Confession, Lament and Healing

Psalm 32; Luke15:18-24

A Sermon Preached by Donald Mackenzie

University Congregational United Church of Christ

September 11, 2005

Seattle, Washington

“As long as I kept my stubborn silence,…my strength was sapped by a summer’s heat.” Psalm 32:3-4

The depth of the moment surrounds us today with complex feelings. We say thank you and farewell to our brothers and sisters at University Christian Church. We observe an anniversary of September 11, 2001 and we do it in the aftermath of what must be the worst natural disaster in our country’s history. So today, we need gratitude, we need confession and lament and we need the reassurance that can lead to healing. May it be that what follows fulfills those needs. Amen.

With regard to gratitude, is there a way to say with words our feelings of love and thankfulness to the congregation at University Christian? You took us in in our time of minor, very minor, displacement. We might have been in an auditorium somewhere with no windows, an out-of-tune piano and no one to welcome us with such warmth and affection. May it be that as your story is told, this act of generosity will be told in memory of you! Amen.

Well, it’s been a rough couple of weeks. Rough because of the death and destruction after Hurricane Katrina. Rough because of our not knowing exactly what to do. Rough because we know, too, that it could happen to us—an earthquake could easily become our Katrina and I doubt we are prepared. Rough because as we start school, and I’m thinking today especially of our 4^th, 5^th and 6^th graders along with our youth who, starting school have been thinking not just about school, but also about the suffering of the people who experienced the hurricane.. And rough because it now coincides with this observance of the fourth anniversary of September 11, 2001.

Today I wish to suggest for your consideration that the intersection between September 11^th and Hurricane Katrina is poverty and privilege. By poverty I don’t mean simply a reference to people who are poor in money. I mean people who are totally poor, without any power to do anything to better themselves because of the barriers that exist between them and us—we who are privileged to live in the middle and upper classes of America.

On September 11, 2001 we witnessed acts of rage and hatred by Arab people—hatred and rage directed at those of us in the West who have privilege. Our national leadership has drilled into our minds the idea that those who inflicted the damage on September 11, 2001 were “terrorists,” people who are naturally evil. The truth is that they are people who are heirs to the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles in Paris in 1919 when the former Ottoman Empire was divided among the European powers. The Treaty of Versailles emasculated the Arabs. The rage of the Palestinians against the people of Israel is in some ways as much anti-European as it is anti Israel. The terrorists were created by us, we who are citizens of the West. And now we must pay the price of our creation.

Hurricane Katrina displaced many, wounded and killed many and most of those who were killed and wounded were poor, elderly and people of color. As Peter suggested last week, they were not people of privilege. But the poverty was also created by us in the United States through unfair tax laws, racial and class discrimination and the high fence of privilege, a “fence” that not only keeps people out; it insulates us from that reality so we forget who we are. As we meet together for worship this morning a bill that intends to make permanent tax benefits for the rich as well as some cuts to some Medicare and Food stamp providions has been delayed for two weeks with the hope that the national outrage over the government’s response to the hurricane will have died down. In this place called “confession and lament” we see life as it really is. The hurricane has functioned as Tony Robinson suggested in Thursday’s PI, as “an apocalypse, a dramatic revealing or disclosure of something that has been hidden or covered.” September 11, 2001 was also an apocalypse. Both have revealed the rage of the poor and dispossessed as well as the essential blindness of our privilege. To say that is both confession and lament. Two needs must be met before proceeding toward healing: the need for emptying through confession, and the need for crying out and naming the truth through lament.

The form, Lament, is one of three forms in the psalms. Some psalms describe life as it should be. Those are psalms of ordinary orientation. But many of the psalms cry out that life is not good! Those are psalms of disorientation. Psalm 32 is an example of a psalm of lament, a psalm of disorientation. These psalms of lament encourage us to put words to our own laments, to cry out and to empty ourselves of them so that there might be room in us to be filled.

On Sunday, August 28^th, Gene Kidder preaching at University Christian Church quoted from the novel, The Kite Runner. Later in the story, the hero returns to Afghanistan and in a conversation with his mentor hears his mentor say, “It is possible to be good again.” By this, he meant, it is possible to find healing. This is a statement of faith. But it also reflects and points to a third kind of psalm, such as Psalm 23, which is a psalm of new orientation where things have been terrible and are now better again. So as we empty ourselves through confession and lament, of anger, rage, uncertainty and anxiety, let us be encouraged by this statement of faith: “We can be good again.”

But it’s not enough is it to simply say that, to declare it. It’s not even enough to hear the words of forgiveness in the gospel reading. We have to be available to our own healing. To be available we can be hit over the head or our hearts can be opened. The latter has a much better effect. Friday night, Mark Pearson of the Brothers Four gave a benefit concert for the University Churches Emergency Fund along with his friend, New York Jazz pianist Ted Brancato. Before he sang this song, he said it is the one song that he wishes he might have written. The words go:

“When you’re weary, feeling small/when tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all/I’m on your side, when times get rough and friends just can’t be found. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.” On this day, may our hearts be opened and may we comfort each other and may we commit ourselves to joining together in working to overcome the systemic causes of poverty and powerlessness in this world. Amen!