Texts: Lam 1:1-6; Lam 3:19-26 (as canticle); 2 Tim 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

This is Thanksgiving weekend, an occasion for many families to gather in celebration. It should be a happy occasion, so you may be forgiven if you are wondering just what the rather grim and challenging readings for today are all about.

The clash comes about because the Church’s calendar of events is not the same as the nation’s. There are lectionary readings provided for Thanksgiving, but we used them last Sunday for harvest thanksgiving, a custom which this parish has generally reserved to the last Sunday in September. (In the USA, Thanksgiving readings are usually used on their Thanksgiving weekend, late in November.) Two weeks ago, we gave thanks for the 125 years of ministry in and through this parish, so we have been away from the regular sequence of readings since September 16.

The Lectionary has a structure which events like the past two weeks can serve to obscure. Since the last Sunday in August, the Hebrew Bible readings have been taken from the book of Jeremiah, the great prophet of the period leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile in Babylon. The lectionary does not include a lesson actually telling of the Babylonians’ victory, but instead provide us today with heard two passages from Lamentations.

Lamentations is a collection of five poems reflecting on the experience of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. Although it is traditionally associated with Jeremiah, it is almost certainly not written by him. Perhaps the most notable expression of grief in the Bible, it is not light reading.

Hearing such an outpouring of grief on this Sunday may be jarring, but it does help us to remember that grief has a way of intruding into life without notice. In church life, we plan ahead for joyful events like baptisms and weddings—but not for funerals.

Hearing this poetry of grief also helps us to remember that thanksgiving ought to arise out of the whole of human life. The attitude of gratitude that should characterize the Christian disciple is not just a facile response to the good things, but for the gift of life itself, and all that life brings with it.

Grief typically involves the recollection of a more joyful past: where there has been little joy, there is often no great grief. We hear the poet of Lamentations recalling the city’s former glory as “daughter Zion,” the favoured, cherished one of God.

She that was a princess among the provinces
       has become a vassal.[i]

The poet says this all happened…

because the Lord has made her suffer
       for the multitude of her transgressions.[ii]

The Book of Jeremiah and the Books of Kings present the exile as God’s punishment of Judah for its unfaithfulness, and Lamentations here follows suit. It is an idea which many people find unhelpful when in personal grief, but it does reflect the “commonly accepted wisdom” of the day that suffering is punishment for sin (also seen in the Book of Job). Suffice it to say at this point that sin may lead to suffering, but not all suffering is the result of sin. There is no simple equation here.

The author of Lamentations is not totally absorbed by grief, but is able to look beyond it. We heard this in the Canticle from Lam 3, as the poet writes:

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
       “therefore I will hope in him.”[iii]

In two verses not included in the Canticle, the poet affirms:

Although (The Lord) causes grief, he will have compassion.
       according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not willingly afflict
       or grieve anyone.[iv]

Hope leads out of grief, to the faith that waits patiently.

The faith that enables us to live life in a spirit of thanksgiving is the same faith that Paul prays might be rekindled in Timothy, leading him from his tears into a life of service to God. It is the same faith that leads the faithful servants not to serve out of desire for praise or any other reward, but to serve their master because his “service is perfect freedom.”

The recent publication of journals of Mother Teresa scandalized some people, because this great servant of God revealed her own struggle, her own sense of God’s absence, her own grief at not always hearing the voice of God. She stands in the same tradition as the writer of Lamentations, wondering why God seems to have deserted his people, and in the tradition of the Spanish spiritual writer St. John of the Cross, who coined the phrase “the dark night of the soul.” But Mother Teresa’s life shows that dark nights can lead to bright days—sometimes for ourselves, and sometimes for the people we seek to serve in God’s name

To serve God is to thank God for all of life—from the depths of despair to the heights of joy.

It is easy to give thanks when all is well, and the bounty visibly pours down on us. It is far less easy to be grateful when life is darker, and we are bereft. But even in the midst of tears, we are called to turn to God in thanks.

For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.[v]

Grief comes unbidden but inevitably into the human life. What we do with our grief is up to us, by the grace of God. We can let it defeat us, or we can turn to God, who turns tears into laughter, mourning into rejoicing, death into life.

On this thanksgiving weekend, let us embrace all of life, giving thanks to the God who gave us life, who stands with us in life’s darkest hours, and leads us ever onward into the light of his love.

Thanks be to God! - and Happy Thanksgiving!