How?

Lamentations 1:1-8

November 3, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

My friends, this morning we stand at the edge of a potentially momentous week. No one I know can accurately predict what our lives, what our country will be like a week from now, but everyone seems to agree that this week’s election is significant. And a lot of people, on both sides of the proverbial aisle, are predicting potential unrest, maybe even violence, no matter who wins. Now, again, I don’t think anyone knows what might happen this week, but the thing that keeps echoing in my heart and mind is a single question: how? How did we get here? How did our nation, which prides itself on peaceful transfers of power, end up in this place? How?

That’s the same question that people were asking in ancient Jerusalem, at a critical time in their history. How could this happen? How did we end up in this place? This morning we are beginning a new series centered around that time and those events, a series rooted in the book of Lamentations. I’m calling it “Cry for the City,” because that’s really what the author is doing: crying over what has happened to the city of Jerusalem. The book’s title is only Lamentations in English; in the original Hebrew, the title is “How?” which is the first word of the first chapter. The question starts it off; there is no “lightly easing into the subject matter here.” From the beginning, the author expresses shock over what has happened to his beloved Jerusalem (cf. Vroegop, Dark Clouds Deep Mercy, pg. 94).

Israel as a nation united under a king didn’t last very long. David brought the kingdom finally all together; those were good years for the nation. David was followed by his son Solomon, and after Solomon died, the nation split in two. In the north was Israel and in the south was Judah. Both of them rebelled against God and chose other gods to worship from time to time, but Israel’s spiritual decline was faster and so Israel was conquered by the nation of Assyria in 722 BC and destroyed. Those ten tribes were never heard from again. Judah, on the other hand, thought they were safe. After all, they had the Temple and the holy city of Jerusalem. They were the chosen people. Surely nothing bad could happen to them, right? Wrong. A new nation, Babylon (basically modern-day Iraq) came against Jerusalem and for three years attacked the city. Eventually, they were able to break down the walls, destroy the city and burn down the Temple. Everything the people had relied on for their safety and security was gone in 586 BC. Everything of value, including the so-called important people, was taken to Babylon and everything else, including the once-glorious Temple, was left in smoldering ruins (Vroegop 92-93).

And so a poet sits down to write, to lament. In our English Bibles, the book comes right after the book of Jeremiah, and so traditionally people have assumed Jeremiah is the author. There’s nothing in the book that says he is, and in the Hebrew Bible, this book is actually located next to Esther because it’s one of five books read at various festivals: Song of Songs, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Esther and Lamentations. This book is read in July or August during the remembrance of the Temple’s destruction, and that’s appropriate since the book not only mourns the loss of the Temple but also confesses sin and begs God for mercy (cf. Goldingay, Lamentations & Ezekiel for Everyone, pg. 3; Guest, Communicator’s Commentary: Jeremiah, Lamentations, pg. 357).

And so the poet begins with “How?” You can hear pain in his voice from the very beginning. “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people.” Is he thinking of friends who are gone, either deported or maybe dead? Is he mourning the loss of the noises that he had become so accustomed to as people bustled about the city taking care of their daily business? What would our city be like if suddenly all the people were gone? How deserted, how quiet. “How like a widow is she,” he goes on, “who once was great along the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave” (1:1). What a powerful, striking image! In the poet’s mind, Jerusalem has gone from being a queen—on top of the world, in charge and powerful—to being a slave—under someone else’s control and powerless. How deserted. How destroyed. How could this have happened?

We might wonder the same thing in our own day and in our own lives. How could this have happened? How have we, as a people, even as Christ’s body the Church, become so divided? Now if you go to social media, you will get all sorts of answers to that question and all sorts of names of people to blame. But the reality is we’ve all made choices that have led to this point. How did we get here? Whether consciously or not, we chose to be here. The question, maybe especially this week, will be what choices we make next. Will future generations look back on 2024 and ask, “How?” How deserted lies the culture…barren of morality, barren of healthy relationships, barren of direction. How? How could this have happened?

And then there are other times we ask that question of our own lives. The relationship ended and I’m left alone, deserted. The divorce papers have arrived just when I least expected them to. How could this have happened? The church I’ve known and loved all of my life has changed, and there are some things I don’t agree with. And there are some people who have come into the church that I don’t like. And don’t get me started on the music! Or the preaching! How could this have happened? My child has walked away from the faith that I have always held so dear. It’s not like my child is following a destructive lifestyle or openly rebelling; it just cuts me like a knife when they say things like, “Well, that God stuff is fine for you, but it doesn’t work for me.” How could this have happened?

One of the news feeds I follow is called “Church Leaders.” It features a mix of stories about different ministries, ways the church interacts with the culture and various news items. But I’ve noticed that rarely does a day go by anymore without a story about church abuse of some kind. This church leader was arrested for sexual abuse, this one for taking money from the church or from parishioners, and still other stories about abuse of power among church leaders. I read the stories and I can understand why some people have given up on the church; it’s heartbreaking and it’s often sickening. But that is the world we live in. One of the biggest reasons people have left the faith today is because they’ve been hurt by or even abused by the church. How could this have happened? How have people who pledged themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ ended up like this? How?

In the setting of Lamentations, the answer is pretty clear. Historians might discuss and debate many different reasons for Jerusalem’s destruction. There was the political and military rise of Babylon, their domination over the ancient near east of the time, and their determination that led them to spend three years attacking Jerusalem. Three years! You might also look at the strength or lack thereof in Judah’s military, the weakness of the kings of the time or any number of other political matters. But the author of Lamentations, and all the rest of the authors of the Bible for that matter, has a different idea. It was not geopolitical issues that brought Jerusalem down. The author of Lamentations puts it this way in verse 5: “The Lord has brought her grief because of her many sins” (1:5). Undoubtedly then as now there were “spin doctors,” people who try to make a bad thing sound good, or to give an excuse for what has happened. Tell the people what they want to hear but whatever you do, don’t tell them the truth! I’m trying to imagine what a Judean spin doctor might have actually said, but whatever it was, the author of Lamentations isn’t having it. Jerusalem was destroyed because of her sin, because she failed to follow God’s way, because she fell short of God’s expectations, because she missed the mark. That’s the Biblical understanding of sin: missing the mark. It’s a concept from archery, that you shoot the arrow but miss the target. However, Lamentations seems to indicate that God’s people here didn’t just miss the target. They weren’t even aiming at it! And this didn’t just happen once, no. They were destroyed because of their “many sins.” It wasn’t just that they offended God once and he gave up on them. He gave them literally centuries and it just got worse and worse. Finally, because of Jerusalem’s “many sins,” God allowed Babylon to destroy the city. How did this happen? You did it to yourself, Jerusalem. That’s what this first chapter of Lamentations says (cf. Goldingay 11).

Which is a sobering message if you bring it forward to today and into our own situations. How did these things happen to us? In many cases, the poet would give us the same answer that he gave to those people so long ago: it was because of your sin. Now, let me be quick to say that not everything is a direct result of sin. The illness you got might be a result of poor choices but it might also be due to no fault of your own. You might have messed up your marriage but you might also have done everything you could to save it. Sometimes bad things happen because they happen. Sometimes they happen to you because of other people’s sin. Sometimes struggle comes because the world is broken and fallen. But many of the situations we find ourselves in today are because we, like the people of ancient Judah, have turned away from God. Why are churches and church leaders finding themselves in situations of power struggles and horrific sexual abuse? Because of our many sins. We have failed to follow your way, O God. Why have we found ourselves in a broken, selfish and divided society? Because of sin. One author puts it this way: “Every death, every war, every injustice, every loss, every hurt, and every tear owe their existence to sin. It has affected everything. Lamentations reminds us that underlying our lives is a foundational brokenness connected to the presence of sin in the world” (Vroegop 101). To paraphrase Lamentations: “The Lord has brought [us] grief because of [our] many sins” (1:5).

Just like then, we want to spin things and blame others, or blame God, or find any excuse other than our own sin. We do it in all sorts of ways. I will never forget being at a church potluck dinner when our kids were little, chatting with some friends, when through the door came my son and his best friend. They had been outside playing on the playground and they were both running to their parents, visibly upset. Christopher got to us first, though, which meant he got to tell the story of what happened first. Here’s what he blurted out: “Nick hit me back!” I tried not to laugh, but I wanted to tell him, “Son, you’ve got to work on your storytelling.” Were they both at fault? Sure, but Christopher was experiencing the results of his own sin, just as we often do. It wasn’t the Lord, it was Nick, but still Christopher received grief from his sin, from hitting Nick in the first place. No amount of spin could change the truth—just the same as it is in our lives. Like the people of old, we have forgotten that God is righteous, he is the creator, and he has a way that he expects us to live. When we veer off of that path, we end up in a mess. How? Listen to verse 8: “Jerusalem has sinned greatly and so has become unclean.”

Now let me take a brief detour here because if you read much of the Old Testament, you will encounter over and over again this idea of being clean and unclean. In the Gospels, the Pharisees and the other religious leaders are always very concerned that Jesus doesn't seem to care about categories of clean and unclean. Or at least he doesn’t care enough in their estimation. He does care about it, they’re wrong, but the point is that early on in Israel’s history there were clear categories of what you could and should do and eat and what you shouldn’t. As scholars have compared modern ideas about cleanliness, health and sanitation to these ancient commands, they have found more often than not that what God told the Hebrews to do was in the interest of their health. These were not just arbitrary rules. It really was what was best for them. Now, the religious leaders of Jesus’ time (really after the destruction of Jerusalem) had turned these things into legalisms, but originally the goal of these ideas was to keep the people safe and healthy (cf. Kalas, The Gospel According to Leviticus, pgs. 129-144). I think the concern of the poet here, though, is twofold. One, the people had sinned and had become spiritually “unclean,” unable to be in God’s presence. And two, the city had proven unable to follow the laws God had laid out for their good. All sounds pretty hopeless at this point. 

However, there is yet hope. Even in this first chapter of Lamentations we are assured of that. Even when we have sinned, we can still turn back to the one who can save us. We can still pray for mercy (cf. Goldingay 11). If you read on through the chapter—which you will get a chance to if you follow the daily Scripture readings this week—you’ll come to this image in verse 17: “Zion [which is another name for Jerusalem] stretches out her hands…” It’s a picture of a plea for mercy, of asking for help, like a child will approach a parent wanting to be held, to be picked up, to be assured that everything is going to be okay. But then comes another heartbreaking image: “Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her…” (1:17). Is God refusing to help his people? I guess I’ve always assumed that was the case when I read this before, that God was so upset with Jerusalem that he refused to comfort them. But having been a parent, and now a grandparent, I can’t imagine any loving parent who would do that, who would have a child coming to them looking for comfort and refuse to help. So then I wonder who it is they are stretching out their hands to; the text doesn’t say directly. Are they asking God for help or are they asking one of the many other gods they have chosen to worship? We don’t know. Chances are they are asking the wrong god because we do know that during the generation following the destruction of Jerusalem, the one true God will give the command to Isaiah the prophet to “Comfort, comfort my people…speak tenderly to Jerusalem…” (Isaiah 40:1-2). Comfort may be missing right now but it will not be that way forever (cf. Goldingay 11). God wants to comfort his wayward children.

There may be times when it seems we have no one to comfort us, when it feels as if we are alone in the dark of the night and no one is coming to rescue us, no one is going to comfort us. And sometimes that is the literal night and sometimes it’s a spiritual condition that St. John of the Cross called the “dark night of the soul.” He believed that such an experience was something everyone goes through from time to time and it’s marked by confusion, helplessness and a sense that God has somehow withdrawn his presence from our lives. But the important part—for us and for those ancient inhabitants of Jerusalem—is to stay in the conversation. Even when it seems God is absent or late in showing up, remember that his timetable is never ours. Stay in conversation, knowing comfort may seem far away, but it will not be that way forever.

The call of this first chapter of Lamentations is to come back to God, to reorient our lives around his life and his righteousness, to respond once again to the love he pours out on us. That was the call of Jesus; that was why he came—to respond to the laments of the world and call us back to God. His very first sermon in the Gospel of Matthew tells us that: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). He proceeded to preach and teach and show the way to live in the kingdom of heaven, which was what God wanted for the people all along. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Give to the needy. Store up treasures in heaven and not on earth. He came to make the sinners righteous, to help the deserted be comforted. Jesus came as an answer to all the laments of the world, those spoken and those yet unprayed.

And then, as he prepared to show the world what love really looks like, he gathered his closest friends (the ones he loved) in an upper room and gave them a meal, a practice by which to find the comfort they needed. This bread, he said, was his body. The wine was his blood. Not literally, of course, but they would serve as pointers, reminders of what he was going to do on the cross the next day. And so still today, as we gather around his table, we find comfort and the very presence of Jesus. I may have told this story here before, but when I was a new pastor, “Associate Pastor B” was my title, I was sent out to take communion during Advent to a few of our shut-ins. One of the first places I visited was a local nursing home, and I managed to navigate the halls, find the right room, and tell the dear saint in the bed there who I was and why I was there. She had dementia and I sort of figured I was wasting my time but I sat down by her bed and started into the liturgy anyway. About halfway through, I glanced up and saw that she was repeating the words right along with me. She knew every single word—not just of the Lord’s Prayer but of the whole liturgy. She may not have known what day it was, but the liturgy of communion was rooted deep down in her soul and that day it comforted her. She gladly received the bread and the cup and smiled all the way through it. And while I loved communion before because of the symbolism and the meaning, that day I gained a new appreciation for communion as a practice that brings peace to the soul. It did for that woman, and I pray that it does for all of us who lament here today. So will you join me as we prepare our hearts for the comfort of holy communion? Let’s pray.