Lamentation - SERMON

17th Sunday after Pentecost  5 October 2025  St. Matthew Parish, Abbosford, B.C. 

Sermon by Father Art Turnbull

I like the little story of the boy who had a really good black eye.  When asked who gave it to him,  the boy replied proudly, "Nobody gave it to me.  I had to fight for it."  This boy stood by his faith in himself.

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; God's mercies never come to an end."

This verse from the Book of Lamentation is a leap of faith in the ever present and positive presence of God.

Lamentation is never read at public worship.  Except for today, as a matter of fact, today's passage is the one time and one quotation of Lamentation in the three-year cycle of readings from the Common Lectionary.

Only this once do we get to hear from this book on a Sunday.  Now, having heard it read, then followed by Psalm 137, some of you may feel obliged to say, "Thank goodness it is not read more often."  It does seem to be terribly negative, discouraging, and offensive in tone.  That is, if we read it literally.

The book was written in the time of the prophet Jeremiah.  It is made up of five poems which make up the five chapters.  The subject matter of his book consists of laments over the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE.  Laments are a deep outpouring of feelings of grief, a form of grieving in the biblical setting poured out to God.

 Unlike other material from that age, Lamentations was written by the remnant Hebrew people, those left in the land after the collapse of the nation.  The majority of people, the elite, the leaders, the educated, the merchants and the middle class had all  been taken into captivity, sent to Babylon.  The poor folk left as the remnant of Judah saw the devastation of a community destroyed, a way of life collapsed, significantly, the symbols of faith lost. "How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!  How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations."

The writers of this poetry are expressing the utter horror of their situation.  It is as if God has abandoned them all.  In our 21st century comfort we have no circumstances touching us in such a black way.  We have no thoughts that the sacred and the sacramental are not available to us as we choose.  Our churches are standing.  We can teach and sing and pray.  We can take and eat and drink the sacredness of God.  And we can think that God has abandoned us to our own devices and pleasures, forgetting that it is we humans who make the choice to abandon God.  It is we who are so self-sufficient that when tragedy hits we enter into the blackness without hope.  The secular and the popular far outstrip our value for the antiquity of the sacred, given lips service by society.  Yes, we can teach and sing and pray together and not have this immense spiritual activity impact upon our life.  That is here; not in Gaza, not in Sudan, not in Ukraine.

But Lamentation is written by people of a deep and precious faith. Their faith relationship is such that even in the bleakness, in the blackness of their despair, they can empty their hearts and deepest feelings out to God.  This is the faith of a people that goes on today; even in spite of the holocaust, the death of six million innocent people  killed in World War Two by racial hatred, Nor is this faith lost in the people of this last decade who have seen thousands upon thousands of innocent die- of war, of hunger, of terror, of neglect, of apathy.

This faith that God is, that God exists, that God is with us, that God is somehow involved in our pain and suffering humanity, is in the discouragement and outrage of tragic human life, this is what is significant and meaningful to the people of Lamentations, AND to the people of our times.  For we have people lost and not found; we have people without a country or home to go to or from; we have people watching their children die and their elders disappear.  We can identify with the Psalm, "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remember you, O Zion."  What was will never be again.  It is as if God has abandoned us altogether.

In the Season of Creation, just ended, in the motto of the season, "Peace with Creation" in our time, in our grasp, in our responsibility, do we need to LAMENT?:  Lament over the ignorance of those who are saying that climate change is a hoax; Lament over oceans filled with plastic waste that is killing the fish and strangling the whales, filtering into our own human bodies; Lament over people, thousands upon thousands of people displaced by eroded lands, deforestation, and flooded out deltas; Lament over the terror all this is generating in the Gaza and the Sudan and the Congo and on Turtle Island.

Are we like the apostles who asked Jesus, "Lord, increase our faith."  And Jesus responded, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, "be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you."

Faith of a remnant people in their darkest days 2500 years ago was still faith in God.  Faith of the exiles on the banks of the river in Babylon was still faith in God, a hope that springs eternal.  Faith of the Apostles and earliest Christians was enough to last these 2000 years, a faith in God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.  The faith we have, this gift from God the Creator to each of us, is enough from God. This is the faith of God who will not abandon us.

The last few weeks have been a reminder of our relationship to Creation.  We have the opportunity as humanity to address the needs of the Earth.  We have hope for the future that can be built for generations yet to come.  We have faith to walk the steps together, with the Creator.

I like the story of the boy with a black eye.  He knew where he got it.  Do we know where we get our faith from?

 Paul spoke, "Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." AMEN

Sermon by Father Art Turnbull