Thoughts on Today’s Lessons for Sunday, Oct. 6, 2013.

First Reading: Lamentations 1:1-6
Cries of suffering and lamentation surely fill today’s readings! What can we do with this? Perhaps our lesson is not to bottle up sad, hurt and angry feelings but to see how we can use them to learn and grow. Lamentations, written in exile in Babylon, poetically imagines the ruins of Jerusalem as a weeping woman recalling happier times. Her princes are weak, her children captive. Her foes have won. Her enemies prosper and – note this well – she believes God brought this suffering because of her wrongdoing.

Psalm: Psalm 137
This ancient hymn of lamentation places the poet in exile – “by the rivers of Babylon” – weeping over Jerusalem and vowing (in words that remain a vivid part of the Passover Seder) never to forget. It is at the horrifying end of this Psalm, though, that we react with visceral shock at the idea of Judah’s warriors joyously smashing innocent babies on the rocks. What can we possibly gain from recalling these awful verses? Perhaps we are meant to see ourselves at our worst, and recognize how badly we can behave when hurt and frustration tempt us to lash out in anger.

First Reading (Track 2): Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Pay attention, as this is the only passage that we will hear in the three-year Sunday lectionary cycle from Habakkuk (“Ha-ba-kuk”), one of the 12 “minor prophets” in the First Testament, who lived nearly 700 years before Jesus and who foresaw the destruction and exile of jerusalem. The prophet tells of his frustration that God doesn’t seem to be paying attention to his prophecy. God responds: Write it down. Make it so plain that a runner can read it passing by. Then be patient, be just, and wait for God.

Psalm (Track 2): Psalm 37:1-9
Today’s Psalm fits Habakkuk’s call, beautifully summoning our faith to keep us living in hope even when things aren’t going well. When the world appears dark and it seems that evil surrounds us, the Psalmist reminds us, we can put our faith in God and wait for God with patience and confident trust. Don’t lash back or strike out in anger. These things only lead to evil. But wait patiently, follow God’s ways, and we’ll be rewarded.

Second Reading: 2 Timothy 1:1-14
Written decades after the death of Paul, this short letter fondly imagines the evangelist writing from prison to his beloved disciple Timothy. It likely came at a time when the young church was suffering persecution, and in that way it mirrors our Lamentations reading and Psalm. Hold onto our faith, even when times are hard; rely on the grace of God given through Jesus.

Gospel: Luke 17:5-10
In Luke’s long story of Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem that we’ve been following for weeks, Jesus seems to throw us one challenge after another. Perhaps these verses are best understood in the context of the verses that come before it, which reinforce Luke’s consistent emphasis that it is not easy to follow Jesus. This short lesson about faith seems to urge us to be humble, be vulnerable, and, metaphorically at least, to be as obedient as slaves when we are called to live and work as Jesus would have us do.