Lamentations 3:19-26

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Luke 17:5-10

 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?  Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’?  Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?  So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’

Faith over Fear

Our readings this morning have to do with faith. What is faith? I think we could say that faith is the belief that everything is going to be ok in the future and that everything is ok right now.

Now, you may be saying, “Preacher, what are you talking about? How can you say that? What do you mean “Everything is going to be ok in the future, and everything is ok right now.” Do you live in a bubble? Don’t you watch the news? Don’t you know what is going on in the world?’

Yes, I agree. The world is a mess. But I am not talking about finding peace in the world, the world of power and politics, ego and status. Because in that world, we find only sorrow and suffering. Rather, I’m talking about finding peace in God. In John 14, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

St. Augustine of Hippo expressed this in his Confessions when he wrote, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

Faith is the belief and the attitude that everything is going to be ok, and, in fact, that it is ok right now. Faith brings us into God’s peace. This is not an escape from the world. It is a platform from which we can effectively engage the world. Faith that everything is ultimately ok allows us to work to help others and not become overwhelmed.

Here, I am reminded of the 14^th century Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich. Her book, called Revelations of Divine Love is the earliest known work in English written by a woman. Julian struggled with a question that we, too, often struggle with. That is, why do bad things happen? Why does God not prevent sin and calamities? Why does God not stop bad things from happening. In one of her visions, Julian receives an answer in which she finally finds comfort.

Of this comfort, Julian writes, “But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ These words were said most tenderly, she writes, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any who shall be saved.”[1]

Faith is an attitude toward life. It’s the attitude Julian describes. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” In our reading from Lamentations, we find another example of this faith. The book of Lamentations is a collection of five poems, called “Laments.” A lament is a grief poem. These five laments mourn the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. Remember this past summer, we talked a great deal about the fall of Jerusalem and what a catastrophe it was. The five laments, these poems expressing tremendous grief, are read each year, on Tish B’av, a solemn day of mourning in Judaism which commemorates that horrible event, the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. And yet, remarkably, along with the words expressing tremendous grief, we also read words of great hope.

The speaker first remembers his affliction. “The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall. My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning: great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.”

Here we see that the key to faith is a change in attitude. The speaker is lost in the bitterness of wormwood and gall. And yet, he says, “This I call to mind…” He changes his thoughts. He takes on a new mindset. And in this, he finds hope restored.

This is actually quite remarkable. It’s a lesson for all of us who tend to worry– and who doesn’t worry? Of course, we all worry– And yet, here we read in the book of Lamentations a great example of faith, and the way that the faith mind operates. A person of faith can say, “His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.”

What is going on here? How can we possibly say this today? How can we possibly enter into this way of thinking, with all the dreadful news? The key, I think, is to access a new view of things, to change gears, so to speak. We must shift gears into God’s eternal sense of time. When we step into God’s timelessness, when we step into God’s ultimate Oneness, when we see that we are expressions of that Oneness, the Oneness of the Universe, our vision can shift into a greater sense of Being, into the ultimate and infinite, endless and eternal, that which never ends but always Is.

This is an experience that is difficult to describe. Julian of Norwich described it as the experience that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” This is the mind of faith.

It is this experience of the faith mind that the disciples want, too. They say to Jesus, in Luke 17, “Increase our faith!” We want this thing you are talking about! Give it to us! We want this faith! Increase our faith! And Jesus answers with this parable about the slaves.

Basically, I think what he is saying in the parable is that faith is not so easy. We have to work at it. Faith is not going to land in our laps like a nicely wrapped birthday present. The slave doesn’t come in from working in the field and get to sit down at the table. There is more work to be done. And so it is with faith. It’s not handed to us on a silver platter. Sometimes we find it. Sometimes we lose it. All the while, we have to work hard to step into the mystery of God’s absolute and eternal truth. And this is outside our usual ways of thinking. In fact, it is outside of conceptual thought altogether. God’s absolute and eternal truth is an experience that is very difficult to describe. We will not arrive there through talking about it. But it is through prayer, contemplation, confession, and service that we find faith.

May we continue to strive toward this goal. Amen? Amen.

[1] Dan Graves, Christian History Institute, Article #31, “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”  https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/incontext/article/julian, accessed October 4, 2025.