Proper 22C
October 6, 2019

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 moment because we rarely hear anything from this book of the Bible in church, although I wish we did. It’s a collection of five dirges: 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. It’s a direct challenge to the notion that religious life should somehow not be political. The Bible’s response to that is “nonsense!”

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 has a city come to such ruin.” The Hebrew word sounds like a sob with a hiccup.[1]  Set in the 6th century BCE during a time of destruction of the City of Peace (Jerusalem), Lamentations is a text for all times of unfathomable suffering. Biblical scholar Kathleen O’Connor writes that, “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 (9th 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 of Lamentations 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. This is probably more than a mnemonic device. There’s a way in which 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.[2] 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).[3]  The various voices in the poems express rage, doubt, shame, trauma, and dismay.[4] Where is God? Has God abandoned them or has God actually 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 gravestone 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: 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. One 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. The midrash teaches that weeping is better than silence. Many of you have heard me teach that tears are sacramental, instituted by Jesus and not (yet) recognized by the Church.

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 spirit of holiness that is in him.

Did any of you hear the apostles’ plea this morning and wonder why apostles were asking for more faith? Well I’ll tell you. They were asking for more faith because Jesus had just given them some impossible directions about how to deal with frequent, continuous sinning against them by other disciples. Apparently, people within the community were sinning against one another back in the olden days. Here are the verses just before our Gospel portion today: If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. 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 to themselves “oh come on!” They must have been thinking that they did not have what it would take to do that. I mean really. Seven times a day? Doesn’t that seem like they are just getting played?

And what Jesus said next is easy to hear as kind of scolding or sarcastic – but I don’t think that’s the intention here. Referencing mustard is invoking mischief and nuisance. Mustard is a weed like kudzu and it’s a little funny (unless you’re a gardener or landowner). What he says is, you know the size of a little mustard seed? That’s all you need to do amazing and seemingly impossible things. Jesus knew that they all had at least this much faith (or they just had nothing left to lose), because, after all, they were following him weren’t they? They were showing up to hear him tell stories. I wonder if their faith was really smaller than a mustard seed whether they would have been there at all. Maybe some of you today are thinking, “I definitely have less faith than a mustard seed!” It’s okay, because mustard can be dangerous and wild and out of control!

Perhaps you remember the series of AT&T commercials where a guy is sitting with a few kids asking them questions like, “which is better, fast or slow?” The disciples in this Gospel passage seem to be answering the question, “which is better big or small?” And all the small kids say “big!” We need more! 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 seems to be saying, “Stop worrying about how much faith you or anyone else has. Stop fretting about not having more.” Stop thinking you need more. Turns out if the measure of your faith is smaller than the mustard seed, it’s okay. And 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 and sorrow. 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 wellbeing and the wellbeing 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 slaves to wages or power, or possessions, or resentment, which is poison. If we are owned by Love, whenever our end comes, it will be a good one.

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 us to hear this and every Gospel story as communicating, provoking, and encouraging acts that transform repression into loving. If we don’t yet hear the Gospel that way, let’s tune our ears. Let’s tune our instruments – which is to say our bodies, our hearts and minds. You know, tuning is not a once and done kind of job. Instruments must be frequently tuned, sometimes more than seven times a day. Let’s tune our instruments, so that at the end of the day, at the end of this day, at the end of any day, at the end of all our days, we can say that we have been played with love and for love, capital L.