I would like to disagree in part with what Mr. Canada says regarding the "laments" of the rest of the world and North America's role in creating these troubles. As in the years of Babylonian rule over the lands of Judah, the ills of todays people are not attributable directly to earthly causes but ultimately to the inability of communities of people to come to know the Lord.
The Jews were handed over to Babylonians by God due to their blasphemy. People today are met with similar trials in both the US and around the world. While we must continue to be generous with our material gifts given to us by the Lord, we must also be will to share the more important giftof all, Christianity
Someone said: "The Jews were handed over to Babylonians by God due to their blasphemy. People today are met with similar trials in both the US and around the world." Are you suggesting that God caused Atta et al to fly those planes into the WTC and Pentagon, killing thousands of innocent people, as some sort of warning about our country's "failure" to spread Christianity? You certainly seem to be... Eric in KS
Note that first submission is dated in August.
Other than the obsurd comments above, I cannot believe that there is no discussion on this lament. It seems so appropriate that we lament what has happened, to uncover the root causes of terrorism, i.e. fundalmentalism, and literalism of Holy Scripture that was written nearly two millenia ago, do we really want to forget about Newton, Darwin and Galileo? God help us all if we are reduced to understanding God in light of human error, rather than the source of human love and compassion. And might I remind the first contributor that Jesus was a Jew and so were most of the disciples(I think there might have been a tax collector and a couple of sinners in there too) and don't forget the orginator of Christianity, Paul...BB in IL
I'm using the first 3 verses, focusing on v. 3, about no resting place, living among the nations. We now have been thrust out of our assumed safety, across oceans from where bad things happen. Now we face the same daily doubts the folks in many nations have been dealing with for decades. Yet throughout the world, in all nations, this Sunday people will lift loaves and cups and pronounce,"This is my body...my blood" singing the Lord's song in a forein world. Our world has changed, but our Kingdom is still strong. Sing the Kingdom song! tom in TN(USA)
Help! What do we do with "the LORD has made her suffer"? kbc in sc
(And wouldn't you know it, we're singing "By Gracious Powers", and that has a verse that says "And when the cup you give is filled to brimming/ with bitter suffering (sorrow), hard to understand/ we take it gratefully and without trembling/ out of so good and well-beloved a hand."
I'm preaching Psalm 137 but reading this, and I feel like it cries out for a word.
Hey, thanks, Tom in TN - very helpful. kbc again
KJ, Like so many others, I waffle and skip that verse. This time I just read up to it and quit at v.4, maybe v.3. Actually, If I was preaching this text solely I would honestly address the issue of human perceptions in holy writ. That was the way fate was seen, good or bad, it was all from God. I have a Church History professor who said the greatest thing; "The Gospel trumps the bible." That is, when any other part of the scriptures seem in conflict with the picture of God seen in the words and deeds of Jesus, go with Jesus. I think likewise that the rest of the NT is a better understanding of God than the OT, for having had the Jesus experience, and even in the OT, there are better images of God. It is also important to admit that even though they (and we) often attribute things to God erroneously, God allows us the honest expression of our feelings. tom in TN(USA) kbc- right back at you!
Lamentations isn't a book we normally like to preach on. There are no bunny rabbits, rainbows, or bright shining faces from which to draw light. Instead we have an honest lament or appeal to God that is told by people too tired, too hungry, and too beaten down to sugar coat anything. Perhaps the ready-made illustration for this Lamentations passage is in the frail, tired bones of our oldest members of the church. Glory has passed, the vision and memory fade quickly. As their body breaks down, their life slips past life a muddy river what is faith? What is the faith they hold? Anyone ccan believe, like Boaz in RUTH, when everything is going well. Anyone can just lay over and die, like Naomi also in RUTH, but what of the one who continues to hold on; who continues to lament and appeal to God for help and rescue? Unlike RUTH, we don't get a happy ending in a neat package. Instead, Lamentations is a dreary, difficult statement of faith. These are the people who have been left behind -- the poorest widows and orphans who must beg in the streets. While the Exile may have passed tem all by as the leaders took off for other lands, as the merchants packed up their wares.. Left behind are the weakest of society, and Lamentations is thier book. As our Economy (USA) is bustling and booming the songs of Lament seem foreign and out-of-place, but who in our country or world sings these songs? How many in our midst know what it means to be destitute and unable to help themself? As you wonder that, consider another thought: What lesson of the Lord, of faith in the midst of darkness, do these outcasts in our society have that keeps them striving through troubles unimaginable to the confortable and secure? The Lamentations are the songs of the people without a future, without an ice cube's chance in Hell -- they are the songs of hope. Lamentations' cries are to an absent God not to a non-existent one. How can someone get made at God and still be called faithful? ... How can someone be faithful and not be angry at times with God?
As I read this passage, one of the images that immediately comes to mind is many of our churches, and the lament/nostalgia that many of our folks express (e.g. "back in my day, we used to have 500 kids in Sunday School--now look at us! We could fit everybody into one class room!") "How lonely sits the city that was once so full of people!" "No one comes to the festivals." As the previous contributor points out, there is no way to sugar coat the message of Lamentations, nor is there any way to sugar coat the sad state of affairs in the main line churches of North American and Europe. Our denominational leaders may speak of the fact that "the decline in membership has slowed down," but that ought not to comfort us. In fact, as Loren Mead points out (I think it is in his book, The Once and Future Church), the situation in main line churches in the U.S. is even worse than we usually make it out to be. The population of the U.S. has grown roughly by one third since WWII. That means our churches would have had to increase their membership by one third just to keep even! Instead, we have net losses of millions and millions of people. We need not hide from these realities, but in order to face them, we need faith. I believe that Lamentations is a faith statement, in that faith in God enables us to express all that we feel. We can let ourselves grieve, let ourselves fall into the depths of our loss, knowing that there is someOne that will catch us in our falling. Faith of that sort enables us to look at our situation with the clarity that the writer of Lamentations exhibits--it enables us to avoid sugar coating, naivete, putting our heads in the sand, etc. And so can we clearly look at our situation as mainline churches, because our faith is in God, not in our institutions. TGL, N.H.
While the lament is a corporate crying out, I think I am going to make it more individual. I see it generally as greif over broken dreams and how many of us do not have broken dreams. I think of people in the pews who have had bright hopes for children smashed by drugs. Wonderful dreams of marriages destroyed by divorce. I think these laments echo the cries of our hearts in the face of the loss of dreams. The key of course is to find God (very present while absent to our senses) in the midst of that loss.
Lamentations hangs on to God as the only hope left. And that is right where God wants us. Not hoping in our strength, but in His alone. God help us if we have to go through what Jerusalem went through to get to that place!
KenTucky
I think we do a disservice to Jeremiah's pain-filled words if we individualize them. I also think we do them a disservice if we listen to them strictly as [North] Americans, rather than citizens of the world; citizens, I might add, who form part of the 20% of the world's population who consume 80% of the world's resources; citizens of the part of the world which forces over $7.5 billion per month onto the $1.5 trillion which the poor part of the world already "owes"; citizens of the same world in which 1500 children die every minute from hunger-related diseases.
Much of the rest of the world is praying Jeremiah's lament, and we in North America obsess ourselves with semen stains, and even the Church in North America laments only the fact that our Sunday Schools are no longer full.
Come on, folks. We're not the victims here. The world was not created for North America; we were created for the rest of the world. "To those who have much shall much be required..."
The question is, how will we respond to the cries of today's Jeremiah's. Make no mistake, they are out there. And make no mistake, God is listening to them!
Rick in Canada, eh?
As the first contributor over-joyed to see others praying over these Laments I want to say AMEN to Rick for Canada and question another contributor. Lament is not the same as Grief. I grieve over thedeath of a friend, a drunk driver grieves over the death of their victim, a mother grieves over the death of thier child... To Lament, however, is more than simply grieving as one naturally would. It is taking responsibility for our actions, it is appealing tog God to be heard... Sorry to cut short but my son just woke uo
We are so terribly guilty of ignoring the laments of our brothers and sisters all over the world. We try to tune it out by getting busier or by turning up the radio. Why can't our generation sit still and listen for the voice of God? We might hear the cries and agony of the dying children. Painful reminder.
RevArt in KY
To the Unnamed Parent:
Thank you for you words. I appreciate your distinction between grief and lament. But lament doesn't come without grief. So I was focusing on the emotion rather than the action. I agree that it is the action of taking the emotion to God that is crucial. Thanks again.
To Rick in Canada:
Allow me to defend myself. First, I will be using the Lamentation text as more of a supplement to the Psalm text which is a more personal lament (granted, over a corporate loss.) You might want to check out my comments in the Psalm 137 section.
I appreciate your prophetic stance against our North American indifference to the REAL poor. I preached such a sermon last week using the Dives & Lazarus text. You say, "We're not victims, here." yet I am convinced that there is enough pain to go around for both the rich and the poor. Wealth can insulate us from a lot of things, but it doesn't free us from pain and grief. Remember, "...Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head." I am concerned about the poor, I have a responsibility to them, but I am not their pastor. As a pastor in North America I must have a prophetic voice, but also a shepherd's heart. If the people in the pews don't know that I care for them, that I can speak to their suffering, they will not listen to my speaking for others they do not hear. The prophets were firey in condemning Judah, but when the judgement came, they wept as loud as any. Sometimes the pain in the lives of the wealthy is a consequence of their hard hearts. Sometimes it is not. Whichever the case, their lament is real and deserves to be heard.
KenTucky
Ken in Tucky,
Thanks for your comments. I do not denigrate the pain that our parishioners experience (in fact, I frequently share it!). But to be a pastor to people in pain does not just mean saying "There, there, it will all get better." I am not saying you do this, nor am I saying you even imply this. However, we have both had many visits with people who desire this sort of pablum from their pastor.
A truly gospel/Christ/cross-centered response would be to put their pain (emptiness, pointlessness, grief, whatever...) into the wider context of God's saving action for the world. Yes, the rich experience pain, but it is not the pain of the poor, and we rich folk have a cure readily available for our pain which the poor do not: to broaden our individualized, self-absorbed life, and begin sharing what God has given us. No matter how much financial "pain" would be caused by forgiving to debt of the poorest of the poor, it would be a redemptive, freeing, life-giving pain. It would be one which joins us to the poor, so that we would more truly become one with them.
Not a bad theme for World Communion Sunday!
May God bless all of our ministries, and may God increase the faith of ALL of us!
Rick in Canada, eh?
A further note from the North. Unfortunately, the powers that be decided not to include Psalm 137 in our Lutheran Book of Worship. Too bad. I might have to run off a copy for the congregation...
Thanks for your comments about this Psalm. May God grant that we all be that honest when we need to be!
Rick in Canada, eh?