Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22C, October 2, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of our weary years and silent tears, grant us the strength, the wisdom, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.

Our first reading this morning was taken from the book of Lamentations, and I want to linger there a while because we so seldom read anything from this book of the Bible. Only once every three years do we hear any passage from Lamentations during our Sunday worship. It doesn’t surprise me that we don’t read from this book more often, because it’s a collection of five dirges, five poems of deep pain and suffering, of outrage and grief, of complaint and protest, in response to political calamity, social and economic devastation, and utter theological collapse. The poetry of Lamentations challenges the notion that religious life should somehow be spiritual but not political. I often think that anyone who believes that hasn’t read very much of the Bible, but the lectionary colludes by not scheduling many overtly political readings.

In Hebrew, Lamentations is called “The Book of How,” because it begins with the word “how” as in “how could this be happening,” as in “how long oh Lord,” as in “how does the city sit solitary that was once full of people.” The Hebrew word sounds like a sob with a hiccup. Set in the 6^th century BCE during a time of destruction of the City of Peace (Jerusalem), this book is a text for all times of unfathomable suffering. Biblical scholar Kathleen O’Connor writes, “The book functions as a witness to pain, a testimony of survival and an artistic transformation of dehumanizing suffering into exquisite literature…[and] it raises profound questions about the justice of God.” In Jewish liturgical practice, it’s read every year on the most mournful day in the Jewish calendar (9^th day of Av), a day set aside to recall catastrophic losses from the destructions of the first and second temples, through the crusades, to the holocaust. Significantly, though, the Book of How makes no attempt to answer the profound question of how.

The first four poems are written in the form of an acrostic, with each verse beginning with a sequential letter of the mystical Hebrew alphabet (or aleph-bait) from beginning to end. Kathleen O’Connor thinks that this is more than a mnemonic device; that the acrostic imposes order to the unbearable chaos and unimaginable pain being described. The form communicates that the suffering is total – all encompassing, from A to Z for us. [1] Unlike the Book of Job, there is no-one else to blame but the Holy One – no Satan, and (this is a lot of negatives) there’s no notion of no God (as in the Greek idea of atheism). [2] The various voices in the poems express rage, doubt, shame, trauma, and dismay. [3] Where is God? Has God abandoned them or has God contributed to their destruction? Although in the middle of the third poem, there are glimmers of hope, the Book of How ends describing a people utterly forsaken and rejected, imagining that God must be angry beyond measure. We can act like this is ancient and primitive, but plenty of people still wrestle with questions of theodicy – does God do evil or permit evil or is God not always more powerful than evil? God never speaks in The Book of How, in spite of the raw despair and crushing grief being expressed by witnesses and sufferers.

I think of the famous grave stone sculpture of the angel of grief by William Wetmore Story made for his own tomb in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. Collapsed over a monument, the angel has her head on one arm, the other arm sagging in a perpetual posture of exhaustion and despair. I think of Psalm 137 that we just heard: by the waters of Babylon we sat and wept. On the willow trees, we hung up our harps. Unable, unwilling to make music, the people weep. The angel of grief weeps. Indeed, in Jewish midrashim, God’s very self weeps, sometimes secretly and sometimes openly. There is a midrash that tells that as the people of Israel went into the night of the exile, every one of them went in silence without weeping, as if they were unaware of the cause of their exile, of their offenses against the Holy One. God pleads with them to throw off the burden of silence and weep. [4] The midrash teaches that weeping is better than silence.

Emmanuel’s former rector and my colleague Bill Blaine-Wallace made the case for expression of grief in his doctoral dissertation about the pastoral psychology of lament. What Bill calls “the politics of tears,” I call “the sacrament of tears.” We both agree that shared suffering can be generative. Those of you who know Bill might remember his premises:

• that “lament is a relational act of articulation,” that is, it takes at least one who is speaking and one who is a companion or witness;
• that lament is testimonial
• that lament is a relation in which testifier and witness stand to be changed
• that lament is revolutionary
• that lament is the seedbed of and catalyst for social justice movements;
• and that lament is an interpretive lens through which to explore and understand the broad Judeo-Christian narrative of grief that “invites and equips materially privileged people and communities to articulate the tyranny of wealth that has isolated [us] from and disguised [our] kinship with a hurting world.” [5]

If I look at our readings from 2 Timothy and Luke through that lens of lament, I notice that the writer reminds Timothy that his tears are evidence of a sincere faith, a faith that first lived in his grandmother Lois, and then in his mother Eunice. The letter urges endurance and courage, and attentiveness to kindling the flame of the Holy Spirit that is in him.

In today’s Gospel portion, the disciples ask for more faith because Jesus had given them some impossible directions about how to deal with frequent, continuous sinning against them by other disciples. Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea, than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble… If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. [so far so good…but then this] And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” They must have been thinking “oh come on!” And I don’t blame them – I have a hard time forgiving the same person even three times in one day – forget seven!. No wonder they are asking for more faith.

And what Jesus said next in the portion we heard today, invokes mischief and nuisance because mustard is like kudzu and it’s a little funny to describe faith that way (unless you’re a gardener or landowner, then kudzu or mustard is no joke). All you need is a tiny amount of faith to do amazing and seemingly impossible things. Jesus knew that they all had at least this much faith, because, after all, they were showing up, weren’t they? Usually, bigger is better. But Jesus seems to be telling them that they don’t actually need more faith. A little tiny bit goes a long way! Even a tiny amount can wreak havoc! (I mean moving a mountain could possibly be a good idea, but planting a mulberry bush in the sea is not good for the mulberry bush or the sea.) Jesus is saying, “Stop worrying about how much faith you or anyone else has. Stop fretting about not having more.” Even if the measure of your faith is smaller than the mustard seed, you have plenty. The unspoken message is, if your faith is bigger than a mustard seed, great! Don’t lord it over others – just get to work!

So if more faith isn’t needed in order to forgive, what is? Humility, attentiveness, and compassion (suffering with). Even the tiniest amount of faith must not ignore the reality of pain. [6] It’s so hard to forgive people for not being the way we think they should be. It’s so hard to forgive ourselves for not being the way we think we should be. It’s so hard to forgive people for not behaving the way we wish they would behave. And it’s so necessary to our well-being and the well-being of the wider community. And when we are humble and attentive and compassionate, and forgiving, we are just doing our job, according to Jesus. This is how we are to behave if we are owned by the Holy One, if we are owned by Love, rather than being a slave to wages or power, or possessions, or resentment, which is poison.

Imagine the healing and reconciliation possible when we are able to be humble, to pay attention and to be compassionate, to participate in feeding and freeing people who are hungry or oppressed. Imagine the healing and reconciliation possible when we are able to ask for and give pardon. Imagine the healing and reconciliation possible when we are able to lament with those who are crying out. I want to go back to the idea that using every letter of the Hebrew alphabet in the poem of lament represents complete and total despair. My former teacher, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, in the introduction to his Book of Letters about the Hebrew alphabet writes, “of a tradition recounted in the thirteenth century Kabbalistic text …[that] teaches that one letter is missing from our present Hebrew alphabet and that this letter will only be revealed in the future….every defect in our present universe is mysteriously connected with this missing letter – an unimaginable consonant whose sound will create undreamed of words and worlds, transforming repression into loving.” [7] Kushner imagines that the mystical letter already exists, that it is right in front of us when we pray. Let’s keep our eyes open for the missing letter that will transform all repression into all loving!

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