October 5, 2025
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
World Communion Sunday

"A Time to Weep"

Lamentations 1:1-6 and 3:19-26

“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 subject to forced labor.” (Lamentations 1:1)

Thus begins one of the saddest poems in the Bible. For two and a half chapters, the poet does nothing but weep all over the page. It’s heartbreaking, and human … but what’s it doing in the Bible?

Like last week’s reading, context is everything. This is not generic grief over generalized suffering; this is specific, pointed, historical.

Like last week’s reading, it comes from the catastrophe of the Babylonian invasion. In last week’s reading, the hordes were at the gates to the Holy City, and it was dreadfully clear to everyone sheltering behind those gates that the end was only days away. By the time this week’s lamentation was penned, the invaders had won the war; the leaders of the defense were either captured or dead; the glorious Temple, home of God on Earth, was nothing but rubble; and everything that Israelites had trusted in – even the love and strength of their God to stand with them at all costs – was in ruin.

Last week’s reading was a theological response – intellectual and rational – arguing for a hope that persists when human strength fails. This week’s reading is more visceral than that; more emotional; more gut-wrenching. There is no attempt to persuade or urge; there is simply unrequited grief at all that has happened: all that their faithlessness caused; all that they’ve lost; all that has been destroyed, never to be revived. Grief is terrible, and the poetry drips with tears.

Isn’t it human, simply to weep at a loss this big? To obsess over the details? To rehearse the specifics? To blame, and to wallow in self-recrimination? This poem arises from a specific historical context, but it resonates with me on a deep level. This is how I begin, every time I come to grips with disaster. Whether the disaster I’m grieving affects everyone (like the pandemic did), or whether it’s just about me, I can’t move on till I’ve plumbed the depths of these emotions.

If the poem only did this, though, I’m not sure I’d ever want to read it (even if it were still in the Bible!) Grief is human, but unremitting grief is hard to bear. It’s hard to listen to, even second-hand. Even centuries removed from the devastation.

No, after two and a half chapters of bleeding all over the page, the poet does an about face. The words are just as irrational; just as emotional. This is not an argument to persuade or a defense against the injustice of the calamity. Rather it is a statement of faith as soaring as the grief is deep: “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; God’s mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Do you recognize the strains of one of our favourite hymns in that quote? Did you know that the hymn was based on words that grew out of devastation?

Is this honest, or cheap? Is this trustworthy, or just papering over the cracks with simple-minded piety? How, and in what way, could God be called faithful, after all that has happened? How, and in what way, could anyone who’s been through something so “final” find cause to rely on Divine faithfulness? If this is honest, and not just cheap grace, is it transferable to other disasters? Could we too find ways to be both honest in grief and trusting in hope?

Join us on Sunday as we continue to explore grief, disaster, calamity and despair … and the path to new hope that never negates the reality and yet somehow moves us beyond it.