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St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
October 5, 2025
Year C, Proper 22: The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Lamentations 1:1-6
Psalm 137
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10
Lamentation and Faith
Recently, someone told me that he had just finished reading the entire Bible, from cover to cover.
Have any of you ever done that?
It’s a pretty impressive achievement, right?
It’s an impressive achievement, first of all, because the Bible is a very long book.
And it’s also an impressive achievement because the Bible really isn’t even a book – it’s a library - it’s a collection of different books – all of them inspired by God, written over a long stretch of time, written by lots of different people in many different historical moments.
And, no surprise, the books of the Bible include lots of different genres:
Just for starters, there’s history and law and prophecy and poetry.
And, of course, the Bible includes a wide range of human experiences and emotions.
There are parts of the Bible that are amazingly beautiful, inspiring, encouraging, and uplifting.
There are parts of the Bible that are downright puzzling, parts that leave us scratching our heads wondering, “How did that get into the Bible?”
And there are parts of the Bible that express what we might call our more shadowy emotions and experiences: fear, grief, rage, and even the desire for revenge.
We don’t often hear those parts of the Bible here on Sundays, but we did hear them today, didn’t we?
Our first reading from the Book of Lamentations begins with a heartbreakingly beautiful line:
“How lonely sits the city that was once full of people!”
And the Psalms alone include the range of human emotions and experiences. Sure there is much praise of God but turn to almost any page and you’re likely to hear the Psalmist crying out to God, pleading something like:
Hey, where are you?!?
Why are you letting this terrible stuff happen to us?
Come down here and fix this!
And then there’s the last verses of Psalm 137 that we read today. Some would argue that we shouldn’t ever say these words out loud in church – we shouldn’t sing this ugly song of revenge, salivating at the idea of Babylon’s children getting dashed against the rock.
Maybe so, but we’ve probably all wished bad things to happen to people we consider not very good.
Like all Jews of his time, Jesus knew and prayed the psalms, so it’s no surprise that as he hung on the cross in agony, Jesus cries out to the Father by quoting Psalm 22:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Hard for us to hear, but very real.
Now, obviously, if lament, fear, grief and the desire for revenge were the end of the story, there would not be much point in us getting together here every Sunday.
But that’s not the end of the story.
I’m told that my predecessor Bill Baxter used to say that “we are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world.”
And that is exactly right.
There are plenty of troubles all around us, there is much to lament, but suffering, fear, hate, despair, and death do not get the last word.
From the cross, Jesus quoted the opening of Psalm 22, but listen to the hopeful conclusion to Psalm 22:
“My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him; they shall be known as the Lord’s for ever. They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.”
Easter people in a Good Friday world.
Lamentation, yes, but also faith.
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus says something familiar but also very important about faith – that we just need a little bit – just a mustard seed of faith – to do amazing things.
And when Jesus speaks about “faith” I don’t think he’s talking so much about agreeing with certain propositions – I don’t think he has in mind something like nodding along to the Nicene Creed which we will stand and say in a few minutes.
No, I think Jesus means faith as a movement of the heart, faith as trust.
If we have even just a little bit of trust – just a mustard seed of trust – we can do amazing things, with God’s help.
And, even better, when we gather together all our little mustard seeds of faith, as we do here all the time, well, then truly extraordinary things are possible.
Just look through the pages of our St. Thomas’ “magazine.”
As most of you know, yesterday we had our second annual Jubilee Reception.
Sue and I – and my parents – were delighted to welcome to the Rectory so many parishioners who have been part of St. Thomas’ story for fifty years or more – in some cases, way more years than fifty.
It said on our sheet cake – yes, of course there was cake – it said on our sheet cake: “Faithfulness and Dedication.”
And, as I looked around the house at all of those wonderful people, I thought about the hundreds of years of faithfulness and dedication represented in the rectory dining room and living room and out on the porch.
Yes, everyone there has suffered and lamented at different times of their lives, and yet, with maybe just a mustard seed of faith, they – you – just kept going, teaching Sunday School, singing in the choir, reading lessons and prayers, providing beautiful flowers for the altar and shining all that brass.
With maybe just a mustard seed-sized amount of trust, they – you – just kept going, serving on the vestry, caring for our buildings and grounds, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, and searching for a new rector or two or three.
With maybe just a mustard seed of faith, they – you – have just kept going.
Easter people in a Good Friday world.
Faithfulness and dedication.
Yes, we can and should lament the many troubles of our lives, our land, and our world, but we can also hold on to that little mustard seed of faith – nurturing and growing that little gift of trust by gathering together here with everybody else with their seeds, and together, together, doing what we ought to do, doing truly amazing things.
Yes, together, we lament.
But also, with God’s help, together, we remain faithful.
Amen.
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