From sadness to despairing…

from loss to unfamiliarity…

to hope-to belief-to communion…

Yes, there is hope!

 

Scriptures: Lamentations 1:1-6, 3:19-26, 2 Timothy 1:1-14, Luke 17:5-10

I preached on today’s scripture from Lamentations three years ago in September of 2022. And in reading over what I wrote then and reflecting on what our world seems to have become I am amazed at how much of it I feel compelled to rewrite…but I am also amazed within, and still fully committed without, to hearing and living into the closing words of our passage from Lamentations today. Those words from verses 21 and 22 where the author writes, ‘But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope, the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases’

And so I want to try and share with you today that what we here have heard from our Lord’s word, not only recently, but it seems for some time now, along with all we have held as our reason for being together, coupled with all I firmly believe our Lord is calling us to, still remains the same…nothing has changed…not at all.

No matter how loud the noise around us gets…no matter what so many societal externals seem to be telling us absolutely everywhere we turn…no matter what voice or voices may try to convince you that, ‘these are different times requiring extreme solutions’…no matter who mutters under their breath that ‘former ways of faith and belief are no longer sufficient in this fight’…

in truth…

…God is still God, and the Holy Spirit is still leading us through the seemingly rough and rocky terrain that lies before us…and perhaps most importantly, our responsibility to engage in a ‘church-life’ as a hard working, tireless, servant body, remains exactly the same as it has been since we began our walk together…yesterday, today, and for every tomorrow.

But I understand, in fact I am not surprised if the words from today’s scriptures may sound all too familiar…because these things have indeed happened before…and yet, somehow (I personally believe by grace), somehow we are still here. Lamenting or despairing at how far we seem to have moved from much of what we previously accepted as ‘fact’ and as ‘normal’, the fact remains that the people around us, including our neighbors and friends, and our community are all still in need of the message we hold within our hearts…a message of hope in the midst of impending darkness, of joy in the face of so much fear, of peace in times when it seems almost comical to believe that peace is at all possible…and finally, of love that abides more deeply than you can imagine.

Together we must stand tall in our belief, and in our lived and spoken witness, that God is still there…that God is still calling us to holy service…and, that the Holy Spirit is working overtime to keep us on track and pointed in the direction of fully emptying ourselves in the service of those in need around us.

In this regard, nothing has changed. But the world around us in the past three years certainly has! But going back to our reading, to be able to gain a sense of what was behind the book of Lamentations, we need to understand the time and circumstances from which it emerged. Jerusalem, the center of the Hebrew faith and location of the First Temple constructed by King Solomom in 1000 BC, was attacked by the forces of King Nebuchadnezzar ll of Babylon in 586 BC. Following a 30 month siege by the Babylonians the city fell and was utterly destroyed including the Temple which was ransacked and burned to the ground. After this, most of the prominent Hebrews in the city were taken off into exiled captivity in Babylon.

Truly it was a time of deepest darkness for a people who had long lived with and cherished the belief that they were a people chosen by God as God’s own. For their lives and livelihoods to have been so completely turned upside down, and the sacred Temple of their God destroyed, was beyond imaginable, beyond grief and sadness and into a place of utter desperation and a feeling of total abandonment. These circumstances gave birth to the writings of lament, some of which were gathered into the collection from which our reading was drawn.

Life for the Hebrews was broken, their whole structure of government and social relationships. All of that upon which they had trusted and depended was no longer able to offer comfort or give them either societal structure or any sense of hope.

…sound familiar?

They were a hopeless people, crying out and wondering why God would have ever allowed this to happen. They felt as if they lived, breathed, and cried out in a strange land that was not their own.

…sound familiar?

Now this is not ever to hint that we here could ever actually draw near to the level of suffering that so many, then and now experience everyday. In fact, I do not think that most of us could ever approach a level of desperation as deep as those carted off unceremoniously to Babylon.

…and yet…here we are!

But that said, even in the midst of the Hebrew people’s utter loss and feeling of total abandonment, the author of today’s reading did not give up hope or faith in God as he further intoned, ‘But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope…

In spite of the profound depths of their grief, and even in the midst of their utter sadness in exile, there was still a flickering spark of hope, a reason to lift one’s head in prayer, searching out and pleading for God’s comfort and presence.

…sound familiar? It needs to…

And somehow I feel that leads us into the opening words of our gospel reading from Luke, a reading which at first seems quite far removed from the first reading from Lamentations. However, I think it is possible to see these words from Luke as the perfect follow-on and response to the despair we find in our first reading. As well as offering a pathway forward out of our own sense of despair, through the faithful living out of our call as brothers and sisters of Christ and of one another.

Our gospel reading starts out with the disciples begging Jesus to , ‘increase our faith’. And then shockingly, his response seems fully out of character for Jesus as he replies, ‘if you had even the smallest amount of faith, then you could do great things…if only you had faith as big as the smallest of all seeds’.

These faithful disciples, having walked alongside of Jesus for several years now, having witnessed the most amazing good works and miracles, ask simply to have their fledgling faith strengthened in order to be able to walk along the pathway of his quite difficult call. Jesus’ reply to this request seems so strange…but was it? Was he really saying to those faithful followers, ‘You ask me for more faith? Really?’

I don’t think so. And that is where our gospel reading picks up that same note of hope we heard echoed in the latter verses of our first reading. In preparing for today, and wondering why this reading from Luke seemed so out of character for Jesus, I came across a 2013 commentary on Text Week.com by David Sellery which looked at the word ‘if’ in our gospel passage where Jesus says in response to his disciples, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed…’. Sellery points out that an alternate translation of the word ‘if’ or ‘ei’ in the Greek is ‘since’. Now that is a significant point, and not wanting to just take his word for it, I looked in the bible concordance at that verse and word and found out indeed that what we have translated in our reading as ‘if’, can in fact be translated as ‘forasmuch’, meaning ‘in view of the fact’…supporting Sellery’s claim.

So our reading, rather than being an unexpected ‘beat-down’ of the disciples by Jesus, can instead be read as, ‘Since you have faith as big as a mustard seed…you can do all these amazing things!’ According to Jesus, even the little seed of growing faith the disciples already had was sufficient for them to do wondrous things. So, the starting point of his response to the disciple’s request for more faith should instead be heard as ‘in view of the fact that you do have faith, even though now it is small…you too can still do amazing things!’

Which brings us back to the beginning…for even though the ‘cries of Lamentations’ may sound familiar today…so too should the words of both encouragement and hope found in ‘since you have faith…’

Both of these therefore…the cry of despair, and the hope extended by a gracious God who still listens, and still hears, are brought forward into this moment, as well as fully into our responsibility as those who still follow.

And so my friends, Jesus says, ‘since you have faith…go and give of my love in my name. Offer aid and comfort to those despairing greatly. For though everything does seem upside down and lacking in any sort of clarity of purpose or reason from time to time, still, I the Lord do hear, and I the Lord do still send you out in my name to be the light of love and grace…for you are truly capable of moving mountains…even with your mustard seed faith!’…

 

By faith, and by grace we must continue to do our job, helping others move away from ‘lament’…to ‘since you have faith, go…’

…for now is the time…now it is more important than ever to live into the hope and encouragement we hear in the final words of today’s reading from Lamentations…for they truly can still serve as a guiding light…

 

       …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…therefore I hope in him.

 

       …Go forth… ‘since we have faith…’

…amen