponents.
Environmental Protection Agency tells scientists to stop publishing research.
Trump administration shuts down the war on cancer.
Thousands of Palestinians try to flee Gaza City before Israeli military assault, but they have nowhere to go.
United Nations inquiry concludes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Pentagon requires journalists to pledge not to report all the news.
ABC takes late night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for monologue remarks.
President Trump suggests stations and networks that air programming that critical of him should lose their broadcast licenses.
Centers for Disease Control rolls back childhood immunization recommendations and limits access to Covid shots.
ICE seeks hundreds of new office spaces as it prepares to hire more than 10,000 people to execute mass deportations.
President Trump announces skilled foreign workers seeking entry to the United States must pay $100,000.
Under orders from the president, U.S. military forces destroy a third boat in international waters.
Wildfire smoke is killing Americans.
Under orders from President Trump, the U.S. Park Service is reviewing more than a thousand park displays for possible “negative” portrayals of U.S. history.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
As we used to say in the news business, “We couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried.”
These previously unimaginable headlines and breaking-news alerts come at us at a steady, unrelenting pace. We hardly have time to absorb one blast of bad news before we’re hit with another. And so we try to manage our bad-news consumption; we do our best to limit our exposure to news of all the unbelievably horrible and frightening things that are happening because . . . well . . . life must go on.
We have to get the kids off to school and go to work and pay the bills and put food on the table. We have to do our best to shine a light in the darkness and keep hope alive amid authoritarian cruelty and utter disregard for the United States Constitution.
And, as discouraging and difficult as all that is, that is not my primary focus this morning.
Because while we struggle to keep our hearts open and our heads above water, while thousands die in Gaza from starvation or military strikes, while our neighbors are disappeared by masked officers carrying weapons, while tens of thousands die in Africa from the sudden cessation of U.S. food and medical aid, while the poor lose access to food and medical care, while crops go unharvested, while food prices go up, while people of integrity and devotion to the common good lose their jobs, while all creation groans, while we can take in only so much . . .
Meanwhile, . . . the Creator of heaven and earth sees it all. The Divine Parent of all watches their children abuse and destroy one another. The God who is love weeps and is overcome with grief.
“Is there no balm, no comfort, no medicine for this human madness?” God asks through the prophet Jeremiah. “Is there no doctor in the house? Is there no one who follows my way? Is there no one building beloved community or providing refuge? Is there no one standing with and for the poor? Is there no one who will speak truth to power? Is there no one to comfort the despairing, bring back the lost, bind up wounds, and instill hope?
You know things are really bad when God is reduced to lament.
But, even as we grieve all that is happening, even as we agonize over current atrocities and fear for the future of our children and the planet, even as we seek comfort and hope, there good news.
Beloveds, there is a balm.
We have the balm, and we are the balm.
The balm is divine love and Spirit power. The balm is a community where all are valued equally and cared for without favor. The balm is community where all are received as children of God and encouraged and equipped to live out their God-given potential. The balm is the hope that springs from an awareness of God’s faithfulness, that is grounded in remembering all the wildernesses God has led us out of, all the manna God has provided for us, all the times we have eaten our full when we feared there was not enough, all the times we’ve been lost but our heartbroken God found us and brought us home.
For a broken world, a grieving God, suffering and persecuted people, desperate and frightened people, and all who feel lost as they see how much we hold dear is being lost, this church can be balm.
The balm is trusting that, even as we struggle against powers and principalities, even as our prophets are silenced and our siblings are disappeared, even as it feels all we hold dear is being destroyed, God is yet doing a new thing. Even now.
Resisting evil and oppression in all its forms is essential. I want to be clear in saying that our faith demands that resistance and that, at its best, resistance is love in action. Resistance is an important way of loving our neighbors and caring for the earth. And even as watch so much we care about being destroyed, we can find some comfort in knowing that the way things were wasn’t so great either, and that there must be a death before something new can be born. Some people and institutions that have been going along are getting uncomfortable with what is happening. Some systems and ways of doing things that were fully accepted before are being identified as part of the problem.
But resistance, in and of itself is not the balm. A balm comforts us, assures us of what is real and true, and gives us the strength to keep going. A balm is spiritual medicine.
Despair is not the balm. Cynicism is not the balm. Blaming is not the balm. Hatred is not the balm. Surrender is not the balm. Limiting our compassion to only us and ours is not the balm. Trying to do everything is not the balm. Pretending to be fine is not the balm.
Running away from it all is not the balm.
Because our weeping, grieving God can’t quit us. Our scriptures are filled with stories where God looks on what horrible things God’s people have done and says, “I am finished here. You throw away everything I give you, you run after other gods, and you destroy each other. I can’t take it any more.”
And then, without fail, a chapter or two later, God is searching high and low for us, feeding us, healing us, celebrating us, delighting in us. Because God can’t help it; that’s how big, long-suffering, steadfast, and extravagant God’s love is.
It’s not a very healthy way to live or a particularly good look—to know that no matter what we do or don’t do, a Love that has a bottomless capacity for abandonment will never give up on us and will, instead, come running to embrace us the second we even think of turning toward home. But that is the God we have. That is the Jesus we follow. That is the kind of community we are called to become. That is the grace we’ve been given.
That is the balm we’ve been given. That is the comfort, hope, faith, and healing we have been given—not only for ourselves but also to be shared with any and all others.
And just as that balm became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, so it can become flesh in and through us.
This balm is no magic potion, a medicine that cures instantly and prevents re-infection. It is a balm that, much like body lotion or sunscreen, we have to keep re-applying. We must continually re-ground ourselves in God’s love, re-center ourselves in a community where there’s both welcome and love for all, re-open our hearts, and re-kindle our faith.
It is a balm that, when life is good, we can take for granted or forget we even have. Or, like the woman with ten valuable coins, we can lose it all together and only then realize how much we need it.
Beloveds, times like these call for love and courage, certainly, but also for a love-balm to get us through. If we’ve lost track of this life-giving, soul-saving balm, let’s do everything we can to find it. Let’s use it and share it and make more of it so that there’s more than enough for everyone to have some.
And because the best sermon is never finished, because a good sermon prompts both listening and response, this morning, after I thought this sermon was done, I felt a nudge from Spirit. I heard a call, if you will, to get serious about offering and being a balm in our community. And so I’m thinking about offering a regular gathering—say weekly or every other week—in which some of us would gather together to pray for our nation and for all the people and organizations working for justice and democracy. And I wondering if, from that, we might offer a public service of blessing and sending for all the activists and organizers in our community—monthly, say, or shortly before major demonstrations.
Let me know—by email, please—if you would like to be involved in something like this.
May we become the spiritual doctors in the house that threatens to fall down upon us all. May we offer the balm we have found to all who ask for it and all who don’t yet realize it exists.
There is a balm. And we can be that balm.
May it be so.
