Epiphany 4: What to do in times of doubt, pain, frustration, and loss.

 

Epiphany 4: What to do in times of doubt, pain, frustration, and loss. 

Isa 40.21-31; Psa 147.1-11, 20c; 1 Cor 9.16-23; Mark 1.29-39

 

Prayer of Invocation

 

Father, set us free from the bondage of our sins, and give us the freedom that comes with the abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

 

Prayer of Illumination

 

We believe, Lord. Help our unbelief as we attend to your word with your people. Meet us where we are at, and strengthen us to wait on you; in Jesus’ name. 

 

Proclamation

 

What do you do when you are faced with doubt, when you experience pain and sorrow, when you encounter injustice? Where do you go when you are frustrated with how things are working out (or how they are NOT working out)? What do you do when life is not going as you wished it would, when life is not going as God says it would or should go? What is your response when circumstances in your life lead you to question God’s care, His faithfulness, His goodness, His ability to provide? When you experience disappointment at work, at home, at school, with your friends, and with your enemies, where do you turn? When you have a complaint against God, or against others, what do you do? 

 

I know for me, when I face doubt, or when I experience hurt, pain, sorrow, despair, anger, or frustration, my instinct is to withdraw. I am not inclined to explore these feelings. I prefer to escape, often through distraction. I get busy crossing something off my list, or I try to take my mind off of things by going to my phone. The last thing I want to do is confront my anger, my hurt, my doubt, my despair, and my sorrow. Often, the last thing I want to do is deal with God. 

 

And yet, it is in times like these--times of doubt, despair, frustration; times of feeling wronged and helpless, forgotten and abandoned--that the Psalms and the Prophets model for us a practice known as lament. They invite us to practice lamenting. 

 

There are four components to lament, acts that we are invited to engage in when we doubt, when we feel wronged, when we are angered by injustice, when we feel betrayed or forgotten or abandoned, when we are suffering pain and loss;  acts that we are invited to engage in when we are frustrated that life is not going as we feel that it should. 

 

The first act is probably the most important and difficult of all, and it is the most neglected: Go to God! Sorrow, pain, anger, doubt, and frustration tempt us to run from God, to turn to ourselves for the solution. Or they tempt us to believe that no one is there to help, that there is no solution, no deliverance, no provision. But the practice of lament exhorts us, turn to God! Bring your complaints to God!

 

The second act of lament is to make our complaint known to God: how long, God? Why, God? Or, why not God? Or, where are you, God? Why are you so far off, God? Through the Scriptures given to us to help us know how to relate to God, we are encouraged to engage with God in our disappointment, to question what He is doing, to hold Him to His word, to explore what is going on with our disappointment, our feelings of abandonment, betrayal, loss, and wrong. 

 

The third act of lament is to make your request known to God: deliver me from my enemy! Execute your justice! Be true to Your word! Protect me! Deliver on your promise, and so on. 

 

And the fourth act is to patiently move forward, to wait for His provision, His deliverance, His timing, His solution. In this fourth component of lament, we move forward in faith, we patiently endure, we wait in hope for His response, because we have taken the time to remember His goodness--that He cares for us. 

 

We can see all of these components of lament in Psalm 10, for example: 

 

The complaint: “Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (Psa 10.1)

 

In the context of Psalm 10, the psalmist is frustrated and angry about the injustice done to the poor; he is bothered by the attitude of those who oppress the vulnerable as they say in their hearts “there is no God” or “God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see” or, “He will not call me to account”. In Psalm 13, another psalm of lament, the psalmist complains to God because of someone who has sought to harm him: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day (Ps 13.1-2)?” From these two psalms we learn that God invites us to bring our complaints, or feelings of sorrow, pain, despair, and abandonment when they pertain to ourselves and when they pertain to others. But we don’t stop there. We make our request known to God. 

 

The request: “arise, O LORD, lift up your hand; forget not the afflicted (Ps 10.12).” Here in our request, we remind God of the promises He has made, we point to His character and His faithfulness. But we don’t stop there. We move to hope. 

 

Faith/hope: “But you do see...to you the helpless commits himself...The LORD is king forever...you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed (Ps 10.14, 16-17).”

 

We see the same pattern with a number of other psalms of lament.  And we see the same pattern in the prophets. Habakkuk, for example:

 

Complaint: “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?...Why do you idly look at wrong?” But Habakkuk ends with an expression of hope.

 

Hope/faith: “Yet I will quietly wait for [the Lord]; I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.” 

 

I say all of this to orient us to our Old Testament reading this morning. Isaiah 40 is part of a larger section, Isaiah 40-66, in which God is responding to a lament, the cries of God’s people who are overcome with frustration, doubt, anger, sorrow, and pain as they languish in exile. Our reading from Isaiah 40.21-31 is a small piece of that wider message that is written to generate hope for those that trust in the LORD, to strengthen us so that we can move forward in faith in the midst of our pain, sorrow, frustration, and doubt; so that we can move forward trusting in God’s provision, guidance, and deliverance. 

 

Isaiah 40 is God’s reply to a long, oft-repeated prayer of lament. If I might paraphrase the response, it would be something like this: ‘be comforted. I hear you. I see you. And I am about to do something. I will respond. My word will be fulfilled. I will deliver on my promise. I am about to bring justice. I will make things right. But you need to wait.’

 

Towards the end of Isaiah 40, the prophet invites us to consider that God unlike anyone else. He is incomparable (Isa 40.18). Isaiah points us to the bigness of God, to the fact that God made all things (Isa 40.21-26), and he then challenges our unbelief, or doubt in the midst of this. It is a confrontation that is meant to encourage us to draw near to God in the midst of our doubt, sorrow, and pain: “Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God (Isa 40.27).’” 

 

The point Isaiah is making in this section is that God does see; your situation, what you are going through is not hidden from Him; He is not disregarding you. But he takes it one step further, reminding us not only that God will respond, but also that “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, He increases strength (Isa 40.29).” Remember Habakkuk? From him we learn that in lament, that is as we turn to God and make our complaint and request known, that as we seek to trust in Him,  we find strength. Isaiah 40 reminds us that God meets us their; as we entrust ourselves to His care, He gives us power and strength to wait on the Lord, to endure, to bear our pain and doubt as we wait for God’s provision: “they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength (Isa 40.31).” Isaiah reminds us that (1) God does not grow weary, and (2) that His understanding is unsearchable (Isa 40.28). Why? Because He has made all things; He is an unlimited source of strength. And He cares for us. 

 

But the subtle point that Isaiah makes is that we find this boundless, limitless strength in the act of turning to God in the midst of our sorrow, pain, doubt, despair, and frustration, in the face of our complaint. We will not find strength turning away from God, or trying to distract ourselves from the pain, sorrow, and doubt that surround us. 

 

Our Psalm (147) for this morning reinforces this. The Lord gathers those who have been abandoned, left behind, betrayed, alienated;  the Lord heals the brokenhearted, binds up their wounds (Psa 147.2-3). The Lord is abundant in power and His understanding is beyond measure (Psa 147.5). The LORD lifts up the humble (afflicted). The LORD does this to those who fear Him, who hope in His steadfast love (Psa 147.11) So, praise the LORD!

 

The Gospel of Mark orients our reading of the Jesus story within the framework of Isaiah 40. It begins with John the Baptist, who is identified as the forerunner of Isaiah 40, who comes to announce God’s new exodus of deliverance in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus, in other words, has come to respond to our laments. Through Jesus, God says, “I hear you. I see you. And I am responding.” And in the gospel of Mark, we find Jesus gathering, healing, and lifting up those who are afflicted. He heals Peter’s mother-in-law; He healed “many” who were sick and oppressed by the principalities of darkness in our world. The Gospel of Mark includes mention of these many healings to remind us that in Jesus Christ, God is at work now in our midst; that the gospel brings power to heal, restore, lift up--because the God who created all things, whose understanding is unsearchable, who desires wholeness in peace in our lives is at work--He is on the move. He reigns. And it invites us to bring our lament, to bring our complaint, our affliction, hurt, doubt, pain, frustration, and anger to Him for healing. 

 

And as we wait on the Lord in hope and with patience, we are freed from our instincts to take and keep, to fight for our own survival, our rights--as 1 Cor 8-9 remind us. We are freed to give up our rights to love and serve others--for we know that boundless source of strength that comes from hoping in God. 

 

Eucharist

 

One of the challenges of Mark’s account of Jesus’ ministry is that he tells us that the people brought all who were sick and oppressed to Jesus, but that Jesus healed “many”. I often wonder what kind of disappointment those who were not healed in that moment would have felt. ‘Why were they healed, but I wasn’t?’ 

 

The Table has an answer for us. It tells us that all who hope in Christ will be healed. It reminds us that Jesus’ healings are a foretaste of the great healing that will come to all those who wait on God’s timing, God’s provision. “He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will He not also with him graciously give us all things (Rom 8.32)?” 

 

Some have to wait longer than others, but all who wait on the Lord will be healed, will be restored, will find peace. Even Jesus had his moment of lament: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” The resurrection was the Father’s response. In the resurrection, Jesus--who had to wait on the Lord unto death--was vindicated. He did not hope in vain; He did not wait in vain; He did not suffer in vain; He did not trust in vain. And neither do we. “The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in His steadfast love (Psa 147.11).” God sees, He hears, and He delivers. And he gives us strength to patiently endure. And we know this because He has given us Jesus. Therefore, let us humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt us, casting all our anxieties, cares, concerns, and complaints on him, because He cares for us (1 Pet 5.6-7). Let us come to the Table to receive the strength He offers us as we wait for His deliverance, His provision, His promises. 

 

Benediction

 

Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your cares on him, because He cares for you. 

1 Peter 5.6-7