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"God the Sigh-er"
To sigh: to take in and let out a long, deep, audible breath,
especially in expressing sorrow, relief, fatigue, longing.
Many experiences of life are too deep for words. We have plumbed the depths:
The depth is unspeakable, inexpressible. It can't be done in careful phrases, much less in any more elaborate literary form. It is more elemental, a much less rational thing. It can only be described as a cry, a sigh too deep for words. Mrs. Emma Thompson ironed for us in the 50's in Mississippi. She was a gentle, kind, loving woman. She taught me how to sigh although I didn’t realize it at the time. She knew and understood the painful side of human existence. And sometimes she would take that deep breath and shake her head. She knew what others were going through. She had heard and seen the suffering of people, experienced what they were having to endure, entered into the hurtful situation, and made it her own. A sigh is the only way it could be expressed. Sighs too deep for words. God understands such, when words won't do. God is a sigh-er, too. Our New Testament text is a marvelous poignant picture: God interceding on behalf of, with, and for us before God. God understands the depth of a sigh. God knows, hears, shares, stands with us. We often think of God in terms of distance and difference: far away and not like us, different from us. We have forgotten the awesome marvel of it all. The glory of the gospel is about a God who yearns for our redemption. We need to remember the incredible love and compassion and faithfulness of this God. This God relates to us and reaches out to us. God the sigh-er speaks of identification with us. An Old Testament text proclaims: "In all their affliction he was afflicted." God is not remote, God shares our pain. Any human being who is present with those who are in distress of one kind or another knows that a true and helpful presence entails some form of empathy, an entering into the situation of the troubled person. If that is so with human beings, how much more is that so with God. God's powers of commiseration, of shared suffering, are unsurpassed. God's presence with the distressed, pained and defeated means that God has so entered into their situation that it truly becomes God's own. Text after Old Testament text speaks of just that identification. God knows the depth of a sigh. Elie Wiesel, the great Jewish writer and survivor of the death camps, was once asked on a panel discussion: who was the unhappiest character in the Bible? Could it be Job who suffered numerous trials and tribulations? Could it be Moses who was barred entry into the Promised Land after leading the children of Israel through the wilderness? Could it be Mary who saw the crucifixion of her own son? No, Dr. Wiesel said. The unhappiest character in the Bible is God who suffers agonizing pain seeing human beings kill and abuse each other in God’s name. From the sufferer's point of view, nothing seems really present except the suffering and its various known and unknown causes. Authentic faith holds tenaciously to the belief that God is present, there within the experience of suffering itself. God is there sighing, embracing all the pain and the angry protest. The final resting place of human suffering is in God. Like the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, God experiences fully the suffering in all its terrible reality. Sighs too deep for words. There is no suffering in the world but comes to be endured by God. God does not deal with the issue at a distance, does not send a subordinate to cope with the problem, does not issue an edict designed to alleviate the suffering. God sees it from the inside, not from the outside. God enters fully into the hurtful situation and makes it God's own. God the sigh-er is with us. This is what the cross is all about. God got into our situation where it was heaviest and darkest, not to wipe it out and make it as if it were not, but to do with it what only God could do. God gets into life not so much to change the past so much as to keep the future open: to cleanse and steady our lives against the rush of evil which continually wells up within and from without and sweeps like a tide across human life and human history. God got into life to work God's holy will. God has committed to life, unable to keep from it. There is nothing left on earth that God hasn't known, even though there is more than enough to sigh over. God refuses to let human beings go even when they forget, and clings to them through all their blindness with a compassion that is not soft, but tough. The image is of God taking the scars of human life on the divine self. There are those in our time who think that the only truth is biological truth, the only master of our destiny is the give and take of economic pressure, where there is always more take than give. Don't you believe it. It is God the sigh-er who upholds us giving us freedom, gifts, and talents. This one, this God of love upholds us, whether we will it or not, whether we know it or not, like the ground on which we stand and the air which we breathe. This one is the tireless, ageless, unswerving sigh-er who wills that we shall be God-like, really God-like, and not playing God; who desires that we in our freedom shall respond to God's yearning with yearning of our own, however weak it may be. This sigh-er bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. That is the kind of God that God is: a sigh-er with us. God is love, which means God sighs for there is no love without sighing in this world. Some Christians believe Jesus is here to help them escape pain, their own and others. They have got it wrong. If they have no pain, then their task is to go and help somebody else in pain, to go where the pain is, to take up a pain they could easily avoid. The 20th century has an immense record of hate and violence. The new century and the world itself are deeply at risk. The writ of loving well God knows there is something more between us human beings than borders and wars, disagreements and death, differences and hatred. There is something more that God wills to which God is passionately committed. There is a true connection between us, God created and God willed: that we can live peacefully together and respect one another. For the sigh-ings of God are the labor pains of a new creation God is bringing about. This is why God is opening the future and expelling us from the safety of old traditions. God the sigh-er will never abandon us, even when we feel we have been abandoned. God is capable of creating a future even where we can see no way to hope and even out of the wreckage of human efforts. Therein lies our hope. God sets about working in and through the mess of this world patiently. Patience is superior to violence because it takes time, but acts of violence never have time and can therefore win only short-term victories.[1] God carries the world, guiding it toward love, justice, truth and freedom. That means a lot of sighing and yes, a lot of persistence and perseverance. We are in the words of the Old Testament "not consumed" or "cut off." In so doing God creates possibilities of life together and for one another. In this time of tragic impasse and shocking alienation, God calls us to move toward God’s future and to keep alive in our words, deeds and lives God’s promises. God does not sweep the contradictions of life away with facile assurances and easy words. Troubles do not vanish, but human vision is lifted above human helplessness to this God who sighs and carries and leads ever so patiently toward the kingdom.[2] And if that is true, an amazing thing happens. We can truly, humanly, live, act, suffer, and die, in life and death, sustained by God and helpful to human beings, trusting in the sigh-er to see us through and more, trusting God to lead us home. Violence will not have the last word as 9/11 seems to suggest. A gentle sigh from a gracious steadfast one says otherwise. As long as we too can sigh and patiently set to work, terrorism will lose. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. When life overwhelms and we can only sigh, we find we are not the only one sighing, there is someone else sighing too. God the sigh-er is with us and we find the energy to go on and forward. Thanks be to God! Maybe a Hebrew phrase says, it best: "Hallelujah!" No, something else must be expressed: a sigh….. _________________ |
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Harry Daniel