Witherspoon member Rev. Jean Rodenbough sends a portion of her sermon for this Sunday, reflecting on the Asia disaster through the image of "the Rag Rug Woman," used in a poem shared at the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference. She offers a biblical - and hope-affirming - perspective on the terrible events of the tsunami and the destruction and death that followed.

A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. (Jeremiah 31:15)

A VOICE IN RAMAH

Rachel weeps: for her children, lost in Sri Lanka, in Sumatra, in India, in Thailand . . . in 11 countries where great walls of water, stimulated by a giant earthquake, carried them out to sea. Carried them away forever. All the children. Rachel weeps.

All the Rachels of the world weep for the children. They weep for themselves as well. They weep for those they have loved, who are no more: the old women, the old men, the sisters and brothers, the cousins, the aunts and uncles who hovered over their families with gifts and love. Rachel weeps and there is no solace. These are the children of God, the God who weeps uncontrolled. Yet . . . yet there is that in God who is the Gatherer, the Gathering God.

Like the Rag Rug Woman, who gathers up the torn and tattered pieces of cloth, worn and discarded, useful no more for they have no purpose, who gathers them all into her basket and takes them home. She makes something beautiful, something elegant, something valuable from all the bits and pieces. She creates a new thing: a rug of many colors, worked into one piece, whole and useful.

The Rag Rug God is a Gathering God, who gathers all the broken and torn lives, the sorrows and grief of destruction, of lost children, the lost from the Twin Towers, the fallen planes, the lost ones from bombed structures in Jerusalem and the dead in Palestine, the devastation in Baghdad and Mosul and Fallujah, in Kabul and Islamabad: dead children, lost hopes.

See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor together, a great company, they shall return here. (Jeremiah 31:8)

God speaks to Rachel: "See, I bring all the lost from the tsunamis and the wars, the hunger and disease, from poverty and violence wherever it is. I am a Gathering God, and all who are lost will come home to me forever. They are with me. My arms hold them. They are comforted. I am a Gathering God. All those who have lost their homes, their loved ones, their children, their parents -- all who have lost their villages and communities -- all who have lost their work and their livelihood . . . see, I gather them to me so that they may live with hope in my promises. I am a Gathering God who makes all things new -- who brings surprises to those who have lost their hope. I, their God, am here with them, with you, with all my people."

God bursts forth when we least expect it, creating something new and elegant out of the torn and broken landscapes of our lives. This is hope: real and tangible. The Gathering God holds us, heals us, brings us together into something beautiful, out of the chaos and death, out of the destruction and devastation. We are created again into what is a mystery, the mystery of God's own making.

Jean Rodenbough adds this note:

The Rag Rug Woman that is featured in this sermon was not my poem, but one by a Lutheran pastor. Barbara Lundblad read it and it was picked up for the daily newsletter that came during the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference. It was in a poem called "Creatio Ex Nihilo", by the Rev. Kathleen O'Keefe Reed.