Is There No Balm - Rev Dr Kelly Sprinkle 9-21-25

Reading: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 by Deborah Nettle

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Sorry to keep you all waiting. Oops, sorry about that,
all right. Your second reading is Jeremiah eighth eighteen versus
I'm eighteen through nine versus one joy abandons me. There
is no cure for my grief. My heart is sick.

(00:22):
Hear the cry of distress of my people from a
distant land. Is the everlasting God not in Zion? Is
its ruler? Not there anymore? And the everlsting God replies,
why do they provoke me from their carved images with
their useless foreign gods? The harvest is past, summer is ended,

(00:45):
and we are not saved. I am devastated, for my
people are devastated. I mourn, terror grips me. Is there
no balm a gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then,
has the health of my people not been attended to?
Oh that my head were a spring of water and

(01:08):
my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might
weep day and night for the slain of my people
descends our readings.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Every time eleven would step into the pulpit, she would
start to cry. Some would say it's not very becoming
of a preacher to cry every time they walk into
the pulpit. Well, she didn't always begin by crying, but
there were times that it was. She would sob so

(01:56):
heavily that she would have to take a pause in
the midst of a sermon, as she would say to
collect herself. Once she was asked, why do you always cry?
Aren't preachers supposed to be stoic. Aren't preachers supposed to
be able to hold themselves together for the rest of us?

(02:16):
And she said, every time I step into the pulpit,
I am surprised that God has called someone like me
to do God's almighty work. The prophet Jeremiah was a

(02:37):
cry baby. He's known as the crying Prophet. If you
read Jeremiah over and over again, he is lamenting and crying,
just as we heard just moments ago. Jeremiah cried, Oh,
that my head were a spring of water, and my
eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might day

(03:01):
and night. There's something about crying in community that unites us,
that weaves us together. There's also something about rejoicing in
community that unites us and pulls us together. Where you

(03:23):
see community as a place where you can be who
you are and welcome all that God has brought in
to our lives. It seems as we go through these
first early weeks of autumn that we're in the juxtaposition
each week of worship taking us to high rejoicing, and

(03:44):
then Jeremiah shows up and we are down in the
depths again. And the child in the church of my childhood,
for the ministry would often call upon on someone in
the congregation to offer a prayer. It was always men,

(04:05):
by the way. At that point, there was one who
every time he prayed, would always end by saying, thank
you God for there is a bomb in Gilead. But
in my untrained child ear always heard him say thank

(04:25):
God for there's a bomb in Gilead. And I puzzled
for years why in the prayers this one person would
offer say God, thank you for there is a bomb
in Gilead, even though we're not thanking God for bombs anywhere.

(04:54):
On some level, it seems like the time we live
in for there are bombs in Gileon, there are bombs
and bullets everywhere. It seems these days it doesn't seem
to end, for we feel that we are broken. We

(05:15):
do cherish those moments of levity, but on some level
we need to lament now for folks, especially those of
European races. We've been told or expected that when you're

(05:38):
in public, don't be an avelin, don't cry, pull it together.
And when we do cry, we said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry. I'll get my act together. But lament is
a part of life. For Honestly, if we look at

(05:59):
the world in which we live, if we look at
the church around the world, if we look at religions,
there is a much to lament. We will lamit that
what we used to know is not the same. Some
say it's been a celebrated because for technology has brought

(06:23):
us closer together, yet also pulls us apart. Our opinions
become known before we even think them. Sometimes it appears
that we almost pull the trigger, if you will, of
singing our thoughts to the world. Was out even thinking.

(06:47):
Yet you see, we need healing in our lives. We
not only need healing right here, we need healing in
our world. The church, primarily those churches that feel they've

(07:14):
got it all together, sometimes need to lament even more.
Sometimes we want to rush ahead. We want to get
to the doctor before a diagnosis is even possible. We
live in a world that sometimes acts like we're all hypochondriacs.
Yet we, like the prophet Jeremiah, must slow down and

(07:45):
hear the words. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is
there no physician there? Sometimes we rush to fix it
before we understand it. Sometimes we just don't know what

(08:09):
to do. We want to make it all what I
call an easy peace. We'll just all get along and
be happy. But that's harder said than done. For if
we are looking for peace, looking for that bomb, it
begins in community. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit

(08:39):
with Jane, our church council chair, the president of congregation
at s Kime, and their new Rabbi, Sandra Katz, and
part of the conversation was just to get to know
you as they are a congregation and transition much like
this congregation. As we were talking about this state of

(09:00):
the affairs of the world, the rabbi in her wisdom said,
it begins by doing just this, sitting down and getting
to know one another, where we're able to talk to
one another, build friendships, and then when the going gets

(09:20):
rough my words, now we are there together. It's not them,
it's fees are our friends. That there's something that holds
us together, something where we collectively are seeking the well
being not just for ourselves but for our communities. But

(09:51):
where is that bomb in Gilead? Where he is that physician?
It seems like a far off dream, doesn't it. But

(10:15):
my friends, and this is the good news to rejoice
about and also to do something about. Is even when
the bomb of Giliad seems missing, where is that bomb
or who is that bomb? That bomb is people like us.

(10:40):
We are the ones to step in the fray, even
with tears still freshly on our face, and to make
a difference, to offer the word, to stand on the
side of the street, perhaps in signs of pro test,

(11:01):
lifting our voices when others wish we would not. By
living the lives of unconditional love that Christ taught us
and how we encourage one another in community, we can
be that presence. We can be the bomb that heals.

(11:21):
We can be that bomb that heals the world when
much of it seems they want to be the bomb.
But it's the bomb that we are called to be.
For my friends, You're Jeremiah, cry babies, stow it got

(11:47):
it together. We are Jeremiah. We are the bomb, and
we are the presence of Christ in this world? We
know this now we must act upon it. Amen, m
mm hmm.