This passage from Jeremiah is in the lectionary for Sunday. I chose not to include it in our worship service but found myself reflecting on it this week. I try to be positive and not remain too long in places of sadness perhaps because of my fear of the tentacles of depression and despair. At the same time, if we create healthy space to hold the hard emotions, perhaps that boundary is enough to keep us from getting stuck in them and actually provides the grace we need to move forward in joy.

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

“No healing, only grief; my heart is broken,” Jeremiah laments because the people he loved and the people loved by God, are suffering.

So often we try to rush through painful situations. But as we read in this passage of Jeremiah, the pain is raw and crushing. And sometimes we need to sit with that. It can’t be fixed. It can’t be rushed.

At the same time, by identifying it and naming it, we can allow the Spirit to sooth us and begin that important healing work.

When we experience something in our life or our world that leaves an ache in our heart, we can’t ignore it. Because that is how the wound gets infected and hurt people hurt people. But when we instead acknowledge the sorrow, examine it, put words to what we are feeling, we can move toward becoming wounded healers.

Jeremiah asked “is there no balm in Gilead?”

While our pain may feel unbearable at times, we remember that Jesus has entered into that pain with us. Jesus who was betrayed by one friend, denied by another, and deserted by his followers was publicly ridiculed, tortured, and crucified as an enemy of the state. Jesus knows our grief. We are not alone. Our anguish is not unbearable . . . because Jesus is bearing the burden with us.

Each one of us is part of the body of Christ. We are called to enter into the pain of our neighbors and sit with them in their suffering, not to fix it or explain it away but to remind them that they are not alone. We are called to listen and to bring God’s presence into awareness allowing the love and light, the suffering and pain of Christ to wash over us again and again . . .

“There is a balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.”