How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!

The book of Lamentations is a collection of sad songs, five of them, representing the five great tragedies in the life of Israel during the era of the Prophets.

Imagine five great songs written about the burning of the White House in the War of 1812, the bombing of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor to begin the Civil War, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of the Kennedys and Rev. King and the fall of the towers of Manhattan. This was what this book meant to the people, sorrows expressed and sorrows shared, grief to wallow in and very little hope for anything different in the foreseeable future.

As Elton John sang: “Sad songs say so much”. Or, if you want a song to capture the Lamentations of our nation and our own Lamentations of life, Joni Mitchell is helpful in describing the root of much of our sorrow:
     Don't it always seem to go
     That you don't know what you've got
     Till it's gone

We have all known that at one point or another, haven’t we?

We take a job, a promotion, a prestigious step forward in our careers only to discover that the satisfaction we once knew at work is now missing, the larger paychecks are not worth the crippling pressures and, alone in the shower, we cry.

Or we take a friend for granted, knowing that we will get together after things calm down, after the kids are older, after the nest is empty, after retirement and then we get a phone call and we go to a funeral and at the side of a grave, we cry.

Or . . . well, I don’t have to tell you, do I? We could fill this 15 minutes of time – and some hours afterwards –with the regrets that I know that I have, and as I look around the room there are more than a few of you who could match me, story for story, tear for tear, with the sad truth of Joni’s Lamentation:
     Don't it always seem to go
     That you don't know what you've got
     Till it's gone

And Lamentation is important, and often overlooked, when we talk about faith development. There is a value, a maturity, which comes to us when we just sit and mourn, cry and feel lousy, together.

You see, it is in our sorrow that faith takes root, for it is in our deepest sorrow that we realize that the only hope we have is that God will be with us.

Here is reality: people we love will die on us, or betray us, or just grow bored with us, but God will never abandon us. That which Christ discovered on the cross, we can experience every day: we are not abandoned, even when we feel like we are, as long as we cling to our God.

How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!

But, having said that, we can’t stay in our Lamentations!

For the faith that only knows sorrow is an embryonic faith, just a shadow of the full faith that God has created you for.

Think back to when you were in 2nd or 3rd grade and you’re really just starting to step out in life on your own. You are in Scouts or 4H or Little League and you have an identity, I think that’s about the age when you really have a personality and an ability to define yourself and the choices that you are making. It’s about then that you start to think that you’re something special. Now imagine trying to do the job that you do, handle the responsibilities that are yours today and make the choices that you are confronted by, as that 8 or 9 year old version of you who thought you were so grown up!

It could get ugly! Because the decisions that you might have made as an 8 or 9 year old or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 year old would not be the right decisions for you today. We might have learned, as Robert Fulgrum pointed out in his book, everything we needed to know in Kindergarten, but how to use what we know only comes with age.

Yet that’s what people are trying to do when they limit themselves to sorrow, trying to make decisions from a single emotional perspective!

Sorrow is a sacred emotion, but it is not a destination emotion!

Sorrow must always lead to service.

And service to God is our purpose for living.

That’s what Jesus was saying in that parable.

Do your job.

Serve God.

You see, looking out for number one and self-promoting is inherently non-Christian, and before you say to me “you need to look out for yourself, because no else will” let me say that the heart of the Christian faith is that God will look out for you.

As parents, as children, as friends, as citizens, as workers, as children of God there are things for us to do: love our neighbors, protect the weak, defend the oppressed, feed the hungry, house the homeless, the list goes on and on and when we do that, we are simply doing what we are created to do.

Don’t be looking for praise and thanks and love, just let your faith grow into service. No, instead of looking for praise and thanks and love, go back to Joni Mitchell’s words and figure out where you should be giving praise and thanks and love, while you can:
     Don't it always seem to go
     That you don't know what you've got
     Till it's gone

Look around you and see – as if you are seeing it for the first time – the people that you have. Thank them, appreciate them, tell them that you love them now, and that will allow you to know what you’ve got while you’ve got it.

You won’t get them all, there will always be those people who slip away from us and we never get to tell them, but that shouldn’t stop us from the ones whom we can love.

There was a song of faith back in the Dark Ages of the early 1970’s, that captured this so well:
     Love them now. Don’t wait till they’re gone away. 
     Love them now, while they’re around.
     Touch them, hold them, laugh and cry with them.
     Show them, tell them, don’t deny with them. 
     Honor them, give birth and die with them now. 
     Love them now before they’re just a guilty mem’ry. 
     Love them now.  Love them now.

The days of Lamentation will come, soon and often enough, in life, cherish the people and the life that are yours today.

How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!

And that is part of what this table is about.

This is a place where all the people who were once in the city of our lives are united with us again, where our souls are nourished by the food of sorrow, betrayal and death, so that we can live lives of joy, loyalty and life.

A place where we grow from sorrow, to service, to a realization of our sufficiency.

The apostles asked Jesus for an increase in faith and he said “you already have all that you need, believe it.”

Boy do we need to hear that!

We don’t have to ask for more faith, we only have to believe that we have been given all of the faith we need.

We don’t have to go looking for a reward for the things we do for God and his Church, we have already received that reward in the relationship that we have with God, so the things that we do are our response to that gift, our response to the love that God has poured out upon us. We serve, not because we want to earn favors and affection, but in response to the favors and affection we already have received.

You see, the gift of faith is unlimited, except by us.

We keep setting boundaries and God keeps stretching them to include new areas of his love.

Today in our worship we invite our children to be with us in our celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

For many years our tradition, both locally and denominationally, was that children did not take part in the Sacrament until their Confirmation.

But then, 30 some years ago, we began to question that as a denomination and as a congregation.

And the questioning began with Baptism itself, when we recognize that a child, or an adult, is a member of the covenant community living in a special relationship with God. People listened, and took me seriously, when I held babies up and said “Behold, the newest member of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

And so for the last 4 or 5 years, on this Sunday, those parents who believe that their children are spiritually mature enough to comprehend the sacredness of this meal are invited to include their children with them in the sacrament, and all of the children will see the act of holiness as our bodies and our souls are fed.

What we have found has been what we have always found when we have stretched ourselves and whenever sorrow has stretched us: we have found the love of God already there, waiting for us, surrounding us, surprising us and strengthening us as our sorrows fade, our service increases and our faith expands.

And the city of our hearts has been repopulated and we have known the things we’ve got before they are gone.

How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!