Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today is a first for me. In 21 years of ministry, I have never preached from Lamentations. Come to think of it, I am not sure I’ve heard a sermon from Lamentations. Have you? I doubt it. That’s in part because Lamentations only appears once in our 3-year lectionary: today, on the 5th Sunday after Pentecost, year B. The next time you’ll hear from Lamentations, unless you read it yourself – which I do encourage, by the way – will be three years from today. But that’s only part of the reason why Lamentations doesn’t get much pulpit time. If you’ve ever read the book, you might understand why. If you’ve not read the book, the name itself, Lamentations, gives you a clue to its content with its root word, lament. A lament is a verbal description of suffering, affliction, and humiliation. It’s not always a request for its removal; sometimes it’s a catharsis, an emotional enema, as my undergrad advisor would say, pouring out the pain of the soul.
It’s a tough, tough book to read and preach because it’s a book of lament. We don't like laments. We don't deal well with laments. In fact, we would rather do almost anything than have to sit and be present with someone who laments.
Historically, Lamentations was read annually on the 4th
Sunday of Lent in the old, common lectionary. In the 8th Century,
selections from Lamentations were read throughout Holy Week. Those placements
made sense, as Lent was a season of lamentation, considering the suffering and
affliction that our sins have caused, and especially as we read of our Lord’s
own laments in the Garden and at the cross.
Yet, here we are, a third of the way into the Pentecost
season, with this reading from Lamentations. But, perhaps it is good that we
are reading this text today for one, chief reason: suffering, and the
Christian’s cries and prayers to God in the midst of that suffering, have no
time constraints, for pain – emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual pain –
has no limit in breadth, width, depth or time. God’s people hurt – not just
during Lent. And we lament – not just during Holy Week. That was true of Jairus
for his dying daughter. It’s true of us. Our lamentations rise to God – not
just during the liturgically purple season, but any and every time as well.
When questioned by the mysterious Man in Black about the death of her fiancée,
the Princess exclaimed, “You mock my pain!” Immediately, the Man in Black
snapped, “Life is pain, highness.”[1]
Lamentations describes that pain, no matter when or where it strikes.
You hear it in the voice of Jeremiah, the Lamenter, as he
returns to Jerusalem. “How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How
like a widow she has become, she who was great among the nations! She who was a
princess among the provinces has become a slave,” (1:1). The beauty of the
city, the majesty of the city of David, the glory of the Temple of God was all
gone and the people – God’s people, the people of Israel, the sons and
daughters of Abraham – exiled into servitude. And Jeremiah laments.
But it’s not a mystery as to why this all happened. Jeremiah
knows – even the people know! This has happened because of Israel’s unfaithfulness
to God. “Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore she became filthy…” (1:8a). The
Lord had been gracious, holding back His own anger against His people, patiently
calling them to repentance again and again through the mouths of the prophets. There
were times of repentance and renewal, times of faithfulness, but then the
pendulum would swing back, a little further each time, until the Lord declared
it was enough.
And, make no mistake, it was the Lord who did this. Jeremiah
makes no bones about it, that the Lord has brought about this suffering, chaos
and destruction. “The Lord has afflicted her,” (1:5) he said. The fire, the
destruction, the death – He caused it all, giving Israel what was deserved for
her sins.
You can almost imagine Jeremiah wandering through the city,
walking through the once-proud walls, stepping over rubble, strewn pieces of
pottery and long-dead fires, passing by corpses left to be buried by the dust
of the air because no one was there to cover them. “Zion stretches out her
hand,” he laments, “but there is none there to comfort her,” (1:17). And, then
he comes to the high point of Jerusalem, to the pinnacle of Mount Zion where
the Temple stood, the sacred Holy of Holies stands, ripped open and desecrated,
the presence of God long since departed. “The Lord has become like an enemy; he
has swallowed up Israel; he has swallowed up all its palaces; he has laid in
ruins its strongholds, and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning
and lamentation. He has laid waste his booth like a garden, laid in ruins his
meeting place; the Lord has made Zion forget festival and Sabbath, and in his
fierce indignation has spurned king and priest. The Lord has scorned his altar,
disowned his sanctuary…” (2:5-6).
And, as Jeremiah turns and looks around, down the streets
and he smells and hears and touches and even tastes the destruction in the air,
Jeremiah laments, “Look, O Lord, and see!... In the dust of the streets lie the
young and the old; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword;
you have killed them in the day of your anger, slaughtered them without pity,”
(2:20a, 21b).
Most of us are of Germanic or Czech roots. We are
notoriously stoic with upper lips that have been stiffened by generations of European
and American stoicism. So, do yourself a favor. When you read Lamentations –
and, again, I encourage you to do so; it’s so important that the Holy Spirit
saw fit to include it’s brief 5 chapters in the Sacred Scriptures – when you
read Lamentations, do it slowly. Do it deliberately. In fact, read it out loud,
without worrying what others might think, because that’s how ancient Hebrew
poetry was meant to be utilized – out loud, so the words could be fully
experienced, the feelings emoted, the pain and the grief they carry delivered
to the soul.
It’s important to do this, because Lamentations teaches us
how to bear afflictions, how to lament, as people of God. Wait, you say, we
know how to lament; we do it all the time. But, do we? Conventional wisdom
teaches us that lamenting is all about woe is me. We’re good at wailing, hollering, carrying on
and pitching a fit to gain attention. But the object of this is the unholy trinity
of me, myself and I. The world’s idea of grieving turns us inward, to try to
find answers to our grief from within. But, if we look to ourselves in the
depths of despair, our strength is about like sand in the water or dandelions
in the wind: worthless, meaningless, hope-less. If my faith is based on my
faith, and my faith is fading fast, that is not of much value. Even Jeremiah
agrees: “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.”
So, Jeremiah, with his Lamentations, he teaches us how to
have hope during these things: our afflictions, and our suffering, and our
humiliation. Instead of pointing at me, myself and I for the answers to our
sorrows, Jeremiah the Lamenter points us to God and to His promises. He laments
to God, “Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall.
My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me, but this I call
to mind, and therefore I have hope…” (3:19-21), and then he speaks the words of
our text.
Open your bulletin; look at these words with me, look where
hope is placed. Look at the words:
steadfast love – whose love? The Lord’s! - it never ceases; mercies – whose
mercies? The Lord’s - that never end; His mercies are renewed every morning;
great is your faithfulness. Our translation next reads, “The Lord is my
portion.” A better way to understand that is “The Lord is my everything.” The
Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good
that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Over and over, Jeremiah
points to God, turning, returning to God and what He knows of God and His
goodness.
Again, St. Paul will say that suffering produces character,
and character produces hope. God uses suffering to purify His people, to restore
His people, for His purpose. In suffering, everything else is stripped away,
except Him. He is brought into sharp focus. He gives hope. That is the only
hope. To have that hope in the midst of that kind of loss, when you’re
wandering through the rubble, stepping over corpses, remembering what was and
seeing what is, to have that hope takes faith of incredible proportions.
For Jeremiah, and the ones returning from Exile, it would be
faith in the promises of God, even while standing among a destroyed city. Israel
would have to wait, quietly raising their lamentations for the salvation of the
Lord. You and I, we sit quietly – sometimes in our homes, sometimes in
hospitals, sometimes in the office of a banker, or lawyer, or doctor, sometimes
in solitude, sometimes in a crowd, sometimes at the grave of a dearly departed,
and we offer our laments. But these laments are always grounded in the hope of
the One who not only hears, but who bore the laments of the world upon Himself.
Jesus would sit alone in near silence, speaking only seven times from the
cross, as the sins which caused the laments of the world were placed upon Him. He
was whipped, beaten, and insulted, and exiled, separated from His own Father.
We hear our Lord’s own laments, “Father, if it is possible, take this cup from me,”
culminating with “Ali, Ali, lamma sabacthani – My God, My God, why hast
thou forsaken me?”
And, the Lord, “The Lord will not cast off forever,” (3:31).
“It is finished,” remember? On the third day, the One who was cast off, cast
down, and cast away was raised to life by the Father who once rejected Him.
And, in accepting that sacrifice, and in giving His only begotten Son life
again, we have hope, hope for life – life now, even in our laments, and life
into eternity when we will lament no more. Jeremiah teaches us to lament, in
hope, through faith in Christ Jesus who lamented for us and in whom we rejoice.
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies
never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him”
(3:22-24). Those words, once spoken by a prophet in lament over a destroyed
city, are now spoken by us. Those words and promises ground our life in times
of lament, they form our worship with joy, they locate our witness to a world
that does not understand, and they direct our hope, through faith, in Christ.
And they remind us how good it is to wait quietly for the salvation of the
Lord. Amen.
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