Truth, Lament, and Healing
Jesus tells the truth about the violence his people were both experiencing and perpetrating. That truth-telling leads to lament: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” And only then, in the wake of truth-telling and collective lament, can people find their way to the imaginative, healing, liberating path of Jesus. The writing of Joanna Lawrence Shenk leads us into engaging some Mennonite-specific truth-telling and lament about Dr. Vincent Harding and his experience as a Black prophetic leader in the mostly white Mennonite Church from the 1960’s on. We want to be willing! May we tell the truth, lament, and courageously find our way along the healing and liberating path to our Mother Hen Jesus’ wings. [sermon begins at 20:15]
Audio
Resources
- “Lament over Jerusalem: Commentary on Luke 13:1-9, 31-35,” Mitzi J. Smith, on Working Preacher blog, for February 28, 2021.
- Bibleworm podcast: Episode 227 – The Parable of the Fig Tree, Amy Robertson and Robert Williamson, Jr.
- The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James H. Cone, Orbis, 2013.
- “Beggars & Saints: What needs to be burned away so that we can hear Vincent Harding’s enduring call to revolutionary nonviolence,” Joanna Lawrence Shenk, Anabaptist World, February 12, 2021.
- Read more: “A Prophet Pushed Out: Vincent Harding and the Mennonites,” by Tobin Miller Shearer, Mennonite Life 2015, Vol 69.
- Photo: Vincent Harding speaks at the Eighth Mennonite World Conference in Amsterdam, 1967. Box 19, Folder 8. Mennonite World Conference Records, 1923-2012. Mennonite Church USA Archives, Goshen IN.
Permission to podcast the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-726929. All rights reserved.
- Together – Text and music: Nathan Grieser 2014, rev. 2018 © 2014
- As a Sigh Great with Yearning – Text: Pierre Jacob, English adap. Andrew Donaldson, © 2017; Music: Gaetan de Courreges; harm. Didier Godel © 1988
Additional Resources
- Thy Word is a Lamp Unto My Feet – VT 398 – Text and music: Amy Grant & Michael W. Smith © 1984