Lectionary Readings: Lamentations 1:1-6, 3:19-26; Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
[Photograph: prayers in the Western Wall]
This week’s readings are populated by believers who have experienced or witnessed deep, unexpected agony—agonies ranging from loss to the threat of faithlessness, from exile to persecution. What is significant throughout them is that, despite afflictions, our believers remain believers, despite conditions which most of us cannot realistically imagine. The question that emerges as we move through the readings is colored, perhaps, by incredulity: how do they manage this? How, even, can they be expected to?
Our Hebrew Bible readings present us with prophets who are trying to grapple with Jerusalem’s destruction at the hands of the Babylonians, a considerable blow to any faithful Judean convinced that the city, and temple, of God could never fall. What are they to do, feel and believe when calamities can befall even the place which houses the presence of YHWH? And our New Testament figures, though dealing with more personal upheavals, must confront the same kinds questions: faced with doubts, what assurances can they draw either from the present Jesus (in the case of the apostles) or the memory of Him (in the case of Paul) to ever “increase their faith” (Luke 17:1)? Even with God before us, it seems, faith is not always easy to come by. And yet in each of these passages, we find that faith is worth maintaining. It is something to work toward ever diligently, never seeking the rewards of utter and total assurance—it is a relationship between God and His people.
Lamentations is the clearest expression of grief in this week’s readings. Composed sometime after the fall of Jerusalem, it is presumably the account of a witness to Judah’s destruction, one who mourns, with the rest of the nation, for the lost holy city: “Bitterly [Jerusalem] weeps at night, tears upon her cheeks, with no one to console her,” (Lamentations 1:2), for Jerusalem’s people have been driven into exile. The despair the witness feels is almost palpable, as he takes careful account of treasures lost: Judean religion cannot be practiced in Judah, enemies to it rest easily within the city, and exiled Judeans find no peace (Lamentations 1:3-5).
As is typical of exile era wisdom literature, the witness assumes the brunt of the guilt for the unimaginable loss of the city: “the LORD has punished her for her many sins,” he suggests. And yet with all of this considered—the grief of the loss, and the tremendous contrition for it—the lamenter makes an interesting move: rather than abandoning faith in the relationship between God and His people, he recalls that, at its healthiest, that relationship meant that God would always redeem, and he takes heart.
Though being forced to remember Jerusalem in exile is “wormwood and gall,” the lamenter finds reason to hope: “the favors of the LORD are not exhausted, his mercies are not spent” (Lamentations 3:21-22). In fact, he calls these coming mercies acts of faithfulness on God’s part, perhaps faith that the Judeans can remain true to the covenant and seek return; in any case, it is clear that, despite great hardships, confidence in the relationship remains. And for what reason? What causes this witness to hope? Little more than the memory of the city of its best, highly traveled by pilgrims and awash in God’s love; the mere recollection of that is enough to make him “put his mouth to the dust,” as a kiss, for despite ashes, despite all destruction, “there may yet be hope” (Lamentations 3:29).
We find this hope solidified by the time of Habakkuk, a prophet very likely able to remember the destruction himself, who had been living in an extended state of misery with the exiled Judeans, who heard them cry out to the Lord with no seeming response—the wicked seemed to grow wickeder, and injustice seemed to multiply, despite the faith of the people (Habakkuk 1:2-3). The oracle he delivers, the only cause for hope, is that God does hear, and enjoins them to wait, and believe: “the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late” (Habakkuk 2:3). If one refrain, one heart of a philosophy, can be drawn out of these works, penned during periods of tremendous hardship for God’s people, it seems to be: wait. God doesn’t afflict us with more than we’re equipped to handle. Relief comes. Wait.
If these exiled prophets and believers can do it, so should the apostles be able to, particularly considering that they’re direct witnesses to God embodied—he stands before them, incarnate, and still they implore Him for reasons to believe.
Imagine the frustration of Jesus, petitioned for more and yet more by his followers, always demanding clearer sight; it seems to us, the removed readers and recipients of these gospels, that they have greater cause than any to take heart and be steadfast. Yet they insist of Jesus, “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). We’ve already heard, in our readings, of followers of the Lord who, their worlds collapsed around them, no end to persecution and exile in sight, manage to maintain, and even increase, their own faith; what are we to do with these complacent disciples who seem to bumble, incomprehensibly, before the Lord?
It is perhaps not wise to be too hard on them; throughout the gospels, the disciples frequently misunderstand Jesus, but they are the ones who carry His message forth after His death, and who are left to grapple with the tremendous implications of the incarnation and crucifixion. They do their best, and the metaphor of the mustard seed may not imply, after all, that they didn’t have enough faith; maybe it signifies that they didn’t have enough confidence in the power of that faith. Certainly, they aptly move “mountains”, both theological and political, in the years following Jesus’s crucifixion, and we must therefore assume that the worries which they present to Jesus in Luke are somewhat unfounded.
They’ve been witness to the life of God, embodied, and yet have no confidence that they’ll be able to properly remember what they’ve seen, or felt, or known in His presence. Similar to worries in budding relationships when two people are faced with sudden extended periods apart: perhaps they fear they won’t be strong enough to remain true to Christ and His mission—will what seems so real to them now seem as real, and as true, when Christ isn’t there to reassure them? Are they in danger of faltering, and returning to their pre-Christian existences? Can’t Jesus do something to ensure, or to reassure them, that no such departures could occur? But Jesus promises them no relief; He will not tell them that they already believe "enough".
The parable Jesus delivers seems to suggest that the work of a believer is never done, regardless of how spiritually substantial and ultimately meaningful one day, or another, in the life of a Christian seems to be. The relationship between a believer and God is an intimate one, and therefore no one can ever rest easily in it, or take undue respite from the work of it; it must be cultivated, fed both by gratitude for, and confidence in, the gift of God’s love, and by a constant awareness of what life would be like if the relationship broke down.
God commands a steadfast heart; the disciples, though they’re sure they’ve given this, cannot expect for the relationship to become suddenly easy, for is a master “grateful to [a] servant because he did what was commanded?” (Luke 17:9) No; rather, work for the servant is as faith for the Christian follower: absolutely imperative and never promised as easy.
It is a form of love that cannot be rested in or taken for granted, and once given, must be re-given, just as God constantly regenerates love for His people: both God and disciple say, at the end of the day, “we have done what we are obliged to do.”
And, lest this be thought a rather demanding imperative for a loving God to make, we learn in Timothy that, just as God never afflicts us with more than we are equipped to bear, God never makes demands of us which we are not uniquely suited to fulfill. For “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control,” which makes even seemingly minute helpings of pure faith sufficient, so that we need never ask for “more”—a seed of faith will sustain, despite odds which seem too incredible. Indeed, Paul assures us, the perfect grace which God displays in making us precisely so that we can always persist in faith is implicit in creation: “He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began” (2 Timothy 1:9).
And so we are reminded this week that in our darkest moments, we can rely on faith, even if the burdens pressing down on us seem too unimaginable to bear. We are meted out just enough faith to endure any strain. And when times are less tempestuous, and faith seems too accessible to be substantial, we must work in the knowledge that it has already sustained us, and must “exercise” faith to keep it strong. The reward of such devotional work is not the return of God’s love, which is always assured, but the awareness of it: a love that demands, and sustains; that persists, and towards which we must persist. That love is the temple that will never fall, even if the earthly image of it must, at times, undergo some reconstruction.
