My sorrow cannot be healed; I am sick at heart. Listen! Throughout the land I hear my people crying out, “Is the Lord no longer in Zion? Is Zion's king no longer there?”
My heart has been crushed because my people are crushed; I mourn; I am completely dismayed.
Is there no medicine in Gilead? Are there no doctors there? Why, then, have my people not been healed?
I wish my head were a well of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I could cry day and night for my people who have been killed.
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Fifteen years ago on September 2, 1998, Swissair Flight 111 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia, killing all 229 people on board. Nova Scotians near the coast felt their homes tremble as the McDonnell Douglas passenger plane smashed into the water a few kilometres off the shore of Peggy’s Cove. The flight took off from JFK airport bound for Geneva, but a little less than an hour into the flight the crew noticed smoke and issued the international urgency signal "pan pan pan." They were cleared to proceed to the airport in Halifax but crashed in the relatively shallow water off Peggy’s Cove.
Though only four Canadians were killed on the flight, the crash of Swissair 111 had an enduring impact on Canada. Local fishermen led the search for survivors, residents welcomed the victims' families into their; the names of the dead are etched in stone monuments at a seaside memorial.
This week, the plan to refloat the cruise ship Costa Concordia was finally put into effect. For the residents of the tiny island of Giglio, it was a flashback to January 2012, and a return of grief and lament. The relatives of the two passengers whose bodies were never recovered were hoping it would provide some relief and healing.
Elio Vincenzi, the widower of Maria Grazia Trecarichi, said his wife was on the cruise celebrating her 50th birthday. Her 17-year-old daughter was one of the 4,000 people who survived the shipwreck; she was on the island this week to watch the crews at work.
There are voices still crying, fifteen yeas after the crash of Swissair, for those lost - for the promise of life, now lost. There are voices crying two years later, for those lost - and a re-opening of wounds.
Voices cry out in lament for those lost as a bus and train collide, as a train hauling crude oil derails, and lives are snuffed out in a moment. People in Colorado mourning the loss of loved ones in unprecedented flooding; families of the three killed in the latest shootings in Chicago; those who died in the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, those now beginning to succumb to radiation poisoning in Fukushima.
There are voices crying in the reading from Jeremiah, the voices of the people crying out "Is the Lord not in Zion? Is Zion’s King no longer there?" Voices of people crying out in lament. But it is also God’s lament - the God who was angry, now weeping as the people cry out.
There are voices weeping when one of our family dies - our parents, children, grandchildren - grandparents, aunts and uncles. Each elder is a marker in our lives, as one by one they pass and we become the elders.
We are often told we need to do something when we lament, or mourn - keep a stiff upper lip, get back to normal, move on. How many times have we heard that - how long it’s been since whatever tragedy happened, time to move on. When we grieve or hurt we often hear that we must pull ourselves up, put that grief away, don't let the tears show, don't let the pain come up at unexpected times. If it does - pull yourself together and put on a brave face. Or if someone else is grieving, we try to fix it- to make them happy, or stop the source of their grief. Why do we do that? Healthy lament is a part of healthy mourning and grief; the problem comes when years later we cannot pull ourselves out of the grief.
We hear all these in the words from Jeremiah. The people in Jeremiah are the Israelites who were invaded by Assyria and the Babylonians - whose temple is torn down and who are taken into captivity. And in those words we hear also the cries of people throughout thousand of years- cries from personal to the community to the global. Where is God in this? Why hasn't God done something? We hear the lament, the grief of Jeremiah, as he looks around and sees his people suffering - and in his words we hear God.
When people ask why God has done such a thing, I am always torn between recognising their grief, and trying to tell them God is also crying out. God has also lost all joy; God's heart is sick.
The voice of God - asks the rhetorical question- “Is there not a balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?”
The answer would have been obvious to Jeremiah's audience. Yes, there is healing in Gilead; it was a center which produced healing balm and had many physicians practicing. It was a health center of its time, and to ask that question would be similar to asking if there are no bandages to be had at Western Health. The obvious answer would be yes.
Nancy Hausman travels all the way from Illinois every year. She comes to pay her respects to her son Thomas, who was just 33 years old when he died. His remains, along with those of many others who were aboard Swissair 111, are buried at a monument near Peggy’s Cove.
"If you have to lose a member of your family away from home, they couldn't have found a better place than here on St. Margaret’s Bay. The people, the care and the love they give for all of these strangers that they have never met in life; our lives are all entwined together now."
In a way St. Margaret’s Bay is Gilead - and the balm which heals and soothes is there - in the care the people show for loved ones of people they never knew, and never would know. It’s just the simply living out of that care which provides healing for those who grieve.
The reading from Jeremiah last week, went like this:
"For my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.
I looked on the earth, and it was waste and void; to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and they were quaking, and all the hills moved. I looked, and there was no one at all; all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert, all its cities laid in ruins before God’s fierce anger.
For God says: “The whole land shall be a desolation; yet it will not be the end of the world. .
Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have spoken; I will not relent nor will I turn back.”
Yet today, the cries of the people reach God’s ears, and God hurts with them. The God of the Hebrew Scriptures displays strong human characteristics - flaming angry one day, and then filled with remorse and lamenting with the people.
The bottom line is that God has not abandoned the people. God relents at the cries of the ones who have been killed. God mourns with those who mourn, weeps with those who weep - and God can and will heal those people who cry. God can and will heal the hearts and spirits that are broken .
We cannot fix the effects of such tragedies and griefs on our own. We will not pull ourselves up by our bootstraps or get back to normal and put the pain behind. This was true before the Swissair crash, the deaths from terrorism in New York, deaths from flooding, or on a cruise ship, shootings in the Navy Dockyard, or in Chicago. It will be true long after these events become merely a history lesson to future generations. It is an illusion that we are safe by our own power, that we can make things right through human might and intelligence. It was and is an illusion that we can control what happens, or that God controls such things - or that God causes such tragedies to happen.
Yes, there is healing in Gilead; God answers our cries, with tears and with love. What we are called to do is to ask God for healing - through prayers of petitions and even thanksgiving. We have hope in the healing power of God, and as we encounter others who need healing, from the pain of a world wandering away from God's intentions can bring, even the pain from self-inflicted wounds, we can point to that balm, that healing we have already been given and have accepted,. We can offer healing in Jesus through words of comfort, empathy and hope; through tears and hugs, casseroles and rides, through cries against all acts of injustice.
The events and feelings from tragic events and personal loss will eventually fade; it is for us to ensure that we trust that God does not fade. Even as we hear God speaking of weeping for “my poor people who have been killed”, we hear in those words God’s care and love, which never changes. There is indeed healing in Gilead, which makes the wounded whole. May it be so.
Sources
1. God is Crying Out Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 Pastor Deb in Bangor, Maine.
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