A FOUNTAIN OF TEARS

9:1 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!

There is a fundamental paradox of faith that is hard to hold on to. We are simultaneously a speck of dust in the universe {“What is man that thou art mindful of him” (Psalm 8:4)}  and a precious child of God (“You have made them little less than God and crowned them with glory and honor. “ (Psalm 8:5)} We may prefer one side of the paradox over the other but both are always true.  

 Last week the Jeremiah passage heavily emphasized the ‘speck of dust’ aspect of our relationship with God.  Forces of history and forces of nature can engulf us and leave us desolate. There are times when even if we are well intended and seek to love, our deeply felt convictions may not be in the service of God.  That is humbling. History is filled with course corrections in our understanding of the will of God. Slavery is no longer ‘ordained’ by God; children matter; women’ s voices must be heard; the disenfranchised must be protected.  It was not too long ago when the opposite was argued in the name of God. If you pay attention to the re-forming of our faith, you will begin to realize that the same process could be happening now.  

Our ability to make sense of the world is challenged with each news cycle.   The pretense of our agency and control is blown away—and we stand helpless and confused before God.  This sense of profound insignificance does not preach well. Even if we see the ‘truth’ of it, the actual experience is usually fiercely resisted.  No one wants to face such radical dependency upon God. I still cannot imagine the pain of a devout, temple going Jew in Jeremiah’s day. She was one of God’s chosen people—-but her faithfulness did not protect her from defeat, death and homelessness.  Jesus’ life teaches the same thing. Nothing about being the Son of God protected Jesus from false accusation, humiliation and painful death.  

It is oh so tempting to skip over Good Friday to get to Easter.  The promises of God are true and worthy of full acceptance but far more than we care to admit,  people die awaiting their fulfillment. And that brings me to this passage. There are times in our lives where the only authentic response is grief—deep grief. Grief hurts and it does not go away.  

 

Grieving comes in many forms. When I asked the faith in real life group what they had grieved in their lives, they spoke of lost loved ones, estrangements in their families, the polarization of our country, our church, immigrants, the homeless and our pets.  In each case, grief had the effect of stripping away of what we thought we could not live without.  

Most commonly, secularly, we treat grief as if it should be mastered.  My best friend asked me two months after her husband died, how long would the pain be so impossible to bear.  When I began my response with the words, ‘in the first year…, she cut me off and said to me, ‘don’t tell me this can last a year’.  What I did not repeat was I said in the first year.  Finally grief becomes part of going on, but it never goes completely away. 

But strength is not stoicism, strength is the willingness to endure all of the feelings that we have.  We do not grow by amputation. We cannot cut out or erase who we are. We grow by trusting all of who we are to God.  This is what Jeremiah does in this passage. He knew that things were going to get worse before they got better. The people had to give up their idea that being the chosen people would protect them.  “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?”  They had to learn a new way to be in relationship with God. God’s care for them  did not depend upon the temple nor even their existence as a nation. That was unimaginable before the exile. 

Grief is the emotional encounter with our helplessness and the disruption of what we thought should be. Grieving is a painful but necessary part of facing who we are. Ultimately grief exposes what we cannot control and exposes our absolute dependence upon God.  It turns out that our ability to grieve is directly correlated to our ability to love. We will lose what we love and we will lose what we cannot imagine living without. If we cannot bear that grief we will not risk getting close.  

In this passage Jeremiah, (and perhaps, God—it is a bit ambiguous who is speaking) was grieving for the suffering of his people.  It is terrible to watch someone you care about suffer. Jeremiah had been proven right but that did not bring joy. It is equally terrible to realize that our best efforts to warn and protect have failed.  There was no “I told you so.” There was grief. Sometimes, when you love someone, the worst thing that can happen is that you are right. We do not want people we love to suffer. And it hurts when we can see it coming but still can’t protect them.  

Warning and even threats rarely alter an addicts course.  Careful reflection and good premarital counseling cannot actually prepare you for the frictions and disappointments of marriage.  There is hardly a parent who has not agonized while their children were navigating waters the parents have already sailed.  

More often than not, we really do have to learn the hard way. Only when we have direct experience can we learn from the experience of others.  As Mark Twain’s commented: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the man around, but when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” It is maddeningly frustrating to realize the limits of our understanding and logic to alter another person’s course.  Just because we are right does not mean anyone is listening. Jeremiah had not only to endure the pain of his people but his utter inability to alter their course.  

And if we pay attention to our own experience,  there are many times we know what we should do—-but we don’t.  Most of us know that increasing the volume or losing our temper doesn’t help.  Most of us know we give too much credence to what other people think of us—but we still get anxious.  Most of us know it’s ok to make mistakes but we turn ourselves inside out to be perfect (or at least appear to be so).  And hopefully we know we are all sinners but that does not stop us from judging ourselves and others. In each case (and many more) we run up against our human limitations.  We can be embarrassed. We can even be ashamed. But the deepest response is grief. We are not what we wish we could be and we are certainly not what we think we are ‘supposed’ to be. As Paul put it in Romans 7:15 “ I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ….I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ….So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.”

Grieving is a painful but necessary part of facing who we are.  Our human connections can show us what it might mean to be loved but the loss of those same connections exposes our deep vulnerability and dependence upon God.  And who wants that? We do not want to be reminded of the frailty of real life. We do not want to learn that sometimes our best efforts do not help—and sometimes even lead to harm.  We do not want to learn that our best and most logical statements can detract from dialogue instead of advancing it. We do not want to struggle with the alienation and polarization of the world.  We become like small children facing a large tank. It is one thing to preach the assurance that we are children of God and quite another to experience what a tiny part of the creation we are.  

We hold the faith that living in right relationship with God is the way to life.  But we are rarely taught the true nature of that relationship—and certainly not the cost.  Our place in the universe is infinitesimal. God’s creative purposes existed long before us and will exist long after us.  It’s not all about us. But in the face of the enormity of God, we are expected to our part, no matter how flawed, trusting that God is working his purposes out.  

The way that happens is through grief.  Alex Trebek, the host of the game show Jeopardy was interviewed recently about the re-occurrence of his pancreatic cancer.  He said: “When it happened early on I was down on myself, I didn’t realize how fallible each of us is in his or her own way … I talk to the audience sometimes and I get teary eyed for no reason. I don’t even bother to explain it anymore, I just experience it. I know it’s a part of who I am and I just keep going.”  May God be with him and each of us and we confront our losses and our limitations.  

Trust that you are a speck of dust in God’s creation.  No more. No less. And you are precious in his sight. Let yourself grieve with all of your heart.  Let yourself find God. May it be so.