Witherspoon member Rev. Jean Rodenbough
sends a portion of her sermon for this Sunday, reflecting on the Asia
disaster through the image of "the Rag Rug Woman," used in a poem shared
at the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference. She offers a biblical - and
hope-affirming - perspective on the terrible events of the tsunami and the
destruction and death that followed.
A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter
weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for
her children, because they are no more. (Jeremiah 31:15)
A VOICE IN RAMAH
Rachel weeps: for her children, lost in Sri Lanka, in
Sumatra, in India, in Thailand . . . in 11 countries where great walls of
water, stimulated by a giant earthquake, carried them out to sea. Carried
them away forever. All the children. Rachel weeps.
All the Rachels of the world weep for the children. They
weep for themselves as well. They weep for those they have loved, who are no
more: the old women, the old men, the sisters and brothers, the cousins, the
aunts and uncles who hovered over their families with gifts and love. Rachel
weeps and there is no solace. These are the children of God, the God who
weeps uncontrolled. Yet . . . yet there is that in God who is the Gatherer,
the Gathering God.
Like the Rag Rug Woman, who
gathers up the torn and tattered pieces of cloth, worn and discarded, useful
no more for they have no purpose, who gathers them all into her basket and
takes them home. She makes something beautiful, something elegant, something
valuable from all the bits and pieces. She creates a new thing: a rug of
many colors, worked into one piece, whole and useful.
The Rag Rug God is a Gathering God, who gathers all the
broken and torn lives, the sorrows and grief of destruction, of lost
children, the lost from the Twin Towers, the fallen planes, the lost ones
from bombed structures in Jerusalem and the dead in Palestine, the
devastation in Baghdad and Mosul and Fallujah, in Kabul and Islamabad: dead
children, lost hopes.
See, I am going to bring them from the land of the
north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the
blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor together, a great
company, they shall return here. (Jeremiah 31:8)
God speaks to Rachel: "See, I bring all the lost from the
tsunamis and the wars, the hunger and disease, from poverty and violence
wherever it is. I am a Gathering God, and all who are lost will come home to
me forever. They are with me. My arms hold them. They are comforted. I am a
Gathering God. All those who have lost their homes, their loved ones, their
children, their parents -- all who have lost their villages and communities
-- all who have lost their work and their livelihood . . . see, I gather
them to me so that they may live with hope in my promises. I am a Gathering
God who makes all things new -- who brings surprises to those who have lost
their hope. I, their God, am here with them, with you, with all my people."
God bursts forth when we least expect it, creating
something new and elegant out of the torn and broken landscapes of our
lives. This is hope: real and tangible. The Gathering God holds us, heals
us, brings us together into something beautiful, out of the chaos and death,
out of the destruction and devastation. We are created again into what is a
mystery, the mystery of God's own making.
Jean Rodenbough adds this
note:
The Rag Rug Woman that is featured in this
sermon was not my poem, but one by a Lutheran pastor. Barbara Lundblad
read it and it was picked up for the daily newsletter that came during the
1993 Re-Imagining Conference. It was in
a poem called "Creatio Ex Nihilo", by the Rev. Kathleen O'Keefe Reed.
