"Increase Our Faith"
Lamentations 1 and 3; Luke 17:5-6
In
the American church, we tend to avoid lament.
But I agree with the Rev. Jill Duffield when she says, “There are times
in our lives when lament is the only response possible.[1] Lament recognizes the struggles of life and
cries out for justice against injustices.
In the wake of 100 more children
dying in Aleppo, Syria… in the week when 6-year-old Jacob Hall died following
the shooting at his school by a teen-aged gunman… as we continue to process
images from Charlotte and Tulsa… Syria and Yemen. We struggle to deal with racial injustice and
with the violence in our society.
This very day—and every day-- in our
nation, families of murder victims are weeping amidst the ruins of their lives.
Wives who are battered by their husbands live in fear for their lives if they
leave, and children are abused by their parents. In our own nation and around the world,
people are hungry or food insecure. This very day, at various places in the world,
there are people who are the innocent victims of warfare and oppression. The list could go on.
These are all reasons for lament. “Lament,” said South African theologian
Denise Ackermann, “is the sound suffering makes when it recovers its voice.”
Devastation can silence us. You see a lonely city that once was full of
people and vitality, and what do you say?
The city “weeps bitterly
in the night.”
The book of Lamentations was written in the wake of
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Many people were killed in the 18-month siege
of the city, and the lives of survivors were broken—ruined. Lamentations gives voice to the
suffering.
In the first chapter of Lamentations, the city of
Jerusalem is personified as a woman…a mother mourning the loss of her children
and her honor. “How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people! How like a
widow she has become…. She weeps bitterly in the night… she has no one to comfort
her.”
The author of Lamentations never heard of Charlotte or
Washington or Tulsa or Detroit or Aleppo, but
he knew what devastation looks like… and he knew that in the face of
devastation, lament is the sound suffering makes when it recovers its voice.
We live in a broken, hurting world. How are people of faith to respond? When we wonder if there any words that can
adequately address the pain in our world, we can look to the scriptures, especially in the prayers of lament.
In the laments in scripture, we hear
the voice of a community where loneliness, isolation, and desperation are the
reality of everyday life. I imagine that
anyone who hears this can make some connection with their own suffering. The painful realities of loss, death, depression, disease, job loss,
domestic violence, mental illness, poverty and oppression join us together across time and space. We can understand these laments because of
our own grief.
Laments, like those in Lamentations,
can be acts of faith and courage, which are tacit acknowledgments of our
covenant with God and others.[2]
A cry in the darkness is an act of faith
because it presupposes that someone is listening. Infants cry out because at some level they
expect and trust that someone will hear and respond to them.
During the Second World War, in
England, people noted that orphans who were placed in over-crowded wards with
few caregivers grew silent within two weeks.
The silence spoke of their growing sense of hopelessness and the
futility in crying out. This silence
represented their belief and experience that no one would hear and respond to
their cries. They lost the courage to act,
to speak.
So our laments represent a risk and
a hope that a trusted person will hear us and reply. It is a covenant of care that binds both the
one who laments and the one who listens.[3]
One of the saddest things about the writings from the
book of Lamentations is the overwhelming sense of being alone. “How lonely sits
the city that once was full of people!... She has no one to comfort her.”
Many people around the world feel that way every
day. Some folk are feeling alone because
of personal tragedies: death, a broken
relationship, loss of a job, addiction, illness. Some, like those we heard in Lamentations,
feel alone because of the political or economic situations. They may be poor beyond belief, or living
under occupation, or refugees. They may
be people who are convinced that, in our society, their lives don’t matter.
During times of lament, we need each other. In the community of one another, in communion
with one another, we find the strength we need to move beyond the paralysis of aloneness and into the power to serve God with all we
are and have.
The people of Judah experienced terrible exile and
loneliness. They got through it by
coming together on a regular basis to weep together, and to remind each other
that God had been faithful and loving in the past and would be in the future. The community reminded people that they were
not alone. They had each other, and they
had God. In community, they were able to
get back to singing songs of joy and celebration, because they had God and each
other.
“This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The
steadfast love of the LORD never ceases.
God’s mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning. Great
is your faithfulness!”[4]
We are called to love one another, to
embody God’s love. We need to do it not
just here where we live, but with our prayers, our financial help, sometimes
our physical presence, for our brothers and sisters around the world.
Yet too often it
feels like we’re just not up to living out our call. So we can relate to what we heard in today’s
gospel lesson. The disciples come to
Jesus and say, “Increase our faith!” Jesus,
give us the faith to do this better. We need you to help us out here, so
we can embody this great love to which you call us....
In
the original Greek, Jesus’ response is something like: "If you had faith
the size of a mustard seed [which you do have], you could say to this mulberry
tree..."[3] In other words, Jesus is not quite
chastising the disciples for their lack of faith, but saying that even a tiny
bit of authentic faith which they already have is more powerful than they can
possibly imagine. Or as Fred Craddock puts it: "Even the small faith they already have cancels out words such as 'impossible' (a tree being uprooted) and 'absurd' (planting a tree in the sea) and puts them in touch with the power of God."[4] They do not need to have their faith increased. They need, rather, to trust in the power of the faith they already have.
On this World
Communion Sunday, we celebrate our unity with our brothers and sisters
in Christ around the world. We remember
that God is with us, and that God is faithful.
As we come to the Lord's Table
today, we remember Christ's victory over death and evil and sin in the
Resurrection-- the source of our strength
and hope and new life… and courage.
We celebrate the good news that
Christ has broken down the dividing wall between people... and that Christ is our peace.[5]
Today, around our nation, around the earth,
Christians come together around the Lord's Table-- the one place where we are one, no matter
what our race, or language, or nationality or theology or politics.
As we come to celebrate this sacred
feast with our brothers and sisters in the faith, let us pray that we may be
filled with Christ's passionate dislike of whatever keeps us from his
peace. As we eat the bread and drink
from the cup, may we do so in thankfulness for the unity we find in
Christ... and in willingness to go out
to be God's peacemakers in the world.
Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
October 2, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment