"Cry Out"
Mark Scannell
Sunday, December 15th, 2002

Two weeks ago, Pat Walsh invited us to WAKE UP as we began this season of Advent, waking up to the God who is present in our human situations, even in the unlikely place of an Arby’s. Last Sunday, George challenged us to GET READY, to become people of compassion. This Sunday, the theme is CRY OUT, a theme from the reading from John’s Gospel. John the Baptizer is a voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. John’s words come from the prophet Isaiah where Isaiah is speaking to the Israelites who are in captivity and in exile, reminding them of the comfort, which God extends to them even in exile.

When we hear the words and actions of people in the Bible, it is easy to look at them from afar and admire what they did and said. Rather, I think they invite and challenge us to do what they did today. In this instance with John, we are invited to cry out. What does it mean for us today to cry out? What strikes me is that we communicated by crying before we learned to speak with words. Crying reflects the most primitive parts of ourselves, the parts which are probably most child-like. As little children, we spontaneously cried out when we were hungry, when we were teething and when we had pants that were full. The, we began to grow up and began to hide what is happening to us. So, crying is giving expression to those feelings and awarenesses, which are the deepest within us. Crying out is letting others know where we are hurting and where we are experiencing injustice, whatever the injustice. It is expressing our fears about our country gradually drifting into war with Iraq. It is crying out about the abuse of power within the Church. It is committing ourselves to crying out and expressing what is most important to us. It is simply letting others see our tears. It is letting others know what our deepest yearnings and longings are. Crying out - if we follow John’s example - is giving expression to wherever we are in captivity or where we see our sisters and brothers being held in captivity and not being able to be free.

One of the things that has struck me in the 2 ½ years that my wife, Elaine, and I have been members of Joan of Arc is the way that George is able to bring tears and emotions into the liturgy. He is a man who is able to cry and to cry out, to express his feelings, which gives the liturgies a feel, a feel which most parishes lack. He is an example of crying out in our lives.

In this vein, I am reminded of a story from the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus is walking down a road with a bunch of people. There is a blind man - incidentally, amid all the blind people in the New Testament he is the only one whose name we know: Bartimaeus - who hears Jesus walking along and begins to cry out so that Jesus would see and help him him. The people around the blind man tell him to shut up. Bartimaeus cried out all the louder. And Jesus heard the cries of the blind man and asked that the man be brought to him. Jesus restored the sight of the blind man. Like the blind man, we need to risk to cry out.

What keeps me from crying out? I mute myself by worrying what you might think about me if I express what is most important to me. I do not cry out when I fear you will judge me. I do not let you see my tears when I am afraid of what you might think. When I do not cry out, I am burying parts of myself. In the reading from SUFFERING, Dorothee Sole suggests that if we do not communicate our suffering, it is death. What keeps you from crying out and expressing what is deepest within you?

There is another important side to this crying out - and that is part where Jesus heard the cries of the blind man - and the image that comes to me is a teeter-totter. Think about the last time you were on a teeter-totter. No one is able to teeter -totter alone. I need you to take your weight and raise me up and then I can use my weight to raise you up and back and forth. If we are going to encourage each other to cry out, then we also see to be committed to listening to the cries of those around us. If people are encouraged to cry out and no one is listening, all that we will have are lots of frustrated people.

Listening to the crying of another is giving comfort to the other - it is not judging others or trying to fix them. It is really a willingness to stand with others, to listen to one another. It is what George spoke about last week - becoming people of compassion toward each other. I enjoy watching people of this community wave to one another in returning from Communion and in the process hug each other. I also see this happen when people call one another by name and talk with each other. Going back to what I said at the beginning, a response to George’s feelings is for us to allow ourselves to feel sadness or anger or whatever.

Another example for me of crying out as well as being listened to is a group of men that I have been part of for about 15 years. We meet twice a month for an hour and a half. There are 4 of us, and we meet at the prime time of 6:00 in the morning. Through the past 15 years, we have been there for each other: through times of retirement, through one of us having brain surgery, through one of the men losing a career and making a huge job shift, through men losing older parents - we have been there for each other through the ups and downs of life. When I meet with these men, I know I will be heard, whatever I might say. I know that I will not be judged. I will also learn from their experience of probably having gone though similar things. These men listen to my cries; they hear the some of the deepest cries that I carry within us. I can cry with them. I have also learned that no one of us has all the answers - we are together on a journey and sometimes I am the one who is raised by the concerns and love of the others. At other times, it is I who raise another up with the weight of my experiences. With these men, I have learned to ride the teeter-totter of life.

In risking to cry out - to let others know what is deepest within us - and in risking to listen to the cries of one another, we are becoming the mouth and the hands of God both as individuals and as a community. Together we can ride the teeter-totter of life and give birth to God today, which is really what Christmas is a reminder of.