Connected
Commentary
Object:
The bride-to-be was obviously nervous. It was only the rehearsal, but already the pastor
could see that tomorrow's wedding might be in for problems. "You're letting it all get to
you," he told her gently, as he pulled her aside. "Just take it one little step at a time. When
you get to the door with your father tomorrow afternoon, look only at the aisle ahead of
you. You've walked it hundreds of times, every Sunday when you come to church. Think
only of that.
"Then, when you get to the front, glance toward the altar. Here's where you first received holy communion. Let it remind you of your Lord Jesus, who brought you to this special moment. Think only of the altar.
"And then, turn your head to your love. He's your best friend. No one in this world wants to be with you more than he does. Look at him and think of him and everything will be okay."
Sure enough, the next day the wedding went off like clockwork. Everyone was in place. All the flowers perfumed the air and the music was festive. But some who stood close to the aisle as the bride entered wondered a bit at the things she was muttering under her breath: "Aisle ... altar ... him ... aisle ... altar ... him...."
It's true that marriage alters us. We don't set out to change the other person when we get married. Still, a living, loving, deepening relationship has its affect on each marriage partner. We live to love and we love to live. And in our living and loving, we grow and change and move and adapt, and somehow become new people. One pop singer calls a good relationship "two hearts beating in just one mind!"
Our texts for today are all about relationships that alter us. The first Lamentation weeps like a lonely widow who has lost her spouse and her life. The opening of Paul's second letter to Timothy is misty eyed at the great relationships that have intersected over their years of friendship together. And Jesus' short tale of duty is a lesson that true relationships are not measured so much by what we get out of them as by what we give to them.
Lamentations 1:1-6
The five songs of lament bundled together as "Lamentations" have always been associated with the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was the last of the great prophets to live in Jerusalem during the sieges of Babylon and the fall of the city. He warned the last kings of Judah not to rebel against the invaders, identifying the Chaldeans as God's chastening scourge on a community that had forgotten its covenant roots. Jeremiah also cautioned the leaders not to rely on Egypt as an ally, asserting that God had made it clear such a path was doomed before it began. In the end, Jeremiah survived the final onslaught that wasted the city and was given a choice by Nebuchadnezzar's generals either to travel with the subdued population now being deported to exile thousands of miles away, or to remain with the poor no-accounts who were to be left behind in the razed city. Jeremiah chose the latter and may well have written these Lamentations during those early days of aftermath in 585 BC when numb vulnerability was coupled with a lack of religious ritual because the temple was gone. Everything felt out of place and ominous and forlorn, all at the same time.
The first four Lamentations are acrostic poems, meaning that the initial words of various groupings of lines begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The last of the five laments is a poem not designed acrostically. In summary, the five dirges appear to have this development:
• 1 (22 x 3 couplets, only the first of which begins with the successive letter): Jerusalem is like a lonely widow suffering from many oppressions
• 2 (22 x 3 couplets, only the first of which begins with the successive letter): Yahweh's covenant anger and the resulting judgment
• 3 (22 x 3 lines, each of which begins with the successive letter): personalized pain because of Yahweh's judgment, coupled with an expectation of restoration
• 4 (22 x 2 couplets, only the first of which begins with the successive letter): the pain of Jerusalem's ruin personalized
• 5 (22 couplets, not acrostic): a prayer of repentance, seeking Yahweh's deliverance
The first of the laments, of which only the initial six verses form our lectionary reading for today, personifies Jerusalem. She is a widow wasting on a garbage heap graveyard. One gets the feeling akin to that which surrounded theater critic, Dorothy Parker, when she was given a small, dingy cubbyhole of an office in the Metropolitan Opera House building in New York City. She seemed to disappear. Since no one ever came to see her in her out-of-the-way quarters, she became lonely and depressed. When the sign writer stopped by to paint her name on the door, she asked him to put "Gentlemen" in place of her own name. She thought that might bring a few men into her office, if only by mistake.
Loneliness is written all over Lamentations 1 as well. It is a prayer that has been whispered a million times in a billion settings by a trillion lonely people. The words may vary, but the prayer is always the same. For the leftover crowd of post-destruction Jerusalem, loneliness was the natural by-product of a society without a center. In this world the temple had been destroyed and culture was fragmented and scattered as a result. With no spiritual glue in the central relationship of life, all the other relationships fell apart quickly. The outcome was anomie and alienation. We know that ourselves. The church may not be a perfect organization, but where it ceases to exist, or where it becomes something less than the visible earthly dwelling of God, society is cheated and cheapened. Moreover, even with its proliferation of church buildings and "Christian" organizations, North American society often experiences the same malaise.
The "widow" of Lamentations 1 saw only a single hope for a change in her condition. That unique anticipation had nothing to do with social programs, at least not on the surface. All she wanted, all she pleaded for, was a return to worship. She asked for a place to worship. She begged for people to worship with. And she pleaded for God to be worthy of the worship directed toward heaven.
Amazing as it sounds, the crier of this dirge honestly believed that a return to true worship would pull his world back together. Maybe that is worth a try for us as well.
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Paul's second letter to Timothy is a warm and tender last will and testament. There are, to be sure, many who identify this as a spurious epistle, at best a forgery clamoring for attention. At worst it is a misguided attempt to project second-century ecclesiastical issues back a generation or two, and find an anchor for them in the great apostle himself. All of that aside, it is hard to read 2 Timothy without a box of tissues nearby to daub at the tears of intimacy, gratitude, and kindness that ooze out of every paragraph.
In reality, 2 Timothy is all about relationships. Here Paul delights in the closeness he feels toward Timothy (v. 2), sees himself in the company of his ancestors (v. 3), sentimentalizes the scene of Tiny Tim bouncing on his grandmother's lap and asleep in his mother's embrace (v. 5), recalls the passions abounding at his protégé's ordination (v. 6), feels the camaraderie of prisoners (v. 8), and celebrates how the Holy Spirit enthuses them all (v. 14).
Paul's reflections are merely the gospel outcome of redemption's renewal of creational kinship. True, people read the biblical story of the creation of the human race in different ways. For instance, there is a male-dominance interpretation that says since God made Adam first, he is obviously a superior being to Eve, and thus all males are superior in some respect to all females. Of course, countering that chauvinism is an equally biased female hypothesis: God made Adam first, then stepped back and looked critically at the man. Finally God said to the angels, "I can do better than that!" and made Eve.
Far more wonderful, though, is the interpretation given by the ancient Jewish rabbis. They said that God made Adam out of the dust of the ground so that he would always love the earth and feel the wonder of it in his fingers. Then, because the man was incomplete by himself, God made Eve to complement him as an equal. God did not make Eve from his head, for then she would rule over him. God did not make Eve from Adam's feet, because then he would be tempted always to walk all over her. Instead, God made Eve from one of the man's ribs, at his side and close to his heart, so that together they would know the joy of friendship and partnership.
Certainly that last interpretation reflects what we know both from the rest of scripture and from our own lives. We need friendship. We need companionship. We need another to stand there with us, to be close to us, to love us, and to support us.
That is the resounding testimony of Paul in our lectionary reading for today. These words are the coffee house conversations of old friends who have known one another long and well, and at the end of an evening lubricated with a few drinks are able to get past business to gushes of deep feeling. In fact, there are times when the larger exhortations of this letter devolve into angry and sometimes vicious laments about the cruelty of those who proved to be far less than friends (see 1:15 and 4:14), and this only buttresses the relational intimacy of this first chapter. Others abused their position in Paul's family or circle of confidants to become tormentors and enemies. The pain of his cry in those circumstances is echoed by the people who have sat in many pastor's studies, pouring out tirades against faithless marriage partners, shivering at memories of childhood abuse by parents, and weeping in agony because of traitorous soul mates.
There is no need greater in the human spirit than for kinship and intimacy with someone who knows us and who cares about us. The doctrine of the Trinity is not merely some theological or philosophical construct best left to the nit-picking debates of academicians; indeed, it is the central badge of identity in the Christian religion. It reminds us that at the heart of the universe, at the core of all being, at the center of whatever reality we know, there is a community. A community of three who know each other intimately. A community of three who love each other fully. A community of three who support and encourage each other without reserve. If we are a reflection of that Trinitarian God, created in the divine image, then it is no wonder that we also need supportive human companionship.
Years ago, a young newspaper reporter got off a train in Detroit and came face-to-face with the great Henry Ford. Not wanting to miss a story or a contact, the man sauntered up and introduced himself. He spoke with undisguised admiration about Ford and sought some word of advice. Ford startled him by asking a strange question: "Who is your best friend?"
The reporter stammered slightly, not knowing how exactly to answer, but Henry Ford knew what he was doing. He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a scrap of paper, and wrote a single line. "Here!" he said, handing the note to the young fellow. To his dying day, that man kept his mentor's brief lesson in his wallet. It read: "Your best friend is he who brings out the best in you!"
That may well typify the passions of Paul in 2 Timothy 1. He revels in the knowledge that the journey of his life, soon to be ended, has been traveled in good company. Words of tenderness with Timothy become the encouragement of a full life passed along to another. But it is very obvious that these things have not happened merely as the whim of chance or the social veneer hiding otherwise rotten hearts; instead, Paul places all of the good connections into the context of God's relational redemption. Ultimately, all friendship derives from the only true Friend who has promised for both time and eternity: "Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you."
Luke 17:5-10
A friend of mine once said that God must be a lousy tipper. After all, in passages like this short teaching of Jesus, the Bible often reminds us that it is we who owe God much, and that God is not indebted in any way to us. If we serve God at the table of faith, why should God leave a tip for us?
It is sometimes hard to connect the initial request of the disciples ("Increase our faith!") with Jesus' somber call to duty. For one thing, it seems a bit dissonant. Why not invite his followers to spend time in prayer? Why not hold some kind of accountability session in which the testimonies of the strong could encourage the weak? Why not paint a vision of the coming kingdom of God that would rouse courage in every faltering heart?
Instead Jesus seems almost calloused and cold. "Do your duty!" he cajoles. "You are slaves!" he intones. "Don't expect what you don't have a right to demand!" he insists. His words are out of tune with our gentle sensibilities of faith's affirmations and encouragement.
Furthermore, duty is not always considered the best of motivating forces in our lives. In her autobiography, for instance, Ellen Glasgow writes about her father, a lifetime elder in the Presbyterian church, and describes him as "full of rectitude" and "rigid with duty." From her vantage point as a young girl, "In his long life he never committed a pleasure." Duty can feel weighty for us, lifeless and overbearing.
Even though we might feel stronger listening to the dogged determination of Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940 ("Let us ... brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour!' "), it comes at us out of a context that we do not wish to repeat or make the normative shape of our lives. Maybe we have to do our duty in the crisis of war, but that is not a pleasant place to live once the threat has passed.
William Henley rebelled against the duty of religion and in its place marshaled the strident individualism of his poem "Invictus." Written in 1875, it catches the essence of what he believed freedom to be and gave it a human face:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
Unfortunately, Henley's stirring attestations failed him. He spent many of his last years in an insane asylum, and he died in 1903 at the young age of 54.
It is here that Jesus' little story about duty may inform our understanding of faith, along with that of his disciples. Faith is a trust in a power, a strength, a force, and a person greater than myself. Faith is seeing things in perspective. Faith, for Jesus, derives from a sense of God's overwhelming presence and guiding hand in my affairs. When we know whose we are, we finally begin to know who we are, and in that comes a sense of duty that is not onerous.
Dorothea Day thought about that when she first read William Henley's poem "Invictus." In response she wrote a rousing call to faith called "My Captain":
Out of the light that dazzles me,
Bright as the sun from pole to pole,
I thank the God I know to be
For Christ, the conqueror of my soul.
Since His the sway of circumstance,
I will not wince nor cry aloud.
Under that rule which men call chance
My head with joy is humbly bowed.
I have no fear, though strait the gate,
He cleared from punishment the scroll.
Christ is the Master of my fate,
Christ is the Captain of my soul.
Application
It will be very difficult to use all three lectionary texts together today because of their significant diversity of background, message, and passion. If one focuses first on Paul's words, however, and uses them to set the tone for lifetime relationships, the Lamentations passage can be brought in as a counterweight, which then urges listeners toward the depth of love's duty found in Jesus' teaching. In this context the words of Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, might be fitting: "I slept and dreamt that life was Joy. I woke and saw that life was Duty. I acted, and behold, Duty was Joy."
Alternative Application
Lamentations 1:1-6. We live in a culture that does not know well how to lament. This may be a great occasion to allow the Lamentations text guide the congregation into a deep appreciation for the other language of faith.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 137
This most poignant of psalms escapes as a cry from a people in exile. "How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" Violated, defeated, uprooted, and brought into slavery in a strange country, a people are further humiliated as their captors try to get them to sing one of the songs from their vanquished land. It's a joke. The tormentors "asked for mirth, saying, 'sing us one of the songs of Zion!' " Go ahead, use your strange instruments, show us your weird music!
It is this response that shows power. It is the spine of a people who ultimately cannot be defeated, who answer with a simple, "No." No. We will not sing for you. Indeed, how can we sing in this strange place? It is in the shelter of this "No" that a people, even in captivity, can stay free.
The power of "No," is universal. We see it in young children learning to navigate their world as they discover that they can refuse that spoonful of mashed peas. They can't articulate it perhaps, but the statement goes something like this: Hey! I am an individual. I am free. I can choose. I will not let you put that awful stuff in my mouth! No! More significant, perhaps, than a childhood refusal to eat, are other things to which we may or may not say, "No."
Saying "No" to hatred and greed has true and incredible power. Saying "No" to unjust laws sets the stage for positive change and growth. During the Civil Rights Movement, it was the simple "No" of Rosa Parks that sparked a revolution. "No. I will not move to the back of the bus." "No. I will not accept your attempts to enslave me."
Where, in the landscape of our lives do we need to say "No"?
Where in our personal lives does our "No" keep us free and maintain our integrity? In instances where we are expected to go along with something we know is wrong? Say, "No." At times when we observe injustice? Say, "No." What can be done when the resources of the community are used to hurt and harm others? Say, "No."
Yes, it's true. Always saying "No," can make one seem kind of negative. But remember, "No" is a multi-dimensional response. Pick it up. Turn it around. Look on the other side of "No," and you'll see. A "No" to war is a "Yes" to peace. A "No" to oppression in the workplace, is a "Yes" to justice and safety. A "No" to discrimination is a "Yes" to dignity.
So pick up your "No" and use it where needed. Don't be afraid to say it. Don't be afraid to use your body to articulate it. For in this "No" was not just the integrity of a long ago people in exile, it is also the location of our own.
"Then, when you get to the front, glance toward the altar. Here's where you first received holy communion. Let it remind you of your Lord Jesus, who brought you to this special moment. Think only of the altar.
"And then, turn your head to your love. He's your best friend. No one in this world wants to be with you more than he does. Look at him and think of him and everything will be okay."
Sure enough, the next day the wedding went off like clockwork. Everyone was in place. All the flowers perfumed the air and the music was festive. But some who stood close to the aisle as the bride entered wondered a bit at the things she was muttering under her breath: "Aisle ... altar ... him ... aisle ... altar ... him...."
It's true that marriage alters us. We don't set out to change the other person when we get married. Still, a living, loving, deepening relationship has its affect on each marriage partner. We live to love and we love to live. And in our living and loving, we grow and change and move and adapt, and somehow become new people. One pop singer calls a good relationship "two hearts beating in just one mind!"
Our texts for today are all about relationships that alter us. The first Lamentation weeps like a lonely widow who has lost her spouse and her life. The opening of Paul's second letter to Timothy is misty eyed at the great relationships that have intersected over their years of friendship together. And Jesus' short tale of duty is a lesson that true relationships are not measured so much by what we get out of them as by what we give to them.
Lamentations 1:1-6
The five songs of lament bundled together as "Lamentations" have always been associated with the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was the last of the great prophets to live in Jerusalem during the sieges of Babylon and the fall of the city. He warned the last kings of Judah not to rebel against the invaders, identifying the Chaldeans as God's chastening scourge on a community that had forgotten its covenant roots. Jeremiah also cautioned the leaders not to rely on Egypt as an ally, asserting that God had made it clear such a path was doomed before it began. In the end, Jeremiah survived the final onslaught that wasted the city and was given a choice by Nebuchadnezzar's generals either to travel with the subdued population now being deported to exile thousands of miles away, or to remain with the poor no-accounts who were to be left behind in the razed city. Jeremiah chose the latter and may well have written these Lamentations during those early days of aftermath in 585 BC when numb vulnerability was coupled with a lack of religious ritual because the temple was gone. Everything felt out of place and ominous and forlorn, all at the same time.
The first four Lamentations are acrostic poems, meaning that the initial words of various groupings of lines begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The last of the five laments is a poem not designed acrostically. In summary, the five dirges appear to have this development:
• 1 (22 x 3 couplets, only the first of which begins with the successive letter): Jerusalem is like a lonely widow suffering from many oppressions
• 2 (22 x 3 couplets, only the first of which begins with the successive letter): Yahweh's covenant anger and the resulting judgment
• 3 (22 x 3 lines, each of which begins with the successive letter): personalized pain because of Yahweh's judgment, coupled with an expectation of restoration
• 4 (22 x 2 couplets, only the first of which begins with the successive letter): the pain of Jerusalem's ruin personalized
• 5 (22 couplets, not acrostic): a prayer of repentance, seeking Yahweh's deliverance
The first of the laments, of which only the initial six verses form our lectionary reading for today, personifies Jerusalem. She is a widow wasting on a garbage heap graveyard. One gets the feeling akin to that which surrounded theater critic, Dorothy Parker, when she was given a small, dingy cubbyhole of an office in the Metropolitan Opera House building in New York City. She seemed to disappear. Since no one ever came to see her in her out-of-the-way quarters, she became lonely and depressed. When the sign writer stopped by to paint her name on the door, she asked him to put "Gentlemen" in place of her own name. She thought that might bring a few men into her office, if only by mistake.
Loneliness is written all over Lamentations 1 as well. It is a prayer that has been whispered a million times in a billion settings by a trillion lonely people. The words may vary, but the prayer is always the same. For the leftover crowd of post-destruction Jerusalem, loneliness was the natural by-product of a society without a center. In this world the temple had been destroyed and culture was fragmented and scattered as a result. With no spiritual glue in the central relationship of life, all the other relationships fell apart quickly. The outcome was anomie and alienation. We know that ourselves. The church may not be a perfect organization, but where it ceases to exist, or where it becomes something less than the visible earthly dwelling of God, society is cheated and cheapened. Moreover, even with its proliferation of church buildings and "Christian" organizations, North American society often experiences the same malaise.
The "widow" of Lamentations 1 saw only a single hope for a change in her condition. That unique anticipation had nothing to do with social programs, at least not on the surface. All she wanted, all she pleaded for, was a return to worship. She asked for a place to worship. She begged for people to worship with. And she pleaded for God to be worthy of the worship directed toward heaven.
Amazing as it sounds, the crier of this dirge honestly believed that a return to true worship would pull his world back together. Maybe that is worth a try for us as well.
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Paul's second letter to Timothy is a warm and tender last will and testament. There are, to be sure, many who identify this as a spurious epistle, at best a forgery clamoring for attention. At worst it is a misguided attempt to project second-century ecclesiastical issues back a generation or two, and find an anchor for them in the great apostle himself. All of that aside, it is hard to read 2 Timothy without a box of tissues nearby to daub at the tears of intimacy, gratitude, and kindness that ooze out of every paragraph.
In reality, 2 Timothy is all about relationships. Here Paul delights in the closeness he feels toward Timothy (v. 2), sees himself in the company of his ancestors (v. 3), sentimentalizes the scene of Tiny Tim bouncing on his grandmother's lap and asleep in his mother's embrace (v. 5), recalls the passions abounding at his protégé's ordination (v. 6), feels the camaraderie of prisoners (v. 8), and celebrates how the Holy Spirit enthuses them all (v. 14).
Paul's reflections are merely the gospel outcome of redemption's renewal of creational kinship. True, people read the biblical story of the creation of the human race in different ways. For instance, there is a male-dominance interpretation that says since God made Adam first, he is obviously a superior being to Eve, and thus all males are superior in some respect to all females. Of course, countering that chauvinism is an equally biased female hypothesis: God made Adam first, then stepped back and looked critically at the man. Finally God said to the angels, "I can do better than that!" and made Eve.
Far more wonderful, though, is the interpretation given by the ancient Jewish rabbis. They said that God made Adam out of the dust of the ground so that he would always love the earth and feel the wonder of it in his fingers. Then, because the man was incomplete by himself, God made Eve to complement him as an equal. God did not make Eve from his head, for then she would rule over him. God did not make Eve from Adam's feet, because then he would be tempted always to walk all over her. Instead, God made Eve from one of the man's ribs, at his side and close to his heart, so that together they would know the joy of friendship and partnership.
Certainly that last interpretation reflects what we know both from the rest of scripture and from our own lives. We need friendship. We need companionship. We need another to stand there with us, to be close to us, to love us, and to support us.
That is the resounding testimony of Paul in our lectionary reading for today. These words are the coffee house conversations of old friends who have known one another long and well, and at the end of an evening lubricated with a few drinks are able to get past business to gushes of deep feeling. In fact, there are times when the larger exhortations of this letter devolve into angry and sometimes vicious laments about the cruelty of those who proved to be far less than friends (see 1:15 and 4:14), and this only buttresses the relational intimacy of this first chapter. Others abused their position in Paul's family or circle of confidants to become tormentors and enemies. The pain of his cry in those circumstances is echoed by the people who have sat in many pastor's studies, pouring out tirades against faithless marriage partners, shivering at memories of childhood abuse by parents, and weeping in agony because of traitorous soul mates.
There is no need greater in the human spirit than for kinship and intimacy with someone who knows us and who cares about us. The doctrine of the Trinity is not merely some theological or philosophical construct best left to the nit-picking debates of academicians; indeed, it is the central badge of identity in the Christian religion. It reminds us that at the heart of the universe, at the core of all being, at the center of whatever reality we know, there is a community. A community of three who know each other intimately. A community of three who love each other fully. A community of three who support and encourage each other without reserve. If we are a reflection of that Trinitarian God, created in the divine image, then it is no wonder that we also need supportive human companionship.
Years ago, a young newspaper reporter got off a train in Detroit and came face-to-face with the great Henry Ford. Not wanting to miss a story or a contact, the man sauntered up and introduced himself. He spoke with undisguised admiration about Ford and sought some word of advice. Ford startled him by asking a strange question: "Who is your best friend?"
The reporter stammered slightly, not knowing how exactly to answer, but Henry Ford knew what he was doing. He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a scrap of paper, and wrote a single line. "Here!" he said, handing the note to the young fellow. To his dying day, that man kept his mentor's brief lesson in his wallet. It read: "Your best friend is he who brings out the best in you!"
That may well typify the passions of Paul in 2 Timothy 1. He revels in the knowledge that the journey of his life, soon to be ended, has been traveled in good company. Words of tenderness with Timothy become the encouragement of a full life passed along to another. But it is very obvious that these things have not happened merely as the whim of chance or the social veneer hiding otherwise rotten hearts; instead, Paul places all of the good connections into the context of God's relational redemption. Ultimately, all friendship derives from the only true Friend who has promised for both time and eternity: "Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you."
Luke 17:5-10
A friend of mine once said that God must be a lousy tipper. After all, in passages like this short teaching of Jesus, the Bible often reminds us that it is we who owe God much, and that God is not indebted in any way to us. If we serve God at the table of faith, why should God leave a tip for us?
It is sometimes hard to connect the initial request of the disciples ("Increase our faith!") with Jesus' somber call to duty. For one thing, it seems a bit dissonant. Why not invite his followers to spend time in prayer? Why not hold some kind of accountability session in which the testimonies of the strong could encourage the weak? Why not paint a vision of the coming kingdom of God that would rouse courage in every faltering heart?
Instead Jesus seems almost calloused and cold. "Do your duty!" he cajoles. "You are slaves!" he intones. "Don't expect what you don't have a right to demand!" he insists. His words are out of tune with our gentle sensibilities of faith's affirmations and encouragement.
Furthermore, duty is not always considered the best of motivating forces in our lives. In her autobiography, for instance, Ellen Glasgow writes about her father, a lifetime elder in the Presbyterian church, and describes him as "full of rectitude" and "rigid with duty." From her vantage point as a young girl, "In his long life he never committed a pleasure." Duty can feel weighty for us, lifeless and overbearing.
Even though we might feel stronger listening to the dogged determination of Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940 ("Let us ... brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour!' "), it comes at us out of a context that we do not wish to repeat or make the normative shape of our lives. Maybe we have to do our duty in the crisis of war, but that is not a pleasant place to live once the threat has passed.
William Henley rebelled against the duty of religion and in its place marshaled the strident individualism of his poem "Invictus." Written in 1875, it catches the essence of what he believed freedom to be and gave it a human face:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
Unfortunately, Henley's stirring attestations failed him. He spent many of his last years in an insane asylum, and he died in 1903 at the young age of 54.
It is here that Jesus' little story about duty may inform our understanding of faith, along with that of his disciples. Faith is a trust in a power, a strength, a force, and a person greater than myself. Faith is seeing things in perspective. Faith, for Jesus, derives from a sense of God's overwhelming presence and guiding hand in my affairs. When we know whose we are, we finally begin to know who we are, and in that comes a sense of duty that is not onerous.
Dorothea Day thought about that when she first read William Henley's poem "Invictus." In response she wrote a rousing call to faith called "My Captain":
Out of the light that dazzles me,
Bright as the sun from pole to pole,
I thank the God I know to be
For Christ, the conqueror of my soul.
Since His the sway of circumstance,
I will not wince nor cry aloud.
Under that rule which men call chance
My head with joy is humbly bowed.
I have no fear, though strait the gate,
He cleared from punishment the scroll.
Christ is the Master of my fate,
Christ is the Captain of my soul.
Application
It will be very difficult to use all three lectionary texts together today because of their significant diversity of background, message, and passion. If one focuses first on Paul's words, however, and uses them to set the tone for lifetime relationships, the Lamentations passage can be brought in as a counterweight, which then urges listeners toward the depth of love's duty found in Jesus' teaching. In this context the words of Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, might be fitting: "I slept and dreamt that life was Joy. I woke and saw that life was Duty. I acted, and behold, Duty was Joy."
Alternative Application
Lamentations 1:1-6. We live in a culture that does not know well how to lament. This may be a great occasion to allow the Lamentations text guide the congregation into a deep appreciation for the other language of faith.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 137
This most poignant of psalms escapes as a cry from a people in exile. "How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" Violated, defeated, uprooted, and brought into slavery in a strange country, a people are further humiliated as their captors try to get them to sing one of the songs from their vanquished land. It's a joke. The tormentors "asked for mirth, saying, 'sing us one of the songs of Zion!' " Go ahead, use your strange instruments, show us your weird music!
It is this response that shows power. It is the spine of a people who ultimately cannot be defeated, who answer with a simple, "No." No. We will not sing for you. Indeed, how can we sing in this strange place? It is in the shelter of this "No" that a people, even in captivity, can stay free.
The power of "No," is universal. We see it in young children learning to navigate their world as they discover that they can refuse that spoonful of mashed peas. They can't articulate it perhaps, but the statement goes something like this: Hey! I am an individual. I am free. I can choose. I will not let you put that awful stuff in my mouth! No! More significant, perhaps, than a childhood refusal to eat, are other things to which we may or may not say, "No."
Saying "No" to hatred and greed has true and incredible power. Saying "No" to unjust laws sets the stage for positive change and growth. During the Civil Rights Movement, it was the simple "No" of Rosa Parks that sparked a revolution. "No. I will not move to the back of the bus." "No. I will not accept your attempts to enslave me."
Where, in the landscape of our lives do we need to say "No"?
Where in our personal lives does our "No" keep us free and maintain our integrity? In instances where we are expected to go along with something we know is wrong? Say, "No." At times when we observe injustice? Say, "No." What can be done when the resources of the community are used to hurt and harm others? Say, "No."
Yes, it's true. Always saying "No," can make one seem kind of negative. But remember, "No" is a multi-dimensional response. Pick it up. Turn it around. Look on the other side of "No," and you'll see. A "No" to war is a "Yes" to peace. A "No" to oppression in the workplace, is a "Yes" to justice and safety. A "No" to discrimination is a "Yes" to dignity.
So pick up your "No" and use it where needed. Don't be afraid to say it. Don't be afraid to use your body to articulate it. For in this "No" was not just the integrity of a long ago people in exile, it is also the location of our own.
