Is there a Balm in Gilead?
At the end of each year we visit or ring friends whom we haven’t seen for perhaps a year, and visit those who have been sick or troubled. We have already been doing that. Four of our friends have severe and advanced cancer. We pray for them every night. I had just come from visiting one friend and celebrating Holy Communion together in the hospital, when I was listening to a new CD given to me for Christmas by one of our friends. It is a magnificent Chorale singing the old African-American spiritual, “There is a balm in Gilead.”
I was thinking of some of my friends whom I had just rung and visited in the Palliative Care ward. There is no cure for anyone there apart from in Heaven. I guess I was downcast about their physical healing, when I suddenly realized the words the chorale was singing. It is an old hymn I remember from my youth. But as I listened to the words my eyes welled up with tears. I was reminded of a fundamental truth:
“There is a balm in Gilead, To make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead, To heal the sin sick soul. Some times I feel discouraged, And think my work’s in vain, But then the Holy Spirit, Revives my soul again.” Refrain: “If you can’t preach like Peter, If you can’t pray like Paul, Just tell the love of Jesus, And say He died for all.”
Is there no balm in Gilead? It is the human question. Jeremiah the prophet asked it. It was the beginning of the 6th century BC. The Israelites were in exile in Babylon. They had once known a good and prosperous life. They had once worshiped with joy in their own hometown. Now they lived as captives in a foreign land, victims of Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of their land. Jeremiah’s words capture the lament that filled the people . . . my heart is sick . . . is the Lord not with us? . . .the harvest is past . . . I am hurt . . . I mourn . . .is there no balm in Gilead?
Jeremiah 8:18-22 “O my Comforter in sorrow, my heart is faint within me. Listen to the cry of my people from a land far away: Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King no longer there? Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their worthless foreign idols? The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved. Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?”
Even if you didn’t know that Gilead was a district in the north known for its aromatic and curative oils, you’d know what these words meant. They express the fundamental lament of the human heart – times of tragedy, heartbreak, war, sadness – times that are part of every life. We ask, we demand, “Where is God in this moment, at this time, in this experience? Did God do this to us, or has God abandoned us? Why? Why me? Why us?”
William Sloane Coffin, Jr. was the chaplain at Yale when his college-age son, Alex, died in a car accident. Alex and his friends had been drinking. On the way home, he missed a turn, crashed through a barrier, and plunged into the icy waters of a river north of Manhattan. After the memorial service, a woman said what people so often say at times like that. She mused to Coffin that what happened must have been the will of God. Later, Coffin wrote, “I wanted to grab her and say – ‘Lady, that’s wrong. God didn’t cause this. It wasn’t God’s will that my son died. None of us knows enough to say that. God doesn’t go around the world hurting and killing people. When the waters closed in over the car, the heart of God was the first of all our hearts to break.’”
That is the simple and profound hope of the faithful heart. There is a balm in Gilead and it is simply this: God is not vindictive. God is not absent. God is present in the grief and the despair, in the human condition.
We see evidence of it in Jeremiah’s lament. He was a prophet, after all, and his voice became God’s voice. As another translation reads: “I wish my head were a well of water, and my eyes fountains of tears, so I could weep day and night for the casualties of my dear, dear people.” In the end, the balm in Gilead is God’s presence through all the exiles of our lives. And when we can’t see it ourselves – which we often cannot – sometimes we must look through the eyes, the experiences of others.
In my car at the year’s end, thinking of my dear suffering friends, the words of the old spiritual lifted my heart. The words of the prophet were as relevant today as in his day 2,500 years ago. May you also be as certain as you enter the New Year, that no matter what happens, God is there with you, to uphold you and to bless.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.
