Faithful

Scriptures:  Lamentations 3:19-26         Psalm 37:1-9

        2 Timothy 1:8-14               Luke 17:1-10

Today is World Communion Sunday, which is celebrated in mainline Protestant churches on the first Sunday in October.  World Communion Sunday was begun in the 1930’s under Presbyterian auspices, as an attempt to promote Christian unity by having one Sunday in which all churches celebrate Holy Communion.   You may note that I said World Communion Sunday is celebrated in Protestant churches.  Roman Catholic churches celebrate communion every Sunday, so for Roman Catholics, every Sunday is World Communion Sunday.  But it’s nice that we Protestants can get our acts together to join with them once a year.

Anyway – our Old Testament reading this morning is from the book of Lamentations.  It was written at perhaps the lowest point in the history of the Jews since their liberation from Egypt – during the exile in Babylon.  Over a number of Sundays in September, we read Jeremiah’s increasingly frantic warnings to the leadership that if they didn’t turn from their idolatry and from their injustice to worship the Lord and to treat one another with justice and dignity, God would let the consequences of their sin play out.  And play out it did, with the forces of King Nebuchadnezzar invading Jerusalem, destroying the Temple, and forcing their best and brightest – not only the political and religious leadership but the artists and artisans, indeed all but the very poor on a forced march to Babylon.  For generations they had celebrated their liberation from slavery in Egypt and their independence as a nation, but now they were in captivity in Babylon.  They had come full circle.

The book of Lamentations consists of five poems of – lament, profound grief, mourning.  By tradition, Lamentations is said to have been written by Jeremiah, which is why it follows the book of Jeremiah in our Bibles – but scholars aren’t so sure.  It may reflect the perspective of the community that was left behind in Judah after their best and brightest were marched away, and they were left in poverty amid smoking rubble.  To have the community torn apart in that way was like an amputation, in which the pain of the severed limb remains even though the limb itself is gone.  Think of the grief at the loss and rage at the perpetrators that followed 9-11 – which is still raw almost 20 years later, and I think we all wince and hide our eyes when we see old footage of the planes flying into the Twin Towers – and you may have the faintest glimpse of what both the exiles in Babylon and the community left behind in Judah felt.  And so the language of Lamentations is raw.  The language gives the sense that not only was Babylon their enemy, and not only were the surrounding nations who did not support them enemies, but God himself, God who had called them his chosen people no less, had become their enemy:  “How the Lord in his anger has humiliated daughter Zion! He has thrown down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel; he has not remembered his footstool on the day of his anger.  The Lord has destroyed without mercy all the dwellings of Jacob, in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of daughter Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers.”  And it goes on from there.  And on.  And on some more.  Although I have to say, even this language, while profoundly sad, doesn’t attain the ugliness of Psalm 137, which was an optional reading that I didn’t use, which ends with the words, regarding Judah’s enemy Babylon, “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!”  Lamentations doesn’t quite go that far in rage – but the grief seems bottomless.  There is also acknowledgement that to a large extent Judah had brought this on themselves through their sins.  As adults we know that actions have consequences, and Judah’s decades on end of idolatry and injustice – bad actions and choices they took of their own volition – brought on horrific consequences. 
But in chapter 3, of which our reading this morning is a part, near the middle of the book, there’s a turning point, as the writer recalls God’s past faithfulness.  “The thought of my affliction is wormwood and gall….. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;  great is your faithfulness.”  Even after such devastating loss, and even after saying that God was acting like an enemy toward them, the writer comes around to remembering God’s faithfulness.

Both those in Babylonian exile and those left behind in Judah had to wrestle not only with their grief and rage, but with some profound questions that shook their faith to the core.  The temple in Jerusalem, the center of religious worship, had been destroyed.  Could those left behind in Judah still worship God without their temple.  And for the exiles in Babylon, was God present only in Judah?  Could the exiles in Babylon worship God in a strange land.  History and Scripture attest that those in exile learned to do exactly that, learned that the God who was present with them in Judah was also present in Babylon.  Indeed, in next week’s reading from Jeremiah chapter 29, the prophet writes to the elders of the people in exile in Babylon:  “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”  Granted, there’s some context: a false prophet, Hananiah, had prophesied that the exile in Babylon would last only two years, after which the people would return – and Jeremiah knew this prophecy was false.  And so Jeremiah was really writing to tell the people to hunker down and get used to their situation, as their captivity would last not for two years, but for seventy – by tradition, “ten weeks of years”.  Even so, Jeremiah came to a place where he could even counsel the people to pray for their captors.

The book of Lamentations gives us a model for dealing with our own times of grief, our own passages through the valley of the shadow of death.  There’s no attempt to slap a smiley-face sticker on what had happened; the grief is raw and powerful.  And I think here is where a lot of Christianity fails, particularly in the megachurches and those that model themselves on that style of worship.  There’s a sense that if one is walking with the Lord, that we should be bursting with joy.  I remember a song, “Victory, I’ve got the victory, I’ve got the sweet sweet victory in Jesus.”  Well, ya know, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we don’t have the victory.  Sometimes life is harsh, and painful, and the harshness and pain goes on for days and weeks and months and years on end.  Sometimes the pain and grief is the outcome of our own choices, and often it isn’t. And sometimes our choices wittingly or unwittingly cause pain, grief, and injustice for others.  Life isn’t fair – anyone who tells you that life is fair hasn’t been around the block enough times - and some communities live with injustice every single day of their lives.   And so Christian communities that dwell only on joy leave their members with a shallow faith, without the resources of faith to sustain them in times of trial.  That’s why we need those minor key hymns in the hymnal, to offer our pain to God.  This week I was reading a draft of a seminarian’s theology paper, that will be part of her ordination exam – the seminarian is from one of our sister congregations – and the seminarian only gave passing acknowledgement of the pain and injustice of life, preferring to dwell on puppies and rainbows.  And I rubbed her nose in it a bit, writing to her that she’ll be no help whatsoever to her future congregants if she can’t walk with them through the ugly, painful parts of life.  Indeed, pastors see people in their happiest and their saddest moments, at their best and at their rock bottom worst – weddings and funerals, baptism and bedsides at hospitals and hospices – and need to be fully present for the full spectrum of human experience.

The book of Lamentations tells us that there’s no need to try to deny our pain and grief, but to own them, to give full expression to our grief and our pain, and, yes, our anger if it comes to that.  Deny and avoid your grief, and it will find you down the road, and will have multiplied. There’s no way around grief; the only way forward is through.  But from Lamentations, we can also be reminded to look to God’s faithfulness, even in our pain.  We may well walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but God is with us in that passage.   And so the book of Lamentations tells us:  Life can be dreadful, and God is still faithful.  And in the church, we also have the resources of the community, so that even when our trust falters, the faith – and the practical assistance - of those around us can carry us so that we don’t crash and burn.

The words of a poem that was scratched on a wall in a German concentration camp:

“I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.

I believe in love, even when I am not feeling it.

I believe in God, even when he is silent.” 

May our faith in our faithful God carry us through all our days.  Amen.