What Shall I Cry?

What Shall I Cry? Is the title of the address given by Dr. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury at a Special Convocation at Huron University in London, Ontario on Monday.  The title comes from Isaiah 40:6:

A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
   And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
   their constancy is like the flower of the field.

Dr. Williams gave the lecture on the occasion of receiving the degree, Doctor if Divinity, (honoris causa).  To clarify, it was actually a lecture on preaching with the subtitle, “How Do We Preach Today?  Now, a lecture on preaching may not be to everyone’s cup of tea or even more potent drink, but I believe that the message was applicable for all who want to share their faith as Christians with others.

Reflecting on the lecture I want to start in a way that is not usual for me, poetry.  Here is my attempt based on what I gleaned from Rowan’s words:

To hold in the cry.

At what cost

Do I hold

The cry within?

We cry our name

Naming who we are,

What we are and

What we say and do

To respond to the Word

With a gift of words.

What then must I declare

To open the door of hope

With an invitation,

To Speak to the heart of the community

The call to receive God’s grace renewed. 

Dr. Williams provided the contact for the quote from Isaiah as a prophet of Israel who called from exile the People of God who now can know reconciliation.  Dr. Williams structured his lecture on four words; mortality, lament, consolation, and invitation. 

In the recognition of mortality, lies the recognition that all flesh is grass.  We are mortal and as it says in the Ash Wednesday liturgy, “we are dust and to dust we shall return.”  This is not just the realization that we will all die.  It is the acknowledgement of all times of loss and abandonment.  We are not, ultimately, in control despite how much we cling on to things in an effort to deny that reality.

Lament is not a list of complaints and bitching about how things have not gone the way we expect or want.  It is the rhetoric of despair, loss and grieving for not only what we have lost but also what the community has lost.  It is not a Jeremiad for the church to be great again.  A good lament is a cry for what might have been and what may yet be.  We acknowledge what we are all deprived and complicit.

Consultation is to give comfort and support.  It is not a case of coming to a person with the attitude that I know what you need or that I know what is best for you.   It is to give encouragement and to offer whatever you are able to give to the person who identifies what that might be.  What comes to mind are the friends of Job. They began well, offering consolation:

they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

 Unfortunately, this comfort did not last, for they knew what he needed to do:

If you will seek God
   and make supplication to the Almighty,^*
6 if you are pure and upright,
   surely then he will rouse himself for you
   and restore to you your rightful place.

Invitation give us an opportunity to join in cooperation with God and with the community.  It we can preach and proclaim the grace of God and invite people to receive the grace of God we will be able to be a voice crying to prepare the way of the Lord.

Blessings on your journey