Lamentations 1:1-6; Psalm 137; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Habakkuk 2:4. That’s the final verse from today’s reading from the prophet Habakkuk, the alternate reading from what we call track 2 of today’s lectionary. We may not have used the reading from Habakkuk, but I think this verse sums up all the readings from today – “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
Let’s begin with the reading from Lamentations, which is a gut-wrenching description of the Holy City of Jerusalem after all her people, her “children”, have been killed or taken away in exile; and others who do not love the Holy City use her and abuse her and violate her holy places.
Lamentations weren’t just sad poems mumbled under your breath. Lamentations were words that were usually sung… LOUDLY… with tear-filled weeping and powerful, grief-filled emotion. A lament was a horrible, pain-filled wail, a guttural, mournful sound common in biblical times but not heard that often in modern times. In this reading it’s the sound of a faith community who has lost their connection with God. For us in today’s world it’s the sound of a newborn calling for the comfort of its mother. It’s the sound of a parent who has lost their child in a horrible accident. It’s the sound of a husband who has lost his wife after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s. A lament is the sound of an ending, of something lost that is so precious and so beloved that things will never be the same again without it. Only the loss of God’s greatest gifts is deserving of a lament. Those who are lamenting are shattered, and in the face of the destruction of God ‘s house and God’s people, they have no songs to sing, much less the Lord’s song in the strange land that they now find themselves living in.
The psalmist continues the Lamentation, the cries of a people abandoned and punished by their God, now trapped in a foreign land unable to be with God. They believed God literally resided on earth in the temple in Jerusalem only, and with Jerusalem gone, so is that special place where God truly dwells with them. Living in a foreign country now that does not even know their God, those in exile in the psalm have no idea how to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. All they feel is anger and rage against those who have conquered them. The only songs they hear are the ones their captives try to mock them into singing. In their pain and anger we hear one of the most disturbing verses of scripture, where those who are captive are so angered and hurt that they pray for the death of their captor’s children by violence. All they can hear is a new song – “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock..”
But lest we lose faith in the face those things for which we lament, the message that St. Paul speaks to his servant Timothy in the 2nd Letter to Timothy seeks to reassure both Timothy in his day – and us in ours – that it is possible to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. It seems clear that St. Paul is trying to build up Timothy’s faith that serving God in Christ’s name is what Timothy is called to do.
Being faithful to the Good News of God in Jesus Christ was a dangerous message in both St. Paul’s and Timothy’s time, and could bring punishment, imprisonment, banishment, and even death. We live in a very different time, a time where proclaiming the Good News more often meets with apathy and outright disregard. St. Paul’s world believed that all things, good and bad, were of God. Our world seems to believe the exact opposite; that nothing is of God, good or bad, and that in a world of random happenings and selfish ambition, our only hope is to take control of everything we can and even sometimes try to take control of things we can’t.
Paul’s message to Timothy, and to us, is that we have been given the gifts we need to preach Good News to the world. And with those gifts we can sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.
To reinforce our faith that God has faith in us, Luke’s Gospel message makes clear our place in relationship with God. As those to which every good thing has been given as a gift, as those which God continues to bless and sustain at every moment, as those who Jesus Christ became human and died to redeem, we are in return to simply have faith. We are to have faith that God is a loving parent. We are to have faith that God in Jesus Christ has redeemed us, and not just us, but also all of creation; God has redeemed ALL of creation. We are to have faith that God loves us and all of creation, not because of what we have done but because of who we are: beloved children of God.
Jesus is trying to teach the disciples that faith is not about quantity, faith is about quality. In chapter 16 Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man who neither asked for forgiveness for his sins during his life nor even after. In the earlier verses of chapter 17 that we didn’t read today, Jesus tells his disciples that when someone sins against us or against God and then repents, we too must forgive, no matter how many times the cycle repeats.
When confronted by such “difficult lessons” about unlimited forgiveness for the repentant, the disciples panic and they command Jesus to “Increase our faith!”
Jesus responds to their command in two ways. First, Jesus tells them how powerful faith is, so powerful in fact, that with even just a pinch of faith as small as a mustard seed, they could command a mulberry tree to jump into the sea. But faith is not an end in itself, and faith is not about ordering trees around. Faith is not about supernatural feats like commanding trees to jump into the ocean or commanding your body to cure your cancer. Faith is not about the power to order anything around, faith is about the strength to take orders from the master, from God. Faith is not about having a supernatural power to make things happen, faith is about trusting enough in God to let things happen. Faith is not about what you can get others to do, faith is about what you will do to obey God’s will. Faith is not about control; faith is about surrender. The ultimate act of Faith is Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane telling the Father, “but not what I want; your will be done.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that faith is not about asking for things in prayer. Jesus himself told his disciples, “Ask in prayer for whatever you need, and God will provide.” But faith is not about commanding God in prayer to act. Faith is about asking, and faith is also about trusting in God even when God’s answer is not what you want to hear.
The second thing Jesus is teaching the disciples is to remind them of their proper place in their relationship with God. They are not the master; they are not God. WE are not the master; WE are not God. WE don’t have the burden to make creation work, that’s God’s job. We have the freedom to simply do the work in creation that God has given us to do.
The Good News today is that those Judeans whose lives became strangers in a strange land learned how to find God even living in far away Babylon. In time God taught them to bide their time and to stop hating those who had exiled them. In time God taught them to dream of and to have faith in a time when they would return to Zion. In time God taught them how to sing His song in a strange land.
The Good News today is that, when it comes to faith, size doesn’t matter. It was not the size of Jesus’ faith that saved us, it was the depth of his obedience that saved us.
The Good News today is that God has given us every good gift we need to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, whether that strange land is in China or the Middle East, or in our own back yard. Faith is the music God has given us to sing; all we have to do is sing God’s song in this or any land.