Rise Up!

The Revised Common Lectionary is an ecumenical plan for reading the Bible in church, over a three-year cycle. What that means is that the readings we just heard read are also being read not only across the country in Episcopal congregations today but also among Roman Catholics and Lutherans and United Methodists and liturgical Congregationalists. There are some slight variations along the way but what this means is that the preacher doesn’t pick the readings: the preacher’s work is to engage with what comes up that week.

I said a three-year cycle. Why am I telling you this? Because twenty-four years ago today, when people showed up in Church, these were the very same readings that they heard read. I was serving at that time as the rector of St. Francis Church in Holden, Massachusetts. The church was full that morning, because of what had happened earlier that week, on September 11, 2001.

The lector got up to read that first reading from Jeremiah, the same words we just heard a few minutes ago:

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 lo, it was waste and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light.

I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro.

I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
and all the birds of the air had fled.

I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins
before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

 

You could have heard a pin drop.  Honestly, it seemed a little “too soon.” And as a preacher, I knew all those visitors were coming to church to hear a word of comfort, a word of hope. I needed the same thing myself. And yet this was what we got.

 

It occurred to me, however, that just one week earlier and certainly most of the September Sundays prior to that day, the words of Jeremiah would have felt like something, well, kind of Old Testament-y. Not relatable. Easier to skip over and move on to the Gospel.

 

And yet, what dawned on me that day is that we were in a place where Jeremiah’s words were precisely descriptive of what we were experiencing as a nation. A city in ruins. We knew what that looked like. Bruce Springsteen wrote a lament with that very refrain, not about lower Manhattan but about economic challenges in his beloved New Jersey, with the boarded-up windows, the empty streets, the churches where the congregation’s all gone, and my brother down on his knees. My city of ruins.

 

We needed to grieve in that time after 9/11, and I think we still need to grieve because, honestly, as positive-thinking North Americans we aren’t so great at it. Whether we go through a personal trauma and the loss of someone we love before they have gotten to live their life, or whether we experience a community trauma, or betrayed trust, or whether we experience a national trauma or just the loss of what we knew, what we believed, what we put our trust in, we need to grieve. And grief takes time. And intentionality.

 

Elizabeth Kubler Ross taught us that grief is not linear but it does have stages, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We tend to want to move through those stages as quickly as possible. We say we want to “get back” to normal. But grief takes time and there is no going back – only forward.

 

When I was a young associate priest in Westport, Connecticut one of my parishioners was a sportswriter some of you may remember, named Frank Deford. Frank and his wife, Carol, lost a daughter, before my arrival, to cystic fibrosis and part of Frank’s grief work was to write a book entitled Alex: the Life of a Child. After her death they adopted a daughter from the Philippines, Scarlett, and Scarlett was in my confirmation class. So that was how I got to know the Deford family pretty well.

 

When the time came for me to leave Westport, having been called to serve as rector at St. Francis, I asked Frank a question. I asked him if he had any advice for me when the day came when I would have to officiate at the burial of a child. What should I know about his cand Carol’s experience?

 

I’ll never forget what he told me. He said people assume that you are grieving the same way, that it can bring you closer as a couple because you both loved that child so much. But he said that their experience was the opposite from that and he felt more common: that they grieved very differently and they were in different places at different times and that put stresses on their marriage. They survived. But he told me to always remember how hard it is, not only to experience that loss but to try to stay in synch through the grieving process. Or because you won’t be in synch, to be sure you are communicating with each other when one is still dealing with anger and the other might be closer to acceptance. My pastoral experience has born it out that this was very good advice.

 

On that September Sunday in 2001 when the pews were filled in Holden, I felt inadequate to the task because all I could do was point toward grief, and hope felt far down the road. There were no easy answers to offer. A national tragedy like that one or the COVID epidemic simply affect people differently – and grief takes time. I felt some of that coming back to the surface again this week after the murder of Charlie Kirk, which stunned the nation. In spite of some placing all the blame on liberals, I read Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s and Gavin Newsom’s and Bernie Sanders’ heartfelt condolences. I have seen us all grieving – liberals and conservatives. Yet we are grieving differently and we saw the deceased differently and ironically we seem even more divided as a country than we were last Sunday. This breaks my heart. When will we learn that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?

 

But here is the good news, if you are ready for some good news. We trust in the power of the resurrection and the good news of Easter and we know that death never ever gets the last word. Never. We trust and we know that the prophet Jeremiah was not in denial: he spoke from the heart about the pain of the Babylonian exile. But he also knew that beyond all the deconstruction there would eventually be seeds to be planted and building to be done. Eventually telling the truth about the loss would lead to hope again, and the possibility for new life. Not a return to “things as normal” but a new normal, a new reality.

 

In that same song I quoted, Springsteen sings a powerful refrain to make this same point: come on rise, up. Rise up. Rise up

 

What does this have to do with us? Jeremiah lived at a time of incredible social upheaval, but it was 2600 years ago. There are people in this room who were not even born yet on 9-11-2001, so it feels like something from a history book for them even while others of us remember exactly where we were on that September morning.

 

But we are here right now, today. We are living in perilous times, I think. But even if you don’t agree with that, you know that at any given moment we are not all in a great place. We grieve old losses and new ones, unresolved hurts and wounds that pierce deeply. We grieve the church that once was, and that can kick up denial and anger and bargaining and depression before we get to acceptance. Some here are in a great place in life. Others are worried about their job, or their marriage, or their kids, or their grandchildren – growing up in an unsteady and confusing world. Political violence is on the rise.

 

And still we sing, in our own way: rise up. Rise up. Rise up. 

Still we sing, there’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea. 

Still we sing,

Praise my soul the king of heaven, to his feet thy tribute bring; ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, evermore his praises sing:

alleluia, alleluia, praise the everlasting King.

 

The Church exists, it seems to me, to help us to grieve, to tell the truth, and then to put our whole trust in God’s love and mercy, knowing in our bones that God is not finished with us yet. And so we live toward hope; not passively but actively. We rise up.  We rise up. We stand together. We weep with those who weep but we remind one another that joy cometh in the morning.

 

I think one of the prayers I pray a lot lately is for patience to allow people to be where they are. Because none of us can be where we are not. We need, I think, to hold space for each other, and for pain and grief and loss and confusion. Even as we continue to make our song: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Even as we continue to rise up.