Can the Center Hold?

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.¹

Can the center hold?

That was the question proposed in an article on Lamentations 3:22-33. It is borrowed from a poem by WB Yeats, “The Second Coming”. Yeats' poem reflects the struggles of a post World War I Europe but it seems to apply here today as we read the poet's words in Lamentations.

We are, perhaps in a bit of irony, at the center of the book of Lamentations. And at the center of this book the poet confesses the creed: “The steadfast love the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end,” but can the center hold? Can the creed hold? Given what has taken place with the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonian empire, the poet reminds himself of this creed as he works his way through his lament, “But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope” (3:21). He seems confident that this creed will hold; that the center will not give way and mere anarchy will not be loosed upon the world but his confidence gives way to a kind of resignation, “It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth...to give one's cheek to the smiter.” Even so, confidence and confession return for the poet: “For the Lord will not reject forever...for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.”

The poet believed those things, at least here in the center of the book, he believes them to be true. He believes in this hope but he calls this hope into terrible question at the end: “unless you have utterly rejected us, and are angry with us beyond measure” (5:22). In other words: The Lord will not rejects forever...unless he does!²

To hear that is to hear the terror that haunts Lamentations. What if the center cannot hold? What God is unable to keep God's promises? Yes, the scriptures say that the Lord's love endures forever but what if if it does not? What if God has utterly rejected us? Can those questions be what faced those hunkered down in the destroyed city of God?³ Can those be the questions many of us are asking today?

A movie came on the other day called Higher Ground. It was about a woman who married very young and grew up in a fundamentalist church. Everything was fine and dandy until her best friend was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her friend survived but was left in almost vegetative state. The movie began to focus on her struggle with what her church taught and with what was happening in reality. At the end of the movie she gives a little testimony in which she expresses her doubts and fears. Her children finish singing “In the Garden” and she begins to share her thoughts. She talks about how lovely it must be to walk with Jesus in the garden. To have him there and to be by his side. She tells a story of how as a little girl she said she heard Jesus knocking on her heart but now, as an adult, with all that's gone on she can't hear him knocking anymore. She cries out for him to answer her but he's no one where to be found. She's struggling. She's confused. She's afraid.

The camera pans to the left for a shot of the congregation and you can see several members tearing up. They seem to connect with what she is saying. They seem to understand and feel relieved that someone expressing the fears and doubts they have themselves. The pastor sits there quietly and gets a look of pride when she says, “I admire your faith.” She gives him the microphone and leaves the church. The movie ends with her taking one look back at the small congregation as they begin to sing “How Great Thou Art” and she leaves through the backdoor alone.

I rewound the movie several times to see if what I saw was right. There was a woman leaving the church with her fears and her doubts and she was leaving alone. When her questions and fears began to shake the center of her church she didn't find comfort or restoration but instead isolation and separation. It was, for once, an honest depiction of the struggles of faith.

It is hard to have to faith. It is hard to go through life and not ask ourselves, “will the center hold?” “Can the center hold?” Can it hold our questions, our doubts, our fears? Can it hold our mistakes, our depression, our divorces, our failures, our pain? Can the center hold at midnight?

The beautiful struggle of faith is depicted throughout the scriptures. We often read the stories of Israel's faults and failures as sinfulness and disobedience from God. We read those stories wondering, “How could they turn away from the God who freed them from Egypt?” We sometimes, accidentally or by design, avoid the real the struggle in those stories. We look at Thomas and question his love for Jesus when he says, “I will not believe unless I see.” We look at one another and say, “If you have questions, fears, doubts, or worries, don't. Jesus, “Do not worry”” forgetting that the rest of the passage reads, “Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough troubles.”

Yes, today has enough troubles, the lines on our faces are evidence of those troubles. Our troubles sometimes ask, “Can the center hold?”

Do you know that ministers ask themselves that question for time to time? Almost 40% of all ministers will experience some form of depression during their ministry. Did you know that almost 80% of all adults living in America will experience so form of depression? Among Christians the numbers are about the same based on a quick Google search, approximately 1 out of 4 will experience some for of depression.

I learned the other night a friend recently lost her job as a youth minister and her husband due to having a mental break. The stress of the job, the stress of feeling like the whole world was on her shoulders eventually broke her. While seeking help she learned that her husband left her cause he couldn't deal with it and the church where she ministered for the past few years said she was a danger to the youth and they let her go.

It's hard to have faith and hope in such a time. It is hard for churches to see their ministers struggle and see them at times of serious weakness. It is hard for ministers to admit they need help or that they struggle in their faith. It is hard for men and women who believe they should have all the answers to life's problems have none of their own.

The hard truth is ministers are people just like you. We are just as human as you are. We wrestle with God, faith, salvation, hope, and reality. We struggle with unrealistic expectations and how to live up to them. We often don't have the courage to say, “I need help.” We often feel alone. We preach that if you call on Christ, he answers you. We preach that Christ is in the midst of your struggles but when our struggles come we feel as though they shouldn't. We feel like we should be excluded. Our churches feel we should be excluded.

But we're not. None of us are: Congregants or ministers.

A lot of us ask the same question the poet is asking every single day, “Does God's love endure forever? Can the center hold?”

We've heard this question before, “even though I walk through the darkest valley” or “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We cannot understand the hope of Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my Shepherd”⁴) if we do not hear them uttered in the midst of the darkest valley. We cannot understand the cry of Jesus unless we hear them in the midst of the pain and suffering of the cross. The hope that the scriptures speak to, the center of faith: “God's love endures forever” is a center that is tested time and time again. And time and time again we see God's faithfulness and we have to remind ourselves of it.

The poet reminds himself of the center of faith and he holds on to it writing, “The Lord is good to those who wait for him” (v.25). Of course we know how long the wait can be. We know what that waiting place looks like. We know the old magazines that sit on the shelves of that waiting place. We know we can be overconfident and say, “It's okay! Just hold on. Just believe that all will be well” like we're Kevin Bacon at the end of Animal House. But what if everything will not be okay? What if our friend's child dies of cancer? What if our father or mother cannot ever walk? What if the poet is right? What if the center cannot hold?

I know it is not my duty to produce such doubt. Life produces doubt, that's a universal truth. But I do believe we need to be honest when we reach these dark valleys in our spiritual journeys. We need to name it, to allow a place for it in our worship, and to put faith where it belongs “as the amazing “nevertheless”: “Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand” (Psalm 73:23).”⁵

For the poet, faith will require Israel's memory of what God has done and it will need to be continual reminder through prayer and worship. Faith for us will require our own communal memory of what God has done. You remember the saying, “It takes a village”? It will take a congregation, a church, a faith community to restore our faith, to be an open space for our questions and our fears, and our doubts. We will sing about it in our worship. We will proclaim from the darkest valleys and the tallest crosses. We will do it together.

The center cannot hold when we are alone. Our faith cannot hold on its own. We are not strong enough to go through life alone. We need one another. We need our faith community, our church family to remind us of our center, to remind us that our center can hold. There will be times when we feel our faith cannot hold, our center is crashing down and anarchy is loosened on the world. We need to admit to one another when we feel that all is lost. We need to be honest with one another about our hurts, our fears, our struggles, our pain. We need to, else we end up trying to hold the center in place alone. We need one another to hold up the voice that says, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (vv.22-23).

It does not fix our problems or raise us up to the clouds beyond the troubles of this world; but it will bring God into the depths to share our terrors and unbelief and give us, in Christ, a place to stand. Even when we feel the center cannot hold.⁶

1William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, seventh edition vol.2 (New York: Norton Co., 2000), 2106-2107.

2Fred Gaiser, “Lamentations 3:22-33: Commentary on First Reading” http://www.workingpreacher.org

3Fred Gaiser, “Lamentations 3:22-33: Commentary on First Reading” http://www.workingpreacher.org

4Fred Gaiser, “Lamentations 3:22-33: Commentary on First Reading” http://www.workingpreacher.org

5Fred Gaiser, “Lamentations 3:22-33: Commentary on First Reading” http://www.workingpreacher.org

6Fred Gaiser, “Lamentations 3:22-33: Commentary on First Reading” http://www.workingpreacher.org