Isaiah 40:21-31 Psalm 147:1-11 1 Cor 9:16-23 Mark 1:29-39
In this past week we have been invited to take part in the Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage – a global movement of prayer and Solidarity for those suffering in the Holy Land, where people walk the length of the Gaza strip.
Their publicity says, ‘with our bodies we will prayerfully map Gaza onto our own cities…to allow the geography of the horror happening in Gaza to become real [to us]. To flee Gaza city [in hope of finding] refuge in Rafah in the south, that’s only the distance of Hillary’s Boat Harbour to Fremantle’.
This is a prayer walk, not a protest; each step is a prayer for every life taken since the occupation re-entered the news on October 7th last year. And we are invited, on 24th February, to walk for peace – for part, or all, of the 36 kilometres – walking in silent prayer, or in song and conversation.
I recognise our privilege in being able to do that.
I recognise it is a small contribution – a tiny whisper amidst a universal scream.
And this invitation came to at the time of Holocaust Memorial Day where we remember, arguably, the most horrific crime humanity has inflicted on itself and each other. I was holding that as I came to the scriptures, and I am grateful for the words of Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm that I draw on today.
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. …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.
Such comfort. Such hope. Deep truth.
And a vast capacity to lose faith when it is not your experience.
Because, can this be true for those who survived the holocaust? How can it be true for those who didn’t? Or for the 2 million displaced people fleeing Gaza right now?
Where is the power for the powerless, the strength for the weak then?
Where is the comfort when it feels like God is so far off that he sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers (to quote another verse we heard)?
One experience can be found in the writings of Elie Wiesel. He had plans to become a Rabbi before his journey through the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps led him to question deeply his belief that God is all-powerful, and able to prevent injustice and violence.
In his book, Night, he recounts one particularly harrowing story of his nightmare in the camps. Three prisoners, two men and a boy, were hanged in front of the rest of the group. The men died instantly. But the boy did not. As the prisoners were forced to file past the gallows, the whole camp saw him gasping for his final breaths. When someone in the crowd cried out, “Where is God?”, Wiesel says, “I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? He is hanging from these gallows.’”
You’ve probably heard this story before, but what I hadn’t heard is Weisel’s own vulnerable explanation of it. He didn’t presume God was alongside the dying child in his suffering, as I had heard portrayed. He was declaring that ‘his faith in a God who could or would intervene on behalf of his people or any other people’ was dead. Right there, in Auschwitz, God was seated so high above the circle of the earth – not powerful at all, but removed.
And even though I know in my head that the words of Isaiah’s prophecy were written to a hope-less group of God chasers who had lost everything, as encouragement that they are not forgotten, still it feels like cold comfort, and it’s understandable that when the shit truly hits the fan, faith is called into question. And, at those times, we might find ourselves believing, along with people like Weisel and Isaiah’s contemporaries that we are forgotten or disregarded by God. At the very least, we might understand why the people of the Holy Land, or Afghanistan or Sudan or Ukraine or countless other places, may feel so.
And yet, all is not lost. Of course all is not lost.
Because we don’t face the world’s traumas with a far-off God, seated high above the circle of the earth at all. We don’t only approach the God of the Old Testament scriptures. Listen to the words of Mark’s gospel…
That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many… for that is what he came to do.
Friends, the world is broken. It is. And we seem determined to dole out punishment and pain on one another – killing people and planet systematically and indiscriminately. But the hope of the Christian faith is that our God is not far off, seated above the circle of the earth, looking at the inhabitants like grasshoppers. Rather, God, in Christ, became one of the grasshoppers – became one of us and listen to where he is to be found…
Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her and he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.
Have you not seen? Have you not heard?
The everlasting God is not far off but came near and is right beside you just waiting to take your hand and lift you up. Whether you are sick, in danger, or in the pit of despair, God in Christ is alongside you to take hold of your hand and raise you up – yes, even to soar on eagle’s wings. And because God is not far off, there is always hope. May we know it. May we see it. May we be it.
I’m going to close with a poem by Chelan Harkin called The Worst Thing:
The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach
pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.
The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.
The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath.
Amen.
Holy Adventures 