17th Sunday after Pentecost Sermon

It’s been kind of a rough summer with the prophets, especially Jeremiah, who has called the people of Israel on the carpet for falling away from the covenant they made with God. For their sins they would face the destruction of all they hold dear and holy, including Jerusalem and the Temple.

Last week there was a small word of hope from Jeremiah in the midst of the devastation and ruin which was raining down on the people: buy the field, he said. Crops and vineyards will once again grow here, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Today, we hear from the people in the book of Lamentations. It’s a small book sandwiched inbetween Jeremiah and Ezekiel; some scholars believe Jeremiah is the author of Lamentations. The lectionary is pretty gentle with us. We’re given the first few verses in the first chapter which set the tone and remind us of the calamity that is befalling them.

[Zion’s] gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve and her lot is bitter. Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe….

Then we chanted the beautiful words from Chapter 3, the ones people like to quote and sing about in the old hymn: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, [the] mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Chapter 3 has very beautiful words of comfort, but it’s not called “Lamentations” for nuthin’.

I encourage you to read the whole book; it won’t take long, it’s only 5 chapters. Laments are called poetic liturgies of pain and anguish; they evoke individual and communal agony over horrific loss. They are prayers of complaint, protest, rage and grief over tragedy and they request or demand divine deliverance. [Introduction to the book from The Peoples’ Bible]

Laments presume that God will intercede on their behalf. The Peoples’ Bible says these five laments exude power and ambiguity and include contradictory voices and tragic themes; from the slaughter of people to starving mothers reduced to cannibalism, to exile, and to the end of worship. Words from this book figure often in the Stations of the Cross. In my seminary Old Testament one of our tasks was to write our own individual or communal lament. It was quite cathartic, but scary and intimidating to put on paper some of your honest thoughts and emotions. It might be a good Lenten project some year.

Some of Lamentations may make you shrink away at the imagery and the railing against God whom they believe has brought this calamity upon them. But I encourage you to not be afraid of lament, because along with many of the difficult imprecatory psalms which invoke judgment, curses and disaster upon the enemy, they are honest, brutally at times, expressions of anger and despair at the circumstances of life and anger at God for not delivering them. God knows there is plenty in our lives and the life of the world now to lament.

There is no fear or expression of bitterness that we might have as humans that is not found in Lamentations and the Psalms. Emily Townes, a womanist social ethicist, [The Peoples’ Bible intro] reminds us that lament precedes healing. Lament asks for deliverance and ends by praising God. Lament is our cry for help. Naming the pain makes it bearable and can be freeing.

We are certainly in the throes of conditions which would cause us to vocally lament and rail to God. Ever more dangerous hurricanes, one million species of plants and animals at risk of extinction, more violence in Gaza, hateful divisive politics in our country and grade school kids needing to have active shooter drills. It is better to cry out to the Lord than to attack each other. God can take it, so let loose in prayer or a journal or write your own lament.

Then reread Lamentations 3 in your bulletin insert: The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. BUT this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, those mercies never come to an end….Great is your faithfulness.

Hulitt Glover believes the reason for the “but” is memory; a powerful thing that can haunt or heal, lead to despair or celebration. The people of Israel lived between memory and hope – the memory of what God had done and the hope and trust that God would do it again.

Memory is a powerful component of the Christian tradition. Each time we gather to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, we remember. We remember the words Jesus used when he shared a final meal with his friends: “Do this in remembrance of me.” We call it anamnesis – a deep remembering which brings the past forward into the present.

It is not distant memory from an old photograph, but the experience of Christ among and with us right now. We remember that the God who has been faithful will BE faithful and that there is something worth trusting, despite mounting evidence and apocalyptic predictions to the contrary. This conviction makes hope among the ruins possible. Healing is possible; good things can and will continue to happen.

Jesus says we don’t need a lot of faith, just a little bit. We might wonder if we have the faith of the Israelites to live with both memory and hope and trust in the power of the faith we do have.

But I must say, in all honesty, I don’t like this passage in Luke about only needing a tiny bit of faith, the size of a mustard seed, to pitch trees into the sea. Despite the fact that no one seems able to convince mulberry trees to throw themselves into the sea, evangelical preachers have used this passage to beat up people with great regularity. What? Someone in your family died in the hurricane? Guess you didn’t pray enough and have enough faith. Your child has a disability? 3 You must not have enough faith to cure it. And – send me some money and we’ll pray with you, maybe that will help…

We might all lament: “Increase my faith! damn it!” and still know that even Mother Teresa didn’t cure hunger and disease in Calcutta. But with our little bit of faith in God’s faithfulness to us, we can use the gifts we already have. We can be faithful to our own calling, whatever that might be. We don’t need to aspire to be what we cannot; we won’t all discover a cure for cancer or travel through time.

We can sit with someone sick, sign a petition to support our schools, speak and write civilly to one another, see the face of God in everyone we meet, be really good at sweeping or cooking or teaching or praying and be slaves to our own gifts to further the kingdom of God; to simply do what we ought to do with the gifts we have been given and the circumstances of our time. That will move us from lament toward healing.

Do what we ought to do. Our little bit of faith has the power of God in it. Christopher Henry knows we don’t really like the word “duty” in contemporary language, but nonetheless we do our duty because we are servants, students, disciples, followers, called to do our part as residents of God’s realm.

Ginger Gaines-Cirelli notes that “commentators don’t agree on whether Jesus is suggesting the disciples have no faith or simply don’t recognize the power of the little faith they have.” The question then, is what IS faith? That made Debi Thomas note “how often and lavishly Jesus commends the faith of those who seek him out.” ‘Your faith has saved you,’ he tells the woman who anoints his feet and the hemorrhaging woman who grasps his cloak. ‘Your faith has made you well, he tells a blind beggar.’ What is it that Jesus commends in these people, she wonders?

Jesus really isn’t talking about vegetating the sea, but encouraging seemingly impossible visions. [Bill Loader] Things need not stay the way they are which leads many to believe that faith might not be a noun but a verb. We might not “have” faith, but we can “do” faith. What if faith or trust in God is an engagement and orientation toward the people we were created to be, doing what we ought to be doing with what we’ve been given?

The hemorrhaging woman crossed cultural and social barriers to reach out and touch Jesus’ cloak, not waiting around for “enough” faith, whatever that is, to appear and bring a cure. The disciples aren’t to sit back and look around for a mulberry tree to cast into the sea. Jesus asks for an orientation in his direction, to go forth and live in light of what we see and have experienced. [Thomas]

What if we DO have enough faith but don’t trust God enough to step out into the challenging and risky things it takes to follow Jesus? We may be asked to give more than we think we can, of our time or talent or treasure. We may be asked to take a controversial stand on a human rights issue like clean water or the protection of sacred tribal ground.

In 1910, English writer and theologian G.K. Chesterton wrote that “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” Faith trusts that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end, and that we can put that trust into action, risking difficult or challenging or impossible things because God will see us through. The seed of faith that we have is enough when we rely on the power of God and use whatever bit we have been given.

This week, DO faith and figure out what that might be for you: volunteer at the Boys & Girls Club which is just down the street; visit someone who can’t get to church, give $10 to the person on the corner instead of the coins you have in the car, write a lament that helps you move from despair to hope, fix your dripping faucets, or walk dogs at the Humane Society. In the words from last week: Buy the field.

Our faith is to be alive and active in us; the more we use it, the more we’ll have to share. It may call us out of our comfort zones, But…we do have what we need, trusting in God’s faithfulness to us.