Lamentations 1:1-6 How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter. Her foes have become the masters, her enemies prosper, because the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe. From daughter Zion has departed all her majesty. Her princes have become like stags that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer.
Lamentations 3: 19-26 19 The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. "The Lord is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
For those of you who shop at thrift stores and garage sales, I have a word of warning. I give this word of warning knowing full well that someone in my household is deeply involved with a thrift store. But the truth must be told. Never buy a puzzle from a thrift store. As a child I loved to do puzzles and my mom would supply my addiction with puzzles from thrift stores. Not only did we have the challenge of putting together the puzzle. We did not know the location of the missing pieces.
Today’s first reading comes as a type of puzzle with a missing piece. Last week, we heard the story of Jeremiah buying a piece of land as the city of Jerusalem was surrounded by the Babylonian army. This week, we hear the lament over the captured Jerusalem. In between those two readings came the missing puzzle piece: The capture of the city, the burning of the first temple, the ravaging of the civilian population, and the deportation of the ruling and artisan classes from Jerusalem to Babylon.
The Babylonians ravaged the Middle East with an aggressive policy of conquering small kingdoms and merging them into the Babylonian empire. Bully nations regularly throw their weight around and vulnerable nations suffer. The reading from Lamentations comes as a rare example of public grieving which we seldom witness in our culture. The state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II marked a moment of public mourning. We as a nation experienced a bit of this national loss on September 11, 2001. Little can we imagine the grief of the Jewish people whose nation was annihilated, whose people were killed, raped and taken into exile, whose religion was obliterated and whose future was erased.
The words of lamentation we heard today come from the broken heart of the people who endured this profound loss. We as a parish are moving through a similar time of grief and mourning as we experienced the sudden death of Sue Shubeck. Many of you were shocked last Sunday when I announced that Sue was in hospice care.
Most of you cannot fathom that a woman whom you remember only six months ago as a vibrant and vital person died so quickly from such a devastating disease.
For many of you, her death reminded you of loved ones whom you lost to cancer or an early death. You may have felt grief for someone you deeply loved. Grief has a way of lingering in our hearts and when you imagine that it has run its course grief gushes forth up like an unknown volcano and tears flow as lava from the deep recesses of your heart. You know from intimate experience that grief and mourning linger in the heart. Over time its intensity may decrease but loss can cast a shadow on even a bright day even as a sudden rain shower darkens the sky as clouds ring out their moisture.
From today’s reading, God invites you to give voice to your sorrow, to acknowledge your pain, to ask God to bring some relief.
Grief and sorrow may seem to bring a pain you would have avoided.
But if you wait, if you ask God to visit you in your need, you may discover that mourning can expand your heart to a deeper love, a deeper compassion for others, a more profound understanding of the anguish others feel.
During the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, you may have heard her words: Grief is the price you pay for love. Love is at the heart of our grieving and our healing. Your heart, so pushed by grief beyond its usual borders, can reach out to others in their pain. While you can never understand the unique contours of another person’s suffering, you can open your heart in love and compassion when you see another person in agony.
Our response to the first reading also came from Lamentations. That same cry of desolation from chapter 1 shifts in chapter 3 to an invitation to wait quietly on the Lord. God works in the depths of heart, in places we know not, to reveal to those who wait, a depth of peace, a depth of compassion, a depth of empathy which God creates. You regularly hear a final blessing invoking on you God’s peace which is beyond our understanding. This peace comes from the Risen Christ who entered into the depths of human anguish to change your experience of sorrow into an occasion for transformation. As you receive the Body of the Risen Christ in communion, ask Christ to enter your heart with that healing grace only God can bring. Pray for the grace that transforms your grief into peace. Pray to find that missing puzzle piece to transform your sorrow. Wait on the Spirit to give you that gift.