Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

The Book of Lamentations comes from a very dark time in the history of God’s people. This was when God finally punished His people for all their wickedness, for all those generations who bowed down to idols and went chasing after other gods. He sent an army from another country to defeat their forces, destroy the city of Jerusalem, including the temple, and carry off survivors into exile. It is an ancient funeral song, a song that mourns the profound loss these people experienced.

What did it mean for these people that their temple was leveled to the ground? It was much more than a severe economic loss, even considering all the tons of gold that King Solomon had used as though it were wallpaper in this massive building, not to mention the gold and bronze altar and lampstands. It cost the people more than their pride, more than their ethnic identity. This was the Temple: God’s set aside place to be with His people. Through the temple and its sacrifices, the Israelites received God’s forgiveness for their sins, and through the temple, God heard their prayers. But not anymore—this connection with God seems to be all gone, and His people are lamenting. The words of Psalm 90 could have come to mind as the foreign army ransacked the place, words like “We have been consumed by Your anger, O Lord, and by Your wrath we are terrified.” They felt consumed, eaten up, by God’s dreadful punishment.

Yet Jeremiah, the writer of this funeral song, changes his tone. Today’s reading from Lamentations follows a section where the author seems to hit rock bottom in utter despair. At such a dire moment, when nothing seems to make sense, when questions are left unanswered, when you feel consumed by the problems of this life, that’s the moment when you see God’s promises come through. When you place your hope in Him alone, you see that His mercies are new every morning, and though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion.

For God’s great love for you is not located in any specific building anymore like the temple. It is located instead in a person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God sent from heaven to be our Savior. Only His sacrifice on the cross can pay for your sin and the sin of the whole world. All the blood of lambs, goats and bulls that was offered at the temple building was a mere shadow of the true blood of sacrifice, the blood that flowed from God’s own wounds as He was nailed to that cross. Only one drop of that precious blood is all that is needed to take your sins away and restore you to life with God. But Jesus has poured out that blood generously upon you ever since you were baptized.

You see, God the Father had every right to punish you, just like He punished the Israelites. He took away their temple and had the invading Gentiles carry them off into exile. You have sinned against your Lord, too—but it is even deeper than the bad stuff you do. You are a sinner, corrupted with this disease ever since you were conceived in your mother’s womb. It is your human nature to think of yourself first, to set up barriers against other people, especially members of your own family, and whatever peace you want, well, that has to be on your terms or it’s no peace at all. You, like your ancestors Adam and Eve before you, are not normally content simply receiving God’s love.

And this is also why you and I tend to see bad things in our lives and setbacks as God’s punishment. You may have questioned to yourself, what have I done wrong to deserve all of this? Why doesn’t my family get along together? Why is life so difficult for me, and not for some other people? In short, you feel consumed, eaten up by the reality of life. Have you been in a similar position to the synagogue leader Jairus, the one who came to Jesus pleading for the life of his daughter? He was frantic, fighting through the crowd that had assembled at the lakeshore, he didn’t care if Jesus was going to be troubled or not—he wanted his twelve-year-old to see the age of thirteen. That’s what mattered to him.

Or think of the sick woman who came up to Jesus as He was walking through the crowd to Jairus’ house. Twelve years of constant blood discharge, and all the suffering and doctors she endured-that would be a health care plan none of us would like! Not to mention that her feminine issues banned her from God’s house, due to ceremonial uncleanness. It would be very easy for her to think that the merciful Lord had excused her forever from His mercy!

Then the horrible news reached Jairus—your daughter is dead. And this was the part that hurt the most—why trouble the Teacher any further! First of all, Jesus never told Jairus that He was troubled. Someone else labeled Jesus incorrectly. That was the unbeliever, whoever it was. That was the person who didn’t take Jesus seriously, that all His miracles were just games or psychological tricks. His Word didn’t seem to that person to be powerful at all. It is hideous to think that you and I have treated our Lord this way, but in our fears, anxieties and outright sins, we too have told others, don’t bother with Jesus. He’s not going to help you. I’m not sure I want to help you. I doubt I can do anything to help myself! This is too much like carrying a cross. I don’t like it.

And that’s because you try to rely on yourself and your strength and your ideas of what God does. I do too. When your efforts fall flat, then you get that terrible feeling that even God Himself can’t get you out of this one. Sure, you may certainly try to make it work on your own for a while, but in the end you realize that there is nothing you can do to avoid a life under the cross.

But the cross is where it all makes sense. On the cross you see your Savior Jesus and what He has done to rescue you from this world, and even from your sinful self. Through Christ and Him crucified, you find out the good news that Lamentations has it right after all: “Because of the Lord’s tender mercies, we are not consumed, His compassions fail not.” This saying is not just some trite motto that you can recite over and over again and you’ll start feeling better. You can truly say in any trial or trouble that you are not consumed because the Son of God was punished.

He was consumed by Divine anger and punishment in your place, for your sins. The life under the cross is your joy instead of your burden—and not merely because you’ve had a simple “attitude adjustment.” Your sinful “Old Adam,” as it’s often called, is killed, drowned in the water of your baptism. You, as a new Man (and I mean Man with a capital M, meaning Christ Himself who is permeated within you) you as a new Man rise each day from that watery grave to live a new life in righteousness and holiness before God. He sees not your rotten, sinful self but He sees His own Son Jesus standing there whenever He looks upon you.

When the woman was healed of her bleeding problem, Jesus stopped and looked for her. He didn’t want to embarrass her or even make an example. He wanted to encourage her growing faith so that it would remain centered on Him. That’s why you need to keep coming to Jesus for your healing, and bring others in real life as well as in your prayers for them, so that our Great Physician can heal them, too, in body and in soul. When Jairus was devastated with the news of his daughter’s death and the despairing words, why trouble the Teacher?—Jesus comforted him with, “Do not fear—only believe.” This illness would not consume the little girl. It would consume Jesus instead on the day when He was nailed to the cross.

Your God, the Blessed Holy Trinity, desires to dwell within you as His Holy Temple. Again, no building is going to do; your Lord wishes to be closer to you than that. And so He who spared you from being consumed, He who offered up the sacrificial temple of His body on the cross now invites you to consume Him. Eat up your Jesus with your ears in the Gospel word that you hear this day. Come with joy to this holy table (whenever you have the blessed opportunity) to eat His body and drink His blood in one confession of the true faith with one another. For by the Lord’s tender mercies, you are not consumed. And yet as you consume Him, you have the strength and faith from Him to face any earthly trial and cross. You can then trust in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of your frail body and the life everlasting as your gift that can never be taken away.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Psalm 90:3-12 we have been consumed by your anger v.7

Lam. 3:22–33 They are new every morning; Great is your faithfulness
Ps. 30 Your brought my soul up from the grave.
2 Cor. 8:1–9, 13–15 the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia
Mark 5:21–43 Jairus’ daughter; woman with the flow of blood