First, Lament, then. . .
17th Sunday of Pentecost October 5, 2025
The texts for this sermon are Lamentations 1:1-6; Psalm 37:5, 8; Matthew 5:4, 6
I owe you all an apology. When I started with you I felt it important to try to encourage you. To speak of the times when our scriptures described situations that appeared doomed. At a dead end, only to discover that something new and alive was in the offing. I wanted to encourage you to claim this truth: to take hold of the knowledge that God is faithful to turn dry bones into full-fleshed living beings, faithful to bless a barren couple with a son, faithful to raise the dead to life.
And that was fine in some ways. But I got the cart before the horse, I think. I should have invited you to walk into or visit another truth; to speak of the loss you have experienced as a community. So I wonder if we could take a few minutes for you to speak of what you miss that was present here at a time past. For those of you who were not here when there was a full-time pastor for instance, what did you expect in coming here?
Let’s reflect on our Lamentations text and as we do so, I encourage you to invite the Holy Spirit into your reflection
How lonely sits the city
that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the cities
has become a vassal.
She weeps bitterly in the night,
tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has none to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they have become her enemies.
Allow yourself to feel the pain in this. The sorrow, the anguish. Do we not cry with her?
It is important to speak of these losses, to name this pain. And it is often the case that loss such as this gives rise to anger and even despair. And anger and despair are okay. It is okay to speak the truth about how we feel about what we’ve lost, about the grief we feel. It’s okay to wail before God over it. Verse 9 of this chapter says O Lord, look at my affliction. There is in this a desperate, perhaps even angry appeal to God.
When loss such as this that you have experienced is not named. If there’s no permission to talk about it, to tell how it feels, the grief goes underground. It finds other ways to express itself and, usually, those ways aren’t healthy ways; they don’t lead to a resolution, such ways do not help us come terms with our pain.
The truth of the matter is that lament is meant to lead to healing. There’s a healthy dynamic to lament—to airing our grief and grievances, and there’s an unhealthy dynamic to it. As a much younger person, when I was upset about something or angry with someone I would itemize out loud how I felt and how awful the situation or person was. I’d get myself into a proper lather about it. I realized that going on and on about my pain just led me to more pain. I realized this was not helpful and I had to stop. I had to find a better way to move beyond my pain.
I came to realize (through God’s help) that when I’d described my pain, named my grief, exhausted and yielded up my anger, I had mental and emotional space to reflect, and this reflection led to insight, to comprehending in a more open-eyed and open-hearted way what led to the trouble and how to move beyond it.
It is the case, that a community like yours that has suffered so much loss can move to healing, to a more open-eyed and open-hearted understanding of how you got here and where you are now. And, sometimes, there is a recognition of one’s on part in it all. As I learned to name and then to yield up my lamenting to God, God, through the Holy Spirit entered the conversation and often, gently, helped me recognize something I needed to address.
Now, in our poet’s case, he acknowledges that God’s people had sinned and he believed this desolation was a judgment on them given all the waywardness Jeremiah named in them and their refusal to repent. So this psalmist’s lament led him to confess this sin in verse 18 where he says The Lord is in the right, for I have rebelled against God’s word.
Now I’m not saying your loss is a judgment from God. No. But it can be the case that when the survivors who are left behind raise their lament and acknowledge the depth of their pain, they put themselves in a position for healing. Lament opens the way for conversation: a conversation with one another and a conversation with God.
C.S. Lewis wrote,
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in
our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. [The problem of Pain, p93]
And something that was true for the poet of Lamentations is also true for us. Even if God did allow judgment to befall on Jerusalem and Judah, God grieved as did they. And God grieves with you.
When we appeal to God about our pain, we might be asking God to strike down our enemy but even in that, we are asking God for consolation, are we not? “Address my pain O God.” What we need to remember is that we’re not appealing to God as if God were a police officer, but we’re appealing to a God who suffers with us, grieves with us. God consoles. And God is ready to console you. God consoles because God is in relationship with you. That consoling relationship opens a conversation. A conversation that does not dismiss your pain, nor does it gloss over the realities that surround it, but instead, begins to illuminate a remedy.
We need to remember that God does not offer an explanation for why things are the way they are. Job teaches us that. And as United Methodist District Superintendent of North Carolina, H. Gray Southern puts it, “Ours is not the God of the quick fix.” [Feasting on the Word, Yr C Vol 4, p127]
This is certainly true. Nevertheless, ours is a God who always moves us to a better place when we’re willing to be moved.
Nobody Knows the Trouble I See [a recording]
Did you wonder at the proclamation that concludes the refrain of this African-American spiritual, likely composed by a slave? Why does he or she conclude this song of lament with a great proclamation of praise, “Glory halleluiah!”? Does it not indicate the deep spiritual wisdom that lament can lead, should lead, to praise: a benediction of praise arising from pain.
I pray it can be so for you. Next Sunday we’ll see how Jeremiah might help us.
Linda Quanstrom, Pastor
Cornelius UMC
Cornelius OR