What Time Is It?
A homily preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, February 17, 2021, Ash Wednesday, launch of “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.
Text: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
About a week ago, as we were finishing up dinner, Anthony and I got into a conversation—a rather benign conversation, really—discussing some of the ongoing dynamics and divides in American politics. At one point, bless him, Anthony said something that hit me sideways. He didn’t say anything wrong. But I found myself welling up with tears. And what came next was an outpouring of grief and rage and disappointment that stretches back years. I gave voice to a litany of moments etched in my heart and mind, moments of deep pain—pain of personal failures and losses, pain over the state of our nation and society, pain over the broken creation, over the failure of the church—and the United Methodist Church in particular—the failure to collectively offer any counter-narrative to the hatred, prejudice, and division among the human family but instead mirror all that in cruel and heartbreaking ways. I stood in my kitchen, folded over the sink filled with dishes and cried, the weight of all the losses and grief of the past year spilling out. And, while none of what flooded into our kitchen was new to me, I don’t think I’d really acknowledged just how deeply the grief dwelled.
Many of you will, like me, find that your life and responsibilities require you to “suck it up, buttercup” and get on with it—whatever the “it” may be in your context. Caring for loved ones, running a business, managing health concerns, getting our work done, discerning through prayer and scripture a choice or action to take or a word to speak to a congregation. There are times when getting on with it is simply what must be done. There is rent to make or mouths to feed or people whose well-being depends upon our showing up. And in order to keep going, to push through, we may repress the reality—I think of this like tucking it away into a little compartment in my inner world, into a place where there are many drawers or boxes stored in a back corner for when I can or decide to open them up again. Sometimes, it is necessary that we push a painful or damaging experience to the side for a while because it is simply too much for us to bear at that moment. I confess that there are times when I think that if I open one of those compartments within, I may not be able to recover.
Regardless of why we may store things away, avoiding and even denying their pain, doing so can leave us hauling around bags and bags of unprocessed emotion. That baggage gets heavy. And carrying it can begin to affect the way we travel through our days. It can affect our proverbial gait, our shape…it can begin to cause strain and pain in all the joints and connecting places in our bodies and spirits. It can spawn resentment and hatred. It can affect our perceptions, our relationships, our overall health. It can literally cause dis-ease.
A well-known wisdom text from Ecclesiastes teaches that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. (Ecc. 3:1) And it is important for us to be thoughtful about when it is time to weep or to laugh, to mourn or to dance. (Ecc. 3:4) A tendency in many church contexts is to rush to hope and joy, to avoid the painful stuff as though its acknowledgment would show lack of faith. But there is a time for mourning and weeping. There is an appropriate time for lament.
Our text from Joel says as much: “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.” (Joel 2:12) The historical theme of the book of Joel is a plague—a locust plague. It may not be locusts doing the damage, but we know something right now about the destruction of a plague, living as we do among the pandemics of COVID-19, systemic racism and white supremacy, polarization and demonization, and rampant misinformation proffered as truth. Pause for just a moment to think of some of what these plagues have taken from us or left us with…
And Joel says “even now” it is time to cry out to God. We have been pushing, keeping a stiff upper lip, finding the silver linings, being innovative and creative, making it work one way or another. We have been hustling and holding it together—more or less—for a long time. There is stuff from the last year and from across the span of our lives that we are lugging around. And on this Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are dependent upon God—that it is the grace of God that has brought us through, the breath of God that animates the dust of our bodies and gives us life, the love of God that is both our judge and our liberator.
And today and through the coming 40 days of Lent, the invitation is to self-examination that exposes and begins to empty the baggage that’s doing damage, to be honest with ourselves even if it causes pain, to confess, to repent, to feel what we feel, to be angry and sorry and sad and afraid, and to “Return to the LORD, your God, for God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…” Our dependance upon God means we can let go our grip, we can stop holding it all together, we can allow our hearts to break, we can even fall apart because when we fall, God will be there to catch us, to hold on to us, to gather up the particles of dust that have become disintegrated and disoriented and reshape and reform us.
You may have a plan for your Lenten observance this year. I would gently invite you to consider adding to that, identifying what it is that is lurking back in those recesses of your soul that need to come to light, to be released and given voice and space… bring those things into the space of lament through these days. If ever we needed this, if ever there were a time for it, I think it is right now. And try not to be afraid. Our tender God will guard you. A blessing will be your reward for the journey. In the words of artist and poet Jan Richardson:
To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering,
for trusting the breaking,
for tracing the rupture
that will return you
to the One who waits,
who watches,
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.
Your broken heart, your wounded heart, your weary and worn heart made whole. That is the promise. So let us begin…
