First, lament, then. . . sing a new song
12th Sunday of Pentecost October 12, 2025
The texts for this sermon are Psalm 137:1-4; Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; 2 Timothy 8-12
Jeremiah is wearing a yoke of wood around his neck to demonstrate his kinship with his people: the Hebrews forced into exile to Babylon. For they feel has though a heavy yoke bears down on their neck. King Nebuchadnezzar has prevailed over God’s Chosen and taken them away from their promised land and has, as we learned last week, razed their temple and decimated their holy city Jerusalem.
Though he has taken up a yoke as well, when he writes to them he does not commiserate with them. He does not join their woeful song. Instead, he tells them to make peace with their situation. Even as he tells them that they are going to endure a long exile he tells them to settle in, to start making a real life for themselves. Plant trees of all things, implying they will see them grow to maturity. Get married, have children and, plan to enjoy your grandchildren.
In other words, he’s encouraging them to look beyond their lament, to move forward. Accept your circumstances, he tells them. Trust God, he tells them. Do not resist your circumstances or the people of Babylon. Do not resent them. Rather, accept your circumstances, see not only to your own welfare, but seek and work on behalf of the welfare of you enemy, the Babylonians. Pray for their welfare, he tells them.
What these words of instruction tell the exiles is that lament has its limits. It is a gift with an expiration date. Of all the 24 Psalms of Lament only two do not resolve into praise, 38 and 88 but even these recognize and affirm God’s salvation.
So, my friends, even as last Sunday, we acknowledged the place for lament and voiced our lament for the losses we grieve, we are invited to give that grief and loss to God, we are invited to ask God to help us make peace with that grief and move forward toward a future that yields welfare, for ourselves and others.
And while last Sunday I spoke of communal lament and the path the exiles as a people were to choose, today I think we should recognize the reality of personal lament. While the Book of Psalms contains communal laments wherein the people writ large bemoan their circumstances (such as Psalm 137). There are also psalms wherein the individual psalmist raises a personal lament. So it is with us, yes?
I think it bears considering the ways that communal lament and personal lament intersect. There is a two-way street running between communal and personal lament. Covenant communities hurt when the individuals within them hurt. The issues that give rise to our personal laments do affect our faith community. It is also the case that individuals who have moved from lament to praise can help invigorate their grieving community. Do you see how this can be so? Think about it. We can get addicted to commiseration, you know. We share our sorrows; our church friends commiserate. We speak of the same sorrows, they commiserate again…and around and around we and they go.
The degree to which one is beleaguered by their personal circumstances is the degree to which their church community will be affected. The degree to which one continually carries the burden of their sorrows and difficulties is the degree to which those difficulties continue to sap their energy and exhaust them. The fatigue caused by this unending burden reduces their ability to engage positively with their church.
Those of us burdened by the weight of unyielded sorrow and worry can break this yoke. We can pray for God to help us release the burden of sorrow and worry we feel because of painful difficulties. We can pray that God will help us know what is ours to do and what is not; pray that God will renew our energy and enliven our creativity and our trust. And as we pray for God to do God’s part, we need to do our part: Do as Jeremiah advises: undertake those engagements that feed our wellbeing: things that feel like a blooming garden to us, spend time with people who don’t commiserate with us so much as cause laughter to break out on our face and in our spirit.
Last week we listened to the refrain of Nobody Knows the Trouble I See. The African American Civil Rights leader and theologian Howard Thurman (1899–1981) spoke of the juxtaposition of sorrow and joy this way: [He said]
These songs were rightfully called “Sorrow Songs.” They were born in tears and suffering greater than any formula of expression. And yet the authentic note of triumph in God rings out trumpet-tongued:
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen;
Glory, hallelujah!
There is something bold, audacious, unconquerable here [he said]:
[ https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/history-of-hymns-nobody-knows-the-trouble- i-see Oct 20, 2022 ]
So friends, let us claim the truth that triumph can arise from lament. There is “triumph in God,” triumph for us, triumph for our congregation, ready to be claimed. I do so pray that we individually, and we as a congregation can claim this so that we together can sing this bold, audacious, Glory, hallelujah!
Linda Quanstrom, Pastor
Cornelius UMC
Cornelius OR