GROAN
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily is, “Groan.” G R O A N – [Spell it out] – Groan.
MAKE SOME GROANS
Unnnnnhhhnn. Oooooooh. Aaaaargh. Oh no.
Uggggh. Rrrrrrrrrrr. Uhhhnnnnnnnn.
We make those sounds when we see all those cars in front of us, backed up for miles in a traffic jam we weren’t expecting. Uhhhh. Oh no. Uhhh. We’re never going to get to the shore.
We make groan sounds when it rains on our parade or snows on our surprise party for our parents, and it’s icy, icy, icy or messy, messy, messy.
It’s the sound folks make in the Midwest when they come home to their flooded home or the folks in the far west make when they come back to their burnt out home.
It’s the scream folks make when they get the news that a loved one is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere.
LETTER TO THE ROMANS
It’s a word in today’s second reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. He writes, “We know that all creation is groaning [sustenazei] - in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan [stenagomen] within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies”
Groan.
To be human is to groan.
To be of the earth is to groan.
Deep down underground, underneath the earth’s crust, there are the tectonic plates that shift and slide, creep and creak, rub and rasp and make underground sounds when they buckle, rift, fault, break. When the earth quakes, monitors, just like the heart monitors on a patient in an intensive care unit a hospital – go up and down. They write in crooked lines that things are moving – shifting and at times there are great groans, great earthquakes – bursting volcanoes – what have you and all those in it’s path better get out of the way.
Deep in each person, underneath the smile, underneath the crust called our skull, there are deep groans. You can hear them when kids are going the wrong way or a spouse is dying of cancer or a marriage is breaking apart and little kids are being pulled this way and that. If you take a seat in the corridor in any nursing home and just sit there all alone, you’ll hear groans, screams, mutterings, calls, the cries of inmates, the groans of the aged.
IMAGES OF ST. PAUL
St. Paul uses the image of a woman in labor pains – groaning – and finally a child is born into our world. He says the same thing happens at the end of our life – as we leave this womb and go into the next life.
Death has powerful and sometimes scary groans.
DEEP PRAYER
St. Paul uses this same reality of human groans – as a symbol of prayer. Deep prayer is deep groaning.
If you want to grow in prayer, just sit there and monitor your groanings, your whinings, your gripes. Get in touch with your inner sounds. Monitor them. Write them down. Sometimes you can hear your values being walked on – stepped on. Ouch!
What bugs you? What burns you? What angers you? What frustrates you? What rubs you like strong sandpaper the wrong way?
Tell me your groans and I tell you where you’re hurting? Tell me your cries and I’ll tell you who you are?
CRIES … BUT SILENT
I have a whole book called, “Cries … But Silent.” [1981] It’s out of print now, and I always thought it was my best book. It simply was the cries I heard people tell me as a priest. I would listen. They would cry. And sometimes, I would say, “Can I put what you just said into a poem? It won’t have your name on it or anything that could identify you in it. But it might help someone else.” If they hesitated, I’d say, “Okay, no, no problem.” Confidence – keeping confidence is absolutely sacred – as in the Seal of Confession – as in the when someone goes to a counselor. Breaking confidence is a sin. Haven’t we groaned when someone broke a secret. Sacred trust is very, very important. So I was very sensitive to this and I always asked. Sometimes people would say okay.
Surprise. Something else would happen. Someone entirely different would come and say, “You were talking about me in that poem, in that piece you wrote.” If they said that, I knew I was touching a universal groan.
THREE POEMS
Let me read to you three examples to show you what I mean about groans – the groans I’ve heard people tell me that I turned into poems with their permission.
MISS SUITCASE
Kept in the closet,
Stuck in the basement
of planes,
While you fly first class.
Forgotten,
Used,
Forgotten again,
Abused,
Shoved under beds,
Banged around.
Well, someday soon
You’re going to
stand there
stupid,
At your airport merry-go-round,
waiting for me.
And me,
Sir Prize,
I’ll be on another flight
BROKEN
It broke
as he tried to clasp it
around her neck,
standing there behind her as usual,
making up her eyes in the mirror
before the party --
and without turning she said,
“Stupid!” with her eyes
into the mirror ,
and he made up his mind
it was finally broken.
LID
A nervous violence
flowed within him,
below his locked mouth,
his tight jaw.
You knew it was there.
You could hear its noise
from time to time,
like a cab going over
a loose manhole cover
in the middle of the night.
Groans? What are your groans? What are your gripes? What causes ripples and agita in your underbelly?
TODAY’S GOSPEL
In today’s gospel we have the Parable of the Sower – and it tells us there are 4 types of people. It’s a test? Which one of the four types of seed am I?
I have a life of Christ that I have been writing on and off for years now. I picture Christ as a teenager – slipping out of the carpenter shop in Nazareth and walking out of town from time to time. He climbs a slight hill. He sits down leaning against a tree. He looks down at a field below.
Down below there’s a farmer planting seed. He notices how some seed misses, but most make it into the good ground. The farmer finishes and heads back to his home. Jesus on his way back to Nazareth stops to see some the scene up close. He notices how some seed landed on the hard path. Some landed on rocky, horrible soil. Some landed in good soil, but soil busy with thorns and thistles. Some landed on good soil.
Years later when preaching he discovered preaching is like farming. You toss the seed. You tell the stories. Some folks are hard like the road. Some folks are shallow. They have no roots. Some folks have depth, but they have too many thorns growing in their schedules. And some folks are good soil. They get it. They understand the word and bear fruit a hundred or sixty or thirty fold.
It’s the thickheaded ones, it’s the shallow ones, it’s the talented, but too busy ones, who caused Jesus the groans – the inner screams. But he kept preaching, kept sowing, kept knowing what Isaiah had said centuries before. My word – like the rain, like the snow, comes down and waters the earth – giving bread to the one who sows. My word is never empty.
CONCLUSION
Thanks to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, 4 great sacks of seeds, Jesus’ words keeps being planted in human fields – and keep bringing forth results.
And Jesus big screams – his powerful groans – from the cross are still being heard – and people seeing Christ on the Cross – the great symbol of Christianity – say within with a softer groan, “Thank you Jesus, you know what I’m going through. You have ears that hear and eyes that see. Thank you. Thank you.”
