Have you ever given one wail of a prayer?
Let me clarify. Have you ever said a prayer like the Prophet, Jeremiah prayed
in our Old Testament reading today? That was truly one wail of a prayer and I
do mean that literally.
This is probably not the kind of a prayer
that we would hear before the beginning of a typical church meeting. It’s not
the kind of prayer that a parent would whisper to their child as they tuck her
into bed for the night. And it’s not the kind of prayer that someone might say
before a service club meeting.
No, I’m talking about a wailing kind of
prayer, a Jeremiah kind of prayer. This is the kind of prayer that just unloads
with heavy tears and deep sobbing. This is the kind of prayer that literally
cries out in anguish.
Jeremiah was a prophet who lived 600 years
before the time of Christ. In our scripture reading today from Jeremiah, chapter
8, we find the prophet in deep anguish over the people of Israel.
He is heartbroken for his people because
invading armies are threatening to do them harm. He knows that it is inevitable
that their land will be taken over by a foreign power and the people will be
displaced.
Even though Jeremiah knows that his own
people have failed to heed his many warnings and turn back toward God, he is
heartbroken for them. Jeremiah is forced to watch this train wreck that is
about to happen to the people he loves, and it’s just too much for him to take.
It’s in this historical context, that Jeremiah gives us one wail of a prayer.
Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet,
because that’s how much he loved his own people on behalf of God. It’s not
unlike a loving parent who has done everything he or she can possibly do to
prepare their child to go off on their own, only to watch them choose one
destructive behavior after another, one bad decision after another.
What do you do when your emotions are
overflowing with incredible anguish, with unbelievable frustration, with deep
empathy, but also with an undying and unconditional love? What do you do? You
end up offering one wail of a prayer. That’s what you do.
Sometimes unleashing our thoughts and
feelings toward God is the best thing we can ever do when we are overwhelmed
with a situation or experience we may be facing. Time and time again, we are
shown that it’s OK to vent to God.
Several years ago, a Bishop in our
denomination shared how she was going through a very challenging time during
her time as Bishop. She was frustrated with the slowness of the denomination to
make policy changes that she believed to be more just and loving from a
biblical perspective. She was also becoming more and more upset with various
clergy who disagreed with her and who seemed to come across callous and
uncaring in the way they spoke against her point of view.
She hit her breaking point when she got home
after presiding over a week long Annual Conference session. Exhausted and
frustrated, she went to bed that night and was reading her bible, when all of
the sudden, she kind of lost it. She tossed her bible to the side and just
started crying out loud. These were deep sobs.
She was offering one wail of a prayer to
God in that moment.
A pastor shared that he got a call to come
to the hospital. A church member’s husband had died. When he arrived, the now
widow was crying in inconsolable grief. Deep sobs.
After a few minutes, he asked if he could
pray for her. He began the kind of comforting prayer that ministers often pray
in situations like that.
In a
very soft spoken voice, almost a whispering voice, the pastor began the prayer
with, “God, thank you for being with us
during this difficult time…”
The pastor was surprised when the woman
interrupted and wailed, “God, I feel so
alone!”
The pastor decided to raise the energy of
his own prayer a little bit and continued, “God,
thank you for the hope you give…”
The woman cut him off and shouted, “God, I don’t feel any hope right now!”
The pastor picked up the pace a little
more and prayed, “God, thank you that in
some ways this good man will always be with us…”
Again, the woman interjected, this time
screaming, “God, I can’t believe you took
him!”
The pastor realized that his prayer was
just not angry and to the point enough for that particular moment. The way he
was praying was just not going to do.
And so, he simply gave this woman the
space she needed to offer her deep anguish to God in that moment. His soft
spoken prayer that was filled with so many clichés and platitudes was just not
cutting it.
In reflecting on that experience, this
pastor said that this woman’s prayer was more honest than anything he had to
offer in that time of deep pain and brokenness. He said it was like this woman
was holding God by the collar in both hands, and was crying in God’s face, “I don’t think you’re listening to me!”
That was one wail of a prayer she was
praying that day.
A few months ago, I was praying for
someone I know who was looking for a full time job. Every morning, I included
this person in my prayers.
He told me that he was called for a job
interview. I was so excited to hear this. I can’t tell you how many times I
prayed for this person each day leading up to that interview. On the day of the
interview, I spent a lot of time praying throughout the morning. I even stopped
what I was doing during the actual time he was being interviewed.
After the interview, he sent me a message
that he would know in the next few days if he got the job. And so, I continued
to pray each morning that this job opportunity would open up for him. Friends,
let me tell you. I think I did a really good job of praying for this person! I
really felt positive that he would be offered the position.
So, imagine my surprise when I got a
message from him a few days later. The message simply said, “I didn’t get the job.”
I remember being so upset. Here, I had
prayed so hard for him and he didn’t get the job. Throughout that day, my
prayers were more like, “What’s up with
that, God?” In frustration, I muttered,
“What’s the point in praying, to you, God? How did any of that help? What’s
this person going to do now?”
Let’s just say that I didn’t
feel very pastoral for the remainder of that day. God was listening to me wail about this for the next day or two. I
think I was channeling Jeremiah.
Whenever I have moments like these, I feel
a little guilty for dumping on God like that. But that’s why Jeremiah’s prayer
of frustration and anguish in our scripture reading today is so important. The
bible gives you and me permission to vent to God when things just aren’t right
with the world, you know what I mean?
Jeremiah had hit that point. Here, he had
done everything that God had called him to do. He had warned the people. He had
prayed for a different outcome. He had poured out his heart out on behalf of
his own people, on behalf of God’s own people. He was feeling let down. What do
you do in moments like this?
You offer one wail of a prayer, that’s
what you do.
Sometimes, these are the kind of prayers
that people who walk by our church place in our outdoor prayer cross box.
Sometimes these prayers are very raw and direct. Thank God that our prayer
cross allows people to offer their prayers to God, and even vent to God.
Listen again to Jeremiah’s wail of a
prayer:
“My
joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.” Notice that there is no
filter here. The prophet is not trying to be poetic or flowery with his use of
words. Just honest. “My joy is gone,
grief is upon me, my heart is sick.”
Psychologists and counselors
are good at reminding us that being in touch with our feelings and expressing
our feelings are an important way for us to have emotional health.
As psychologist and author, John Bradshaw
shares in his book, Homecoming, “Feelings
are facts. They’re neither right or wrong. They just are. There is nobody who
should tell you how you should or should not feel. It’s important and it’s
necessary to talk about feelings.”
A wail of a prayer gives us permission to
tell God how we feel in any given moment or situation. Even Jesus from the
cross, had a wail of a prayer when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jeremiah also prayed, “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?”
Do you ever feel that God is
absent and nowhere to be found? Have you been there? It’s that feeling of
emptiness that prompted Jeremiah to pray one wail of a prayer.
And then Jeremiah prays, “The summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
For those of you who don’t want summer to officially end this Thursday, this
prayer is especially for you! Even Jeremiah was really down because summer was
ending.
Well, let me qualify that. It wasn’t
because summer was his favorite season and it was now ending that led him to
offer a wail of a prayer. It was because he had been praying for God’s people
to be saved before the end of summer, and here, things had only gotten worse.
Jeremiah also prayed, “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has
taken hold of me?”
Often times, our deepest prayers are the
result of feeling the pain of the people who are closest to us. We offer our
prayers for a world that is filled with so much brokenness and injustice. We
offer our prayers for a world of so much poverty and violence. We offer our
prayers for a world where so many people are hungry and live as refugees. We
offer our prayers for a world that is filled with racism and division.
Sometimes, the church needs to channel
Jeremiah and offer a wail of a prayer for our community and world that God came
to save and redeem.
And
what a powerful image Jeremiah gives us when he also prays, “O that my head were a spring of water, and
my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain
of my poor people.” This is why Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet.
I’ve told you this before but it bears
repeating. When I first stepped into this building as your new pastor, I could
tell that many prayers had been lifted for God to use our church in a special
way in our community. I could feel those prayers in the air. I could tell that
there was an expectancy here that God was about to do something new in and
through us.
I want to thank you for being an
incredible church of prayer, a church that prays on behalf of our community and
world.
Many of you have heard of what is called,
“The Wailing Wall,” which is located in the city of Jerusalem. This wall
contains the remaining stones from when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans
in 70 AD. This wall stands close to where the Temple was located.
It’s called the “Wailing Wall” because the
Jewish people are in constant mourning over the destruction of the Temple. It’s
the closest they can stand to where the Temple would have been located.
People will often go to the wall and are
encouraged to write a prayer on a slip of paper, place it in between the cracks
of those ancient stones, and then offer a prayer while facing the wall. I had
the opportunity to do this during my trip to Israel several years ago and it’s
a powerful experience to think about all of these prayers that people offer to
God at this holy site. It was breathtaking to see all of those slips of paper
tucked between all of those stones.
The wailing wall reminds us to join
Jeremiah in offering our prayers on behalf of the world which is in need of
God’s healing love and justice. It reminds us that it’s OK to cry out to God
like the prophet Jeremiah from our Old Testament reading.
Wailing prayers are not easy to pray
because they put us in touch with the pain of others, people that we know and
love. As one song says about these kinds of prayers, “God knows it’s not easy, taking on the shape of someone else’s pain.”
While these prayers can take a
lot out of us, they also point us to a God who promises to be faithful, even
though we may not fully understand how God is at work.
Which reminds me. I didn’t tell you the
end of the story about my prayers for the person who didn’t get the job. Remember
how I was so disappointed for him? So, I called him after he told me the news
that he didn’t get the job. I was expecting him to be really down and depressed
which would have been understandable.
Instead, he was surprisingly upbeat, and
he said, “Well, I obviously wanted that
job, but I was told that it was pretty amazing that they wanted me to interview
since I am still really new in the company. They told me that I was doing a
really great job and they are confident that something will eventually open up
for me.”
After I got off the phone,
that’s when I realized that my prayers really did make a difference. He was now
in a good place in his life, full time job or no full time job. He had a sense
of peace, which I hadn’t seen in him for quite a long time.
Here I had prayed for him to get that
job, but he ended up getting something so much better; a sense of peace, hope,
and a new found joy in his life.
All I can say is, I must have prayed one
wail of a prayer. And God answered my prayer.
A Wail of a Prayer!
Small Group Questions
Jeremiah 8:18 to 9:1
September 18, 2016
There are different kinds of prayers like ones we use to tuck a child in bed at night, or say before a church meeting, or prior to a meal. Our scripture reading from the Book of Jeremiah offers another important type of prayer known as a "wailing prayer." This is the kind of prayer that gives us permission to vent to God as we cry out with tears of faith. Jeremiah offered a "wail of a prayer" as he cried out to God to save his people from war and destruction.
Have you ever offered to God a "wail of a prayer" where you vented your frustrations and anguish to God? What was that like to pray that kind of prayer?
Psychologists tell us that it's good and necessary for us to be in touch with our true feelings. Prayers that allow us to wail and cry to God can be emotionally helpful as they lead us to express our true feelings to God who loves us and cares about us.
What helps you to be honest in your prayers even if that means expressing your deepest longings, frustrations, and hopes?
The Wailing Wall is an actual wall in Jerusalem where people go to place slips of paper containing prayer requests between the rocks. Many people who visit the Wailing Wall leave from this place feeling a sense of peace because they were able to give to God what is deepest in their hearts and minds.
Share a time when you felt more at peace as a result of sharing your deepest feelings to God. How did God answer your "wail of a prayer?"
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