Voices Raised to God
Palm/Passion Sunday
Rev. Patricia D. Barth
March 20, 2005
Living in the U.S.—insulated from other’s pain. We just don’t realize what most people the world over are going through. They have all of the above plus pains we never dreamed of, such as the hundreds of Nigerian children dying of measles, and childhood disease we just don’t get any more over here. Women brutalized in the Sudan. And natural disasters strike especially hard in impoverished countries—witness all the villages in Thailand and Indonesia that simply disappeared in the tsunami.
But despite the difference in things we have to cope with, no matter where you live, there is pain. It’s just a part of life. We all have them—mental, emotional and physical. It’s the human condition. And when awful things happen, we cry out to God. We lament the world over. Lament psalms—Denise—April 24 healing service. We raise our voices to God, and expect an answer.
Sometimes an answer comes. Priest Zimbabwe arms blown off—held in arms. Sometimes we get a sense of peace
More often, it does not. How are we to make sense of our pain? How can we find meaning in disaster.
Life, death, joy and pain—all mysteries. “We’ll understand it all by and by.
Meantime—helps to remember Jesus there first. Whatever we have experienced, he experienced. Human. He also cried out to God “My God, My God, Why have you Forsaken Me”? Beginning of a lament psalm. He felt the abandonment, the loss, the fear that we feel. And he went beyond it—died and was resurrected, showing us that death and pain do not have the last answer. There is joy to come. Good Friday is almost here, but Easter Sunday is coming.
And Jesus, the risen Christ, stands ready to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with you and you and you. He stands ready to help us with our pain; to tell us “It’s all right! I’ve been there, and you will survive. He’s ready to calm our fears, and remove our anxiety.
He’s there reminding us, “I love you; I love you!” Because nothing, nothing, can separate us from the love of God, in Christ Jesus. Thanks be to God!
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