This sermon was preached on Sunday, October 6 at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Wellesley, MA. The texts for this sermon were: Lamentations 1:1-6, Psalm 137, 2 Timothy 1:1-14, and Luke 17:5-10.
Have you ever been sitting in church, enjoying the excellent music, snuggling up to your loved ones, maybe finally taking a deep breath for once, grateful for a time away from the constant barrage of stress and work and politics and panic…maybe you’ve been looking forward to a space of calm and quiet to reconnect to a God of love and deep joy…and then Boom. The first scripture passage is an angry tirade about a vengeful God from some Old Testament prophet. Or…Boom. The Psalm literally ends with a gleeful verse about slaughtering one’s enemy’s children. What do we do with that?
Why do we read these verses? Why include the Book of Lamentations in our lectionary at all?
The other day I was doing one of those mindless scroll-throughs on one of those time-wasting websites, chuckling at all the pictures of the funny cats when Boom. A photo of a tiny, premature infant lovingly held in her father’s arms. This is my daughter, explained the poster. And then, incredibly, the poster writes: Pregnancy and infant loss awareness week is coming up. I want to do what I can do to break the taboo of childloss and be there to talk about it, or answer any questions anyone has...So please, Ask Me Anything. And ask they did. In the space of a half a day, ten thousand strangers from all across the globe promoted this man’s post. Over one thousand people responded, asking honest questions: How can I support my friend through her miscarriage? How can I remember my child? Or sharing their own stories: My wife and I…My son…My daughter…This grieving father had carved out a space for people he didn’t know, would never meet, opened up the most wounded part of himself, so that others could speak. And in each and every comment and reply, the refrain: you are not alone, you are not alone.
In his interruption, this poster tapped into a deep, unspoken need. The same need that connects us to our Psalmist, determined not to forget the home he lost. And to the prophet lamenting the downfall of his city. And even to Paul, in all his determination to find some noble meaning in his suffering. These voices, all these people, they could have remained isolated, convinced they are alone in their experience. But for the brave person who, in sharing his pain, gives permission to the rest of us to question, complain, to mourn out loud.
We wouldn’t know it from reading the English, but much of the Book of Lamentations is written as acrostic poems, each verse beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet from beginning to end. Interpreters over the years have read this as a symbolic claim – this Book catalogs all the vastness of human suffering, from A to Z. There’s a compelling wideness to that claim. It urges us not to get lost in the contradictions and contrasts of all the confusing stances the Bible takes. It invites us to step back and admire how our scriptures are made up of a multitude of voices, spoken by numerous generations and civilizations and very different authors--containing the full range of human experience. Even the icky, depressing, stomach-turning parts.
When we include it all each Sunday, we affirm our faith. We say, this God is big enough to take on your pain. This community is wide enough and deep enough to hold your grief. We affirm that we worship the God who came down among us and who took up into himself all the suffering that is and was and is to come.
More than that, speaking and listening to these words in worship means that when we come across echoes of these voices in our daily lives, we can recognize them as sacred. We know what the voice of a prophet sounds like. The voice of doubt calling out to God is a voice of faith. The cry of frustration and fear, screaming, “How could you let this happen?” is holy, too. We are strengthened to receive it all as prayer. And even if we disagree, even if we disagree, we are able to affirm as one, “The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.”
We pray today: God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray. Our holy calling as people of an ancient faith, is to do the work of worship, to do all we can to preserve sacred places where we can encourage each other in honest prayer. Creating sanctuaries like this one where we gather as a people to remember, lament and grieve--right alongside our celebration and gratitude. In the same service, in the same breath.
God, our God, soothes the suffering and shields the joyous. Our scriptures speak to it all—from anger to zeal, vengeance to veneration. Our liturgy, what we do here today in worship, it’s wide enough to hold rejoicing and lamentation, confession and celebration. Because of God, because we are grounded in relationship with God, our community is strong enough to take up whatever you are carrying with you today.
As church, there are so many ways we say to one another: you are not alone. Simply showing up on Sunday morning is one of them. Just being here, in the pew. Giving generously and eagerly to keep this place going, for sure that’s another way. Cutting out felt circles and commiserating about how stressful elderly parents can be, that says it, too. Or recounting all the homework we have to do and staying all the way to the end of youth group anyway.
We say “you are not alone” to each other when we teach our children the ancient stories: when we tell of Rachel’s lament, Sarah’s bitter laugh, and Mary’s grief. When we read these scriptures, we remind each other that we are part of the same, big story that they are. That the prophet is. That the psalmists are. And underneath every lament and song of praise, generation after generation, is the heartbeat of faith. Our faith. Our faith that God is the God who is even more ready to hear than we are to pray, to give even more than we desire or deserve.
This is all to say, you are not alone. We need your holy voice.
Have you ever been sitting in church, enjoying the excellent music, snuggling up to your loved ones, maybe finally taking a deep breath for once, grateful for a time away from the constant barrage of stress and work and politics and panic…maybe you’ve been looking forward to a space of calm and quiet to reconnect to a God of love and deep joy…and then Boom. The first scripture passage is an angry tirade about a vengeful God from some Old Testament prophet. Or…Boom. The Psalm literally ends with a gleeful verse about slaughtering one’s enemy’s children. What do we do with that?
Why do we read these verses? Why include the Book of Lamentations in our lectionary at all?
The other day I was doing one of those mindless scroll-throughs on one of those time-wasting websites, chuckling at all the pictures of the funny cats when Boom. A photo of a tiny, premature infant lovingly held in her father’s arms. This is my daughter, explained the poster. And then, incredibly, the poster writes: Pregnancy and infant loss awareness week is coming up. I want to do what I can do to break the taboo of childloss and be there to talk about it, or answer any questions anyone has...So please, Ask Me Anything. And ask they did. In the space of a half a day, ten thousand strangers from all across the globe promoted this man’s post. Over one thousand people responded, asking honest questions: How can I support my friend through her miscarriage? How can I remember my child? Or sharing their own stories: My wife and I…My son…My daughter…This grieving father had carved out a space for people he didn’t know, would never meet, opened up the most wounded part of himself, so that others could speak. And in each and every comment and reply, the refrain: you are not alone, you are not alone.
In his interruption, this poster tapped into a deep, unspoken need. The same need that connects us to our Psalmist, determined not to forget the home he lost. And to the prophet lamenting the downfall of his city. And even to Paul, in all his determination to find some noble meaning in his suffering. These voices, all these people, they could have remained isolated, convinced they are alone in their experience. But for the brave person who, in sharing his pain, gives permission to the rest of us to question, complain, to mourn out loud.
We wouldn’t know it from reading the English, but much of the Book of Lamentations is written as acrostic poems, each verse beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet from beginning to end. Interpreters over the years have read this as a symbolic claim – this Book catalogs all the vastness of human suffering, from A to Z. There’s a compelling wideness to that claim. It urges us not to get lost in the contradictions and contrasts of all the confusing stances the Bible takes. It invites us to step back and admire how our scriptures are made up of a multitude of voices, spoken by numerous generations and civilizations and very different authors--containing the full range of human experience. Even the icky, depressing, stomach-turning parts.
When we include it all each Sunday, we affirm our faith. We say, this God is big enough to take on your pain. This community is wide enough and deep enough to hold your grief. We affirm that we worship the God who came down among us and who took up into himself all the suffering that is and was and is to come.
More than that, speaking and listening to these words in worship means that when we come across echoes of these voices in our daily lives, we can recognize them as sacred. We know what the voice of a prophet sounds like. The voice of doubt calling out to God is a voice of faith. The cry of frustration and fear, screaming, “How could you let this happen?” is holy, too. We are strengthened to receive it all as prayer. And even if we disagree, even if we disagree, we are able to affirm as one, “The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.”
We pray today: God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray. Our holy calling as people of an ancient faith, is to do the work of worship, to do all we can to preserve sacred places where we can encourage each other in honest prayer. Creating sanctuaries like this one where we gather as a people to remember, lament and grieve--right alongside our celebration and gratitude. In the same service, in the same breath.
God, our God, soothes the suffering and shields the joyous. Our scriptures speak to it all—from anger to zeal, vengeance to veneration. Our liturgy, what we do here today in worship, it’s wide enough to hold rejoicing and lamentation, confession and celebration. Because of God, because we are grounded in relationship with God, our community is strong enough to take up whatever you are carrying with you today.
As church, there are so many ways we say to one another: you are not alone. Simply showing up on Sunday morning is one of them. Just being here, in the pew. Giving generously and eagerly to keep this place going, for sure that’s another way. Cutting out felt circles and commiserating about how stressful elderly parents can be, that says it, too. Or recounting all the homework we have to do and staying all the way to the end of youth group anyway.
We say “you are not alone” to each other when we teach our children the ancient stories: when we tell of Rachel’s lament, Sarah’s bitter laugh, and Mary’s grief. When we read these scriptures, we remind each other that we are part of the same, big story that they are. That the prophet is. That the psalmists are. And underneath every lament and song of praise, generation after generation, is the heartbeat of faith. Our faith. Our faith that God is the God who is even more ready to hear than we are to pray, to give even more than we desire or deserve.
This is all to say, you are not alone. We need your holy voice.
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