Up Down Places

Shared on August 22nd, 2010 at Hamilton Union Presbyterian Church
Based on 2 Samuel 21:8-14 and Revelation 22:1-3

I chose this morning’s Scriptures because to me they represent the absolute extremes in life. One describes a devastated mother isolated on a mountain top, as she mourns the loss of her sons. The other describes a river of life, whose surrounding trees yield an endless supply of fruit and whose leaves provide healing to the nations.

It’s difficult to reconcile these two realities, much less understand how G-d could permit such a dichotomy in His world. Each and every one of us has experienced highs and lows in life. And it’s hard to grasp that the same loving G-d could produce such an extreme range of experience.

During the past two years I’ve witnessed intense heartache, both in Peru and at the City Mission of Schenectady. However, I have also seen concrete examples of change, progress and healing. I have met people in various stages of recovery, receiving therapy after a history of sexual abuse and domestic violence, reintegrating society after years of incarceration or entering a treatment program to overcome addiction.

As I continue to navigate this roller-coaster of human experience, I’m beginning to learn that G-d doesn’t necessarily permit the lows nor does he prefer the highs. But He is present and alive in both. And it is up to us to recognize His loving presence whether we are digging up bones on a mountain top or harvesting healing fruit from the tree of life.

The Old Testament reading from the Second Book of Samuel describes the heart-breaking story of Rizpah, one of King Saul’s concubines, whose sons were brutally murdered. During his reign, Saul sought to wipe out the entire population of Gibeonites in Israel.

When King David took power, he offered retribution, thinking that it might end the famine that had plagued Israel for three years. In response to the genocide, the surviving Gibeonites requested that King David capture Saul’s seven sons. The King agreed, and the sons were murdered on a mountain top, with their unburied bodies left to decay.

It’s difficult to imagine G-d having first allowed Saul’s genocide to occur, and then to endorse the response of the Gibeonites who sought revenge by murdering the King’s sons. But maybe we are not meant to ask whether G-d allowed those events, but instead to ask how God responded to them, how He revealed himself during times of hardship and who He used to heal the wounds.

G-d’s presence is overwhelmingly evident in the aftermath of this story of bloodshed. G-d chooses to reveal himself through the figure of Rizpah, a woman who had experienced a life of luxury as Saul’s concubine, but had now lost everything, including her family. She had fallen from a place of recognition and esteem into a place sheer desperation.

However, rather than respond with rage or defeat, Rizpah stands vigil on a mountain top, presiding over the heap of bones of Saul’s sons, so they would not be eaten by vultures. Scripture says that Rizpah kept watch on that summit, day and night, from the beginning of the barley harvest until the season of rain. For six months, Rizpah endured the harsh elements of that cruel environment, surrounded by wild animals and dead bodies – an act of protection, mourning, and prayer.

Although I pay special attention to the women of the Bible, I had never heard of Rizpah until last year. While in Peru, I encountered her story several times, including the sermon which was shared on Mother’s Day, in a small church I visited in the city of Trujillo.

However, my first introduction to this brave and stoic woman was during our usual Monday morning devotional at Paz y Esperanza, the organization where I worked while in Peru. My host father, who directs the pastoral counseling program, chose to use the story of Rizpah to reflect on a similar story happening in present-day Peru.

In May of 2008, just before I arrived in Peru, the bones of 60 innocent men, women and children were excavated from a mass grave in the small village of Putis in Peru’s highlands. A massacre led by government officials had taken place in 1984, killing 123 innocent villagers. The officials claimed that the families had ties to the Shining Path, the extremist group who terrorized the country between 1980 and the year 2000.

During the twenty year period of violence, 163,000 innocent people were killed by either the Shining Path guerillas or the government militia. The recovery of the bones in Putis did not simply serve as a ritual of healing for the small mountain town, but a poignant experience in Peru’s collective mourning.

Just like the Biblical heroine Rizpah, a team of archeologists took care to guard the remains and restore the bones to a proper burial, bringing some sense of closure to an incredibly upsetting chapter in Peru’s history.

With the sense of utter despair evident in both Rizpah’s experience and the excavation in Putis, it seems like the images in our New Testament reading are some kind of a fairy tale. The Book of Revelation describes a river bringing forth life-giving water, trees flanked on either side bearing fruit that will bring healing to the nations. I doubt that many of us have ever experienced that kind of instant reversal or cleansing, making all that is wrong with the world right again.

But maybe we are simply looking for the wrong thing. Maybe the sweeping changes we are looking for are not the real changes we need. Maybe the cry for perfect peace and harmony overlooks all the gradual change that is occurring on a daily basis.

While the bone diggers in Putis could not undo the past, they could honor and respect the lives that were lost and dignify their existence with a proper burial.
Similarly, Rizpah’s act of remembrance toward the men who were murdered was recognized by King David, who ordered that the bones be collected and placed in the formal burial site of Saul’s ancestors.

The Scripture from the Book of Revelation was another part of the Bible that I had never read until recently. The verse shared today was the Biblical theme of a Presbyterian Women’s gathering in Hamilton, New York, which I attended in early August. The conference was called “Gathering at the River,” and discussed the promise of God’s healing in a broken world.

The keynote speaker was Rev. Patricia Raube, a pastor from Endicott, New York, who gave a very thoughtful analysis on the Scripture. What struck me most about this description of the river of life was the closing statement, “Nothing accursed will be found there anymore.” Nothing accursed will be found there any more.

Rev. Raube explained that the Greek translation of the word “accursed” literally means “up down places.” Meaning, what was accursed was something that had flourished and was held high but was thrown down, discarded, or buried - much like the sons of Rizpah and the women and children of Putis.

Up down places… we all experiences them. Having moved along just fine, feeling energized and empowered, with a sense of meaning and direction, we are often derailed by any number of reasons – illness, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, or feeling generally overwhelmed. We experience some form of devastation that leaves us unable to hear G-d’s voice. And in many cases, we assume that He just isn’t there.

I experience these “up down places” just about every day at the City Mission, where one person’s success and progress is always met with the devastating fall of another. I saw this during Christmas time, where the overwhelming joy and generosity of volunteers and donors was met with feelings of depression and loneliness in the men and women who live at the City Mission.

For residents, Christmas-time is a cold reminder of all they have lost. It is no wonder that during this season of joy, three women at the Family Life Center relapsed in their addiction recovery.

During the past year my most difficult struggle has been how to maintain my own sense of balance when others are in the process of burying the bones of their past, like Rizpah. In short, their “up down places” become my own. Since starting to work at the City Mission I have felt so elated on certain days, celebrating the changing attitudes and behaviors of some of the woman, while confronting resistance and despair in others.

I come home feeling so inspired by how G-d is working in the women’s lives and how grateful I am to participate in their recovery. Yet there are many days that I come home feeling numb, burdened by the needs of the women we serve and frustrated by the repeating patterns that prevent them from positive change.

I discussed this dynamic with a co-worker one day, feeling that I had had enough of these “up down” places. Having endured the ebb and flow of ministry for over twenty years, he explained that I was experiencing the pendulum effect. He described a large pendulum on a grandfather clock, noting that when one first enters into direct-line ministry, one experiences huge swings.

The pendulum starts high, and swoops down during times of struggle and frustration. Then it inevitably picks back up again and one feels reinvigorated.

However, as the pendulum keeps moving, the swing becomes less dramatic, less divergent. It’s not that the highs are less wonderful and the lows less devastating, but we respond to them with more clarity, more consistency. As the pendulum slows its swing, it rocks back and forth along the middle line, eventually steadying itself, anchoring itself with gravity.

We are the pendulums, ministry is field where the swing occurs, life circumstances are the various points on the arch and of course, G-d is the gravity which anchors us. G-d anchors us in times of difficulty and does not abandon us on a mountain top. G-d also grounds us during times of prosperity, when life pours out healing fruit.

If we can accept that life does include all of the extremes, then maybe we can begin to focus on where and how G-d is working in even the most dire of circumstances. And I think what we may find is that the tree of life and its healing fruit is not just an image found in the last chapter of the Bible, but a possibility at any point on the pendulum’s swing.