"Is There Balm in Gilead?"

The “balm of Gilead” is a reference from the Old Testament, Jeremiah 8:20-22:  “I am wounded at the sight of my people’s wound, I go like a mourner, overcome with horror.  Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?  Why then is there no healing for the wounds of my (God’s) people?”  Most of us are familiar with the lyrics of the spiritual, which proclaims “There Is A Balm in Gilead.” The spiritual asserts that the answer to Jeremiah’s question is found in the New Testament in the person of Jesus Christ:  “There is a balm in Gilead, To make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead, To heal the sin-sick soul.”

Like so many of our Christian hymns, Jeremiah’s questions are given an “individualistic” answer by the spiritual.  While Jeremiah is overcome by the sight of “my people’s wound,” the spiritual deals with an individual soul:  “Don’t ever feel discouraged, for Jesus is your friend, and if you look for knowledge he’ll ne’er refuse to lend.”  Jesus tells us that God knows us as individuals and responds to us as such, but Jesus, like Jeremiah before him, is also overcome by the sight of “my people’s wound” not just yours and mine. The gospel is not an individualistic gospel—“God so loved the world”—not just me and thee.  To make the gospel merely individualistic is unchristian; to make the gospel merely global or social is unchristian.  The holy conjunctions, “both/and” bring the two together.

The “balm of Gilead” was a medicinal herb used to cure ailments, but it was interpreted by Jeremiah as a spiritual medicine that could heal not just a person’s ailments, but the ailments (wounds) of the whole people, Israel—“my (God’s) people.”

Edgar Allen Poe in his poem, The Raven, asks Jeremiah’s question: “Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”  I find myself asking the same question this morning.  With Jeremiah “I am wounded at the sight of my people’s wound” (read:  my own wounds, my neighbor’s, my community’s, my nation’s, my world’s wounds).  This world of mine, and the world God loves, includes a diverse people (race, gender, creed, nationality).  Is there no balm in Gilead?  The question becomes my morning prayer using Poe’s words:  “Is there—is there balm in Gilead? (America, Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia)—tell me—tell me, I implore!”

Yucca:  The Candle of the Lord.