Free Access

Lamentations 1:1-6
We’ve come to expect long lines at parks like Disneyland, Universal Studios Orlando, Coney Island and Disney World. It's hard to imagine that the fun could ever end. For some of America's amusement parks, the fun did end. Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in Princeton, WV is one of those happy places that has since closed. The park had a history of violence and death before it became a destination for amusement. Built on the site of the Clay family massacre, in which Native Americans kidnapped and killed members of a settling family, the amusement park opened in 1926. After the death of two children on the park grounds, it closed in 1966, leaving behind many of its wood and steel rides.

Today you can go to the site of the Lake Shawnee Park and find the rusting Ferris wheel and children's swing that stands unkempt. The grounds have changed hands over the years, but the park's land remains abandoned. It is a lonely skeleton of what was once a fun place.

We get the sense of that in this passage from Lamentations. There can be no doubt that this is a dirge or funeral song, sung by one who has lost her children (verse 5) and her husband. She has become “like a widow” (verse 1). Writing after the catastrophe of Jerusalem’s defeat, Jeremiah thought of the contrast between happy, prosperous Jerusalem and the lonely, empty, conquered city after the Babylonian conquest. Once she was full of people, now she is empty. Once she was great among the nations, now she is like a slave.

From happy to sad; bustling to barren; thriving to lifeless; it’s sad for an amusement park and worse for a nation.
Bill T.

* * *

Lamentations 1:1-6
Life is not good in America today. A 2018 Gallup Poll found that a record low minority of Americans (only 47% of us) are extremely proud to be American. A poll taken just a year earlier by the American Psychological Association found that 59% of us think that this is the lowest point in American history that they can remember. The US ranked only 19th, well behind Finland and Norway, in the 2019 UN World Happiness Report. A recent book by psychologist Jean Twenge, iGen, pp.78-79 reported that the generation born in the 1990s is more connected (online), but also less happy and lonely than previous generations. Commentators on our lesson have tried to help us in the despair this lesson seems to imply. Martin Luther’s advice urges that we not give in to our feelings of despair:

To this I reply: I have often said that feeling and faith are two different things. It is the nature of faith not to feel, to lay aside reason and close the eyes, to submit absolutely to the Word and follow it in life and death. Feeling, however, does not extend beyond that which may be apprehended by reason and the senses, which may be heard, seen, felt, and known but the outward senses. For this cause feeling is opposed to faith and faith is opposed to feeling. (Complete Sermons, Vol.1/2, p.244)

John Calvin offered this word of comfort:

Now all this depends upon the providence of God; for unless we are persuaded that the world is governed by Him in righteousness and truth, our minds will soon stagger, and at length fail us. (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol.V/1, p.16)

In the midst of all that is wrong in America, God is still ultimately in control.
Mark E.

* * *

Lamentations 1:1-6
The passage from Lamentations could easily be voiced by some of our mainline churches. How lonely we are as this small number occupies our sanctuary on Sunday morning? I remember how it was when the pews were full and the Sunday school classes were overcrowded. We weep because it seems our friends and neighbors have abandoned us. Our communities do not engage with us. We are lonely and alone. What will become of us?

This is a lament I hear often. In the lament is pain and grief and fear that the church we love will pass away. Yet, I don’t think God is done with us. There is still more for us, as church, to do and be in the world. There is still hunger and thirst, both for physical food and drink and for the nurture of God’s love and the living water of Christ’s presence. There are still the sick and imprisoned to visit, the oppressed to set free. It may be that church will be different in the next years, but there is much for the church to do. Lament if you must, but move into the hope that there is more for us to be and do in the world.
Bonnie B.

* * *

Lamentations 1:1-6
Why would anyone be subject to all this agony? We are left In the dark.

I talked with a retired military man who told me about a time when he suffered. It was dark and no one came to help him.

I hope that not too many of us have had that experience. I know I wondered why I was in the dark a few times when I opened my eyes and I was in the recovery ward of our local hospital. Finally a nurse came in and gave me some light. I had a fall and was knocked out. The doctor helped me recover enough so I knew what had happened. I still suffered a while before recovery, but at least I was not longer in the dark.

I knew a man who told me that his wife was divorcing him. He still loved her and was not sure why she wanted out. He was still in the dark. I had to invite his wife to join us and turn on a little light. She told me how he made her suffer. He did not think he had treated her badly and could not remember when he was supposed to have done it. She said that it was only when he came home after too many drinks at the tavern. The suffering ended when his drinking ended.
Bob O.

* * *

2 Timothy 1:1-14
With the conversion of Constantine, a new hairstyle was introduced for both women and men. Women, who used to wear their hair in very precise side waves, now adopted the “helmet” structure. Wigs and hairpieces were also encouraged. These styles were often carefully adorned in pearls. Men, who previously wore long hair with well-trimmed bears, were now clean shaven with short hair. Sometimes the hair of the man was curled with an iron. Men of status and philosophers began to wear long hair with long beards as a sign of status. Popes maintained their current style of short hair, with or without a short beard.
Ron L.

* * *

2 Timothy 1:1-14
It’s common practice, if a little foolhardy, for some Christians to quote a single verse out of its larger context as an inflexible rule, ignoring whatever else one might find in scripture, or our knowledge of how the early church functioned.

The apostle Paul has been used as an authority to demonstrate that women may not be be clergy, and especially may not teach men. This runs in the face of other evidence found within the letters or life of Paul. One thinks of Priscilla (always mentioned first, before her husband, whenever Paul calls to mind that couple) who is an active partner in ministry with Paul and teaches the basics of the faith to Apollos. And in this passage I’m drawn to Paul’s statement to his protege Timothy: I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.

So now I’ll quote from my book about the Pastoral Letters, titled “The Household of God”: “…despite what Paul seems to say elsewhere, women did teach men. This is consistent with what some suggest would have been the case in house churches, where typically women managed day-to-day affairs.”

And it’s not just me. In that book I had occasion to quote a couple of real scholars who have a lot to say on the subject.

“That’s why it may be worth noting that the most significant office may be that of mom and grandma! Paul commends the work of Timothy’s mother and grandmother, Lois and Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5). In A Woman’s Place; House Churches in Earliest Christianity, Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald emphasize that “the Pastoral Epistles offer specific evidence of women being involved in the Christian socialization of children.”

Those authors make it clear that this influence continued even after the children grew older and attained adulthood. Sociologically it’s known that women ran the household, which included the raising and teaching of children. The relationship between mother and son seems to have been both formative and lasting. (p22-23)
Frank R.

* * *

Luke 17:5-10
A.W. Tozer once said, “God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.”

One of the most powerful movies of the spring of 2019 is the movie “Breakthrough.” It is the amazing, true story of John Smith and his fall through the ice of Lake St. Louis in January of 2015. It’s a story of faith and believing the impossible.

When Joyce Smith’s adopted son John falls through an icy Lake St. Louis, all hope seems lost. But as John lies lifeless, Joyce refuses to give up. Her steadfast belief inspires those around her to continue to pray for John’s recovery, even in the face of every case history and scientific prediction.

The movie is emotive and challenging. It’s also an incredible testimony to faith. Jesus speaks of faith in our text today and how faith as small as a mustard seed can see great things done. It isn’t like the genie in Aladdin’s bottle, though. It doesn’t mean we always get what we want, but it does mean if we have faith, God can do more than we imagine within the parameters of his will. Will we believe and trust?
Bill T.

* * *

Luke 17:5-10
It’s not the size of your faith that matters, Jesus seems to say (v.6). Martin Luther spoke of faith as “the wedding ring with which we have pledged ourselves to Christ.” (What Luther Says, p.497) A wedding ring does not the marriage make. A couple exchanging modest wedding rings is just as likely to have their marriage last 50 plus years as a one swapping ostentatious rings. It does not matter how strong your faith is; it can be as small as a mustard seed, Jesus says. Luther put it this way:

A person may carry a hundred gulden wrapped in paper, or he may transport them in paper, or he may transport them in an iron chest; yet the treasure is entirely the same. Though you or I have a stronger or weaker faith in Christ, Christ is, after all, the same and we have everything in him, whether we have grasped it with a strong or with a weak faith. (What Luther Says, p.488)

This is why Christ does not praise his servants for what they did for him (vv.9-10).
Mark E.  

* * *

Luke 17:5-10
Slave language in scripture always jars me. Jesus speaks in his time and place, in his culture and the people were not servants, in most cases, they were owned and were therefore slaves. Jesus uses the language and situation of the times to remind us that we often like to be rewarded for those things we are expected as His followers to do. It’s as if we said, “See I have loved my neighbor, I have offered the gift of service, I have prayed. Aren’t I wonderful” Jesus is reminding us of the expectations of following him. We are expected to love God and our neighbor. We are expected to be in conversation and discernment with God about the direction and living of our lives in faith. This is the command and the expectation. The rewards are great – peace, hope, love, grace, an eternal future, but the “look at me” response to our faithfulness is unnecessary, and maybe even counterproductive.
Bonnie B.