Originally given April 10, 2006

Lamentations 1:1-2, 6-12

The Deserted City

1How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal.

²She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they have become her enemies.

⁶From daughter Zion has departed
all her majesty.
Her princes have become like stags
that find no pasture;
they fled without strength
before the pursuer.

⁷Jerusalem remembers,
in the days of her affliction and wandering,
all the precious things
that were hers in days of old.
When her people fell into the hand of the foe,
and there was no one to help her,
the foe looked on mocking
over her downfall.

⁸Jerusalem sinned grievously,
so she has become a mockery;
all who honoured her despise her,
for they have seen her nakedness;
she herself groans,
and turns her face away.

⁹Her uncleanness was in her skirts;
she took no thought of her future;
her downfall was appalling,
with none to comfort her.
‘O Lord, look at my affliction,
for the enemy has triumphed!’

¹⁰Enemies have stretched out their hands
over all her precious things;
she has even seen the nations
invade her sanctuary,
those whom you forbade
to enter your congregation.

¹¹All her people groan
as they search for bread;
they trade their treasures for food
to revive their strength.
Look, O Lord, and see
how worthless I have become.

¹²Is it nothing to you,^* all you who pass by?
Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
which was brought upon me,
which the Lord inflicted
on the day of his fierce anger.

I got a “warm fuzzy feeling” reading today’s passage from lamentations as I prepared to speak to you. Okay, I know that sounds strange. So I thought about it for a while, and I realized that this passage reminded me of lent.

I just love lent with all of its penitentiality and sin-loathing. I just love the opportunity to reflect for 40 days on just how bad I’ve been! No, I’m serious. And that’s probably even more strange. But let me explain. I realize now that this passage draws me back to my first lent as a Christian. I was then a catechumen, which is a word I’d never heard before I got to Sewanee. A sophomore in college, I was preparing for my baptism. And I was at that time lamenting the last 18 years of my life. Years I spent walking away from God.

In many ways, I can relate to what Jeremiah is saying as he looks out at his Beloved, Jerusalem, now burned, destroyed, empty. “Jerusalem sinned grievously, so she has become a mockery” Simply substitute “Jackie” for “Jerusalem” and that is how I was feeling about my life that first lent. As I had come to know Jesus and become more familiar with the Bible, I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the person I had been for so long.

Jeremiah, I have read, was sitting under a small knoll just outside the walls of Jerusalem.
This spot where he sat looking out upon the devastation of the ruined city has become known as “Jeremiah’s Grotto.” The hill he sat under is now called “Golgotha.”

As I journeyed through my own past of sin and self-destruction that lent, I was walking with Jesus toward that same hill. Not literally, of course. But I was learning the story of Jesus more fully and making it a part of my own story.

I remember Palm Sunday, and the dramatic reading of the passion in church. The congregation played the crowd, as I think is standard practice. Suddenly the moment came for us to call out “Crucify him!” and - I - was –stunned! My heart was pounding and it was all I could do to keep from yelling: “Please don’t crucify him, I love him!” I had never really known before then what Easter was, and suddenly it was as if I was actually living through the events that led to the very first Easter.

These memories of my first lent are so meaningful and important in my Christian life. That journey of sorrow and repentance was bringing me ever closer to the knowledge of hope and love that can only be found in our living savior.

I love lent, it is a time to walk through the wasteland of our sinfulness. As our holy lent draws to a close this year, we are approaching the very place Jeremiah sat lamenting: - the foot of the cross.- There we too can sit and cry out about the desolation and destruction in our lives and in the world. And there we can leave our sin and agony.

On Friday we will recall that Jesus died there on that hill. Jesus’ death was sad, it was ugly. He was broken and destroyed, naked and dirty just as Jeremiah saw Jerusalem that day 600 years earlier. But even as Jeremiah sat weeping, God had the salvation of the world in mind. On that very hill, the most bittersweet event in the history of humankind would take place. Jesus would die, but with his death He would take our sins, our broken, destroyed lives and make us all new and clean. He was the sacrifice that would make us right with God once more.

What I didn’t understand that Palm Sunday is that Jesus had to die. And while his death was sad it was also glorious. Jesus needed to die so that we can rejoice in his rising again on Easter morning, so we can rejoice that we have a living savior, so we can rejoice in God’s saving sacrifice, so we can rejoice that our sins are washed clean, so we can rejoice that we have eternal life.

I love lent, it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.