F. Harry Daniel
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: July 8, 2007

"There Is a Balm in Gilead?"

The whole day was spent on the island with not one tree for shade. The resulting sunburn was awful, especially the top of the feet and the back of the neck. The throbbing, stinging, burning pain needed a cooling, soothing balm, like that for which Gilead was famous in the 7th century BC. It possessed remarkable medicinal qualities, and was particularly effective in the treatment of wounds and sores. The pleasant smell counteracted the smell of painful wounds. Balm is soothing for the wounds and pain of life. Our spirits need a little balm in the midst of the burning and wounding of modern life.

We know the pathos of Jeremiah's piercing question - "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" There is a burning among us and in us. For many life has lost its meaning, and despair has become their constant companion. Responding to the woundedness, brokenness and violence of our society is a growth industry. There are wounds made by us and to us. There are wounders and woundees, and often the worst wounder is a woundee, striking out in burning pain. Hush; listen; soft. Do you not hear the groans - human being wounding human being, life torn apart? There's a fire in our hearts, and there's a burning in our bones.

There are those who think they have it made, or want to think they had it made, but they don't. There is no instant Camelot; there is no Camelot at the top of the success pyramid. There is chaos in the world, in society, in us. Like our neighbors we know the longing to be heard, accepted, loved. The trusts we trusted are failing. "Every day in every way grow old along with me because the best is surely yet to be in this fair land possessed by people who are brave and free." The dream is unfilled, and there is a burning. Like any other human being we want success as measured by the instruments devised by those who have achieved success. We want, we want, we want. There is a burning, and we are deeply wounded. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. Old Jeremiah called it judgment. We the younger Jeremiahs of our day may call it what we will; but it is death. The greed is heedless, headlong. The clever thing our technology has made can wound. Its worship is idolatry.

To do our own thing: self-actualization, self-assertion, self-fulfillment is to live a life that deals God out, a life not referred to any purpose beyond the self. In that kind of world, there are no safe places. We yearn for equilibrium, and there is a lot of denial, self-deception, and wishful thinking. Society can't seem to think of anything to do, but more of the same. The ears of our ears are awake and the eyes of our eyes are opened. And it's not supposed to be this way. We have lost our way. There is no absence of pain; there is no love which is not vulnerable and open to hurt. There seems to be only a careless past, a fruitless present, and a hopeless future. We understand the old spiritual: "Bent down so low 'till don't bother you no more." But it does bother. Have we forgotten everything necessary to survival, forgotten commitments, forgotten shame, forgotten accountability, forgotten God? There is a fire in our hearts and a burning in our spirit. Is the sickness too deep? Is no healing possible? Scarred souls, and broken dreams - the wound is grievous. Is it curable? Is there a balm in Gilead? Healing can come only when the wound is acknowledged.

If the Word of God could break in, break through to us, what would we hear?

We would hear God's anguish. Jeremiah mirrors the mourning of God. The lamentation of God is embodied in the person of the prophet. There is from God a cry of sheer pain at the hurt God's people have suffered, and at the suffering God’s people have caused. As long as somebody cares, it may be possible for something to be done about it; there are still choices open to us, doors are not closed. God cares, God weeps and we know that the light is stronger than the dark.

The bumper-sticker platitude: "Smile, God loves you," is not helpful. That's a cover-up of the burning, the pain. "If you love the Lord, you rejoice always." "Real Christians don't have problems." Such an attitude leaves little room for truthfulness among people who need to be able to express the burning in order to grow into real love. If God knows our wounds, and God does, God will not meet us with a smile, but with a deep, deep cry for life run amiss. Alienation is a heavy, serious, burdensome thing for us, and for a weeping Father- God, a God who like a mother grieves for us. We don't need a God who tells us it doesn't hurt--no, we need a God who feels the hurt. There is a story told of a rabbi, renowned for his piety. He was unexpectedly confronted by one of his devoted, youthful disciples. In a burst of feeling, the young man exclaimed, "My master, I love you!" The ancient teacher looked up from his books and asked his fervent disciple, "Do you know what hurts me, my son?" The young man was puzzled. Composing himself, he stuttered, "I don't understand your question, Rabbi. I am trying to tell you how much you mean to me, and you confuse me with irrelevant questions." "My question is neither confusing or irrelevant," rejoined the rabbi, "For if you do not know what hurts me, how can you truly love me?" There is a balm in Gilead. God knows what hurts us. No matter how much we are hurt, God knows about it, cares about it, and so, through God's love, we are sometimes enabled to let go our hurts, so that God can apply balm.

God hears. A listening ear is one of the rabbinic designations for God. God will hear the cry of human beings, even if it is only a whisper. God is our healer who knows our afflictions and adversities and our sin, and knows them more deeply that we do. God is not indifferent. No matter how quiet or hidden the suffering, how silent the afflicted, there is One who not only knows of it, but likewise feels the pain. There are lives of quiet desperation, but no lives of solitary desperation, for all suffering is shared. This is true of the wicked as well as the good. There is a balm is Gilead. The balm is God's love; the balm is God in Christ. By his wounds we are healed. God is more for us that we are for ourselves. The spirituals of America’s black community know and express this in the most profound way. The slave straightened the question mark of Jeremiah’s text into an exclamation point: There is a balm in Gilead! They knew, they had been there.

This balm is not advice. There is no advice to give. This marvelous balm of Gilead only wants people, us, to see differently, to revision life. God is able to do a new thing, and we have been gifted and called to live out of that new thing. God does not coerce. God only tries to stimulate, surprise, hint, and gives opportunities. The alternative can be seen ever so delicately in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. From the crucified one flows healing balm. This balm is nothing we can earn. It has nothing to do with virtue, or job descriptions or morality. It is nothing we can do, in this do-it-yourself world. It is gift, sheer gift, waiting there to be recognized and received. We do not have to be qualified, the pain, the wounds, and God's love qualifies us. We have to do with an accessible, tender physician. We are creatures. We are limited by our conditions, our emotional needs, and our proneness to sin. As God's creatures, though, we are each loved by God in our frailty, sin, and all. It is the sick who need the physician, not the well. We know the burning, throbbing pain. We may also know the balm.

Having experienced the burning and the balm, we know the paradox of life: we do learn through pain. Balmed wounds and soothed pain enrich life. Could Beethoven have written that glorious paean of praise in the 9th Symphony if he had not had to endure the dark closing in of deafness? Pain is not always creative, wounds may not heal. Received wrongly, such can lead to destruction. Nevertheless, without suffering we do not grow. The world tempts us to draw back, tempts us to believe there can be no burning, no wounds. The world lies! It may be that this very holding back is the one evil you could have avoided.

This place, this worship is not only for those who have found, but also for those who know the burning and are seeking; not only for those for whom faith is easy and natural, but also for those for whom it is difficult and strange in the light of the unavoidable questions which experience is forcing them to ask. There is balm for both.

Perhaps balmed pain and soothed wounds allow us to become God's balm for others, our neighbors. We have walked independent of God, not with or before or behind God, confident that our own power and genius would be sufficient. Perhaps we are now beginning to learn that, of all options, to walk alone is the one the human race cannot afford, and cannot survive. To learn anew to walk with God, to have the strength to feel how weak we can be, and how much we are in need of guidance and love, that learning is difficult. But that is the balm offered for the burning.

The balm is the knowledge that we are human beings, children of God, beloved of God, and ultimately loved enough to know the love portrayed in terms of Christ; that we are human beings, ourselves quite capable of that same love by which we are loved. Having received balm, we may become the same for our neighbors.

If crucifixion of the son of man fully impinges upon your consciousness, then you will not be able to escape the calling of the Caller; you will know that you are called, called irresistibly, without a word of promise or success; called out against insuperable odds to go and speak and work and live, in faith that judgment must finally be redemptive, that fire ultimately purifies, that burning is for cleansing and forgiveness, that love and righteousness and holiness in fact pervade this shattered habitation, and that there is a balm in Gilead.

Hush; listen; soft. Do you not hear the groans, do you not feel the burning? But take heart God is here, there is balm, balm of Gilead, the best of all. Throbbing can be soothed, stinging can be cooled. Healing can begin! There is a balm in Gilead!