I mourn,
and dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
not been restored?
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!
O that I had in the desert
a traveler’s lodging place,
that I might leave my people
and go away from them!
For they are all adulterers,
a band of traitors.
I've always thought these some of the more pathos filled lines in the Old Testament, if not the Bible. And while there are Christians who seem to think God a severe judge who punishes without compunction, even relishes punishing, the God described here is a God whose love for humanity is costly. God's own interior life is in turmoil because of God's commitment to humanity.
The idea that it costs God to be for us runs counter to classic Western notions of divinity. By definition, the Divine is static perfection, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But the God of the Hebrew Scriptures does not fit neatly into such an understanding. And neither does God's suffering on the cross in Jesus.
Many of us have had the experience of growing up, maturing, and recognizing the pain we caused our parents when we were younger. But for most of us, the trauma we caused our parents did not irreparably damage our relationship with them. The same is often true in other loving relationships. Most relationships contain hurts and pains inflicted on the other. Most relationships carry with them scars and regrets. But where love prevails, those relationships can grow stronger.
One of the real problems I have with faith as believing the right things, even with "accepting Jesus as personal Lord and Savior," is that such formulaic notions of faith often leave little room for the dynamic, pathos filled, scarred, surprising, grace-filled life of a relationship rooted in God's unwavering love for us. We break God's heart, and we bring God great joy. We recoil at the hurts we have inflicted, and we experience the love of God that is never beyond reconciliation. Such dynamics can never be fully expressed in formula or doctrine. They can never be completely prescribed in rules and law. They can only be lived into.
The hunger for spirituality in our day, coupled with a corresponding distaste for the institutional church, may well speak to a desire for less formula and more relationship. As such, this may be providential call to the Church to remember the relational, pathos-filled, overflowing-with-grace nature of our life with God.
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