The Psalmist Who Cries, Laments, and Rages

Beloved Community,

My bones and my heart continue to ache these days. We are living in a time of deep violence. And perhaps, truthfully, we always have been. Earlier this week, two lives were lost in ways that demand our attention. A 21-year-old Black man from Mississippi, Trey Reed, was found hanging from a tree. That very same day, Cory Zukatis, a 36-year-old white, unhoused man, was also found hanging from a tree.

Within hours, the police disregarded the details surrounding his death and ruled out foul play in Trey Reed’s death. To accept vague explanations surrounding his death without deeper investigation is to echo a long legacy of silence, denial, and complicity. We cannot and will not forget the long and devastating history of racial terror and anti-Black violence in Mississippi and across this nation. It dishonors Trey, his family, and his community who loved him so dearly. His loved ones deserve truth, transparency, and justice. And we, as part of the human family, deserve the same. We must hold onto truth. We must demand truth. We must speak truth even if our voices shake. We must speak up even when we don't always know exactly how to say it.

As we dwell in the psalms together at church, I am reminded of the psalmists who cry out, who lament, who even rage at God. They remind us that it is faithful to grieve, faithful to cry out, faithful even to shout our anger at God. It is faithful and holy work to name violence, to grieve, and to cry out for something better. And still, in the midst of lament and fear and the unknown, the psalmists remind us that hope has the last word. Love has the last word. Justice has the last word. 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Change is often slow, and often painful, but it does come. Love will win. Justice will win. Truth will win. And we do not say these words with empty actions. We must know that the arc does not bend on its own. It bends because we refuse to let white supremacy, state violence, and systemic neglect be the final word. We are invited and called to be part of that love, part of that justice, part of that hope that makes the world a better place for us all.

So let us pray and dream together, with the words of Mark Miller’s song, “I Dream of a Church”:

I dream of a place we all can call home
I dream of a world where justice is flowing
With hope and peace growing,
Where God’s will is done

O God fill our hearts to reach out in welcome 
Make us to see your vision once more 
Let's dream of a world 
Where our hands are your hands 
We offer ourselves O God make it so

O Holy One, we truly pray for the day when we believe our hands are Your hands. Your hands of healing, of welcome, of justice, of peace. Make it so, God. Make it so.

With love, grief, outrage, and hope,

Pastor Eli  

For Such a Time as This...

I have been to countless conferences, workshops, and trainings focused on this iconic phrase from the book of Esther. In nearly every commissioning for something new, to bless us over the threshold moments in our lives, in ordinations, installations, and blessings this phrase is invoked to send urgency into our being that perhaps it is true that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, for such a time as this. 

On my best days, I can look in the mirror and see myself and you with me, saying “yes” it is us, it is you, it is me. Then some days, I can’t even bear the image in the mirror because I’ve looked at the images in the newspaper first. When I look into my own eyes, I see the eyes of starving people half a world away, I see skeletal children with empty bowls begging for mercy, I see the screams of mothers holding the lifeless bodies of their babies who have starved to death. What can I do in such a time as this? What can any of us ordinary citizens do? 

This week, this poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Tommer arrested me and brought tears to my eyes: 

In the Airport, I wonder about enough

Could they ever be enough,
these stumbling attempts
to bring kindness to an aching world?
Enough, this holding the door for a stranger,
this saying I’m sorry, this holding a place in line?
How could it be enough, asks the ache,
when today I saw the photo of the mother
holding the starving child in Gaza,
his brown legs as thin as my wrists.
I am sick with helplessness.
What does it mean, enough?
Beside me on a bench,
a man I have never met is humming.
His tune blooms like a sun in my chest.
The warmth twines with the beat of my question,
How could any small act be enough?
Until the child in the photo and all children
are safe and fed and loved and held by loving mothers
who are safe and fed and loved
and held by loving others who are safe
and fed and loved—until then,
how could anything ever be enough?
The old man beside me has started to sing.
His eyes are closed, and his
low gentle voice braids beauty
into everything around him.
Even the questions that will never
have answers. Even this terrible ache.
How deeply I want to believe
it is not too late to save this world.

I read this poem the morning after coming home from our family reunion, which was a time of love, grace, and abundance. I read this after I spent much of the day in the car, catching up on the news and reading a book about rebuilding a world that is closer to the earth and her natural patterns. I read this after going to the grocery store for ingredients for dinners and lunches in the coming days. 

I did my shopping at Trader Joe’s, where you shop in a way that, to me, mimics lining up for an amusement park ride. At the end, instead of a ride on a roller coaster, you get to pay for your groceries, ring a bell for good service, and eat a good snack in the car on the way home. Usually, this snack is an impulse buy in the freezer section, something that glimmers over the frozen blueberries in TJ’s unusual organization. 

This time, as I was returning my cart, I ran into a fellow shopper who meandered through the aisles with me, who also treated himself to a car snack. We exchanged a knowing look with our car snacks in hand en route back to our cars from the cart return. The man was wearing a large kippa; I had on something with a large rainbow on it. He offered me a piece of dark chocolate with orange in it. I offered him some dried mango with chili flakes on it. In this exchange, two strangers from two different backgrounds, likely with very different beliefs, I felt a hope for what we can be when we reach across the borders of our lives with an offering of nourishment. I can’t fix the genocide happening in Palestine, but I can share offerings with a likely Orthodox Jewish man as we both look into each other’s eyes, hoping for an end to the starvation of God’s people. 

Is it enough? I am not sure. But that day, it’s what I had. If we practice the muscles of kindness more often, perhaps the muscles of hatred will atrophy replaced by the muscles of compassion. Perhaps these actions of love can help our prayers to cause a ripple effect that saves a child from starvation. Perhaps trusting that these choices are enough will in fact, be enough to save us on this roller coaster of life. 

God, in your mercy, receive our acts of kindness as actions toward the end of suffering for your people. Be with us in our bewilderment, sorrow, and anger. Show us that our proximate actions can and do make a difference. Meet us in our unbelief. 

In solidarity with those who cry out to God known in so many ways and through so many names, we cry out to the compassionate man of Jesus who taught us what it is like to live with loving kindness, 
Pastor Lauren