Readings: Lamentations 1: 1-6; Psalm Lamentations 3:19-26; 2 Timothy 1: 1-14,
Luke 17: 1-10
Let me assure you that it is not the case that, faced with this morning’s readings, Fr. Denis has decided to have a day off. Before he began his locum ministry with us, he had agreed to take the services at St. Luke’s Ekibin, his home parish this Sunday and next Sunday. Very early on, he asked me if I could cover these two Sundays, to which I happily agreed…..that was before I’d looked at the readings for today which, apart from the second reading challenge us with their difficulty. The Lectionary for today gives a choice for the Psalm. I’ve perhaps added to the difficulty by choosing the portion of Lamentations Chapter 3 instead of Psalm 137, as psalm of the exile. But you may have noticed that in the choice of music, Christopher has covered that I guess with his prelude and with the motet the Lucians will sing at the 9am service. Psalm 137 begins with “By the waters of Babylon” but ends with some even more difficult verses than we have this morning.
I chose to include both readings from Lamentations as after I’d looked at the Lectionary, I said to Christoper I had the drift of a sermon in my mind. And in a sense Fr. Denis set the scene last Sunday in his opening remarks on the reading from Jeremiah. He said that it was then a time of great turmoil and danger, the small city of Jerusalem was being threatened by the armies of Babylon invading from the north. The city was besieged for a time, then it happened. If you delete Jerusalem and Babylonians and insert Gaza City and the army of Israel, you’ll catch my drift. It’s a tragic and awful irony. An ancient lament can speak to us today.
Babylon struck and destroyed Jerusalem, including the prime place of worship, the temple built by King Solomon. All the people were forced to flee apart from a very few who remained – the remnant. Most were taken into exile in Babylon where they struggled to retain their sense of identity and culture – how could they sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? Everything that had given them meaning, purpose and identity – land, dwellings, family, faith, culture, governing institutions was stripped away. What could they do? They responded by gathering a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of their city. Some of these were most likely written by Jeremiah himself, hence the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
Next Tuesday, 7th October marks two years since the unprovoked attack by Hamas on innocent Israeli families and young people enjoying a music festival. 1200 people were killed and many others taken into captivity as hostages – 48 are still held with no certainty as to how many are alive or dead. So began the seemingly inexorable march to the awful and seemingly unending tragedy we now see every evening on news bulletins and on all the other media that people use today. Everything is being stripped away from the citizens of Gaza. As Anglican Christians we can’t stand aloof. Here’s an account of a recent incident at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, an Anglican facility managed through the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem: Yesterday, Sunday, August 17th at 12:15 am, armed members of a local outlaw band entered the grounds of our Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, demanding treatment of one of their wounded gunmen. The medical staff complied and treated him promptly and with full respect. After doctors discharged him in good health, members of the band set on fire the hospital morgue and staff prayer room, blocking the hospital entrance to prevent firefighters from entering to extinguish the blaze. The fire came close to tents serving as the hospital's emergency department. Doctors and nurses evacuated patients. Both sections were left severely damaged. Once members of this first band departed and the staff resumed normal operations, a second group of outlaws stormed the campus. Its members shot into the air and shouted for two hours. This attracted an IDF drone. Without its operator giving due warning, the drone fired into the hospital compound, killing seven and severely wounding five.[1] This, I think encapsulates the complexity, horror and futility of what is happening now. What do we do?
Part of what we may do, I think, is rediscover the poetry and power of lament, much more usual in other cultures today than our own. Read again the lines from Jeremiah – they capture the grief and bitterness and seeming hopelessness of what has happened. The city is personified as a widow but it’s a lament of the whole community and the suffering and grief is unbearable – the loneliness of the city, bitter weeping, treachery, suffering and servitude, nowhere to rest, constantly being pursued, enemies prospering. Another verse of Chapter 3 of Lamentations reads “My soul is bereft of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is.”[2] Surely in compassion we can lament with and for the people of Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Israel and all other places of suffering and despair where there seems to be no end to hatred and the bitterness and violence engendered by it. Laments in Scripture is an honest expression of pain; they provide a sacred space to voice deep sorrow, confusion, anger, and dismay to God, acknowledging the horrors of the world and one's own suffering. Laments don’t ignore or gloss over suffering, but bring questions like “How long, O Lord?” directly to God and call for God to hear and respond. So, laments aren’t passive, they appeal to God’s character, God’s nature to act. A core purpose of lament is to move from pain and confusion toward hope and renewed trust in God's promises, even when suffering continues. We see all of this in the readings from Lamentations this morning – the cry of desolation turns into a moving expression of trust in God’s love and grace “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.”[3] This most certainly does not mean that everything suddenly turns out for the better; we cannot succumb to the temptation to rush to easy answers or the quick fix, but we can who God is and what God has done and long for the day when heart wrenching suffering will be overcome. The English poet and priest Malcolm Guite writes in his introduction to his anthology “Love Remember – 40 poems of loss, lament and hope” We yearn for trust, recovery and hope and hardly know whether, when or how to trust that hope, perhaps poetry..can help us as we feel our way forward[4] I think the poetry of Lamentations can help us.
As Christians, how does that help us? I think we must let the Hebrew Scriptures speak with their own voice. It would be all to easy to read “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” and to see there – as some do – some kind of prediction of the saving acts of God in Christ. But I think there is a distinction to be drawn. The laments of the Hebrew scriptures – there are many in the Psalms too – looked back to what God had done and expressed the fervent hope that during both personal and national suffering God would act in the same way again. There is a potential danger I think – if we continually look back, we can become stuck in our suffering, old pain, old conflicts, old hatreds can be repeated. Christian hope looks back – it remembers the saving acts of God in Christ but then firmly sets its face to the future. For me, Christian hope always looks forward. The eucharist we celebrate together each Sunday exemplifies this – “do this in remembrance of me”, we hear as we look forward to the heavenly banquet. The great thanksgiving prayer in the third order of Holy Communion in the prayer book expresses it like this “Father, as we recall his saving death and glorious resurrection, may we who share these gifts be renewed by your Holy Spirit and united in the body of your Son. Bring us with all your people into the joy of your eternal kingdom there to feast at your table and join in your eternal praise.”[5] Hope firmly grounded in resurrection faith brings with it the possibility of transformation and renewal. I think this is the faith that the writer of the Letter to Timothy as we’ve heard read this morning reminds him about and urges him to rekindle – the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
So, as we see unfolding tragedy each day we can lament, remembering that lament is not only for the suffering, but also with the suffering and yet holding on to firmly grounded hope that there will be and end, and the possibilities of transformation emerge. Signs of that hope always appear – a few months ago I saw on a TV news bulletin vision of some children in Gaza. Against a backdrop of destroyed buildings, they had found a piece of concrete culvert and a plank of wood. They’d made a seesaw and were playing on it. What a great sign of hope I thought at the time. I wonder what has happened to them – have they survived? I hang on to the hope that they have. Let us pray:
Beauty for brokenness, hope for despair, Lord in the suffering, this is our prayer. Bread for the children, justice, joy, peace, sunrise to sunset, your kingdom increase. Lighten our darkness, breathe on this flame until your justice burns brightly again, until the nations learn of your ways, seek your salvation and bring you their praise.[6]
© The Rev’d. W.D. Crossman
[1] https://anglicanoverseasaid.org.au/our-work/disaster-response/emergency-appeal-ahli-arab-hospital/
[2] Lamentations 3:17
[3] Lamentations 3: 21-22
[4] Malcolm Guite Love Remember – 40 poems of loss, lament and hope Canterbury Press, Norwich 2017 p xiv
[5] A Prayer Book for Australia p 177
[6] Together in Song No 690.