It’s a pleasure to be worshipping with you again at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in balmy Southern Ontario. Back home in Nova Scotia, autumn is showing; but with last week’s nor’easter the leaves have begun to fall and we all know that it won’t be long before the Arctic winds begin to blow and we’ll be scraping our windshields and shovelling our driveways. Although Toronto is in the banana belt, I expect that even here you’re beginning to brace yourselves for winter’s blast. In Newfoundland they say that they have three seasons – spring, summer, and misery.
So now we enter the season of our complaint. Some, I’m told, actually enjoy complaining. And you know what they say – “misery loves company.” Someone has suggested that that saying would be more accurately stated: “Misery loves miserable company.”
Not everyone, however, appreciates the value of a well-aimed complaint. How do we say it? “Oh, quit your complaining!” Do those words sound familiar – either because you’ve hurled or muttered them or maybe because you been reprimanded or stung by them? “Nobody likes a complainer,” or so goes the cliché that is so often used to silence someone who dares to speak out or to avoid taking seriously their dissatisfaction.
Is complaining necessarily a negative thing? When we were discussing this morning’s texts, someone reminded me of another saying: “The world has seldom been moved forward by satisfied people.” Mother Theresa was dissatisfied with the way the poor and the dying were basically ignored on the streets of Calcutta, picked up with the daily garbage. Her complaint led to the founding of the Sisters of Charity to care for those who would otherwise die abandoned and alone. Martin Luther King, Jr. was dissatisfied with the racism, the discrimination and segregation that had so diminished the dignity of his people. His complaint led to the Civil Rights Movement, which began to turn around centuries of abuse. Tommy Douglas was dissatisfied with the poor state of health care in this country. His complaint led to the establishment of a system of health care that would meet the needs of all Canadians. And if it is less now than it needs to be, a loud and intelligent complaint may be what is needed to set it back on course.
It makes me think that there are at least two kinds of complaining. There is complaining that is part of the problem and complaining that can be part of the solution. “The world has seldom been moved forward by satisfied people.”
This morning’s Scripture readings share this common theme of complaint. In the reading from the Book of Exodus, the Israelites are complaining to Moses and Aaron that they are hungry. They have made their longed-for escape from slavery in Egypt, little realizing that the long road to freedom would not be a cake walk but would bring its share of hardship. “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger!” And Moses, who was a reluctant leader in the first place, replies, “Oh, quit your complaining!” Attempting to silence their outrage or deflect their dissatisfaction, he says, “Who are we that you complain against us? Your complaining is really against God!”
Well, that’s put rather nicely, isn’t it? What is Moses really saying? “It’s not our fault! If you want to blame someone, blame God.” Which introduces a whole other set of defense mechanisms we use to avoid complaint or sidestep someone’s dissatisfaction. “I’d much rather you blame God for this problem than remind me that I neglected to make sure we all had enough bread for this journey.” That might let me off the hook, at least for a little while. But Moses’ defense could also carry a more manipulative tone, couldn’t it? “God won’t be happy that you’re complaining about him. So if you know what’s good for you, you should just keep quiet and keep walking.”
The more I’ve thought about this passage, though, the more convinced I am that it’s about something more than an angry mob crying out for something to eat. Because when we peel back the top layer of complaint, we find something quite different. We reach a layer of lament. Lament is different from mere complaint. It’s the kind of complaint that is within reach of a solution but is unable to take hold of it. The people are lamenting their hunger because they left the land of their bondage in hope of a Promised Land where they would have a better life – a land flowing with milk and honey. A far cry from the parched wilderness into which Moses has led them, where they are overwhelmed with hunger and thirst. Their lament rises up from their fear that their hopes are failing and their trust has been misplaced – that the God to whom they had cried out for deliverance has turned his back on them and that Moses has led them on a wild goose chase.
Their complaint comes not only from hungry bellies; it rises from a hungry heart. Sometimes life’s struggles, its hardships and injuries and disappointments can make it hard to believe in God, or to believe that God is good. And sometimes our quarrel with life or our complaint against God are not so much angry rebellion or resigned indifference. They are the longings of a broken heart.
What is on the other side of lament? If lament is the dark side of the coin, what is on the bright side? Do you remember when our Lord was walking with those two travellers on the road to Emmaus and they didn’t know it was the risen Jesus? “Why are you looking so sad?” he says. They reply, “We had hoped…” We had hoped. The other side of lament is hope. Lament is in danger of saying, “It can never happen.” Hope says, “Oh yes it can!”
Do you know that Jesus actually congratulates the complainers? How does he say it? “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Blessed are those who long for a more just society; blessed are those who hope for a fairer world; blessed are those who dare to dream of a world at peace. Blessed are those whose complaint is not part of the problem but part of the solution.
Back to the complaining company in the wilderness on their way from Egypt to who knows where. How does God respond? “Oh, quit your complaining!”? No. No, God responds with great generosity. The next evening they are knee deep in quail – tastes like chicken – and each morning they dined on bread from heaven.
That’s the thrust of this morning’s gospel as well, where Jesus says “the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who paid those who only worked an hour the same as those who had worked the whole day.” “But that’s not fair!” complained those who had started work at dawn. “What?” says the landowner, “are you going to complain that I’m too generous?” Jesus says, “That’s what God is like.” “Generous – generous even toward those we think least deserve it.”
God is up to something. Something new. Something good. Something wonderful. Why? Because God is the biggest complainer of all! God’s lament over this broken world echoes down through the ages. But it is a lament that continues to be fueled by hope. God so loved the world; God so believed in the world; God so hopes for the world; God so desires to mend broken hearts and to restore this broken world. And if God has a complaint against us – against frail, fallen humanity, it is when we have allowed our complaint to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
That’s what Paul means when he says, “For me to live is Christ.” In Christ, God is reconciling the world to God’s self. “God is doing something wonderful,” says Paul, “and I want to be part of it.”
One theologian puts it this way: "Most of us were not raised to understand that we are participating in something that is already happening…. Know that your deepest you is in God, and Christ is living his life in you and through you and with you….How we participate in this reality that is larger than our individual lives is precisely to be “in Christ.” We are saved by standing consciously inside the force field that is Christ."
In other words, we are saved, we are healed, we are made whole by not allowing our complaint be part of the problem, but by letting our lament, letting our longings, letting our hope, be part of God’s solution.
You might call it the “gospel of good complaint” – when complaint is transformed into blessing.
A Four-Fold Franciscan blessing puts it like this:
May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.
May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.
May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.
And the blessing of God the Supreme Majesty and our Creator, Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word who is our brother and Saviour, and the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide, be with you and remain with you, this day and forevermore.
I have also found this blessing from William Sloane Coffin and Stephen Shoemaker to be a source of encouragement for many:
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine on you and be gracious unto you. May God give you the grace never to sell yourself short; grace to risk something big for something good; grace to remember that the world is now too small for anything but truth and too dangerous for anything but love. So may God take our minds and think through them; God take our lips and speak through them; God take our hearts and set them on fire, through Jesus, the Saviour. Amen.