I suppose I knew I would be preaching on
Lamentations a couple months ago. I was
approached by a couple parishioners who wanted to explain to me that
Lamentations was not appropriate in certain congregation settings. Without going into too much detail, I think
the underlying issue was whether it is appropriate for church to be a place
where we mourn, where we acknowledge suffering, where we rage against
injustice, and where we weep. Most of us
are used to messages about toughing it out, about having hope, about
redemption. Heck, we want to focus on
answered Hail Mary’s in Athens rather than children casualties in Aleppo. When we focus on the evil in our lives and
mourn, though, such thoughts seem to run counter not just to popular culture,
but to popular church culture as well.
Then, during the course of the week, I met
a new Adventer. Betty joins us from
Florida. Her rector in Florida reached
out to us to see if we could take her Communion. She had recently moved here, was shut in, and
still wanted Communion. Such requests,
as you all know, are no brainers. Holly
had bailed me out the week before while I was working around funeral rubrics,
so this was my first opportunity to meet Betty.
Betty was very mournful. Her
husband of 70 years had died in the last month.
She had been hospitalized between the time he died and the day of his
funeral, so she was unable to attend his funeral. Upon her release from the hospital, she had
interred his ashes. Then, she had moved
here to be with family. On top of that,
she had lost a son less than a year earlier.
And she felt like she needed to apologize for the tears. Can you imagine? I am certain many of us can. Active mourning makes us uncomfortable. Active mourning somehow makes us think we are
not who we are called to be, and nothing could be further from the truth! Remember, God caused Lamentations and the
lament psalms to be written for us.
Better still, when He came down from heaven and walked the earth, He
gnashed His teeth at the suffering He saw.
He railed against the perpetrations of evil that He witnessed like a
horse chaffing at its bridle. He even
cried at the death of a loved one. And
we feel the need to apologize for powerful, mournful emotions when faced with
hurt, loss, pain, or suffering? As Percy
Ballard reminded us a couple months ago, mourning is necessary for us, both for
our physical and mental health. Maybe,
just maybe the Lord who created us understood that about us when He caused the
laments to be written, collected, and preserved!
Our reading from Lamentations begins with
an acrostic poem. Each letter of the
stanza begins with the next letter of the alphabet. We might say that the opening poem is the A-Z
of suffering in Lamentations. It makes
sense. We know the circumstances of its
composition. It was written somewhere
around 567 BC. Judah has been
destroyed. Its people have been carried
off to different parts of the ANE. The
leaders have been killed or taken to the capital city as prisoners. Many men have been killed in the battle and
following bloodlust. Women have been
raped. The economy has collapsed. The Temple has been torn down. Children have witnessed these
atrocities. And this has not happened in
nameless cities like Aleppo, but in the city of God, Jerusalem! Many in Israel believed that God would always
protect Jerusalem. Some believed He HAD
to protect Jerusalem. That was His holy
seat. What would happen were somebody to
conquering it? It would be a testimony
that the foreign gods had conquered Yahweh in the heavens. And, let’s face it, recent history seemed to
have given that perspective confidence.
For some strange reason, Israel had already been defeated and carried
off by the Assyrians. Due to internal
squabbling, Judah was left alone.
Now, however, Jerusalem has faced the
terror of God’s judgment. God warned
them through the prophet Jeremiah that this day was coming. In fact, God promised them way back during
the Exodus that He would punish them if they did not keep His instruction. The Land that they so desired would disgorge
them if they prostituted themselves and followed other gods. God is nothing if not faithful!
For generations Judah had ignored the
warning of the prophets. For
generations, Judah had rejected the teaching of the torah. For generations, Judah had proclaimed one
message with their mouth and another with their actions and attitudes. God’s patience had run out. And this utter destruction, this terror, is
the result.
Our poem begins with the word How.
It is a fitting beginning. How can this have happened to God’s
people? How can this have happened to God’s city? How
can this have happened to His home, the Temple?
How can the people of Judah
and Israel still believe that God is good, that God loves them, that He still
will keep His covenant with them? How?
We face the same questions both in our
own minds and in the voices of those who know us. For as much as we like to pretend we are so
much more advanced that our ancient spiritual ancestors, we are far too alike. We claim a God who loves children and
instructs us to let them come to Him.
How can we claim He is who He says He is when see tragedies like Aleppo
unfolding before us or we reduce our children to “not seen and not heard”
status within our churches? How can we
say He wants nothing but good for us, when we have experienced similar economic
meltdowns, when some of us must work two or three jobs to pay the bills, live
in fear of hospitalizations and the out of control medical bills, or think the
American Dream has simply faded? If God
is real and good and wants all humanity to come to Him, how do we explain
current societal trends? We, the Church,
are losing members consistently. Heck,
it was just reported in Detroit last week at the House of Bishops’ meeting that
our denomination’s losses in 2015 exceeded its baseline loss trend in a year
where we were not fighting. No parishes
or dioceses left in 2015, and still our losses were higher than our baseline. How do we reconcile that reality with what we
think we know about God? If we believe
in the saving work of Christ, why is it more people are leaving our story than
entering it?
Personally, we all have issues which make
us wonder about God’s omnipotence or omniscience. Some might just lament our current political
situation. Others are struggling with
far more oppressive realities.
Cancer. Death. Privation.
Loneliness. Depression. Other forms of mental illness which make us
question whether we are truly loved by God, whether we are, in fact, loveable. Some of us may be fighting with parents, with
children, or with grand children. Heck,
this afternoon I will be leading a service at a wonderful assisted living
facility. Truthfully, it is in the top
ten of such locations I have seen as a priest.
I would bet you big money, though, that none of the residents pictured
such an existence in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, or 50’s. I am certain many would tell us that Norman
Rockwell never painted such a scene as idyllic.
Maybe they envisioned family around them. Maybe they envisioned a lost spouse with
them. Maybe they envisioned traveling
the world as they got older, saving their money for such wonders, only to find
their bodies have betrayed them and require more help than they ever thought
possible. I know many feel cut off from
their communities of faith. They have
shared.
Later this evening, the youth and I will
head over to Murfreesboro for the Compassion Experience. I have never done it before, but I can well
imagine what we will see and hear. We
will hear tales of how Compassion has helped to begin to break the cycles of
poverty and dejection in some of the poorest societies in the world through
education, food, and letter writing. We
may meet children or adults who were rescued from slums the like of which we cannot
imagine in the States. We may meet youth
or young adults who are disfigured or injured from their work in their
childhood. That’s right. While we are going to elementary school and
griping about it, some children are working dangerous jobs, poisonous jobs, to
support their families. Six, seven,
eight year old kids supporting their families because the poverty is crushing.
How?
In just three or four minutes of highlighting, I have described world
that is . . . wrong. I have described
lives that are . . . horrible. I have
described systems that crush rather than help, grind down rather than
support. Imagine what picture I could
paint in your minds if I took more time.
Imagine how others, who have no idea of a loving Father in heaven, must see
the world.
I have shared several times over the
twenty months or so that I have been here that we gather as God’s people for
several purposes. Chiefly, we gather to
celebrate what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, of how we are all
sojourners bound for a better home. But
I have also reminded us that we gather to celebrate life’s joys with one
another and that we gather to mourn with each other. We, more than anyone in the world, are called
to realize that this, whatever the this is for each of us, is not all that
there is. For those of us who have money
and health and beauty and all the advantages of this world, even those pale
when compared to what our Lord has planned for us. But those of us who suffer, those of us who
battle disease, privation, loneliness, depression, or the effects of death on
our life are reminded that this is not all that there is.
In fact, we gather to remind ourselves
that our Lord understands precisely what we are experiencing. When He walked the earth, He had the same
emotions, the same responses, and even the same hurts. Jesus’ life on earth was every bit as
challenging as our own. His apostles
made fun of His hometown. One of His
closest friends betrayed Him. Those who
should have recognized Him, the priests and scribes and king, worked to have
Him killed. The soldiers mocked and spit
upon Him, pulled His beard, punched Him and challenged Him to prophesy who did
these things to Him. Eventually, He was
hung to die between two thieves, even though the judge, Pilate, recognized He
had done nothing wrong.
Yes, our Lord understands our hurts and
our fears, but even more. Remember, He
was the Messiah, God’s anointed, who was entering the world to save us. And how did we respond? By falling on our knees? By raising our hands in thanksgiving to
God? No, by challenging Him and His
claim. You saved others, save Yourself.
If You are the Son of Man, come down. Unlike you and me, who must continue to bear
suffering and pain even when we want it to stop, Jesus had the power to end it
by force of will. He could have
lightning bolted those mocking soldiers.
He could have called angles to defend Him against the militia that
arrested Him. He could have shouted
“never mind!” instead of “It is finished,” and who among us would not
understand? Yet He stayed. By force of will He bore the hurt, the pain,
and the suffering. He stayed on that
Cross because He loved us, because He knew how important it was and taught us
that He could redeem all of that. Every
bit.
Brothers and sisters, I know the church
culture likes to claim that everything is hunky dory, that’s a theological
term, once we have accepted Christ as Lord.
Church culture likes to promote the idea that “real Christians” cannot
be sad, cannot be despondent in the face of overwhelming loss or evil, cannot
have any doubts. If you accept Jesus as Lord He takes away all your problems. We tacitly accept the idea that our condition
reflects the concern our Creator has for us.
If we are suffering, He is distant
or I am displeasing to Him. If things
are going well, then He must love me.
Most of us figure out a few minutes or hour after our baptisms that bad
things still happen. We may no longer be
of this world, but we sure as heck live in this world as we pass through. Sometimes I wonder whether the church world
does a better job of afflicting His people than the powers and principalities
of the world around us. The teaching of
Lamentations and of all the lament psalms is that wonderful reminder that God
uses suffering for His purposes and redeems it.
At times, He does let us bear the consequences of our sins. In fact, much of Lamentations is a reflection
upon the failure of God’s people to honor Him as they promised. Put differently, if we stick our fingers in
the socket, He sometimes lets us feel the sting. But those punishments are never mean. He chastens those whom He loves. And for those who call upon Him, there is
promise and hope even in the face of death.
Other sufferings, however, are not of our
doing. Other sufferings arise because of
the sins of others or because sin is in the world around us. Sometimes, He allows us a share in the
ministry of the Son. Lamentations speaks
to the fact that those who were faithful, who tried to keep the torah, suffered
along with those who were hypocrites or evil.
Sometimes, He allows us to be the redemptive sufferer in the lives of
others. How we face cancers, how we face
privation, how we face broken relationships become shadowy incarnations of the
work of our Lord. And they are powerful
testimonies for others. How can you stand at a grave and say an
alleluia? How can you face cancer and
not lose hope? How can you have lost
your job and not be worried where you will live, what you will eat, or how your
family will see you? It is at those
times that we are able to give an accounting of the ultimate joy that is within
us.
I can face whatever tragedy that befalls
me because I know my Lord loves me and will redeem whatever suffering I
face. How do I know this? Because, two thousand years ago, when He took
that suffering upon Himself, He chose to suffer because of me, He chose to hang
on that cross and die for me. He proved
His love for me then. And because He has
been raised from all that suffering and even from death and sits at the right hand
of my Father in heaven, I know that one day He will call me there to share in
that glory, too! He has promised. That’s how I bear whatever tragedies that
befall me in this life.
Brothers and sisters, we live in a dark
world. The forces of evil conspire to
convince you and me and all those whom we encounter in our daily life and work
that there is no God or that He does not care for them. Often, circumstances seem to be on the side
of evil. In the Gospel stories, we will
speak of storms and wind and waves and the threats to our boats and our very
survival. But you and I have been given
a better song, a better voice. We can
look on the horror of the destruction of Jerusalem and know that God eventually
restored her. We can look on any number
of the redemptive stories in the Bible and know that the barren were given children,
the food never ran out, the family was redeemed, and so on. We can look on the horror of the Cross and
know that God raised our Lord from the dead.
And, with that redemptive perspective in mind, we can face the horrors
and tragedies which beset us today, not sure how our Lord will redeem them, but
confident that He will. And that, my
friends, will be the best sermon your friends, your families, your neighbors,
and your co-workers will ever hear!
Peace,
Brian†
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