September 21, 2025 – The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

There are times in scripture when the words land with such raw honesty that they take our breath away. For me, Jeremiah’s lament in today’s reading is one of those moments. This is not the voice of triumphant faith, of confident victory, of “all shall be well” neatly tied up. This is the voice of a prophet undone by grief, a prophet standing before the ruins of a people and crying, “My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.”

Jeremiah is often called the “weeping prophet,” and here we see why. He looks at the devastation of his people—violence, exile, the crumbling of everything they held dear—and he cannot help but weep. He gives his whole body over to lament: his heart, his eyes, his voice. He does not hide it. He does not explain it away. He names it and offers it to God.

And so, we are invited into the same posture: lament.

Lament is not popular in our culture. We prefer praise, positivity, problem-solving, and quick fixes. We want to move on from pain, to explain it away, or at least to manage it with efficiency or self-medication. But lament asks something else of us: to stay in the place of sorrow long enough to tell the truth.

Lament is not despair. Lament is faith’s refusal to look away from suffering. To lament is to trust that God is big enough to hear our cries, strong enough to hold our tears, and present enough to stand with us in the ruins.

Jeremiah’s tears are not wasted. They are a prayer. They are a protest. They are a testimony that even in grief, God has not abandoned the people.

And how can we not resonate with Jeremiah today? We live in a world that seems saturated with grief.

• We watch wars grind on, displacing millions, leaving cities in rubble, children hungry, afraid, dying.

• We witness the intensifying climate crisis—floods, fires, droughts, hurricanes—destroying communities and leaving the most vulnerable at risk.

• We live in a world of widening inequality, where some hoard unimaginable wealth while others cannot afford a loaf of bread.

• Closer to home, we carry grief in our own lives: illnesses that linger, relationships that fracture, dreams that die.

It is too much for us to hold. Like Jeremiah, our hearts are sick. We ask: What do we do in the face of unparalleled suffering, so much death, and reckless hate?

The first thing scripture teaches us is that we don’t need to jump too quickly to answers. We begin with lament.

We let the tears fall. We cry out, “How long, O Lord?” We refuse to numb ourselves, to look away, to pretend it isn’t happening.

The Psalms are full of this language—over a third of them are laments, like our psalm this morning which is only half of the lament, and we miss out on the turn towards hopefulness in God. Jesus himself laments on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When we lament, we stand in the long tradition of the people of God who bring their whole, hurting selves before God.

Lament does not solve suffering, but it gives us a way to live honestly before God. It is the first act of resistance against despair.

In my own journeys through valleys of mental and emotional darkness, through the grief of loved ones lost, through the broken hearts and loneliness the psalms of lament gave voice to my experience. They were my companions as I clung to the glimmer of hope they offered.

Jeremiah’s lament reminds us that God does not shy away from our grief. God is not embarrassed by our tears. God is not offended by our cries of “Why?” In fact, in Jesus Christ, God enters into the depths of suffering with us.

On the cross, Jesus bore the weight of violence and injustice. He wept over Jerusalem’s pain. He groaned at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Our God is a God who weeps. Which means that when we lament, we do not lament alone.

Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is to sit in silence with one another, to hold space for grief, to embody the truth that God has not abandoned us. As Paul writes, “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Corinthians 12:26).

But lament is not the end of the story. True lament compels us to act.

Jeremiah’s tears are not passive. They are the kind of tears that burn, the kind that refuse to accept that the world must remain as it is. When we let suffering touch us deeply, we are moved to respond—not out of guilt or frantic activism, but out of compassion rooted in God’s own heart.

• In the face of war, lament calls us to be peacemakers, to pray, to advocate, to welcome refugees, to seek reconciliation in our own conflicts.

• In the face of climate disaster, lament compels us to care for creation, to change how we live, to speak up for policies that protect the vulnerable.

• In the face of poverty, lament urges us to feed the hungry, to share what we have, to challenge systems of exploitation.

We may not be able to solve the world’s suffering, but we can be faithful in the small places where God has planted us. Lament roots us in reality and propels us toward love.

Finally, even as we lament, we dare to hope.

Jeremiah’s book is full of tears, but it also holds words of promise: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jer. 31:31). Jeremiah’s lament is not the last word.

The same is true for us. The cross is not the end of the story—Easter is. Death does not have the final word—life does. Tears may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.

Christian hope is not naïve optimism. It does not deny suffering. It looks suffering square in the face and declares that God is still at work, that resurrection is still possible, that love is stronger than death.

So what do we do in the face of unparalleled suffering, so much death, and reckless hate?

• We lament honestly.

• We remember we are not alone.

• We act in love, even in small ways.

• We hold fast to hope, even when we cannot see it.

This is not a neat or easy answer. It is a way of life. A life that keeps us close to the heart of God, a heart that is both broken and yet burning with love.

Jeremiah longed for a fountain of tears, enough to weep day and night for his people. In Jesus Christ, we discover that such a fountain does exist: the wellspring of God’s mercy, the living water that flows even in the wilderness, the Spirit poured out on all flesh.

So let us not be afraid to weep, especially as we approach Truth and Reconciliation Day. Let us not be afraid to lament. For our tears are precious to God. They water the seeds of compassion. They join us to Christ’s own suffering love. And, by grace, they point us toward the day when God will wipe every tear from our eyes.

Until that day, may we be a people who lament faithfully, act justly, love deeply, and hope stubbornly. Amen.