Rev. Rachel Lewis Cooley
“Covenant – God’s Promise”
Eternal Hope UCC, Fort Walton Beach, FL
November 21, 2021
Joel 2:21-27
21 Do not fear, O soil;
be glad and rejoice,
for the Lord has done great things!
22 Do not fear, you animals of the field,
for the pastures of the wilderness are green;
the tree bears its fruit;
the fig tree and vine give their full yield.
23 O children of Zion, be glad,
and rejoice in the Lord your God,
for he has given the early rain for your vindication;
he has poured down for you abundant rain,
the early and the later rain, as before.
24 The threshing floors shall be full of grain;
the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
25 I will repay you for the years
that the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
my great army that I sent against you.
26 You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied
and praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has dealt wondrously with you.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.
27 You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel
and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.
Psalm 126 -- A Harvest of Joy / A Song of Ascents.
1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
3 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.
4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
5 May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.
Covenant. God’s promises.
Honoring loss. Through lament AND through gratitude.
Honoring in general.
Slow living.
Practice of gratitude. Not just “attitude of gratitude”. Both and.
Did the plants fight to live? Or did it just happen in abundance? Both? Sometimes each?
This is Thanksgiving week, can you believe it?? The days fly by, the weeks seem long, the months are gone suddenly, and we look back sometimes and say how did we get here already? This is the time when we’re supposed to feel gratitude, to give thanks easily for gifts of all sorts.
But what if we feel grumpy about the prospect of feeling grateful this time? What if gratitude is not coming naturally, or we’re just so caught up with both busy-ness and immersed in our feelings and struggles that we simply don’t have time or energy? Some of us have faced losses of loved ones, and grief can feel like a weight we carry, making it impossible to feel the easy-lightness of gratitude. I’m not sure where you are in your attitude about the pandemic situation right now, but I know I’ve gone through bouts of grief, definitely fear and anxiety, uncertainty of what I am or we are to do, and often numbness about it. At this point, we’ve lived with it so long, our brains and bodies have needed to ignore it sometimes, because they cannot physically maintain such stress and that is an adaptation and way of being that is good and right sometimes, in the face of trauma.
Whatever the case for you right now, the question of how gratitude relates to pain or deep sadness or anxiety or even numbness seems like a question we could all benefit from wondering about for our lives as a whole. Because there will be seasons of heartache, and seasons of plenty across our lives – we all know this, likely from experience. And maybe sometimes, the heartache and the plenty of goodness may overlap.
In our readings from the Hebrew Bible today, we see that our ancestors wrestled with this question too. On first reading, and out of context it may seem that our verses today are ones of pure gratitude, marvelling at God’s wonders simply from seeing them around and knowing God’s promises are fulfilled. But in fact, both of these readings come from times of deep distress, and fear. The people of Psalm 126 talk about a time when God did provide, when those who reap the crops could go out to gather and come back with shouts of joy at how much there was. They talk about how they and others around them could not deny that they were blessed by God, that God was taking care of God’s people. Right now, though, they are currently like dry streams in the desert waste, they plants with tears, and they come back again in tears. They are having gratitude for their circumstances in the past. It occurs to me that this looking back to the past gratitude is important, especially in the face of despair or depression, the memory of a time of joyful shouts and abundance and knowing all is well can be vita life lines to keep us hanging on, looking to both past and future and seeing or trusting in hope. Maybe these memories or foresights can motivate us to try our damndest to bring hope into the present moment too, which the people try here but calling out to God. They ask God to do what they know God has done before! Which is to provide for them. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the people believe and experience that they must ask God for deliverance, and to ask God, they need lament, for one, which involves calling out to God from deep distress, weeping and wailing even to say “God look at us, see how we suffer and need your help!” Hebrew Bible scholar Claus Westermann traces this pattern over and over throughout the Old Testament – the people are in some distress, they cry out to God, God answers, and the people are brought to deliverance. Their cries are vitally necessary, an integral part of the process. If they didn’t cry out, God wouldn’t know what to do, or wouldn’t know they were ready for deliverance perhaps. So the people here cry for God to bring to their present moment the abundance they’ve known from God before.
We practiced lament together a few weeks ago on All Saints Day, naming those sorrows which we could not explain or bear to God, asking that Christ be with us. I want to be clear that I think both lament and gratitude are key pieces of our relationship with God, of our awareness of God’s promises. When it does seem clear that God is providing and fulfilling God’s promises, and when it doesn't, we are still in relationship with God – God is still present and listening. And when we look around, we can see instances of abundance and instances of injustice and horror. God sent God’s beloved son to be with us in both. God is here with us, and both lament and gratitude can remind us and show that we trust that God is present and loving.
It is good and right that we honor our loss and pain, for God is with us in both. Acknowledging the loss and pain and naming it to God shows that we trust in God’s love which has no end and which can hold whatever we question or give over. Even when we don’t feel like we trust, lament to God can form us in faith, reminding us that we do. going into the holiday season when we feel all things should be joyful and struggle when they seem they’re not, lament seems all the more important, that we know we can have whatever feelings come up. For the joy of the season seems to sharpen our griefs and hurt. Can the feelings of hurt and the naming them help sharpen the joy and perhaps even gratitude?
Qualitative shame researcher Brené Brown interviewed and reviewed interviews from many many people to ponder what wholehearted living might look like, and of course in these interviews she heard stories of incredible loss. People who had gotten that dreaded phone call about the sudden illness or death of a loved one. People who’ve faced such loss – and you may have seen this in your own life or the lives of others you’ve known – they say that the thing they miss most are the ordinary moments, like knowing your loved one is in the next room, or the way they complained or smiled as you cooked dinner, or the kind of text messages they used to send. The folks who’ve lost say that gratitude for the ordinary things honors what they’ve lost. When we take a moment to really notice the ordinary beautiful human moments and ways around us, we are honoring that they are beautiful, they are gifts.
As someone whose brain too often imagines horrible scenarios which could occur to come raining down on the ordinary beautiful moments I enjoy with my loved ones or with God, I try to think about gratitude instead. Brene talks about this. In those moments when things are wonderful and then anxiety seizes her that something awful might happen just then, she has to will herself to turn toward gratitude instead. This helps her feel the joy that is there, instead of turning it into anxiety! This helps her honor the losses of those who have lost, and who could never have predicted or prepared themselves for the loss even though we seem to think we can sometimes. The gratitude in these ordinary beautiful moments helps us remember that God is present and good, just as lament in the despair moments helps us remember God is present and good.
Brene Brown also met with parents of children who had been murdered at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012. They had clearly faced incredible, horrifying loss, and lament was surely not an option for them in those moments of facing the news and during the long journey of grief. But neither was gratitude an option for them. Brene showed them a picture of her children, and they talked about their activities and their ages and the things that make them special together. Afterward, many of the parents thanked her for sharing some of her life and her joy in her children with them. “People don't show us pictures of their children anymore,” they say. “They think it will hurt us too much, but actually it’s healing.” “Your gratitude honors our loss,” they say. God invites us to honor our losses and hurt, bringing it all to God, bringing both our laments and our gratitudes too.
So earlier in this sermon called gratitude light and easy, because it can come in a simple moment of noticing the breeze, or the smile on our beloveds face, or the beauty of music, or the human softness and wonder in people around us. But I think gratitude can also be deeper, coming in response to pain and suffering and reminding us that God is present and loving through it all. We have to acknowledge and notice both the beautiful and the painful to call God and ourselves to make more things more beautiful. It is not, I don't believe, that we have to have the painful to have the good, or something like that, but it is that both exist and we cannot deny that. And sometimes the experience of pain sharpens our experience of good. And God is present and loving through them both. May we remember that this is so, all through the holiday season. May we take time to slow down and notice God present around the joy and the sorrow, all through the holiday season. Amen.