I don’t think that it takes much of a stretch of the imagination to replace the power-structure of the Jerusalem Temple, over 2000 years ago, with the national power structures of our own day. As I’m sure you know, Mount Rushmore is a mixed symbol. It represents the birth, growth, development and preservation of American democratic ideals. Yet there is a shadow side: it also represents the injustice of sacred lands stolen from the Lakota Sioux and the scars inflicted on the natural beauty of the Black Hills. The Temple was a similarly mixed symbol for Jews in Jesus’ day. It was a powerful religious institution; some people made their living from its thriving, some found ultimate meaning there. Other Jews, though, recoiled from it, as a center of the political and religious corruption of their time. The Temple, with its immense stones and its holy origins, looked invincible. The prediction of its fall by Jesus signaled more than the collapse of a building; it signaled an entirely new way of being in the world. Indeed, only some forty years after Jesus’ death, the powerful Temple and the world of Jesus’ Jewish listeners lay in ruins—destroyed by war with Rome. Yet these ruins were also ripe for amazing new beginnings in both Judaism and, of course, in Christianity.
The fear of the imminent collapse of the foundations that structure our world—that is something that we can identify with these days. Democracy, the institutional Church, the health care system, the economy, the caste system, even our very climate and coastlines … they all look like fair game for some kind of massive divine reordering. Christian humorist Anne Lamott once expressed our lament well: “It’s all hopeless. Even for a crabby optimist like me, things couldn’t be worse. Everywhere you turn, our lives and marriages and morale and government are falling to pieces… The planet does not seem long for this world. Repent! Oh, wait, never mind. I meant: Help.”[1]
Apocalyptic language, such as we see today in Mark 13, is a powerful response to the kind of despair that nags at our souls these days. God hears the world’s cries of pain and injustice, this language says, and God is going to act. “Apocalypse” doesn’t mean the end of the world; it means “uncovering,” the revealing of what has been hidden. Debbie Thomas describes experiencing apocalypse as experiencing “fresh sight. Honest disclosure. Accurate revelation. It is to apprehend reality as we’ve never apprehended it before.”[2] Apocalyptic is powerful language for urgent times, for times when something new simply must be born, for times when the “birth pangs” of change can no longer be held back. Wild, apocalyptic language screams, “Turn around!” “Pay attention!” “Watch out!” “Hold on!” God is coming soon with power and great glory…. bringing disrupting change!”
However, before we get swept away into too much fear or too much drama, I’d like for us to catch ourselves, following Anne Lamott’s lead in the quote that I just read. Our first lesson for today offers us another kind of language for desperate times, a quiet language just as urgent and just as powerful as “repent.” There’s another language that can herald earth-shattering change just as much as the apocalyptic can: faithful prayer of lament. In these turbulent times, we also need to listen to Hannah’s story.
Hannah is trapped and in trouble. In a world in which a woman’s worth and security are tied to her ability to give birth to sons, Hannah is a loser. Year after year, despite her prayers and her efforts and the love of her husband, she endures shame and ridicule for her childless state. Understandably, she has become “bitter of soul.” She’s angry at her destiny and at the end of her rope. She refers to herself as a woman of “hard days” and “troubled spirit.” In her lament to God, she begs God—and us—to “see, yes, see” into her misery and despair.
But her clueless husband doesn’t see; even the priest Eli doesn’t see. Representing the upstanding religious structures of her society, Eli feels as if he has the right to treat her sharply, and with judgement. He eyes her suspiciously; he calls her drunk; he orders her to get rid of her wine. How often we religious types, unseeing, react to someone else’s tragedy with heartless judgement.
Amazingly, Hannah continues her prayer with firm determination. This powerless, doomed woman speaks as if there is hope for her future. Even though she has no response from God, even though she leaves the Temple with no promise of a son, her lament before God transforms and heals her. Her countenance lifts, and she is able to go on. After her son Samuel is born, in the verses that follow today’s lesson, Hannah continues her prayers in the beautiful poem that we read together today as our canticle. Hannah’s private lament turns into a powerful song for the whole world. Hannah’s song later gives rise to Mary’s Magnificat, as both women praise God for raising up the lowly and bringing the mighty to their knees. The songs of these two women announce a change that sounds much like Jesus declaring that the great stones of the Temple will fall … They sound a lot like Mark proclaiming in the vocabulary of apocalypse that the Day of Judgment is at hand. “The bows of the mighty are broken,” Hannah cries, “but the feeble gird on strength …The Lord will judge the ends of the earth … and exalt the power of his anointed.”
Apocalyptic language says, “Look at the outside world and hang on, because God is going to fix what is broken!” Hannah’s lament says, “Know in your heart that you have been heard, that God is going to fix what is broken!” Looking from the outside in or from the inside out, we hear today that God’s presence means change, God’s healing action means our transformation, a total shaking of the foundations.
In 2016, American author and social activist Adrienne Maree Brown wrote about the Black Lives Matter movement: “Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.”[3] We live in a time of much uncovering. And uncovering can be ever so painful. I have seen how many St. Ambrosians—almost a quarter of our average Sunday attendance—have bravely turned during this time of Pandemic to uncovering the history of race in this country. In book after book, and discussion after discussion on racism and caste and our place in the brokenness, you in the Becoming Beloved Community group have held each other tight and struggled. Struggled with the unveiling of pain, struggled with hard things you would rather not see. It hasn’t been an easy journey. Yet in lament and with the persistence of Hannah, you have kept going.
Yes, in these difficult days, when we cry out with Hannah for saving change-- Know in your hearts that you have been heard, that God will fix what is broken. With the disciples, when we tremble and ask when the earth-shattering change will come--hang on tightly to God, because God will fix what is broken. Behind our cries of lament and our calls for repentance lies the urgent intensity of a God who holds us, and all of our fragile constructions, in a strong and merciful embrace.
[1] Anne Lamott, “My secret little prayer,” found at http://www.salon.com/2012/11/13/anne_lamott_my_secret_little_prayer.
[2] Debie Thomas, “Not One Stone,” Journey with Jesus, November 11, 2018. Found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2010-not-one-stone.
[3] Ibid.
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