The readings for
next Sunday include this passage from Jeremiah.
The prophet is sunk in inconsolable grief at the state of religion and
the people. I was tempted, as I’m sure
others were, to consign this to the Too Hard basket… but then my attention was
caught by its raw reality and poetry…
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 there?
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
no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my
poor people not been restored? 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! [Jeremiah 8:18ff]
You might say that
there are two broad ways of living a faith, in our case Christian faith. They differ from each other, and yet in some
ways you can have bits of each. The most
popular attitude, at any rate in western Christianity, is that it is mainly about
me. Although I know I am to love God and
my neighbour, and quite often do, my faith, my satisfaction and my
happiness are not negotiable and are the test, my security and assurance, my
church and its fellowship, my growth and development… This overall prior assumption with all its
variations is scarcely questioned, and it can be formed to merge peaceably at
least with the now dominant secular culture and people who probably want
nothing to do with religion. Faith is
for me, obviously, and so plenty of people now say, “I have no need of it. I can take better care of myself, myself.”
The other way is
the road less travelled… in which… I am
not the centre of life and faith. That
self is finding itself displaced (replaced…?).
In prayer and quiet discipline I am attending to what Jesus taught and
presides over even now – a life which is challenging my securities and
boundaries. Jesus asked, Why do you call me Lord, yet don’t do the
things that I say? The balm in
Gilead, we discover, is not a soothing balm, it is a healing, re-creating
balm. It is not about how I am feeling,
but about who I am becoming, in Christ. This
way of faith is by its nature open and vulnerable, it sees no need of fences or
walls. It has been called in history the
Via Negativa, because God whom we
love and worship is best described by what God is not – God is not what we
think. What we have is mystery, holiness,
justice and love, with the veil somewhat lifted for us by Jesus. So we are not loud, and we do not imagine we
are saving the world. We live by the Spirit,
as one of the great biblical images puts it – the wind of God. The Spirit, taught Fr John Main, is Jesus
living in us, and among us, and joining in our prayer.
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