Lament
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My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
my heart is sick.Hark, the cry of my poor people
from far and wide in the land:"Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King not in her?"-Jeremiah 8:18
The reading from Jeremiah assigned this week is deeply mournful. Jeremiah’s times were not easy, nor was his work. He was constantly having to give bad news to those who did not want to hear it - not one little bit. He had the unenviable task of constantly having to speak the truth to power and withstand the backlash. Eventually that kind of thing wears one down.
The words of Jeremiah’s lament may resonate with many of us these days, having been through so much turmoil with the pandemic, political upheaval, climate concerns, and the increasing violence, hate and injustice of the past few years. What is going on among us, anyway? Why does there seem to be no way to break through the brokenness we see all around us? Where on earth will all this lead? How are we supposed to fix it?
We live in a confusing world filled with conflicts, and as fallible human beings, we muddle our way through it with all kinds of conflicting commitments. Sunday’s opening collect calls us to not be anxious about earthly things but to love things heavenly. Sure, thanks for reminding me. I’ll just stop worrying now about the future of humanity. Sometimes faith is much easier said than done.
But even though we are placed, as the collect also says, among things that are passing away, we are called to do everything we can to hold fast to those things that shall endure. The things that endure, as we can see by our crazy world, are usually not the things we once thought we could always rely on. The earthly things we thought were rock solid all too often give way and collapse. I’m reminded of Jesus telling the disciples that not one of the strong, powerful stones of the magnificent temple would be left standing upon another. What? If even that can collapse, what then what can possibly endure?
The things that endure are always beyond our knowing - things we have not yet seen - that are the things in which we’re called to illogically place our hope. How do you do that? Trust and hope in something you’ve never seen? That is the impossible, life-giving way of Jesus.
The ways of God are mysterious, and sometimes stories from Scripture make us scratch our heads (which I am definitely doing as I read this Sunday’s gospel!) And the way the world works - or doesn’t - is often not what we might expect in the realm of a loving God. As human beings we want to fix it, to help, and to understand. But sometimes, the best response when the frustrations of this life get too hard is not to work harder but to lament, just as Jeremiah did. When we let down our need to understand, control or fix, call out to God for help and allow the vulnerability of grief, it is often in that place of vulnerability that hope and trust are re-kindled and deepened.
