Sermon, The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, September 21, 2025
The opening words from the lesson from the prophet Jeremiah are words that echo so much of what so many people are experiencing today – in our nation, and in the world. We hear and feel this anguish in our own lives: “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Hark, the cry of my poor people from far and wide in the land: ‘Is the LORD not with us?”
And if we are not experiencing this anguish ourselves, it is most certainly all around us, in our communities, our families, our nation. Friends and colleagues taken away by immigration officials, their future and their present safety uncertain. Access to healthcare precarious. Livelihoods taken away. Further afield, children dying of hunger or buried under bombed buildings.
This anguish transcends political and ideological boundaries. Progressive politicians and conservative activists alike have been gunned down. The family of Melissa and Mark Hortman and the family of Charlie Kirk, they all cry out with the same pain, “grief is upon me, my heart is sick.” Those who bore children in Gaza and those who love hostages taken by Hamas are wondering, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” The cry is far and wide, and is no respecter of persons.
That pain is real, and searing. It can tear apart anything it touches, whether a person, a family, a community, or a nation. When the heart is sick, all we want is for the pain to stop. Focus narrows to tunnel vision, rational thought is short-circuited. We respond to the assault, or perceived assault, in emergency mode. The psalm, and many other psalms like it, lays this experience bare for us. When enemies invade Jerusalem, destroy the temple, and take the people away into exile, the people wail in anguish at the loss of their home and their identity.
But their grief soon turns into anger; and not only anger, but a call for vengeance. We know this feeling – it is not enough for our pain to stop, but we also want those who inflicted it to suffer as we have. “Pour out your wrath,” they cry to God, “ upon the heathen who have not known you, upon the kingdoms that have not called upon your Name.” This lashing out is instinctive, the synapses in the most primitive part of our brain firing desperately in response to the threat. We all know it. Even when we are not physically in danger, it is so easy to lash out or to wish the other harm.
The desire for retaliation and the actual taking of vengeance is all over the bible, both in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. It is there in the history of the people of Israel, but also in Jesus’ disciples, who ask if God can rain down punishment on their opponents. It is there in the book of Revelation where good and evil are in a cosmic war with one another. But it is worth noting that in the larger arc of scripture human vengeance always leads to sin and devastation. In the psalms, the plea for enemies to be punished is lifted up to God, out of our reach, as a hot pan is pushed to the back of the stove away from a toddler’s fingers, where it cannot fall back on the one who seeks to grab it. “Payback” does not care whom it destroys.
For that is what retribution does, in whatever form it appears. Whether it comes in the form of physical violence, slander, or merely scorn, payback violates not only the recipient but also the one who inflicts it. We become what we say we deplore, and everyone else becomes collateral damage.
Jesus’ parable of the rich man and his manager can read like a justification of retribution and dishonesty, a tale of the ends justifying dishonest means. The manager has been hurt, and so he resorts to whatever means necessary to survive. I’m not able to go in depth into this story, but I do want to say that given Luke’s critique throughout the gospel of systems that concentrate wealth in the hands of the few and place burdens on those who are at the bottom, I think this parable is more about that, and the ways in which we are called to subvert unjust systems by prioritizing relationships and community. If you are interested in learning more about this, I’d recommend reading Ched Myers’s recent book which explores Luke from an economic perspective. It’s called Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy – Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics (Fortress Press, 2025).
Let us be clear – saying that retribution is wrong is not to say that great harm is not being done to us or to others. The pain, the anguish, the grief is real. The question is, what and where is our balm in Gilead? What way of living, of moving forward, will soothe not just our pain but the wounds that have pierced our society and threaten to tear it apart? Where is our healing balm?
For we know, don’t we, that there is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal our sin-sick souls, and it is found, first of all, not in swallowing or ignoring our own grief but in naming the violence and injustice in our own hearts and wherever it appears around us. When someone declares that innocent deaths are an acceptable consequence of preserving Americans’ rights to guns, we say no. This is not of Jesus. This is not of God. And when that person is killed, we say no. This is not of Jesus. This is not of God.
There is a balm in Gilead, and it is found right here, where we learn to confess our sins and admit our desire for vengeance, and then are formed in new ways of being, where peace is given to those who have harmed us, and no one who comes to the table is given less than anyone else. This is where we learn to sing instead of curse, where we actually feel the Holy Spirit revive our souls again, and show us that there is another way.
There is a balm in Gilead, here where we learn to cherish each other’s distinctive abilities and passions. Some of us preach like Peter, whether in the pulpit or out in the world. Some of us preach and pray up a storm like Paul. But all of us can tell the love of Jesus, and as the love is shared, it flows back on we who give it, not like the hot pan left too close to the edge of the stove, but like a cool waterfall on a summer’s day.
“He died for all,” the song says. For us, for Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk, for high school students in Colorado and children in Gaza; for undocumented immigrants and the agents who arrest them on their way to work. For those who spout hate, and those who try to sow love.
Our balm is in speaking the truth in love, with no compromises either on the truth or the love end. Our balm is in refusing to choose one over the other, knowing that without love, truth is not true, and without truth, love cannot really be loving. We do not have to choose between truth and love. Love does not mean letting lies pass unchallenged. And we do not have to let commitment to the truth about what is right and wrong make us arrogant, or bitter, or vengeful.
The author of First Timothy urges his readers to make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for everyone, especially kings and those in high places. His reason is so that all may live peaceably with one another – this is part of our balm in Gilead.
It goes deeper than that, I think – this is not about putting a veneer of politeness and respectability on top of a broken world, or making peace with injustice. This is about inviting the Holy Spirit to revive us again and keep us from becoming the evil we deplore. We pray so that we can reach out instead of lashing out. Friends, there is a balm in Gilead, and it makes the wounded whole. Thanks be to God.
