I bring you today reflections on a beautiful spiritual because on the edge of a new age familiar human truths, familiar human needs echo in the wells of our existences as they ever have. I offer you the words of this African-American spiritual:
"There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work's in vain; but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.
There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. If you can preach like Peter, if you can preach like Paul, go home and tell your neighbor, "He died to save us all."
There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul."
The wish for a balm, a soothing agent that will heal wounds and comfort suffering souls is as poignant a cry now as it was when the spiritual was first sung.
I believe that wish can be answered I believe that wish can be answered if we bind our hearts together so that we may lead our heads in directions that profit, and do not pillage, creation.
And I find the possibility of inspiration for this, the seminal human task in this age, in the energies of our gathered religious communities.
And this leads me to devote my life to the greater fulfillment of those repositories of promise and inspiration.
For, here on the brink of a new millennium, it is clear to me that the human creature is fascinated with making things better. Indeed, our consummate cleverness has fueled a technological explosion in the last few decades; but it is a revolution because of the rapidity and the scale of our achievements, not because of the uniqueness of our desire to improve the technologies with which we manipulate the necessities of managing corporeal existence.
The computer is an amazing instrument, and it has fundamentally changed our lives in more ways than I can count or account, but the impulse in our souls which led us to lend meaning to bits and bytes and web sites and software packages is nothing new at all for humankind.
We have always tried to improve our technologies.
It's nearly the year 2000; think of Henry Ford or the Wright brothers in 1900 or Eli Whitney in 1800 or Gutenberg... the list extends back as far as history goes, and promises to extend as far into the future as we can imagine. Let us not begrudge, let us never disparage this basic human drive to innovate. It is an integral and unexpungable element in our story.
Our inventions are far more a source of wonder than despair. And yet, as dazzling as our abilities grow to manipulate the material world, the soul is still hungry and needs to be fed. We could call ourselves "fishers of men", as Jesus is said to have termed his Apostles, or use some other formulation, but human contact, human care, human love are still as basic needs as we have, no matter how fast we can get our machines to whirr.
That is why we will always need to know whether there is a balm in Gilead to "soothe our sin-sick souls".
The text of the spiritual speaks directly to me. I think I know what it means to search for that balm; I think I know what that lack feels like. even amidst the material plenitude with which I have been graced.
But before I go further, a decent respect for my audience requires me to more fully explicate the metaphor upon which I hang this sermon,
So -
Where is Gilead? What is Gilead? And what is this balm? First, Gilead. The word is a derivation of the Hebrew for "rugged" Gilead is a region, and probably a city name as well, perhaps also a tribe, according to one Biblical reference in the book of Judges, found on the east side of the River Jordan, north of the Dead Sea, home to the tribes of Reben, Gad, and Manaseeh, and an important source of early shrines in the history of Israel. It is a rugged, highland region, rising from the valley of Jordan, from 700 feet below sea level to 3300 feet above sea level.
The birthplace of the prophet Elijah, Gilead is a historically significant region where a decisive battle was fought in Gilead that restored David to his kingdom, according to 2 Samuel, among other examples.
The Jabbok River flows east-west across Gilead, which made it a well-watered region, good for growing grapes and olives. At one time, according to Jeremiah 22, it was heavily wooded. One of the major trade routes of the Old Testament era, the so-called Kings Highway, ran right through it.
And that brings us to the matter of the balm.
The balm of Gilead, immortalized by the famous spiritual you have heard, is mentioned 6 times in the Hebrew Bible, in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Genesis. Its composition is not entirely known, though best guesses name it as an aromatic resin reputed to be an effective antiseptic or counter irritant of nearly miraculous qualities, according to the Biblical Archeology Review. It was reputed to heal wounds and to arouse male sexual energies, among other claims. In any case, it was a commodity of commercial value that was carried in caravans that passed through Gilead on the Kings Highway, which is probably why the spiritual tells us there is a balm in Gilead - because while there is evidence that the balm was available in Gilead, there is no evidence that it originated there.
Pharmacological history tells us that a balm of the type described as the balm of Gilead could have been made in Assyria, northern Africa, on the west shore of the Dead Sea or the southeast shore, or in Jericho - but not in Gilead.
There was no local vegetation that could have produced that resin, according to the Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible and a 1996 article in the Biblical Archeology Review. There is a balm in Gilead, then - is a bit of an advertisement - that is, you can get the miraculous balm in Gilead - and I would be happy to sell it to you.
But I cannot consign the phrase, "There is a balm in Gilead" to the category of other famous slogans like "See the USA in your Chevrolet", I cannot overlook its message. The words and the import of the spiritual lift that expression well beyond its mundane origins. In the antebellum South, where the song originated, knowing that there would be a balm in Gilead, knowing, or perhaps, believing that there was, out there somewhere something that would quell the "searing flames of withering injustice" (King) something that would offer relief to the irritations and the wounds, emotional and physical, of perpetual enslavement. "There is a balm in Gilead" had to be a powerful image, had to be a enormous source of strength for a strong people shackled to lives as beasts of burden.
The song still speaks to us today, in our present circumstance, in this age of technological wonder here, on the brink of a new millennium. There is no doubt that we need some kind of balm. We need look no further than our own communities, for as the great American sage of Cambridge, Tip O'Neill, said, "All politics is local".
I think of some of what has happened in my own small community in the past few years. in a racially tinged action, an African American man was gunned down by a white deli owner because he parked in the wrong parking space. The deli owner's store is called the "Murder Deli" and is shunned by a significant portion of the town, while another group patronizes the store and bitterly resents the ostracism.
Two elementary school children were sexually molested by a new teacher, who had been highly recommended.
The school community wrestles still with the import of the teacher's action, and in a display of frustration, is suing the teacher's former place of employment for their failure to warn the town of the approaching danger, even though the teacher's behavior did not raise alarms in the previous school.
A church and its minister stand on the precipice of becoming denominational outcasts because they have the temerity to sponsor a service of union for two gay men.
And the church remains in a controversial spot, subject to the tittering of the town and the discomfort of disunion with the local church communities in their denomination, who, far more than the central body, spearheaded the drive to censor that generous and clear-thinking community of faith.
Yes, today we need to ask, Is there no balm in Gilead? In that big coffee-table tome, The American Century, that graces many of our homes, I would bet. Harold Evans says of the American people,
"The glory of a people does not lie in their economic indexes, their actuarial tables, or even the fame of their designer jeans; it lies in their idealism, in the use they make of their resources, in the kind of people they become amid the temptations of pride and greed."
Today, on the eve of millennium a balm of soothing loving-kindness, is not so much another pharmacological possibility; but it must be a relational one. We are on the verge of mapping the human genome, but that phenomenal cognitive and scientific achievement will count for little if we cannot find the wisdom to understand, in the Dalai Lama's words, that society is kindness. I'm persuaded by the trials of my own community as well as by the erudite analyses of Paul Kennedy in his seminal work, Preparing for the 21st Century that our future hangs on our abilities to act according to that simple wisdom, in a ever more crowded world with ever more signs of great disparity in wealth and opportunity around the globe.
There is a balm in Gilead, and Gilead must be here and now. We need to make it here. So what we do to create a community in this church, what we do to care for each other in this church what we do to make this church a repository of love and support for all its members - with these acts first do we begin to bring mortar and pestle to our greatest human concerns and concoct a balm not for Gilead or from Gilead, but for ourselves and this world that we inhabit.
Let me make my meaning clear. It may sound as if I regarded the church as but a safe harbor in the storm, as if the soothing balm should be reserved for parochial concerns. Not at all.
I rather believe that it is within the individual churches, in the local communities we inhabit, in our local concerns, that we must start if we hope to contribute to all of human kind.
For, if we as a church community would feed the hungry, clothe the naked, support the poor, as I believe we ought to feel driven to do, if we are to be a helping community, if we want to make a difference, we must first become a community ourselves.
We must have, as the actor James Earl Jones put it, "that magnetic sense of a center", so that our action is collective action, so that the soul force that would enervate our efforts is the loving kindness of a group of people committed, not the impetus of the few who would bother.
This is drive that led the actor Jones, as he explained to the NYTimes on 20 June, to eschew the platinum platitudes of L.A. celebrity charity efforts and volunteer in his local community of Pawling, New York. "You want to know your community." explained the stentorian Jones, "You want to know your neighbors are on your side."
Emerson issued the challenge a century and half ago, "Trade and Government will not alone be the favored aims of humankind, but every useful, elegant art, every exercise of the imagination, the height of reason, the noblest affection, the purest religion, will find their home in our institutions and write our laws for the benefit of people."
This is the task before us today this is the challenge on the eve of the millennium. We might find the balm in Gilead, we might find the inspiration elsewhere, but we must bring its soothing properties first to the people with whom we live. there is no where else to start other than where you began. In all our efforts and achievements of technology and innovation, it is only in recognizing our human needs, it is only in applying the soothing balm to each other and then spreading its salvivic ooze throughout the world with our careworn efforts that we may realize the promise that our achievements suggest. And in an interdependent world we have no more important work to do.
The balm is here. Gilead is here. Gilead is here. Copyright Terry Ward 1999.