September 21, 2025

“Healing Tears”

”Healing Tears’^ A sermon based on Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 delivered on September 21, 2025 at the First Congregational UCC of Onekama, Michigan by the Rev. Alison Andrea Young.

“You who are 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?’ . . .’Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. Is there no balm in Gilead? . . . Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people? Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people’.” (Jer. 8:18-9:1)
Jeremiah, prophet of God, speaking for God, is in agony. He sees his people ready to be hustled off into exile and his heart is breaking. As he speaks, he weeps. He sheds a fountain of tears. These are God’s tears. It is God’s grief which is “with” the grief of the people and of Jeremiah that is expressed here. God, then, is not separate from our grief. God does not cause our grief, God cries with us and for us, and it is God’s heart that is sick along with Jeremiah’s over the destruction and dispersion of the chosen people.. . .