When God Overdoes It
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
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Dear Fellow Preachers,
Bad news always demands good preaching, and there is no shortage of the former. Using as a basis the lectionary's Lamentations text, Psalm 137, and referring to the alternative first lesson text from Habakkuk, team member Roger Lovette writes about the questions raised by the suffering of so many around the world. The immediacy of a world shrinking smaller and smaller jolts us to a fresh heartbreak every day. So on the Sunday when we break bread and take the cup and remember a cross, the church ponders once again the power of the old exile passages. What might the words mean for us, and the whole wide world?
When God Overdoes It
Psalm 137; Lamentations 1:1-6; 3:19-26; Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4; Luke 17:5-10; 2 Timothy 1:1-14
by Roger Lovette
Introducing the Texts: The twin themes of doubt and suffering run through this week's texts. Are these writers talking about their time or ours? These scriptures provide no easy answers to the hard conditions they faced. The prophets and preachers lift up some of the painful things of their lives into the light of God's presence and understanding. Whether we deal with our three Old Testament scriptures or the New Testament lections -- we learn once again the power of the tiniest of faith in the midst of insurmountable difficulties.
Lamentations 1:1-6; 3:19-26, an often over looked book, provides the primary focus for this week's sermon. The book begins with an interrogative adverb: How. The word is uttered twice in the first verse. Rather than asking a question, the word painfully states the condition of an exiled people. The prophet observes: This is how life is for us -- hard and difficult and uncertain.
Psalm 137 could very well be part of the book of Lamentations. These grieving exiles express how impossible it is to sing the Lord's song in a place of pain and rage. The late Samuel Terrien, seminary professor and Old Testament scholar, said that even though God's people refused to sing for their captors, they composed a musical meditation out of the sorry scene of their lives. Lamentation slowly gave way to faith. You could easily title a sermon on Psalm 137 "Singing in the Rain."
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 serves as the Old Testament alternate text. The old adverb how found in Lamentations also emerges in these verses. Habakkuk raised the age-old question of the silence of God in the midst of so much wrong and suffering.
2 Timothy 1:1-14: The old veteran Paul writes to the young, inexperienced Timothy. Scholars think Paul's letter was written from prison. He reminds Timothy that faith can be rekindled even in the midst of a very hard time. Verse 12 points the preacher and the struggling church to sureties that will not fail.
Luke 17: 5-10 reminds Christ's followers that even the tiniest faith has enormous power. The believers are challenged to be faithful in a time of difficulty and hardship.
When God Overdoes It
In some ways there are wonderful parallels found in Tuesdays with Morrie and 2 Timothy. In both books a wise, old man speaks to a young man about some of the things he has learned along the way. Mitch Albom learns that his old teacher, Morrie, is slowly dying from Lou Gehrig's disease. After an absence of many years Mitch reconnects with his teacher and begins visiting him every Tuesday. Albom's best-selling book tells about some of the great lessons that emerged from those Tuesday conversations with his dying mentor, Morrie. You might choose to begin your sermon with a page from Albom's book:
"Okay, question," I say to Morrie. His bony fingers hold his glasses across his chest, which rises and falls with each labored breath.
"What's the question?" he says.
Remember the book of Job?
"From the Bible?"
Right. Job is a good man, but God makes him suffer. To test his faith.
"I remember."
Takes away everything he has, his house, his money, his family ...
"His health."
Makes him sick.
"To test his faith."
Right. To test his faith. So I'm wondering ...
"What are you wondering?"
What do you think about that?
Morrie coughs violently, His hands quiver as he drops them to his side.
"I think," he says, smiling, "God overdid it."
(Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie, New York: Doubleday, 1997, 150-151).
Almost all the lections this week deal with the age-old problem of suffering. Only a cursory reading of today's news prompts us all to agree with Morrie: Sometimes it seems like God overdoes this suffering business.
Lamentations certainly deals with the subject of suffering. Much of the book is so dark it is no wonder we preachers have tip-toed around this book and Psalms like 137. Who comes to church to hear such gloomy words?
Yet, like it or not, Lamentations asks us to understand what the convulsions of our time may mean. Scholars tell us that the book's title could very well mean a funeral song or tune which expresses deep grief or mourning. These are exile words. They were either written by God's people far away from home in captivity in Babylon or penned shortly after they returned to a broken and destitute land. Lamentations is a collection of five elegies bewailing the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 587 B.C. and the emotional and physical devastation that follows these events.
Old Testament scholar Claus Westermann has said that a clue to understanding the book begins with the first word in the first chapter. The Hebrew word, ekah -- how -- is found twice in the first verse. The writer seems to ask: "How did we get here? How did this happen? How in the world did so much go so wrong?" And out of these painful questions flows a sorrowful description of the plight of God's people. (Claus Westermann, Lamentations, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, 115).
Lamentations' first chapter likens the community to a widow. Israel would understand that term. Without a husband the widow was left to fend for herself. She had no status in the community. She had no resources -- she was alone in her weeping. And if, as the text suggests, she turned to lovers for help, she would be further isolated from the community. Lamentations offers this picture of God's exiled people found themselves. They had lost their king, their land, their sanctuary -- their whole way of life.
But a strange thing emerged from the depths of their anguish. Samuel Terrien says it was in this barren lonely place that their faith rose to its summit and found its truest expression (Samuel Terrien, The Psalms and Their Meaning for Today, New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1952, 125).
We could say the same thing of Psalm 137 and its plaintive, "How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" (137:4). We find in much of the Exile literature the naming of their demons -- physical atrocities, social collapse, devastation of war and its accompanying poverty and hopelessness -- something new emerged.
The laments gave way to healing. Wading through their anger and grief, God's people came out on the far side. After rage and bitter grief, Lamentations 3:22-36 describes how faith in God came back stronger than ever before. "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (3:22-23).
Lamentations also speaks to our time. Place Beslan with its 300 dead children alongside our text. Place poor, already destitute Haiti alongside with its 1,100 dead because their country has been ripped apart by a recent hurricane. But more than that, place all the ennui and pain and pathos that burdens much of the world down beside these words. The preacher's words were communal but they also were individual in their anguish. You might think of someone as you write your sermon that will sit there on the next to last pew next Sunday. Their situation resonates with that expressed in Lamentations. Perhaps, they lost a job, or their retirement income has been lost, AIDS has touched their family. Maybe cancer took their mother this year. They worry about their divorced daughter. They stay awake at night thinking of Alzheimer's or they are wondering if they will make it to the finish line.
Old Testament authors and prophets didn't know that the church growth movement warns preachers to stay away from gloomy subjects if we are to pack our pews. One preacher was instructed before he was to preach in a well-known successful congregation, "Don't be negative. Don't say too much about sin. Be positive. All that cross talk scares people away."
American culture and Christians do not want to deal very long with atrocity and trauma. We use words like "closure," "getting over it," and "moving on" when we deal with difficulty. We want to hear that the glass is half full. Yet Elie Wiesel who lost almost every member of his family in the Holocaust called his first book, Night. There's little closure here. Wiesel waded through the terrors of those awful days. He kept wondering why he was spared when everyone he knew had met their deaths at the hands of the Nazis. He writes that he finally realized he had been spared to tell the story, because there are some things that we must never forget.
It is no wonder we shy away from texts like Lamentations and the laments scattered throughout the Psalter. We are a people acquainted with denial and amnesia. We barricade our life structures to keep out the pain, but our obsessions, addictions, and denials produce a people whose rage and anger lurk just beneath the surface. Listen to talk radio and you will hear the rage that covers the fear. Baptist preacher, Carlyle Marney used to say, "We play hard to forget that we live in a haunted house" (sermon "The Treasures of Darkness," 47).
The task of preaching is to tell the truth -- even when the truth is hard. The false prophets never dealt with the dark side of life -- they told people what they wanted to hear. But the real prophets gave no easy answers to hard problems. Neither did they construct rigid dogmas that diminished their own humanity or others. They told the story. They lifted up the pains of the afflicted. World Communion Sunday offers us a great opportunity to remember the cries of our brothers and sisters in our congregation and around the world.
That first chapter in Lamentations is not the last word. After the rage and grief finally are spent, healing slowly began to emerge. The chaos stories are part of the terrain of our faith. But there are many occasions when we can agree with poor, broken Morrie -- it does look like God has overdone this suffering business.
But this we know -- out of their lamentations came a renewed faith in God, but it was a long time coming. Let your finger move from Lamentations 1 to Lamentations 3. Follow the words of Psalm 137 found in verse 5: "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand whither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy" (Psalm 137:5). They remembered and that remembering, even in their hard days, produced faith. You might look at Habakkuk 3 where the prophet exults: "Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vine ... yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation" (3:17a, 18). Our text in 2 Timothy continues this theme. Old grey-haired Paul wrote from prison to a young preacher, Timothy. Even after all the great apostle had been through, he wrote with shaky fingers to his young friend across the way, "I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him" (2 Timothy 1:12b).
Tell your people they need not be ashamed of their fears and doubts. Tell them not to be ashamed when they wonder why God seems to be silent. Tell them they are in good company. The biblical saints asked these same questions again and again. Lamentations says they are prelude for much that God has in store for his people. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30:5).
Englishman, theologian and pastor Leslie Weatherhead was no stranger to suffering in his own life. He preached during the days when the bombs fell all over England during World War II in one of his sermons he wrote:
I can only write down this simple testimony. Like all men, I love and prefer the sunny uplands of experience when health, happiness and success abound but I have learned more about God, life, and myself in the darkness of fear and failure than I have ever learned in the sunshine. There are such things as the treasure of darkness. The darkness, thank God, passes, but what one learns in the darkness, one possesses forever.
You might want to end your sermon with some of the last words in Mitch Albom's book about Morrie. Ted Koppel interviewed Morrie on several occasions on ABC's Nightline. Toward the end of their last interview Koppel asked the old professor if he had anything he wanted to say to all the millions of people he had touched. Morrie whispered, "Be compassionate. And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place." He took a breath, then added his mantra: "Love each other or die" (162-163).
Team Comments
Carlos responds: Roger, you've done a wonderful job of highlighting the many pastoral issues connected with the perennial human problem of suffering. "Why me?" we're led to ask, at certain theological crossroads of our lives. "Why does God allow this?" The dialogue from Tuesdays With Morrie -- an influential little book that many of our people are likely to have read -- is an effective introduction, giving the abstract theological problem a local habitation and a name.
An early tactical decision for any preacher addressing this subject is: "In what sort of key should the sermon should be composed?" Do we choose a minor key -- the one that at first glance appears natural for a message on suffering? Or do we choose a major key -- one that appeals more to those who come to church seeking uplift and encouragement, but which risks glossing over the real theological complexities? (Nothing is less helpful to a suffering victim than applying a Pollyanna-ish gloss over raw and painful experience.) The choice of the key in which to compose the sermon depends as much on the local circumstances of the congregation as on the subject matter itself.
As for me and my house, I think I'm going to choose the major key this week. I'm going to use the disciples' demand of Jesus in the gospel lesson -- "Increase our faith!" -- as a jumping-off point for addressing the problem of how to find faith for tough times.
Jesus' answer to their request is oblique: an odd little parable about a tiny morsel of faith, small as a mustard seed that has locked within it the power to uproot a mighty tree. For years, scientists have been searching for an energy source like that. "Nuclear fusion," they call it, and it's still little more than a gleam in the researcher's eye. Jesus is saying that, when it comes to meeting our spiritual energy crises, we already have all the power we need: and then some.
Years ago, in a sermon written a few years after the discovery of nuclear power, Peter Marshall said: "Not a single one of the new powers discovered by [humanity] possesses any redeeming force. Neither fire, nor steam, nor explosives, nor electricity, nor atomic energy can change [human] nature."
Marshall continued, "The greatest force ever bestowed on [the human race] streamed forth in blood and sweat and tears and death on Calvary ... when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on the cross. It was a power so great that it shattered the last fortress -- death. It was a power so great that it made atonement for all the sin of all the world. It was a power so great that it provided for those who would accept it the ability to live victoriously like children of God, in fellowship with Him Who made the world and the sun, the moon and the stars. It was power that would enable believers to do the mighty works of Christ, and to experience, flowing in and through their own lives, the energy of God. Here is a power so tremendous that with it nothing is impossible; and without it, nothing we do has any eternal value or significance."
George responds: For several weeks the First Lessons have been from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, recording his words and actions in the years before the final destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of death or exile of the leaders of Judah in 587 B.C. The texts have been primarily warnings and threats of disaster, though with some indications that God's promises to Israel will still be fulfilled in spite of the destruction that is coming upon it. Now in Lamentations we have poems that follow that devastation: What Jeremiah and other prophets had warned of has really happened.
It's not surprising that Lamentations was traditionally connected with Jeremiah, who is sometimes called "the weeping prophet," and that connection explains the fact that the book follows Jeremiah in the traditional ordering of English Bibles (as in that of the Septuagint and Vulgate). Modern scholarship, however, generally doesn't attribute authorship to Jeremiah. In the Hebrew canon Lamentations isn't with the prophetic writings at all but is in the third category of "Writings." It is one of the five Megilloth, or scrolls, and in the Jewish tradition is to be read on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple. In the Christian tradition it has been connected with the passion of Christ, and portions of the book are sometimes read during Holy Week.
When we think of the problem of suffering the book of Job is likely to come to mind, as Roger notes. There are, however, some important differences between Job's situation and that of Lamentations. God allows Job to be afflicted (by Satan if we include the prose introduction in chapters 1 and 2). In Lamentations we're forced to face the explicit statements that it is God -- and not merely the Babylonian armies -- who has not only allowed disaster to happen but who is its cause. That is indicated in 1:5 in our text and stated even more strongly later -- especially in 2:1-8.
On the other hand, the problem that has to be faced with Job is that he is a righteous sufferer. He insists that while he is not perfect, he has done nothing to deserve the terrible things that have happened to him. The whole idea that the good are rewarded and the bad punished is challenged by that book. But in Lamentations, Jerusalem has deserved punishment: "The LORD has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions" (1:5 -- cf. also 1:8-9). Certainly there were faithful Jews who suffered in that disaster but the poet (or poets) of Lamentations didn't call attention to the theodicy question.
But that doesn't mean that the Jews who survived the disaster weren't asking the "how" (or "why") question, as Roger emphasizes. And it doesn't mean that we don't ask them. One reaction of the Jews was to take out their anger on someone, perhaps as a substitute for taking it out on God. Psalm 137 begins with that moving lament "By the waters of Babylon" and ends with a chilling hope for the heads of Babylonian babies to be smashed against rocks. That may carry some memory of what Jews had seen Babylonian soldiers do in Jerusalem -- which makes it understandable but no less horrible.
How in the world can we say or chant "Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock"? I'm not sure we should as part of public worship but they are part of the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible. The best I can say about it is to refer again, as I did in my comments here a few weeks ago (for Proper 20, 19 September), to Bonhoeffer's reflections on the Psalms as the prayers of Christ.
A psalm that we cannot offer as a prayer, that makes us falter and horrifies us, is a hint to us that here someone is praying, not we; that the One who is here protesting his innocence, who is invoking God's judgment, who has come to such infinite depths of suffering, is none other than Jesus Christ himself. He it is who is praying here, and not only here but in the whole Psalter (Life Together, New York: Harper & Row, 1954, 45). How Christ prays this I honestly don't know. We simply have to leave it to him. (You can allegorize Psalm 137:9 but that's a cop out.)
And as always, the deepest response to the theodicy question is the passion of Christ. The intuition that Lamentations should be connected with Holy Week is correct. ("The LORD's anointed, the breath of our life, was taken in their pits -- the one of whom we said, 'Under his shadow we shall live among the nations' " -- Lamentations 4:20). If we are not to flinch or lose faith at the statements that God brought about some disaster, we have to remember that in Christ God has shared in the suffering of the world. As Luther said, "The cross alone is our theology," we ought to say, "The cross alone is our theodicy." That doesn't mean that the passion of Christ answers all our questions about why people suffer from hurricanes or car bombs, but it must be where we start. It is an expression of God's faithfulness to creation to which Lamentations turns in chapter 3, especially verses 22 and 23.
The alternate First Lesson, Habakkuk 1:1-4 and 2:1-4, offers a related but somewhat different perspective on the destruction of Jerusalem and the problem of evil generally. The first part (1:1-4) is a complaint directed to God about the wickedness that the prophet sees all around him. This may (though it is not certain) refer to the decades before the final destruction of Jerusalem. But the more important point is that it is indeed not merely a lament but a complaint: "Why do you [God] make me see wrongdoing?" It is more in the spirit of Job than is the book of Lamentations.
But we also have God's response to the prophet in 2:1-4, a response that concludes with familiar words: "The righteous live by their faith" (2:1-4). They are familiar not so much because of their place in this relatively obscure book of the Old Testament but because Paul cited them, in the form "The one who is righteous will live by faith" to introduce his theological argument on justification in Romans (1:17) and Luther and others made them one of the key slogans of the Reformation in the sixteenth century.
We need not try to read Paul into Habakkuk: The apostle developed the idea in a way that the prophet hadn't thought of. But there is an essential continuity. In the midst of trouble, even as we complain to God, even as we may lash out at those who (like the Babylonians) have inflicted suffering on us, we can live only by trust in God -- or, as the NRSV's marginal reading puts it, by "faithfulness." The difference between Habakkuk and Paul is that the latter can see the need for faith to be focused on "the LORD's anointed," the Messiah Jesus.
The reading from Habakkuk complements that from Lamentations in an interesting way. (Since these are both assigned as the First Lesson I'm not sure how you'd use both. But exercise your imagination.) Habakkuk states that the righteous will live by faith, or faithfulness. We are called to trust in God and be faithful to God. But Lamentations states an even more basic truth: We can trust in God because -- in spite of all the troubles that argue to the contrary -- God is faithful. "Great is thy faithfulness," the poet says (Lamentations 3:23). The faith that makes righteous, the faith that justifies, is not something we conjure up by an act of will. It is made possible by the faithfulness of the God in whom we're called to have faith.
Related Illustrations
Submitted by Roger Lovette
When Robert Louis Stevenson was nearing the end of his life his wife came in one morning and said, "I suppose in spite of all your trouble you will tell me again that it is a beautiful day." The great writer answered, "Yes, my dear. I refuse to let that row of medicine bottles be the circumference of my horizon."
***
In The New Yorker magazine there was appeared a cartoon depicting a minister preaching. "Having completed the formation of the earth, on the seventh day the Lord rested. Then on the eighth day, the Lord said, 'Let there be problems.' And there were problems."
-- New Yorker, 10/18/93
***
"I do not wholeheartedly enjoy storms at sea, but I enjoy having been through storms at sea."
-- Rita Snowden
***
Submitted by Carlos Wilton
Once I heard Alex Haley speak in a college chapel service. He told a story that came from his childhood. When he would be down and depressed, his grandmother would say again and again, "Alex, we don't know when Jesus is going to come back, but he will always come on time."
***
Consider for a moment the microphone most use as a preaching aid each week. Flick a switch, and a whole universe of power comes into this one instrument. A microphone is connected by wires to an outlet, which is connected by wires to a power station, which is connected by rails and roads to oil wells and mines, which is connected by light rays to the sun, which is connected by ways we still don't understand to billions of other suns.
This mike, and those who made it, didn't create the energy that makes it work. All they did was design a channel for that energy to flow.
Faith is that channel through which the power of God wants to flow into and out of your life
-- Homiletics, September 25, 1994
***
When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty.
-- Flannery O'Connor "Letter to Louise Abbott"
***
It is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse this world offers, moral as well as material, has been drawn on and expended with no effect, when in the shivering cold every log has been thrown on the fire, and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out -- it is then that Christ's hand reaches out, sure and firm, that Christ's words bring their inexpressible comfort, that his light shines brightest, abolishing the darkness for ever.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge, "A Twentieth-Century Pilgrimage"
***
When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.
-- Edward Teller
***
I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
***
Souls are like athletes that need opponents worthy of them if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers.
-- Thomas Merton
***
There is an Ethiopian legend about a shepherd boy, Alemayu, that speaks to me of the power of hope. Alemayu had to spend the night on a bitterly cold mountain. He had only a very thin cloth to wear. To the amazement of all the villagers, he returned alive and well. When they asked him how he survived, he replied:
"The night was bitter. When all the sky was dark, I thought I would die. Then far, far off I saw a shepherd's fire on another mountain. I kept my eyes on the red glow in the distance, and I dreamed of being warm. And that is how I had the strength to survive."
-- Retold by Joyce Rupp in Dear Heart, Come Home
Worship Resources
by George Reed
World Communion Sunday
OPENING
N.B. All copyright information is given from the first cited place where found. Some copyright information may differ in other sources due to adaptations, etc.
MUSIC
Hymns
"Give To The Winds Thy Fears" WORDS: Paul Gerhardt, 1653; trans. By John Wesley, 1739 MUSIC: William H. Walter, 1894 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 129, TPH: 286, TNCH: 404
"God Will Take Care Of You" WORDS: Civilla D. Martin, 1904 MUSIC: W. Stillman Martin, 1905 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 130, AAHH: 137. TNNBH: 52, TNCH: 460
"Leaning On The Everlasting Arms" WORDS: Elisha A. Hoffman, 1887 MUSIC: Anthony J. Showalter, 1887 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 133, AAHH: 371, TNNBH: 262, CH: 560
"Great Is Thy Faithfulness" WORDS: Thomas O. Chisholm, 1923 MUSIC: William M. Runyan, 1923 (c) 1923, renewed 1951 Hope Publishing Co. as found in: UMH: 140, TPH: 276, AAHH: 158. TNNBH: 45, TNCH: 471, CH: 86
"On Eagle's Wings" WORDS: Michael Joncas, 1979 MUSIC: Michael Joncas, 1979 (c) 1979, 1989 North American Liturgy Resources as found in: UMH: 143, CH: 77
"He Leadeth Me: O Blessed Thought" WORDS: Joseph H. Gilmore, 1862 MUSIC: William B. Bradbury, 1864 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 128, LBOW: 501, AAHH: 142, TNNBH: 235, CH: 545
Songs
"Surely The Presence Of The Lord" WORDS & MUSIC: Lanny Wolfe (c) 1977 Lanny Wolfe Music as found in: CCB : # 1
"I Will Call Upon The Lord" WORDS & MUSIC: Michael O'Shields (c) 1981 Sounds III and All Nations Music as found in: CCB : # 9
CALL TO WORSHIP
Leader: We come together with our joys and our sorrows.
People: Hear our praises and see our tears.
Leader: We come with the pain we experience in our lives.
People: We come bearing the pain of a world gone mad.
Leader: We are in awe of the beauty of the natural order.
People: We are in awe and terror of its power to destroy.
Leader: Open our hearts to worship you and see you always with us.
People: Open our lives that we may share your presence with others.
COLLECT/OPENING PRAYER
O God who weeps with your children: Help us to be aware of your everlasting arms that hold us up amidst the waters of chaos; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. OR We come seeking your face, O God, because we know that in all of life your love and grace surround us and support us. We praise you for your great faithfulness and loving kindness. Hear our praises and hear our cries that we might find comfort and strength in you. Amen.
RESPONSE MUSIC
Hymns
"Lonely The Boat" WORDS: Helen Kim; trans. By Hae Johng Kim; versed by Hope Kawashima, 1987 MUSIC: Dong Hoon Lee, 1967 (c) 1967, 1989 The United Methodist Publishing House as found in: UMH: 476, TPH: 373
"Precious Lord, Take My Hand" WORDS: Thomas A. Dorsey, 1932 MUSIC: Thomas A. Dorsey, 1932 (c) 1938 Hill & Range Songs, renewed Unichappell Music, Inc. as found in: UMH: 474, TPH: 404, AAHH: 471, TNCH: 472, CH: 628
"O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go" WORDS: George Matheson, 1882 MUSIC: Albert L. Peace, 1884 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 480, LBOW: 324, TPH: 384, TNNBH: 210, TNCH: 485, CH: 540
"Jesus, Lover Of My Soul" WORDS: Charles Wesley, 1740 MUSIC: Joseph Parry, 1879 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 479, Hymnal '82, LBOW: 699, TPH: 303, AAHH: 453, TNNBH: 64, TNCH: 546, CH: 542
"Bread Of The World" WORDS: Reginald Heber, 1827 MUSIC: John S. B. Hodges, 1868 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 624, Hymnal '82: 301, TPH: 502, TNCH: 346,CH: 387
"You Satisfy The Hungry Heart" WORDS: Omer Westendorf, 1977 MUSIC: Robert E. Kreutz, 1977 (c) 1977 Archdiocese of Philadelphia as found in: UMH: 629, TPH: 521, CH: 429
SONGS
"O How He Loves You And Me!" WORDS & MUSIC: Kurt Kaiser (c) 1975 Word Music as found in: CCB : # 38
"One Bread, One Body" WORDS: John B. Foley MUSIC: John B. Foley; arr. By J. Michael Bryan (c) 1978 John B. Foley, SJ and New Dawn Music as found in: CCB : # 49
"Take Our Bread" WORDS: Joe Wise MUSIC: Joe Wise; arr. By J. Michael Bryan (c) 1966, 1996 John Wise as found in: CCB : # 50, Cars Chorus WORDS & MUSIC: Kelly Willard (c) 1978 Maranatha! Music as found in: CCB : # 53
"Spirit Song" WORDS & MUSIC: John Wimber (c) 1979 Mercy Music as found in: CCB 51
PRAYERS OF CONFESSION/PARDON
Leader: Come let us confess to God and before one another the struggles of our lives when we have doubted God's love and failed to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
People: We confess to you, O faithful God, the lack of trust in our own hearts. We find it easy to look to your loving hand when we receive abundant blessings but we struggle with tragedy and loss and wonder where you are. We are thankful for your care when our loved ones are safe but when we lose them in violent storms or the carnage of war we doubt your love for them and us. We confess, O God of all the nations, that the death or maiming of one of our citizens imparts a greater sense of loss and dread than that of those from other countries. We have lost our sense of all humanity being our family. Hear our prayer and as you forgive us our sins fill us once again with your Spirit that we may truly live as your presence in this world. Amen.
Leader: The God of compassion and second chances offers you grace, peace and strength to be the image of God. Receive the grace of God. Amen.
GENERAL PRAYERS, LITANIES, ETC
We worship and adore you, O God of eternal presence. There is no place that we can go where you are not with us. There is nothing that can happen to us where you do not experience it with us. You are the faithful, ever present loving kindness that sustains us and all creation. (The following paragraph is most suitable if a prayer of confession will not be used elsewhere.)
We confess that we are not very good reflections of your faithfulness. We quickly turn from praise to blame when things do not go well for us or our loved ones. We value the lives of those most like us more highly than we do those who are different from us. We fail to see your image in the face of all humanity. We seek once again to know the power of your Spirit that calls us back to you and faithfulness built on your love.
We have around us so many examples of your faithful love. The creation that produces so abundantly to meet our needs even when we have abused it. The love and care we find in the lives of other people even when we have failed to love and care for them. Most of all we find it in the cross of Jesus as he took the instrument of shameful death and awful agony and turned it into a sign of your constant presence, life, and power. (Other specific thanksgiving may be offered.) We offer up to you, great compassionate One, the needs of our lives and of our world. As you walk with those who are going through great tragedy may our prayers, our spirits, and our love be part of ministry to them. Where we have the opportunity walk with those who are hurting may we be clear channels for the balm of your Spirit to caress them and heal them. (Other petitions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of Jesus who taught us to pray saying, "Our Father ..."
Hymnal & Songbook Abbreviations
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal '82
The Hymnal 1982, The Episcopal Church
LBOW: Lutheran Book of Worship
TPH: The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
TNNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
TNCH: The New Century Hymnal CH: Chalice Hymnal
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
PMMCH3: Praise. Maranatha! Music Chorus Book, Expanded 3rd Edition
Children's Sermon
Faith grows
Object: a baby shoe and a large man's shoe
Based on Luke 17:5-10
Good morning, boys and girls. I brought two shoes to look at today. Are these shoes the same size? (let them respond) No, one shoe is very tiny and one shoe is very large. Who do you think would wear the tiny shoe? Could you wear the larger shoe? (let them respond) You might wear it to play dress-up in, but it would be way too big to really fit you. I need a volunteer. (choose a child to volunteer his or her shoes) Are ____________'s shoes bigger or smaller than the baby shoe? (let them respond) They're bigger than the baby shoe. But they look smaller than the big person's shoe. I guess they're right in the middle. How fast do feet grow? (let them respond) They grow very fast. When you are a baby and a very young child, your feet grow very fast. When you start school they grow fast but not quite as fast. As you get old, they keep on growing. Some people's feet are still growing when they are just about out of high school. Some people's feet are even longer than this large shoe. Does your mom or dad ever say, "How could your shoes be too small? I just bought them a few months ago!" (let them respond) You've probably all heard that. Sometimes feet have a growth spurt. That means they grow a lot all at once. Sometimes you wear out your shoes before your feet even have a chance to grow.
Our lesson today is about growing. But it's not about feet growing. It's about our faith growing. Faith is a word we use when we talk about God and what we think about God, how we tell about God and how we feel about God. When you are tiny, you don't even know about God. As you grow, you learn a little bit more about God. First you probably think God is an old man with a beard in a castle in heaven. As your feet grow, so do your ideas about God. You learn that God is everywhere and doesn't have a body. That's a little harder to understand and as you grow older, so do your ideas and feelings about God and who God is and what God does. By the time your feet are as big as this large shoe, your ideas about God are very different. They grow just like your feet grow.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The Immediate Word, October 3, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
1 (Mitch Albom. Tuesdays with Morrie(New York: Doubleday, 1997,150-151 2 Claus Westermann. Lamentations. Minneapolis: Fortress P, 1994, 115. 3 Samuel Terrien, The Psalms and Their Meaning for Today. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1952, 125. 4 Life Together. New York: Harper & Row, 1954, 45
Bad news always demands good preaching, and there is no shortage of the former. Using as a basis the lectionary's Lamentations text, Psalm 137, and referring to the alternative first lesson text from Habakkuk, team member Roger Lovette writes about the questions raised by the suffering of so many around the world. The immediacy of a world shrinking smaller and smaller jolts us to a fresh heartbreak every day. So on the Sunday when we break bread and take the cup and remember a cross, the church ponders once again the power of the old exile passages. What might the words mean for us, and the whole wide world?
When God Overdoes It
Psalm 137; Lamentations 1:1-6; 3:19-26; Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4; Luke 17:5-10; 2 Timothy 1:1-14
by Roger Lovette
Introducing the Texts: The twin themes of doubt and suffering run through this week's texts. Are these writers talking about their time or ours? These scriptures provide no easy answers to the hard conditions they faced. The prophets and preachers lift up some of the painful things of their lives into the light of God's presence and understanding. Whether we deal with our three Old Testament scriptures or the New Testament lections -- we learn once again the power of the tiniest of faith in the midst of insurmountable difficulties.
Lamentations 1:1-6; 3:19-26, an often over looked book, provides the primary focus for this week's sermon. The book begins with an interrogative adverb: How. The word is uttered twice in the first verse. Rather than asking a question, the word painfully states the condition of an exiled people. The prophet observes: This is how life is for us -- hard and difficult and uncertain.
Psalm 137 could very well be part of the book of Lamentations. These grieving exiles express how impossible it is to sing the Lord's song in a place of pain and rage. The late Samuel Terrien, seminary professor and Old Testament scholar, said that even though God's people refused to sing for their captors, they composed a musical meditation out of the sorry scene of their lives. Lamentation slowly gave way to faith. You could easily title a sermon on Psalm 137 "Singing in the Rain."
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 serves as the Old Testament alternate text. The old adverb how found in Lamentations also emerges in these verses. Habakkuk raised the age-old question of the silence of God in the midst of so much wrong and suffering.
2 Timothy 1:1-14: The old veteran Paul writes to the young, inexperienced Timothy. Scholars think Paul's letter was written from prison. He reminds Timothy that faith can be rekindled even in the midst of a very hard time. Verse 12 points the preacher and the struggling church to sureties that will not fail.
Luke 17: 5-10 reminds Christ's followers that even the tiniest faith has enormous power. The believers are challenged to be faithful in a time of difficulty and hardship.
When God Overdoes It
In some ways there are wonderful parallels found in Tuesdays with Morrie and 2 Timothy. In both books a wise, old man speaks to a young man about some of the things he has learned along the way. Mitch Albom learns that his old teacher, Morrie, is slowly dying from Lou Gehrig's disease. After an absence of many years Mitch reconnects with his teacher and begins visiting him every Tuesday. Albom's best-selling book tells about some of the great lessons that emerged from those Tuesday conversations with his dying mentor, Morrie. You might choose to begin your sermon with a page from Albom's book:
"Okay, question," I say to Morrie. His bony fingers hold his glasses across his chest, which rises and falls with each labored breath.
"What's the question?" he says.
Remember the book of Job?
"From the Bible?"
Right. Job is a good man, but God makes him suffer. To test his faith.
"I remember."
Takes away everything he has, his house, his money, his family ...
"His health."
Makes him sick.
"To test his faith."
Right. To test his faith. So I'm wondering ...
"What are you wondering?"
What do you think about that?
Morrie coughs violently, His hands quiver as he drops them to his side.
"I think," he says, smiling, "God overdid it."
(Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie, New York: Doubleday, 1997, 150-151).
Almost all the lections this week deal with the age-old problem of suffering. Only a cursory reading of today's news prompts us all to agree with Morrie: Sometimes it seems like God overdoes this suffering business.
Lamentations certainly deals with the subject of suffering. Much of the book is so dark it is no wonder we preachers have tip-toed around this book and Psalms like 137. Who comes to church to hear such gloomy words?
Yet, like it or not, Lamentations asks us to understand what the convulsions of our time may mean. Scholars tell us that the book's title could very well mean a funeral song or tune which expresses deep grief or mourning. These are exile words. They were either written by God's people far away from home in captivity in Babylon or penned shortly after they returned to a broken and destitute land. Lamentations is a collection of five elegies bewailing the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 587 B.C. and the emotional and physical devastation that follows these events.
Old Testament scholar Claus Westermann has said that a clue to understanding the book begins with the first word in the first chapter. The Hebrew word, ekah -- how -- is found twice in the first verse. The writer seems to ask: "How did we get here? How did this happen? How in the world did so much go so wrong?" And out of these painful questions flows a sorrowful description of the plight of God's people. (Claus Westermann, Lamentations, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, 115).
Lamentations' first chapter likens the community to a widow. Israel would understand that term. Without a husband the widow was left to fend for herself. She had no status in the community. She had no resources -- she was alone in her weeping. And if, as the text suggests, she turned to lovers for help, she would be further isolated from the community. Lamentations offers this picture of God's exiled people found themselves. They had lost their king, their land, their sanctuary -- their whole way of life.
But a strange thing emerged from the depths of their anguish. Samuel Terrien says it was in this barren lonely place that their faith rose to its summit and found its truest expression (Samuel Terrien, The Psalms and Their Meaning for Today, New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1952, 125).
We could say the same thing of Psalm 137 and its plaintive, "How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" (137:4). We find in much of the Exile literature the naming of their demons -- physical atrocities, social collapse, devastation of war and its accompanying poverty and hopelessness -- something new emerged.
The laments gave way to healing. Wading through their anger and grief, God's people came out on the far side. After rage and bitter grief, Lamentations 3:22-36 describes how faith in God came back stronger than ever before. "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (3:22-23).
Lamentations also speaks to our time. Place Beslan with its 300 dead children alongside our text. Place poor, already destitute Haiti alongside with its 1,100 dead because their country has been ripped apart by a recent hurricane. But more than that, place all the ennui and pain and pathos that burdens much of the world down beside these words. The preacher's words were communal but they also were individual in their anguish. You might think of someone as you write your sermon that will sit there on the next to last pew next Sunday. Their situation resonates with that expressed in Lamentations. Perhaps, they lost a job, or their retirement income has been lost, AIDS has touched their family. Maybe cancer took their mother this year. They worry about their divorced daughter. They stay awake at night thinking of Alzheimer's or they are wondering if they will make it to the finish line.
Old Testament authors and prophets didn't know that the church growth movement warns preachers to stay away from gloomy subjects if we are to pack our pews. One preacher was instructed before he was to preach in a well-known successful congregation, "Don't be negative. Don't say too much about sin. Be positive. All that cross talk scares people away."
American culture and Christians do not want to deal very long with atrocity and trauma. We use words like "closure," "getting over it," and "moving on" when we deal with difficulty. We want to hear that the glass is half full. Yet Elie Wiesel who lost almost every member of his family in the Holocaust called his first book, Night. There's little closure here. Wiesel waded through the terrors of those awful days. He kept wondering why he was spared when everyone he knew had met their deaths at the hands of the Nazis. He writes that he finally realized he had been spared to tell the story, because there are some things that we must never forget.
It is no wonder we shy away from texts like Lamentations and the laments scattered throughout the Psalter. We are a people acquainted with denial and amnesia. We barricade our life structures to keep out the pain, but our obsessions, addictions, and denials produce a people whose rage and anger lurk just beneath the surface. Listen to talk radio and you will hear the rage that covers the fear. Baptist preacher, Carlyle Marney used to say, "We play hard to forget that we live in a haunted house" (sermon "The Treasures of Darkness," 47).
The task of preaching is to tell the truth -- even when the truth is hard. The false prophets never dealt with the dark side of life -- they told people what they wanted to hear. But the real prophets gave no easy answers to hard problems. Neither did they construct rigid dogmas that diminished their own humanity or others. They told the story. They lifted up the pains of the afflicted. World Communion Sunday offers us a great opportunity to remember the cries of our brothers and sisters in our congregation and around the world.
That first chapter in Lamentations is not the last word. After the rage and grief finally are spent, healing slowly began to emerge. The chaos stories are part of the terrain of our faith. But there are many occasions when we can agree with poor, broken Morrie -- it does look like God has overdone this suffering business.
But this we know -- out of their lamentations came a renewed faith in God, but it was a long time coming. Let your finger move from Lamentations 1 to Lamentations 3. Follow the words of Psalm 137 found in verse 5: "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand whither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy" (Psalm 137:5). They remembered and that remembering, even in their hard days, produced faith. You might look at Habakkuk 3 where the prophet exults: "Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vine ... yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation" (3:17a, 18). Our text in 2 Timothy continues this theme. Old grey-haired Paul wrote from prison to a young preacher, Timothy. Even after all the great apostle had been through, he wrote with shaky fingers to his young friend across the way, "I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him" (2 Timothy 1:12b).
Tell your people they need not be ashamed of their fears and doubts. Tell them not to be ashamed when they wonder why God seems to be silent. Tell them they are in good company. The biblical saints asked these same questions again and again. Lamentations says they are prelude for much that God has in store for his people. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30:5).
Englishman, theologian and pastor Leslie Weatherhead was no stranger to suffering in his own life. He preached during the days when the bombs fell all over England during World War II in one of his sermons he wrote:
I can only write down this simple testimony. Like all men, I love and prefer the sunny uplands of experience when health, happiness and success abound but I have learned more about God, life, and myself in the darkness of fear and failure than I have ever learned in the sunshine. There are such things as the treasure of darkness. The darkness, thank God, passes, but what one learns in the darkness, one possesses forever.
You might want to end your sermon with some of the last words in Mitch Albom's book about Morrie. Ted Koppel interviewed Morrie on several occasions on ABC's Nightline. Toward the end of their last interview Koppel asked the old professor if he had anything he wanted to say to all the millions of people he had touched. Morrie whispered, "Be compassionate. And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place." He took a breath, then added his mantra: "Love each other or die" (162-163).
Team Comments
Carlos responds: Roger, you've done a wonderful job of highlighting the many pastoral issues connected with the perennial human problem of suffering. "Why me?" we're led to ask, at certain theological crossroads of our lives. "Why does God allow this?" The dialogue from Tuesdays With Morrie -- an influential little book that many of our people are likely to have read -- is an effective introduction, giving the abstract theological problem a local habitation and a name.
An early tactical decision for any preacher addressing this subject is: "In what sort of key should the sermon should be composed?" Do we choose a minor key -- the one that at first glance appears natural for a message on suffering? Or do we choose a major key -- one that appeals more to those who come to church seeking uplift and encouragement, but which risks glossing over the real theological complexities? (Nothing is less helpful to a suffering victim than applying a Pollyanna-ish gloss over raw and painful experience.) The choice of the key in which to compose the sermon depends as much on the local circumstances of the congregation as on the subject matter itself.
As for me and my house, I think I'm going to choose the major key this week. I'm going to use the disciples' demand of Jesus in the gospel lesson -- "Increase our faith!" -- as a jumping-off point for addressing the problem of how to find faith for tough times.
Jesus' answer to their request is oblique: an odd little parable about a tiny morsel of faith, small as a mustard seed that has locked within it the power to uproot a mighty tree. For years, scientists have been searching for an energy source like that. "Nuclear fusion," they call it, and it's still little more than a gleam in the researcher's eye. Jesus is saying that, when it comes to meeting our spiritual energy crises, we already have all the power we need: and then some.
Years ago, in a sermon written a few years after the discovery of nuclear power, Peter Marshall said: "Not a single one of the new powers discovered by [humanity] possesses any redeeming force. Neither fire, nor steam, nor explosives, nor electricity, nor atomic energy can change [human] nature."
Marshall continued, "The greatest force ever bestowed on [the human race] streamed forth in blood and sweat and tears and death on Calvary ... when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on the cross. It was a power so great that it shattered the last fortress -- death. It was a power so great that it made atonement for all the sin of all the world. It was a power so great that it provided for those who would accept it the ability to live victoriously like children of God, in fellowship with Him Who made the world and the sun, the moon and the stars. It was power that would enable believers to do the mighty works of Christ, and to experience, flowing in and through their own lives, the energy of God. Here is a power so tremendous that with it nothing is impossible; and without it, nothing we do has any eternal value or significance."
George responds: For several weeks the First Lessons have been from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, recording his words and actions in the years before the final destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of death or exile of the leaders of Judah in 587 B.C. The texts have been primarily warnings and threats of disaster, though with some indications that God's promises to Israel will still be fulfilled in spite of the destruction that is coming upon it. Now in Lamentations we have poems that follow that devastation: What Jeremiah and other prophets had warned of has really happened.
It's not surprising that Lamentations was traditionally connected with Jeremiah, who is sometimes called "the weeping prophet," and that connection explains the fact that the book follows Jeremiah in the traditional ordering of English Bibles (as in that of the Septuagint and Vulgate). Modern scholarship, however, generally doesn't attribute authorship to Jeremiah. In the Hebrew canon Lamentations isn't with the prophetic writings at all but is in the third category of "Writings." It is one of the five Megilloth, or scrolls, and in the Jewish tradition is to be read on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple. In the Christian tradition it has been connected with the passion of Christ, and portions of the book are sometimes read during Holy Week.
When we think of the problem of suffering the book of Job is likely to come to mind, as Roger notes. There are, however, some important differences between Job's situation and that of Lamentations. God allows Job to be afflicted (by Satan if we include the prose introduction in chapters 1 and 2). In Lamentations we're forced to face the explicit statements that it is God -- and not merely the Babylonian armies -- who has not only allowed disaster to happen but who is its cause. That is indicated in 1:5 in our text and stated even more strongly later -- especially in 2:1-8.
On the other hand, the problem that has to be faced with Job is that he is a righteous sufferer. He insists that while he is not perfect, he has done nothing to deserve the terrible things that have happened to him. The whole idea that the good are rewarded and the bad punished is challenged by that book. But in Lamentations, Jerusalem has deserved punishment: "The LORD has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions" (1:5 -- cf. also 1:8-9). Certainly there were faithful Jews who suffered in that disaster but the poet (or poets) of Lamentations didn't call attention to the theodicy question.
But that doesn't mean that the Jews who survived the disaster weren't asking the "how" (or "why") question, as Roger emphasizes. And it doesn't mean that we don't ask them. One reaction of the Jews was to take out their anger on someone, perhaps as a substitute for taking it out on God. Psalm 137 begins with that moving lament "By the waters of Babylon" and ends with a chilling hope for the heads of Babylonian babies to be smashed against rocks. That may carry some memory of what Jews had seen Babylonian soldiers do in Jerusalem -- which makes it understandable but no less horrible.
How in the world can we say or chant "Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock"? I'm not sure we should as part of public worship but they are part of the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible. The best I can say about it is to refer again, as I did in my comments here a few weeks ago (for Proper 20, 19 September), to Bonhoeffer's reflections on the Psalms as the prayers of Christ.
A psalm that we cannot offer as a prayer, that makes us falter and horrifies us, is a hint to us that here someone is praying, not we; that the One who is here protesting his innocence, who is invoking God's judgment, who has come to such infinite depths of suffering, is none other than Jesus Christ himself. He it is who is praying here, and not only here but in the whole Psalter (Life Together, New York: Harper & Row, 1954, 45). How Christ prays this I honestly don't know. We simply have to leave it to him. (You can allegorize Psalm 137:9 but that's a cop out.)
And as always, the deepest response to the theodicy question is the passion of Christ. The intuition that Lamentations should be connected with Holy Week is correct. ("The LORD's anointed, the breath of our life, was taken in their pits -- the one of whom we said, 'Under his shadow we shall live among the nations' " -- Lamentations 4:20). If we are not to flinch or lose faith at the statements that God brought about some disaster, we have to remember that in Christ God has shared in the suffering of the world. As Luther said, "The cross alone is our theology," we ought to say, "The cross alone is our theodicy." That doesn't mean that the passion of Christ answers all our questions about why people suffer from hurricanes or car bombs, but it must be where we start. It is an expression of God's faithfulness to creation to which Lamentations turns in chapter 3, especially verses 22 and 23.
The alternate First Lesson, Habakkuk 1:1-4 and 2:1-4, offers a related but somewhat different perspective on the destruction of Jerusalem and the problem of evil generally. The first part (1:1-4) is a complaint directed to God about the wickedness that the prophet sees all around him. This may (though it is not certain) refer to the decades before the final destruction of Jerusalem. But the more important point is that it is indeed not merely a lament but a complaint: "Why do you [God] make me see wrongdoing?" It is more in the spirit of Job than is the book of Lamentations.
But we also have God's response to the prophet in 2:1-4, a response that concludes with familiar words: "The righteous live by their faith" (2:1-4). They are familiar not so much because of their place in this relatively obscure book of the Old Testament but because Paul cited them, in the form "The one who is righteous will live by faith" to introduce his theological argument on justification in Romans (1:17) and Luther and others made them one of the key slogans of the Reformation in the sixteenth century.
We need not try to read Paul into Habakkuk: The apostle developed the idea in a way that the prophet hadn't thought of. But there is an essential continuity. In the midst of trouble, even as we complain to God, even as we may lash out at those who (like the Babylonians) have inflicted suffering on us, we can live only by trust in God -- or, as the NRSV's marginal reading puts it, by "faithfulness." The difference between Habakkuk and Paul is that the latter can see the need for faith to be focused on "the LORD's anointed," the Messiah Jesus.
The reading from Habakkuk complements that from Lamentations in an interesting way. (Since these are both assigned as the First Lesson I'm not sure how you'd use both. But exercise your imagination.) Habakkuk states that the righteous will live by faith, or faithfulness. We are called to trust in God and be faithful to God. But Lamentations states an even more basic truth: We can trust in God because -- in spite of all the troubles that argue to the contrary -- God is faithful. "Great is thy faithfulness," the poet says (Lamentations 3:23). The faith that makes righteous, the faith that justifies, is not something we conjure up by an act of will. It is made possible by the faithfulness of the God in whom we're called to have faith.
Related Illustrations
Submitted by Roger Lovette
When Robert Louis Stevenson was nearing the end of his life his wife came in one morning and said, "I suppose in spite of all your trouble you will tell me again that it is a beautiful day." The great writer answered, "Yes, my dear. I refuse to let that row of medicine bottles be the circumference of my horizon."
***
In The New Yorker magazine there was appeared a cartoon depicting a minister preaching. "Having completed the formation of the earth, on the seventh day the Lord rested. Then on the eighth day, the Lord said, 'Let there be problems.' And there were problems."
-- New Yorker, 10/18/93
***
"I do not wholeheartedly enjoy storms at sea, but I enjoy having been through storms at sea."
-- Rita Snowden
***
Submitted by Carlos Wilton
Once I heard Alex Haley speak in a college chapel service. He told a story that came from his childhood. When he would be down and depressed, his grandmother would say again and again, "Alex, we don't know when Jesus is going to come back, but he will always come on time."
***
Consider for a moment the microphone most use as a preaching aid each week. Flick a switch, and a whole universe of power comes into this one instrument. A microphone is connected by wires to an outlet, which is connected by wires to a power station, which is connected by rails and roads to oil wells and mines, which is connected by light rays to the sun, which is connected by ways we still don't understand to billions of other suns.
This mike, and those who made it, didn't create the energy that makes it work. All they did was design a channel for that energy to flow.
Faith is that channel through which the power of God wants to flow into and out of your life
-- Homiletics, September 25, 1994
***
When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty.
-- Flannery O'Connor "Letter to Louise Abbott"
***
It is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse this world offers, moral as well as material, has been drawn on and expended with no effect, when in the shivering cold every log has been thrown on the fire, and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out -- it is then that Christ's hand reaches out, sure and firm, that Christ's words bring their inexpressible comfort, that his light shines brightest, abolishing the darkness for ever.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge, "A Twentieth-Century Pilgrimage"
***
When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.
-- Edward Teller
***
I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
***
Souls are like athletes that need opponents worthy of them if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers.
-- Thomas Merton
***
There is an Ethiopian legend about a shepherd boy, Alemayu, that speaks to me of the power of hope. Alemayu had to spend the night on a bitterly cold mountain. He had only a very thin cloth to wear. To the amazement of all the villagers, he returned alive and well. When they asked him how he survived, he replied:
"The night was bitter. When all the sky was dark, I thought I would die. Then far, far off I saw a shepherd's fire on another mountain. I kept my eyes on the red glow in the distance, and I dreamed of being warm. And that is how I had the strength to survive."
-- Retold by Joyce Rupp in Dear Heart, Come Home
Worship Resources
by George Reed
World Communion Sunday
OPENING
N.B. All copyright information is given from the first cited place where found. Some copyright information may differ in other sources due to adaptations, etc.
MUSIC
Hymns
"Give To The Winds Thy Fears" WORDS: Paul Gerhardt, 1653; trans. By John Wesley, 1739 MUSIC: William H. Walter, 1894 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 129, TPH: 286, TNCH: 404
"God Will Take Care Of You" WORDS: Civilla D. Martin, 1904 MUSIC: W. Stillman Martin, 1905 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 130, AAHH: 137. TNNBH: 52, TNCH: 460
"Leaning On The Everlasting Arms" WORDS: Elisha A. Hoffman, 1887 MUSIC: Anthony J. Showalter, 1887 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 133, AAHH: 371, TNNBH: 262, CH: 560
"Great Is Thy Faithfulness" WORDS: Thomas O. Chisholm, 1923 MUSIC: William M. Runyan, 1923 (c) 1923, renewed 1951 Hope Publishing Co. as found in: UMH: 140, TPH: 276, AAHH: 158. TNNBH: 45, TNCH: 471, CH: 86
"On Eagle's Wings" WORDS: Michael Joncas, 1979 MUSIC: Michael Joncas, 1979 (c) 1979, 1989 North American Liturgy Resources as found in: UMH: 143, CH: 77
"He Leadeth Me: O Blessed Thought" WORDS: Joseph H. Gilmore, 1862 MUSIC: William B. Bradbury, 1864 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 128, LBOW: 501, AAHH: 142, TNNBH: 235, CH: 545
Songs
"Surely The Presence Of The Lord" WORDS & MUSIC: Lanny Wolfe (c) 1977 Lanny Wolfe Music as found in: CCB : # 1
"I Will Call Upon The Lord" WORDS & MUSIC: Michael O'Shields (c) 1981 Sounds III and All Nations Music as found in: CCB : # 9
CALL TO WORSHIP
Leader: We come together with our joys and our sorrows.
People: Hear our praises and see our tears.
Leader: We come with the pain we experience in our lives.
People: We come bearing the pain of a world gone mad.
Leader: We are in awe of the beauty of the natural order.
People: We are in awe and terror of its power to destroy.
Leader: Open our hearts to worship you and see you always with us.
People: Open our lives that we may share your presence with others.
COLLECT/OPENING PRAYER
O God who weeps with your children: Help us to be aware of your everlasting arms that hold us up amidst the waters of chaos; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. OR We come seeking your face, O God, because we know that in all of life your love and grace surround us and support us. We praise you for your great faithfulness and loving kindness. Hear our praises and hear our cries that we might find comfort and strength in you. Amen.
RESPONSE MUSIC
Hymns
"Lonely The Boat" WORDS: Helen Kim; trans. By Hae Johng Kim; versed by Hope Kawashima, 1987 MUSIC: Dong Hoon Lee, 1967 (c) 1967, 1989 The United Methodist Publishing House as found in: UMH: 476, TPH: 373
"Precious Lord, Take My Hand" WORDS: Thomas A. Dorsey, 1932 MUSIC: Thomas A. Dorsey, 1932 (c) 1938 Hill & Range Songs, renewed Unichappell Music, Inc. as found in: UMH: 474, TPH: 404, AAHH: 471, TNCH: 472, CH: 628
"O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go" WORDS: George Matheson, 1882 MUSIC: Albert L. Peace, 1884 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 480, LBOW: 324, TPH: 384, TNNBH: 210, TNCH: 485, CH: 540
"Jesus, Lover Of My Soul" WORDS: Charles Wesley, 1740 MUSIC: Joseph Parry, 1879 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 479, Hymnal '82, LBOW: 699, TPH: 303, AAHH: 453, TNNBH: 64, TNCH: 546, CH: 542
"Bread Of The World" WORDS: Reginald Heber, 1827 MUSIC: John S. B. Hodges, 1868 (c) public domain as found in: UMH: 624, Hymnal '82: 301, TPH: 502, TNCH: 346,CH: 387
"You Satisfy The Hungry Heart" WORDS: Omer Westendorf, 1977 MUSIC: Robert E. Kreutz, 1977 (c) 1977 Archdiocese of Philadelphia as found in: UMH: 629, TPH: 521, CH: 429
SONGS
"O How He Loves You And Me!" WORDS & MUSIC: Kurt Kaiser (c) 1975 Word Music as found in: CCB : # 38
"One Bread, One Body" WORDS: John B. Foley MUSIC: John B. Foley; arr. By J. Michael Bryan (c) 1978 John B. Foley, SJ and New Dawn Music as found in: CCB : # 49
"Take Our Bread" WORDS: Joe Wise MUSIC: Joe Wise; arr. By J. Michael Bryan (c) 1966, 1996 John Wise as found in: CCB : # 50, Cars Chorus WORDS & MUSIC: Kelly Willard (c) 1978 Maranatha! Music as found in: CCB : # 53
"Spirit Song" WORDS & MUSIC: John Wimber (c) 1979 Mercy Music as found in: CCB 51
PRAYERS OF CONFESSION/PARDON
Leader: Come let us confess to God and before one another the struggles of our lives when we have doubted God's love and failed to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
People: We confess to you, O faithful God, the lack of trust in our own hearts. We find it easy to look to your loving hand when we receive abundant blessings but we struggle with tragedy and loss and wonder where you are. We are thankful for your care when our loved ones are safe but when we lose them in violent storms or the carnage of war we doubt your love for them and us. We confess, O God of all the nations, that the death or maiming of one of our citizens imparts a greater sense of loss and dread than that of those from other countries. We have lost our sense of all humanity being our family. Hear our prayer and as you forgive us our sins fill us once again with your Spirit that we may truly live as your presence in this world. Amen.
Leader: The God of compassion and second chances offers you grace, peace and strength to be the image of God. Receive the grace of God. Amen.
GENERAL PRAYERS, LITANIES, ETC
We worship and adore you, O God of eternal presence. There is no place that we can go where you are not with us. There is nothing that can happen to us where you do not experience it with us. You are the faithful, ever present loving kindness that sustains us and all creation. (The following paragraph is most suitable if a prayer of confession will not be used elsewhere.)
We confess that we are not very good reflections of your faithfulness. We quickly turn from praise to blame when things do not go well for us or our loved ones. We value the lives of those most like us more highly than we do those who are different from us. We fail to see your image in the face of all humanity. We seek once again to know the power of your Spirit that calls us back to you and faithfulness built on your love.
We have around us so many examples of your faithful love. The creation that produces so abundantly to meet our needs even when we have abused it. The love and care we find in the lives of other people even when we have failed to love and care for them. Most of all we find it in the cross of Jesus as he took the instrument of shameful death and awful agony and turned it into a sign of your constant presence, life, and power. (Other specific thanksgiving may be offered.) We offer up to you, great compassionate One, the needs of our lives and of our world. As you walk with those who are going through great tragedy may our prayers, our spirits, and our love be part of ministry to them. Where we have the opportunity walk with those who are hurting may we be clear channels for the balm of your Spirit to caress them and heal them. (Other petitions may be offered.)
All these things we ask in the Name of Jesus who taught us to pray saying, "Our Father ..."
Hymnal & Songbook Abbreviations
UMH: United Methodist Hymnal '82
The Hymnal 1982, The Episcopal Church
LBOW: Lutheran Book of Worship
TPH: The Presbyterian Hymnal
AAHH: African American Heritage Hymnal
TNNBH: The New National Baptist Hymnal
TNCH: The New Century Hymnal CH: Chalice Hymnal
CCB: Cokesbury Chorus Book
PMMCH3: Praise. Maranatha! Music Chorus Book, Expanded 3rd Edition
Children's Sermon
Faith grows
Object: a baby shoe and a large man's shoe
Based on Luke 17:5-10
Good morning, boys and girls. I brought two shoes to look at today. Are these shoes the same size? (let them respond) No, one shoe is very tiny and one shoe is very large. Who do you think would wear the tiny shoe? Could you wear the larger shoe? (let them respond) You might wear it to play dress-up in, but it would be way too big to really fit you. I need a volunteer. (choose a child to volunteer his or her shoes) Are ____________'s shoes bigger or smaller than the baby shoe? (let them respond) They're bigger than the baby shoe. But they look smaller than the big person's shoe. I guess they're right in the middle. How fast do feet grow? (let them respond) They grow very fast. When you are a baby and a very young child, your feet grow very fast. When you start school they grow fast but not quite as fast. As you get old, they keep on growing. Some people's feet are still growing when they are just about out of high school. Some people's feet are even longer than this large shoe. Does your mom or dad ever say, "How could your shoes be too small? I just bought them a few months ago!" (let them respond) You've probably all heard that. Sometimes feet have a growth spurt. That means they grow a lot all at once. Sometimes you wear out your shoes before your feet even have a chance to grow.
Our lesson today is about growing. But it's not about feet growing. It's about our faith growing. Faith is a word we use when we talk about God and what we think about God, how we tell about God and how we feel about God. When you are tiny, you don't even know about God. As you grow, you learn a little bit more about God. First you probably think God is an old man with a beard in a castle in heaven. As your feet grow, so do your ideas about God. You learn that God is everywhere and doesn't have a body. That's a little harder to understand and as you grow older, so do your ideas and feelings about God and who God is and what God does. By the time your feet are as big as this large shoe, your ideas about God are very different. They grow just like your feet grow.
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The Immediate Word, October 3, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
1 (Mitch Albom. Tuesdays with Morrie(New York: Doubleday, 1997,150-151 2 Claus Westermann. Lamentations. Minneapolis: Fortress P, 1994, 115. 3 Samuel Terrien, The Psalms and Their Meaning for Today. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1952, 125. 4 Life Together. New York: Harper & Row, 1954, 45
