Balm Aid

There are songs whose words stir the soul. There are songs whose tunes haunt the mind.  When we listen to songs, do we react to the words, or do we respond to the tune?  I suppose, it’s impossible to say. Perhaps the African-American spiritual, “There Is a Balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole” is both word-stirring and tune-haunting. Especially when sung by our own soloists, who sing it with great empathy and pathos.

In case you haven’t realized it yet, the book of Jeremiah is not a light, easy read.  It’s not the kind of book you’d read on a lazy afternoon lounging on the beach. There is both heaviness of heart as Jeremiah grieves for a nation that has turned its back on God; and there is the heat of prophetic anger at a people who refuse to listen.  Jeremiah weeps and Jeremiah admonishes because that’s what prophets do.

I doubt Jeremiah could have made a career on the lecture circuit.  It’s hard to imagine a Fortune 500 company inviting him to give the keynote address at their annual shareholders meeting. It would be easier imagining, Michael Moore, the writer/producer/director of such stinging documentaries as Bowling for Columbine and more recently Sicko getting an invitation to speak at the National Rifle Association or the American Medical Association.

Jeremiah, of course, stands in the tradition of biblical prophets.  Now there’s a concentration of study you won’t find in a college catalog.  A Hebrew prophet was not primarily a predictor of an individual’s future.  A Hebrew prophet didn’t hang out a shingle or take out a yellow pages ad.  Hebrew prophets didn’t read tarot cards for anyone willing to part with $20.  Hebrew prophets didn’t sit hunched over Ouija boards or stare into crystal balls or read the wrinkles in a human palm, forecasting what would happen next Thursday.

In the Hebrew tradition, a prophet was a spokesperson for God, a mouthpiece for the Maker of heaven and earth.  A Hebrew prophet was God’s press secretary, an intermediary who interpreted the agenda of God to the people of God. Prophets looked at the behavior of society,

examined the practices of the culture, and critiqued the rituals of the religious establishment.

Hebrew prophets like Isaiah, Amos, Hosea and Jeremiah were moral watch dogs, righteous pit bulls. Think Ralph Naders on spiritual steroids.  Truth tellers and whistle blowers.  Crusty and tough, thick skinned and calloused. They despised pretense.  They exposed hypocrisy.  They ranted and railed against the inequities of the system.  They sided with the marginalized, the championed the voiceless and the poor. They cared about widows and the defenseless minority.

As you might guess, prophets were a little bit daffy and none too demure.  And sometimes they were downright crazy like the time Isaiah strutted naked through the streets of Jerusalem.  Explain that one to the arresting officer.

A prophet never had much by way of job security.  No union.  No pension plan. No 401K.  No health insurance.  No housing allowance.  Prophets were never invited to White House prayer breakfasts.  Prophets didn’t own navy blue suits or have wing tip shoes to tie. Prophets were an odd, odd lot, a peculiar folk. You’d have thought midwives must have dropped them on their heads when they were infants to make them act so strangely. You’d no sooner see a prophet and instantly feel the urge to call 911.

Prophets lived and breathed God. They were all about aligning earthly life to the life of the Holy One.  The amazing awareness about reading the prophets is that you can never by absolutely sure whether you were experiencing the prophet or if you’re experiencing the God of the prophets. 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 that Jeremiah’s voice or is it God’s?

Gilead was a region east of the Jordan River that served as a place of refuge for those in danger. A sanctuary for those pursued.  It was also a region where an indigenous plant grew, whose sap and gum and oils soothed and aided in the healing process. Gilead was an ancient day Mayo Clinic.  If all else failed, if nothing in life could help, if not even Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura could offer a healing word, certainly Gilead could make the bad things better. 

Maybe in the past, says Jeremiah, but not now.  Maybe yesterday, says the prophet, but not today. Jeremiah called it God’s judgment, judgment on a people bent on running away from God.  Judgment on a people too willing to follow whatever gods came out of their cereal box.  Judgment on a people too eager to make gods of those things that were never intended to be gods. 

Life has a way of playing that tune and repeating those words. We may not always get the words right, or sing the tune on key, but the wounds are familiar, aren’t they?

A stranger in your own home.

Always on the outside of the conversation.

Your kids don’t respect you.

Your parents don’t trust you.

Forever passed over by someone less qualified.

The first one let go when the downsizing comes.

In a job that tests skills you’re not sure you have.

In a system that could care less that you don’t have money at the end of the month.

The insurance company that thinks your operation is elective surgery.

Not able to get insurance at all, the plight of 45 million Americans.

In a war where 3,700 have come in body bags and tens of thousands injured and we have no exit plan.

Honey, I’m home. What’s for supper?  I don’t know; I’ve been in bed all day depressed.

At the end of the day, we don't need a God who tells us it doesn't hurt; we need a God who feels the hurt. We need Jeremiah’s God.

The story is told of a rabbi, approached by one of his devoted student who gushes, "Master, I love you!"  The teacher looks up from his books and asks his fervent disciple, "Do you know what hurts me?"  The young man is puzzled. "I don't understand your question, Rabbi. I’m trying to tell you how much you mean to me, and you confuse me with your irrelevant question." The rabbi responds, "My question is neither confusing nor irrelevant. For if you do not know what hurts me, how can you truly love me?"

The African slaves got it right.  They straightened the question mark of Jeremiah’s “Is there no balm in Gilead?” and they turned it into an exclamation point, “There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole.”  

There is a balm. God knows what hurts. God knows the pain felt by entire populations oppressed. God knows the ache of a single beating, broken heart.

Was it not another prophet – Isaiah -- who said, “He was despised and rejected; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, and by the stripes of his beatings we are healed. 

His lived life is our balm aid; which makes the corollary none the less true – we are the balm aid agents today, called to continue the healing that Jesus started.  To initiate healing in our relationships, among the races, to seek the ones who have lost their way, to raise the lowly who have been beaten down, to encourage those who hope though dim is not lost.   

As Augustine once said, “Preach the gospel, and if necessary use words.”

May we live it well this week.