We continue our work of connecting Biblical texts from thousands of years ago with our time and place, a central function of preaching in a Christian church. The short book of Lamentations in the Old Testament is a collection of laments, hence the name Lamentations, expressing sorrow over the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E by the Babylonians. The book begins with these words: "How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks."
There are Psalms that reflect the same kind of grief. "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hung our harps on the willow trees." This morning's reading from Lamentations began like this: "The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me."
Any pastor with years of service has spent time with families or individuals who have expressed similar thoughts, although not in those particular terms. For most people, at some point in life there comes an experience of loss or calamity when words cannot express the depth of grief they are feeling I think of the Negro spiritual "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen."
The book of Lamentations reminds us that the people who wrote the Bible were not different from us. They were not exempt from the tragedies you and I experience, or read about in newspapers, or see on television. Their central message was not that if you do the right things, believe the right things, and say the right words, everything will work out nicely for you. The world of the Bible is a very real world. People cry out to God in their grief: "Where are you, God? Why have you forsaken me?" as the Psalmist put it.
The reading from Lamentations quotes someone as saying, "My soul is bowed down within me." What about you this morning? Do you connect with that part of the Lamentations reading? Are you in a difficult place?
The reading goes on, and there is a change. The author says, "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God's mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning." Then, addressing God directly, the author, who has identified himself as a man, writes, "Great is your faithfulness." Or in the words of the hymn we sang two weeks ago, "Great is thy faithfulness." "The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will hope in God." That's quite a statement of faith, especially when we understand that the word faith means trust. What we have in our reading from Lamentations is a person in deep grief who, nevertheless, professes trust in God.
The author of our second reading, Saint Paul or someone writing in his name, also tells of the suffering he is enduring. He is a prisoner because of his loyalty to Christ. But he asks the young recipient of the letter not to be ashamed of the writer's status as a prisoner. He says he himself is not ashamed of being in prison, not ashamed of the suffering he bears. Why? He echoes Lamentations. "I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure he/she is able to guard what I have entrusted to him/her until that day." A profound affirmation of faith defined as trust, trust in a Higher Power, trust in God.
How do you understand trust? Trust functions at several levels. Wednesday I leave for a short conference on Presbyterian Church government, and the meeting is in Mobile, Alabama. To get there and back I will be on four different airplanes. I trust the engineers who designed the planes and the workers who produced them. I trust the pilots who fly them and the air control system that guides them. Everyone of us takes actions all the time that are based on trust. Usually our trust is validated. Sometimes it is not. Human beings and human enterprises are not perfect. In general, we go with the odds.
But the author of Lamentations and the author of II Timothy aren't talking about that kind of trust. They are dealing with ultimate trust. I remember looking up the word ultimate many years ago, and something in me shifted. The word means elemental, fundamental, foundational. I started thinking about what it means to trust ultimately.
About that time I read about a Frenchman whose professional name was Charles Blondin. He was a circus performer, and his specialty was tightrope-walking. In the mid-eighteen hundreds, he and other performers gained fame and some income from walking on a wire stretched across the gorge below Niagra Falls. Each performer added his or her own twist to the feat. On one occasion, well documented in records at the Niagra Falls Library, Blondin completed a two-way crossing—over and back. Still up on the small platform at the end of the wire, he saw his manager, Harry Colcord, standing below. He called down to his manager, "Do you believe I can cross over and back again?" What could the man say? Suspecting what was coming, he managed a weak "Yes."
Blondin said, "Then come on up here and ride across on my shoulders." The manager climbed the ladder to the platform, got on Blondin's shoulders, and the two of them went over the gorge and back.
I think of that true story whenever I explore the meaning of trust. For me, trusting ultimately means placing all my hopes, all that I love, all that I value, somewhere solid, somewhere sure. Some people place their ultimate trust in themselves or in another human being. Other people never think about ultimate trust. The writer of II Timothy says he trusts ultimately in God, because he knows the one in whom he places his trust, his hopes for everything.
I have shared with you more than once my conviction that Christian churches can grow in vitality as their members risk sharing their faith journeys with one another and with people outside the church—not in manipulative or coercive ways, but rather for the purpose of explaining who we are and why we do what we do. So far this morning you have heard from two people about their personal faith. The first one, the author of Lamentations, told his story, and wrote that he said to God, "Great is your faithfulness." "I will put my hope in God."
The second, the author of II Timothy, wrote that he placed his trust in God, because his experience of God was personal and profound. In prison, he wrote that he was sure God was able to fulfill his hopes and vindicate his trust.
I will add my faith statement to those two. My faith journey has been strongly influenced by Jesus of Nazareth, the one who spoke of God in terms of love and showed that love by accepting people the religious establishment scorned and rejected. As he was dying, Jesus quoted a Psalm of lament: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But he went on to say to God, whom he knew as Father, Mother, "Into your hands I commit my spirit, my life."
It happens that today, October 7, 2007, is the eighth anniversary of my daughter Jennifer's death. Throughout her life, Jenny's mother and I entrusted our daughter to God. We did that at the time of her death as well. We came to understand our powerlessness over other people's lives, even people we love very much. We learned to turn things over to God, to trust, especially in the big things, like health and sickness, death and destiny.
That trust is the foundation of who I am. Because of it I can, and I do, experience life in all its fullness, life in all its goodness, today, tomorrow, and beyond the final sunset.
Thanks be to God.