Year B Proper 14 2021 Woe Is Me!

 Year B Proper 14, 8 August 2021

St. James the Less Epsicopal, Ashland, VA

“Woe Is Me!”

Collect: Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

John 6:35, 41-51

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Woe is me! Woe is me! We live in a time when dissension is running amuck. We have forgotten our neighbors are our sisters and brothers, and that we are all beloved of God. We have forgotten that one of our oldest stories is that we are our siblings’ keepers. We have sinned and fallen short of the high calling you have made on our lives. Woe is me! Woe is me!

There are times and places where we all feel sorry for ourselves. Our own little pity party. Overwhelmed by our emotions, we turn that anger inward. That is Depression. We turn that anger outward. That is Rage. One of the great things about being reflective and intentional in our lives is that we have the ability to take those honest feelings, recognize them for what they are, and then turn in faith to do something about it. 

Our readings all have a common theme today, one that I did not catch in several readings. But then I found a thread that really spoke to me. In 2nd Samuel, David mourns that Absalom was killed. His son had rebelled and taken arms against his father, a wretched betrayal. But David was his Father, and always would be. “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

Woe is me! Woe is me! My son, the traitor is dead, and would that I would have died in his place. Alas…

In our Gospel, Jesus warns those who doubt his veracity to stop complaining amongst themselves. The small, the petty, those who feel unempowered do that. Snivelling and complaining, they complain and backbite, and one day when opportunity arises they escalate to backstabbing. All of it the refuge of the pitiful or the wretched.

Instead of confronting Jesus directly, they stand in their circles and belittle and bemoan. But Jesus knows, the Truth, and the Truth will out. 

Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me… Woe is me! Woe is me! What am I to do with these people!

St. Paul’s instructions to us are clear, near impossible, but clear. 

“Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil… Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God... Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

To sum that up: Speak truth. Don’t be petty. Turn the other cheek and respond with only Grace. Be like Jesus, and respond as he did!

My whole life that phrase has haunted me. “Be angry, but sin not.” It goes against my Irish blood. All the reason I need Jesus all the more. I will have the feelings, STRONG FEELINGS. I will recognize the feelings. I will allow myself to feel the feelings. Feelings are just that. Fleeting emotions that come and go. Feelings are our teachers about ourselves. They show us before we think what we are really thinking. Some of us feel deeply. Some of us can cry at a commercial that tugs the heartstrings. Some of us don’t. But all of us have feelings and are confronted with them day in and out.

The hard part is to let them be, and then choose to respond in Christlike ways no matter what our feelings are. My kids are going to make fun of me. I have quoted this in sermons here, and at their chapel at St. Catherine’s. But in the book DUNE, there is a mantra that begins. “Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Fear is one of the many feelings that can step in and control. When it arrives it tries to push its way into the driver’s seat. Anger is merely our fear pointed outward as a defensive weapon. Or inward to control ourselves to save us from feeling the feelings, and that swallowing of those emotions can be just as destructive. 

Joy, Rage, Sorrow, Pity, all of it can be overwhelming and pull out from us things which we do not want to express. Like the mantra against fear, replace most any emotion. See it. Recognize it. Maybe ask where this is coming from. What was the trigger? And then your brain can choose how you will respond. That way we can be angry, and sin not. When we are slapped or countered or mocked or hurt, we need not respond with the like. We have a choice in how we respond, and as the prophet said, “Choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!” (Joshua 24:15)

Think of the freedom that gives us! Think of the lightening of our burden. We need not be driven by the wind of rage in our sails. We need not be forced by the lash of our emotions to go where we would not choose to go. 

God’s call is for us to be our whole, complete, mature selves, and to be like Christ who even on the cross forgave his torturers, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Following that example, and seeing that ability in ourselves, is the only way we can do what St. Paul calls us to: “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Especially for those temperaments whose hot heads sometimes get the best of them. St. Peter is the perfect example of someone whose emotions run ahead of their brain. “Jesus, I will never deny you!” and then within hours three times he denied the very one to whom he swore total allegiance. In the Garden of Gethsemane, striking the High Priest Caiaphas’s servant Malchus with a sword and cutting off an ear to protect the Prince of Peace! The irony! The hypocrisy! But also, the reality! Be angry, but sin not.

Friends, I have to confess my frustration lately with the people who refuse to get vaccinated. I obviously do not mean those who cannot, but those who have excuses and fears that overwhelm the science and numbers. Almost as frustrating are those who do not care enough of others to mask up. Soon they will be the lepers and pariahs in some areas, and some of them will gladly take on the mantle of martyr for their rights. 

And on the other side, people are tired of the pandemic, tired of being told what to do. Just tired. 

I have to remind myself, and all of us, even though I feel so strongly about my point of view, I am called by Christ to love. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. There are no asterisks on Grace.

Some of you have strong feelings about how we are responding to this ongoing, and this ever-mutating crisis. Thank you for your patience and forgiveness when we get things wrong. None of us have a playbook on how to do this. No, not one. We are doing the best we can with what we have, and we are following the instructions and mandates of those who have authority over us. 

Woe is me! Woe is me! We live in a time when dissension is running amuck. We have forgotten our neighbors are our sisters and brothers, and that we are all beloved of God. We have forgotten that one of our oldest stories is that we are our siblings’ keepers. We have sinned and fallen short of the high calling you have made on our lives. Woe is me! Woe is me!

I express my feelings in lament, that biblical tradition of bringing those deep feelings to God. Lament is prayer. David lamented his son. Jesus lamented those who doubted. St. Paul lamented when we let our anger get in the way of our discipleship. I lament. You lament, though you may not have a word for it or thought of it that way.

As I said in the mantra against fear, Fear is the mindkiller. Lament is a way to let those emotions happen, and then to release them and let them pass on through. Lament is seeing it, and once seen we can let it go. 

Laments are common in the Bible. The dictionary definition is “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.” Check the Psalms, or better yet, the whole book of lamentations. We have those feelings. Those feelings make us human. What we do with them makes us mature, or shows the opposite. How we respond despite our feelings shows how much we are like Christ.

We are called to love! We are called to forgive! We are called to “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Friends, when you find yourself saying “Woe is me! Woe is me!” that is okay. See it. Learn from it. And let it go so you can love like Christ. Amen.