Praying, Weeping, Praising                
Jeremiah 8: 18- 9:1 and I Timothy 2:  1 – 7

 I was in Richmond Virginia this past week at a training session for lead pastors.  It was a week filled with learning about the importance of team mission statements, performance reviews, clarity of communication and discovering your leadership style using the LSI- Life Styles Inventory.  I learned that I am an affliative and humanistic encouraging leader – basically I prefer people to tasks. 
 
Not surprisingly, then one of my favorite moments of my time away was meeting  Ruby.   When I landed in Richmond I went as my pre-seminar material advised to the Groome Transportation Company.  I signed up for a round trip ride to the retreat center and then went outside to the waiting area to catch my ride.     My driver was Ruby.   It was Ruby’s first day as a driver for Groom.  Ruby was 74 years old.    She pulled away from the curb after getting directions for her boss.  I was a little nervous because as I kept repeating the address, she kept saying it back to me wrong—oh well, this was her town.   We drove and I found out a little about her life—she had worked for Pratt—the airplane engine company for over 30 years, her husband had been military, but had died many years ago, she had raised 5 kids – 4 boys and a girl, by this time we were nearing downtown --  she found out I was a pastor –Oh  how new,  how new,  what a blessing.   The radio crackled – Miss Ruby where are you – downtown,  what are you doing down town --  you told me too go this way, no miss Ruby—you are supposed to be on East Cary—get on East Cary and then call me back.  She seemed a little upset, “men they just have to show you up a little;   I thought I knew how to get there but when they told me different directions I got confused” —no worries I said--  actually I really didn’t care a bit since I was a day early and the longer trip meant that I got to see downtown Richmond.  She showed me some of the major sights as we drove by them.   We drove on and on and eventually she found the way to River Road, the address of the retreat center – She was so glad that I was her first passenger and not bothered by her detour.  I asked why she decided to start driving --   She said a body has to keep busy.  Her grandson had just graduated and gone off to college this fall – he was a violinist and a basketball player—Ty.  She had raised him and his older brother Aaron after their mother had died of cancer.  She had promised her daughter she would raise them – and she did. They were only 4 and 6 when their mother had died.   Ruby said this time she had more time for reading and homework and PTA.   She loved it, but now they were raised and she needed something to do.   She smiled her amazing smile and asked pray for us – pray for me and Ty and Aaron.  Of course . . What grace I thought to go through all that and still have such a smile and courage to try a new thing even now.    We pulled into the retreat center and she let me out.  I grabbed my bag and walked over to her --   A long hug ,  a prayer— I’m not sure I will ever pray with my cabby again, but it was  after all her first day. . .   a good day for me  even as the radio crackled in the background – Miss Ruby, where are you miss Ruby?  8 come in.

Paul urges Timothy in the epistle for today to pray – pray where ever you are – pray for everybody . .Paul writes to his young convert to Christianity,  “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.

Prayer – in amazing ways it does connect us to one another— I felt connected to Ruby.  In our prayers for one another we tap into an energy that is larger than any one of us.   Pray—Paul urges,  pray for the rulers – pray for peace. .. 

Peace is what the prophet desperately desire for the people Israel  -- peace is far off and so Jeremiah laments and cries out for God – .    My grief is beyond healing, my heart is sick within me.  Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images and with their foreign idols. . . O that my head were waters, and my eyes a foundation of tears that I might weep day and night. . .

Jeremiah describes to the people of Israel a truly suffering God, a grieving God. In Chapter 7 Jeremiah calls on the people to change the way they are relating to one another, especially their treatment of strangers, orphans and widows.   He challenges the peoples disregard for the most vulnerable in their society.     And he chastises the  priests and prophets and leaders for acting as if these wrongs, the  wounds they have inflicted were only scratches.   The people have refused to see what is really happening in their lives.   Justice and mercy are the tests of the people’s spirituality and they have failed horribly.

Jeremiah gives expression to the grief of God.   Is there no balm in Gilead?  Is there no physician there?  Why has the health of my people not been restored?  These questions of lament haunt us in our time.

We come here to worship to offer our prayers for peace,  prayers for our leaders,  prayers to be reconnected to one another and our God.   Prayers of lament for  the hurts and aches in the lives of those we love,  prayers for our nation, for our partners in the Philippines ,  for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.    And at times we cry . . . It is  important to weep   for as Alice Walker writes in her poem SM-,  “ I tell you, Chickadee  I am afraid of people who cannot cry    Tears left unshed turn to poison in the ducts. . .’”

After Ruby dropped me off and I checked in, l I stopped in the library and found lying on the top shelf of the small book case Annie Lamott’s most recent book,  Grace Eventually.     I had been working on my sermon, so as I read I was captured by Lamott’s  chapter called “Wailing Walls”.   Lamott writes in this chapter,  “ I’d been pumped up about the Sunday School  lesson the night before when I saw an art project suggested in the curriculum materials that involved building a paper Wailing Wall with students, to teach them about pouring one’s heart out to God and about letting go. I’d also printed images from the internet of men clustered at the wall, crowds milling nearby , harder to find shots of women at the wail , multiple copies of one block of stone and a picture of a young boy and his father pushing prayers written on paper into cracks in the wall.  This is something I do all the time, shove bits of paper with prayers and names on them into desk drawers, little boxes , my glove compartment.  I’ve found when you give up on using your mind to solve a problem, which your mind is holding on to like a dog with a chew toy, writing down helps turn of the terrible alertness.  When you not siphoned into the black hole of worried control and playing fretful Savior, turning the problem over to God or the elves in the glove compartment harnesses something in the universe that is bigger than you and that just might work. 

I got a piece of poster board, and the greatest invention in the history of Sunday schools everywhere – glue sticks. We pasted our blocks to the poster board and taped strips and wads of green construction paper to represent the wonder of vegetation breaking through the cracks, then we wrote, right on the blocks the names of people we loved who were suffering—grandparents, people in nations at war – and then the names of pets who had died,  While we worked, we had wailing and muttering practice.  

I asked Neshama, the other teacher, whether she had anything to add about letting go. She put down her glue stick and said… maybe turning things over is not the solution to everything but you do what you can… then you get out of the way, because you’re not the one who does the work.”

Paul writes to Timothy,  I urge that prayers be made for everyone and then in the midst of this passage Paul begins to sing "For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind,Christ Jesus, himself divine, who gave himself a ransom for all."  We don’t know what tune he used or what rhythms, but we do have his song. . 

Sometimes we wail, sometimes we pray and sometimes we sing.  As I was working on this sermon I found myself singing “There is balm in Gilead”.   This powerful African American spiritual sings out an answer to Jeremiah’s question, “Is there no balm in Gilead”   Yes says a people who have known great oppression and pain,  yes,  there is a balm—a balm for the wounded,  a balm for sin sick soul. 

There is a balm -- God is with us, share God’s justice, share God’s love, share with one another in prayer and song.    Do what we can for the healing of the world and then get out of the way for there is a greater one at work among us. . . .  

Thanks for the ride Miss Ruby – I won’t forget your courage or your smile --   I’m still praying for you.    Amen.

Amen.