Necessary Anger
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| Internally displaced people in South Sudan find a safe shelter at the UN House IDP compound in Juba, South Sudan, February 2014. Photos: Petterik Wiggers/Panos Pictures |
For audio, click here: https://soundcloud.com/emsworthup/february-8-2015-11-17-56-am
For more information about the political situation and civil war in South Sudan, here is a good primer from 2013 when the war began: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/12/30/9-questions-about-south-sudan-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask/
Isaiah 40:21-31
For more information about the political situation and civil war in South Sudan, here is a good primer from 2013 when the war began: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/12/30/9-questions-about-south-sudan-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask/
Isaiah 40:21-31
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not
been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations
of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its
inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a
curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted,
scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows
upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To
whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your
eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and
numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty
in power, not one is missing.
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way
is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not
known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the
ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is
unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even
youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those
who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with
wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not
faint.
It took me at least 24 hours after my arrival in
South Sudan to remember where I had seen that look before. The far away gaze of eyes made
bloodshot from lack of sleep over many, many weeks. The countenance so distant and reserved that at first it looks like perfect tranquility, but upon closer examination is more like shell
shock. I knew I’d seen that look
before – that zombie-like presence in which the body keeps moving and the lips
are speaking, but the humanity has somehow floated away. It took me a day or more to realize
that the faces of the people I met in South Sudan looked just like people I’d
met in New Orleans a few months after Hurricane Katrina.
The congregations and pastors that make up South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SSPEC) have not been immune from the
trauma. In fact, most of the
pastors I met in Juba are exiles.
Many were forced out of northern Sudan after the south gained its
independence in 2011. As a result of the peace agreement that established South
Sudan, hundreds of thousands of Christian and traditional African religious
adherents were forced to leave their lives in Khartoum and other parts of north
Sudan and return to what the Sudanese government considered their “ancestral
homeland.” The exiles were not
allowed to take much property with them, and they arrived in a
sparsely-populated, under-developed new country with little infrastructure and
few easily-developed resources.
Many of the pastors I met had led well-established, thriving churches in
Khartoum, and are now struggling to make a living by doing church work in South
Sudan. The more well-educated
pastors who speak English have been able to get work in the South Sudan
government. The rest are
struggling mightily.
The first wave of exiles came to South Sudan in 2011. But in late 2013, a
civil war broke out in South Sudan and violence is still raging today in many
parts of the country. More pastors
and church members – this time coming from within South Sudan -- have come to
Juba. Many have lost friends,
family, and their churches to the war.
In fact, it is safe to say that nearly every pastor I met from the South
Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church is in exile, a stranger in a strange and
sometimes dangerous land.
When you talk to these pastors, the trauma in their
eyes is the first thing you notice.
They’ve been deeply broken by the death and destruction they’ve
witnessed. Some of the
pastors have no option but to live but in the United Nations refugee
camps. There are three of these UN
camps in Juba, each containing 10’s of thousands of refugees. Other pastors are living in cramped
quarters with friends and other family members. One of the pastors I met is living in a 2 room apartment
with 20 other people including his wife and 5 children.
Although the city of Juba is South Sudan’s capital
city and is located in what is a relatively calm area of the country at the
moment, there is no infrastructure to speak of, no safe water, no schools or
healthcare, few paved roads, and an ever-growing population suffering from
rampant disease and malnutrition.
It is a city of politicians and bureaucrats living behind gated walls,
and a civilian population that resembles walking wounded.
The text we heard today from the book of Isaiah was
composed toward the end of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon. And the exiles who received these words
of Isaiah were, like the people in South Sudan, children of war. Fifty years before, the people of
Jerusalem had suffered the savagery of the Babylonian forces who destroyed
their city and slaughtered their people. The book of Lamentations describes the horror of what
they experienced in unflinching detail.
Listen to this passage from Chapter 2:
11 My eyes are spent with weeping; my
stomach churns; my bile is poured out on the ground because of the destruction
of my people, because infants and babes faint in the streets of the city. 12
They cry to their mothers, ‘Where is bread and wine?’ as they faint like the
wounded in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their
mothers’ bosom.
20 Look, O Lord, and consider: To
whom have you done this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they
have borne? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the
Lord? 21 The young and the old are lying on the ground in the
streets; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword; on the
day of your anger you have killed them, slaughtering without mercy (Lamentations 2:11-12, 20-21)
Not everyone in Jerusalem was taken to Babylon. Some stayed in Jerusalem and endured
the hardship of living in an occupied land with few resources. Others went to Babylon and lived as
exiles. In their suffering,
the people of God developed a case of spiritual amnesia born of their traumatic
experiences of war and exile.
Spiritual amnesia is what happens to us when the
worst happens. The crushing
diagnosis. The deep loss. Exile from friends or family. Spiritual amnesia is the kind of
problem that causes us to fall apart whenever a crisis comes. It is a deep trauma to the psyche and
our souls. We wonder if God has
gone off and left us altogether.
Or we doubt if God exists at all because it sure doesn’t look like
it. We forget God’s promises,
God’s goodness and God’s call to us.
We are lost in waves of grief and panic. Well-meaning Christian friends may tell us that our problem
is we don’t have enough faith or have done something to deserve the hell we’re
experiencing.
But the prophet of Isaiah speaks to remind the exiles
and us that our faith is not what saves us. Only God saves us.
God saves us not because we are good, but because God is good. God saves us not because we are
powerful, but because God is powerful beyond our comprehension. And we forget that it is in our
vulnerability that we most fully experience the grace and power of God. God understands our exhaustion and our
fear, and will meet us in that place.
I know all of that is true. But when I saw the suffering I saw in South Sudan, it made
me angry. When I see the
brokenness in families and neighborhoods and other situations much closer to
home, it makes me angry that God doesn’t do something about it. So many days, I am not only angry
beyond belief, but tired. Tired of
waiting for God to give power to the faint, strengthen the powerless, and lift
up hurting people on eagles wings.
Tired of seeing the bad guys win.
Tired of seeing the poor get poorer.
And then it occurred to me while pondering this
passage from Isaiah this week is that as angry and as tired as I am, God is
probably more angry and more tired than I am. Because God is probably very tired of waiting for me and you
and all of us who ask stupid questions like, “Why is there so much suffering?”
It’s like a cartoon in which the man asks God, “Oh Lord, why is there so much
suffering in the world? Lord when
are you going to do something about it?”
And God answering, “I’ve been meaning to ask you exactly the same
question.”
In this text, we’ve read this morning, the people of
Israel have forgotten what they believe and why they believe it. They have forgotten who they are. Isaiah calls the people of Israel to
remember who God was for them and is for them, and to remember why God called
them in the first place. The
people of Israel were called by God from the beginning to be a blessing to all
nations. God promised to equip
them with everything they needed to be that blessing. To bring good news to the poor and relief to the
captives. To do justice. To love mercy. To bind up the brokenhearted.
Throughout scripture, every time the people of Israel
forget that call and forget God’s abundant provision, things fall apart for
them. And every time the worst
happens, God sends prophets like Isaiah to remind them of who they are, what
they are to be, and what God is for them.
Things are falling apart everywhere, brothers and
sisters. Isn’t it time for us to
remember who we are? Isn’t it time
for us to remember why we are?
When we were in South Sudan, a member of our group
preached in a UN refugee camp where more than 2000 people gathered for
worship. In telling about his
experience, he described the singing of children’s choir:
“And then this
little girl came up and knelt on the floor a foot from me and sang “O God, you
made us, why aren’t you saving us? Why can’t you see us? Do you still love us?
We are wandering in our own land, Father. Why have you forgotten us? Are you
the one who created us or not?”[1]
People of God what are our answers to her questions?
Why are we not saving those who are in need?
Why do we close our eyes to great suffering?
Why do we not love as Jesus has commanded us to
love?
Why do we reject the stranger, the refugee, the
immigrant, the homeless?
Why do we forget God’s goodness, or question God’s
provision to us?
Why do we live as though we have no attachment to our
creator and no responsibility to our neighbor?
Good questions.
Angry questions. Necessary
questions. These are questions
that trouble and confront us when we allow ourselves to look beyond our safe and
tidy churches into the wildness of God’s people crying for deliverance. The children singing in that UN camp believe in
God’s promises – that God does hear them, that God will answer them, that the
God that created them knows them and loves them.
The children believe. But will we?
While we were in South Sudan, Rev. Dave Carter
preached a sermon about the various texts in the Old Testament that refer to
“eagles” and noted that there’s a better translation of the Hebrew word –
“nesher” – which our English bibles translate as “eagle.” “Nesher” would be
better translated as “vulture.” I
looked it up this week while preparing this sermon and he’s right. And it’s not surprising that later
translators would choose “eagle” over “vulture.” Who wants to be lifted up on vultures wings?
The thing about vultures though is that while it is
true that they feed primarily on animals that have died, they do not attack
healthy animals as an eagle does.
They are almost entirely dependent upon finding food that is already
dead. While an eagle often hunts
alone, vultures fly together. When
the vulture in the lead finds food, it shares the find with the rest of the
birds flying with him. Vultures
eat together, sharing the food.
Because they have weak talons, the vulture cannot pick up his food and
take with him to somewhere else and eat alone. The eagle will swoop in, pick up its prey, and take it back
to its nest.
Further, vultures are not very strong. Their stamina is not great and their
wings are very weak. Yet they are
able to travel long, long distances to find food. How do they do that? Vultures do not fly – they soar. They depend upon finding air currents
to carry them along. Once they
find an air current, they spread their large but not very strong wings – and
soar. Vultures do not do all the
work themselves, but rest on the air they are given. As a result, they can glide higher and longer than almost
any other creature.
This understanding of “nesher” as a vulture and not
an eagle really changed my thinking about this Isaiah text. Being lifted up with vultures’ wings
does not mean being strengthened to do all the work all by myself, but to
become even more dependent on God’s grace and the power of the Holy
Spirit. Being lifted on vulture’s
wings means to trust that all that we need to live will be provided, and that
we have the responsibility of sharing what we find with my brothers and
sisters. To fly like a vulture
does not mean frantically flapping our wings to get from where we are now to
some imagined point B, but to depend upon the wind blown by the Holy Spirit,
trusting that it will lift us up and carry us forward into God’s future.
The incredible power of God of which the prophet
Isaiah speaks is the same power of the Holy Spirit that is available to us – to
engage in the necessary work of loving, healing, engaging and bring good news
to a broken, traumatized world.
Have you not seen? Have you not heard?
Evil doesn’t stand a chance when God’s people work
together. Admitting to our
weakness and brokenness is how we become powerful in God’s economy of
grace. We have been given
everything we need to be a blessing to the world. We must throw off our spiritual amnesia and remember who we
are. When we know that, when we
believe that, we will have an answer, not only about the future of our church,
but for the whole world.
“…but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their
strength, they shall mount up with wings like vultures, they shall run and not
be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
Let us pray:
Take these broken wings, O God.
Take the broken wings of this congregation and of your people in South
Sudan. And teach us not to
fly like eagles, but to soar like the vulture, lifted up always by your
goodness and mercy and grace.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
