Tag: laments

OMG: Good Friday Sermon, 2025

by Steve Harsh, posted in Lenten devotion, Sermon

OMG – a common abbreviation used these days on social media and many users don’t know it, but it’s really a prayer, a lament.  It means “O My God,” and in our Good Friday context the emphasis is on the little word “My.”  Because even when we doubt and feel God is absent, we still own and affirm the relationship. My kids are still My kids even when they do stupid stuff I don’t agree with – same with friends, spouse, and colleagues.  Real relationships and friendships have no expiration date, and certainly there is none with the eternal God of all creation who has been with us since the day we were born and will be with us for all eternity after our short sojourn on this earth is over.  

Another common lament today is “Life sucks and then you die!”  That one is not in the Bible, but it could be in the book of Lamentations. When Jesus says from the cross, “My God My God why?”  Hear the My and not just the forsaken.  And of course the lament of Psalm 22 is followed immediately in our Bible by the most familiar Psalm of the whole 150.   Psalm 23 begins with “The Lord is MY shepherd.”

As we remember the brutal crucifixion of Jesus tonight I invite you to make that experience real.  Feel it in your gut.  Imagine or remember a time when you were in unbearable pain – either physical or emotional, and Jesus was certainly in both – a time when God feels as far away as the planet Pluto – at the death bed of someone you don’t think you can live without – when you hear a terminal diagnosis from a doctor – or your heartbreaks over a shattered relationship, or a job loss, or your financial security disappearing, or hearing on the news about unspeakable human cruelty.

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in his book “Night” relates an incident when he was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp when a young man was hung and all the other prisoners forced to watch.  Someone asks Wiesel, “Where is your God?” and his answer is, “Right there on the gallows.” Whatever and whenever we suffer God suffers right along with us.

One of my favorite descriptions about human lament is the one Brian and Barbara just sang for us, “Day is Done,” by Peter, Paul, and Mary.  I asked for that song because of these lyrics which say, “Tell me why you’re crying my son; I know you’re frightened like everyone. Is it the thunder in the distance you fear? Will it help if I stay very near – I am here.” And if you take my hand my son, all will be well when the day is done.”

We really want to believe that “all will be well when the day is done,” but we don’t know how long that metaphorical day will last or if we can last that long. But what we do know is that it helps to have someone very near.  It helps to be able to share out loud what our pain is with someone we trust and know will listen and just be present as long as we need them. 

I just learned about a quote from Fred Rogers recently in our Books to Bridges book group.  Mr. Rogers said, “What is mentionable is manageable.” “What is mentionable is manageable.”

Pain that we try to carry alone can suck the very life out of us, but if we can talk about it the power it has over us is shared and diminished – it becomes manageable.

Another lament in Psalm 13 begins with these plaintive words: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?   How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long?”   The point in sharing these cries for help is not to depress us but simply that it’s OK to lament, to doubt; those feelings are part of the human condition. No matter how strong your faith is it is hard when the foundations of your existence are shaken like an 8.0 earthquake.  Even Jesus who had more faith than all of us put together cries out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” which is even more powerful in the Aramaic that Jesus would have spoken: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”    

And as you heard in our scripture from Psalm 22 tonight we know where Jesus got those words.  Jesus knew his Scriptures very well, and he knew his people for centuries had been no strangers to devastating loss.  They were experts at lament.  We even have a whole book called Lamentations in the Hebrew Scriptures, which is our Old Testament, devoted to nothing but laments.  And part of the prophet Isaiah’s description of God’s Messiah is that he is a suffering servant who “… was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with grief.”

Ps 22 is typical of another source of laments the Hebrew people used in public worship. Do you know that there are more psalms of lament in the book of Psalms than any other type of Psalm? One of my favorites when I’m having a no good, terrible, awful day is Psalm 130.  It’s called “De Profundis” in Latin and says, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.  Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!”  Out of the depths loosely translated means “we are in deep do do.”

Psalm 63:1 echoes the same song: “O God, You are MY God; early will I seek you; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.” I’ll bet most of us have been in such a dry and thirsty land or may even be there right now.  That’s the message of Good Friday.  I still remember vividly one such time in my youth.  It was my Boy Scout Order of the Arrow initiation.  I was maybe 13. I was led out along with my fellow scouts in total silence and darkness until I was tapped on the shoulder and told to stop and sleep right there, left alone in a strange, dark woods overnight with only a sleeping bag. I had no idea if anyone else was close by or where I was. It was the most alone I had ever been at that stage of my life

Kate Bowler, one of my go to devotional sources, wrote this blessing two years ago in 2023, but it is even more relevant today and is part of her Lenten devotions for 2025. 

It’s called “A Blessing for when you need a little hope.”  “These days feel heavy and dark, like hope packed up and left, and forgot to send a postcard. We cry: Where are the good things? And honestly, where are the good people— the sensible ones fighting for what matters? Why does it feel like bad stuff always elbows its way to the front, pushing everything good to the sidelines? We’re tired. Exhausted, really. Desperation is knocking, and it’s tempting to surrender. Blessed are you, who see the world as it is: the sickness and loneliness, the injustice that never seems to end, the greed and misuse of power, the violence and intimidation, the mockery of truth, and disdain for weakness, and worse— the seeming powerlessness of anyone trying to stop it. Blessed are you, worn down by hard-earned cynicism, running on fumes, with no promise of a destination. Maybe hope isn’t so distant. Maybe it’s there—small, persistent, and stubborn. May you grasp something in the heaviness. A glimmer of what could be, and walk, step by step, toward the possibility that goodness exists. Hope is an anchor dropped into the future pulling you forward, toward something better— even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.”

Yes, my friends, there is always hope somewhere.  Even “O My God, My God” still claims God as ours.

 This Good Friday feels more real to me because we are living in a time of great uncertainty in our country and our world.  No matter what your politics you know these are unsettling times.  But we aren’t the first to feel this way.  The women at the foot of the cross and the other disciples hiding out somewhere had no idea what their future held – and neither do we.  I invite you to put yourself in the crucifixion story – pretend we don’t know what happens on Sunday morning, and enter fully into the forsakenness of that moment with Jesus and his followers and friends.   

What do we do when life seems hopeless, empty, dark, alien, and full of fear and uncertainty?  Like Jesus we can call out “O My God, help us!” and God will answer.  Maybe not immediately; we may have to go through a long Saturday of uncertainty, as long as that Saturday lasts, but there will be an answer because God does not forsake us, just as God did not forsake Jesus.

Even here in the darkness we remember that God so loved the world that God sent Jesus to love and save us. When all else fails it is that love that is eternal.  God so loved the world, and as author Sarah Bessey says, we are called to love that world too and everyone in it, even, Sarah says, knowing that it will break our hearts – knowing it will break our hearts.  To love means risking, being vulnerable, feeling pain — but a broken heart is so much better than not having a heart at all. 

Good Friday 2025, Northwest UMC, Columbus, OH

Election Blues and Faithful remnants

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Politics, Faith and Values, Government Reform

“The lame I will make the remnant, and those who were cast off a strong nation.”  Micah 4:7

Is it possible to be very pessimistic about the future of American democracy and simultaneously confident in the future of its ideals drawn from the best of Judeo-Christian values?  It is on the horns of that dilemma I find myself as I near the end of my 75th orbit around the sun.  The euphoria I felt a year ago when Donald Trump was soundly defeated in his bid to be re-elected dictator of the U.S. has given way to despair as I watch the democratic party described by Will Rogers when he said, “I don’t belong to any organized political party; I’m a democrat.”  Now that inter-party warfare threatens to doom the Biden presidency and in the process throw open the doors of the US Capitol so the failed coup attempt of January 6 can be successfully completed at the polls in 2022 and 2024.

I have voted faithfully in every election since 1968, but this year I am so discouraged by the way the bitter politicization in our country has infected even local elections for school boards, city councils, and township trustees that I am tempted to throw up my hands and not even vote. Politicians have always exaggerated and lied about reality to get votes, but this year 90,000 Americans have died unnecessarily because political lies have become more deadly than the Delta variant of COVID-19.

As the news plays on my radio or TV I hear Amos warning against the sins of Israel. I see Jesus weeping over Jerusalem because she would not listen to his words of salvation and peace. I see shock on the faces of those who have bought the lie of American exceptionalism as they try to wipe the mark of the beast off their faces on the day of Armageddon.

But deeper than my despair I also know that the reign of God is not dependent on sinful mortals. I feel in my dry bones the salvation history revealed throughout the Scriptures that there has always been a faithful remnant preserved from any tragedy that rises from the ashes of earthly kingdoms to carry on the eternal torch of God’s holy shalom.

There are 82 references to “remnant” in the Hebrew Scriptures.  These references are not about left-over pieces of fabric, but about those who are left out and powerless according to worldly ways.  Through flood, slavery, exile and even execution of the Messiah the solid rock of truth has survived as the foundation of life itself. The earthly power of Pharaohs, Jezebel, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod, Pilate, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and all the others named and unnamed in our history books is as flimsy as the fakery of the Wizard of Oz.

The creator of our universe will still prevail with or without us, even if we succeed in our blind foolishness and destroy the earth itself. Dr. King was right that the arc of the moral universe is long, so long that we cannot see the end. It is as unattainable for mere humans as the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. So just now we despair because that arc of morality seems twisted and malformed in our finite ability to envision the mystery of the future. But I still dare to believe that it bends toward justice, maybe not in the dwindling short term of my lifetime, but in God’s eternal kairos.

From the perspective of 3/4 of a century of life on this planet this much I know, maybe not in my feeble brain but “deep in my heart,” the great old protest song “We Shall Overcome” is true. That “someday” of justice may not be on any human calendar, but it will come in God’s good time; and on that hope I must hang my hat, especially in such trying days as these.

From Lament to Repent

by Steve Harsh, posted in Uncategorized

My church is using “Lament” as the theme for worship this Lenten season. I wrote the following piece as one of the daily devotions for this Lent.

Most of the times I lament it is because of something painful or unjust (at least in my mind) that has happened to me or someone I care about.  But recently I had an experience that reminded me that sometimes laments can also lead to confession of something wrong I’ve done or a good thing I failed to do. 

I am part of a group from our church that is studying a book called “Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation” by Latasha Morrison.  We’ve just read and discussed the first chapter so far, but Morrison has already challenged me with some provocative and uncomfortable questions at the end of Chapter 1.  For example, “Have you studied the history of non-White cultures in America and how those cultures came to be here?  If so, what books and articles have you read and what videos and documentaries have you watched about the history of those cultures prior to their forced migration?”  I am embarrassed to admit that my answers to those questions were very short.

That experience reminded me of one of my favorite stories in the Hebrew Scriptures (II Samuel 12) where the prophet Nathan confronts King David with his sin in taking Bathsheba from her husband Uriah in a most diabolical manner.  Nathan approaches David with a parable about a rich man who takes his poor neighbor’s sheep instead of killing one of his own large flocks for a big dinner party.  David of course recognizes the injustice and says, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”   And Nathan simply says to David, “You are the man!”

I like that story because I’ve always seen it as someone else getting his or her comeuppance, but this time the shoe was on the other foot. Through reading this book I heard God clearly saying to me “Steve, you are the man!”  It took my laments over the systemic racism that has infected our American history for 400 years and how I have blamed others for that horrible injustice and held a mirror up to my own guilt.   So now I can lament my own failure to do more to address this critical mistreatment of God’s beloved children of color. 

The hope in that process is summed up this way in “Be the Bridge:”  “I have seen awareness lead people out of denial and ignorance, into lamentation, and ultimately into racial solidarity.”