Call to Mind
Sunday, October 7th, 2007
Nineteenth after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Lamentations 3:19-26
Theme: Remember God’s Faithfulness

19The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! 20My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. 21But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; 23they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” 25The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. 26It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Did you wonder if the floor was going to be there this morning when you got out of bed and put your foot down?

Did you wonder if the sun was going to be in the sky when you looked outside?

Did you consider for a moment the possibility that there might not be any air when you opened your mouth and yawned after starting to wake up?

When you came in and sat down this morning, did you pause to think of the possibility that the pew would collapse under you when you sat down?

The thing is, there are things we so take for granted that we don’t even think about them. Things that are so much a part of our background, of our environment, of our regular surroundings, that the thought doesn’t even register that they could be NOT THERE in the next moment.

I remember once when I was about 13 or 14, a fairly good-sized tremor hit Santiago, I think it was probably a 5.5 temblor on the Richter scale. Not enough to do a lot of damage, but enough to definitely rattle some windows and shake some furniture. I THINK we were sitting at the dining room table when it hit. There was an initial rumbling, something that could have been a low flying plane or a big truck going down our street, but then a second wave of sound came, and things started to rattle, not just on the table, but the HOUSE. Before I knew it I was out of my chair and halfway to the front door. To this day, I still feel ashamed that I wasn’t thinking about helping the other members of my family to get to either the doorway between the dining and living rooms or beyond that to the front door. I was ONLY thinking about MAKING IT there myself.

The lasting impression that I came away with from that experience, as well as other occasional brushes with plate tectonics along the Pacific Rim’s ‘circle of fire’, was the fact that things don’t always remain as solid as they seem.

And yet, it didn’t take long to go back into the ‘normal’ mindset and mostly forget that the whole house was shaking to the point of creating a few minor cracks along some of the walls and ceilings. Though I never lived close enough to one for it to be an issue, I think the same process takes place with folks who live near a volcano that erupts and then quiets for a time.

After all, you don’t expect the ground you walk on, the walls that are so solid, the mountain that your house is built on, to suddenly shift under your feet. It just doesn’t seem possible.

The writer of Lamentations, traditionally held to be Jeremiah, though there is some question about that, is confronted with a similar – in HIS mind – impossibility. Jerusalem, the holy city, David’s city, has been ransacked and destroyed. The temple has been desecrated and destroyed, and tens of thousands of his fellow Israelites have been deported hundreds of miles away.

The Babylonians first attacked and laid siege to Jerusalem in 597 BC, but didn’t finally invade, capture and destroy the majority of the city (though not all of it) until ten years later. Still, the totality of the event was as much a blow to the psyche of the Israelites as any physical attack might have been.

As we studied in Habakkuk a few weeks ago on Wednesday nights, the attack from Babylon and the subsequent deportation of the Israelites was not exactly a surprise TO the people of Israel. All the signs were there for many months if not years before the actual events took place.

And just like Habakkuk did, the writer of Lamentations came to the same place in dealing with the reality he was facing. That in spite of the trauma and the unimaginable nature of the disaster he was staring in the face, a sense of God’s unfailing presence – and more – broke through.

One commentator, Robert B. Laurin, puts it this way:

“The author is really saying: I thought all hope was gone, but my problem was that I had a very narrow view of God; but my problem was that I had a very narrow view of God; I thought only of the judgment of God and of my sin; I forgot about the mercy of God and his forgiveness.” (The
Broadman Bible Commentary, Vol. VI, pg 216-217)

And what is it that is discovered in the process of going through that trauma? What is the nature of the mercy and forgiveness of God?

The Hebrew term that we read as “steadfast love” is hard to translate into a single word. It implies a combination of ideas; it is made up of love, faithfulness, kindness, loyalty, and strength. It is the basic idea that is used to describe the covenant relationship that exists between God and God’s people.

But it is, even at that, a one-sided description of the relationship. It is, simply put, a description of GOD’S side of the relationship—GOD’S feelings, GOD’S emotions, and GOD’S care for the relationship. NOT ours.

So we have this incredible example of God’s faithfulness – Jeremiah’s, or whoever’s – recognition that in spite of the fact that Jerusalem has been destroyed, and in some sense, justifiably so, in light of the fact that the people of Israel had so lost sight of who they were, or who they were SUPPOSED TO BE, that it was going to take an invasion and a period of exile to bring them back around to remembering who they were – THROUGH ALL THAT God remained faithful.

And it is that faithfulness that we … rely on, that we sing about, that we breath in without evening thinking, that we even take for granted when we don’t think about it … it’s that faithfulness that we work to emulate, that we strive to copy, that we seek to live out in our life as a community of faith.

And it is that faithfulness that we recognize and affirm in the life of those who seek to serve the family of faith.

Janice Collins has been presented and approved as a deacon, the Greek word is best translated as “a servant.” The original deacons at the church in Jerusalem were charged with caring for the widows of the church and with waiting tables. It is essentially no different a task here. Deacons serve as ministers to the community at large. They are servants of the church. Those qualities have been identified in Janice, and today we are recognizing and affirming her position, of leadership, yes, but of leadership by example.

Because we are all called to serve each other, when it boils right down to it. We are all tasked with the responsibility of being Christ’s presence not only to the community around us, but more immediately, more noticeably, more literally, to each other. Because it is in the way we conduct the relationships we have inside the church that we learn how to carry on the relationships we have OUTSIDE the church.

(Ordination)

(Solo) (Hannah)

(Communion)

(prayer)