• Lamentations 1:1-6

The writer of this lament or dirge over the destruction of Jerusalem personifies the City as a “widow,” or as a “princess [who] has become a vassal.”  She once had many admirers, lovers and friends.  The writer now turns to a more prosaic description of desolate Jerusalem.  The population has been taken away into “exile and servitude.”  The roads to Zion, which once were crowded with pilgrims, are now empty.  “Her foes have become the masters….”  Zion has lost her “majesty.”  The leaders have become like “stags that find no pasture.”

• (for the psalm) Lamentations 3: 19-26

Echoing the psalms (22, 88 and 143, for examples), the writer of Lamentations turns from despair to hope.  “When I remember this, I have hope: by God’s loving kindness we are not destroyed;/for God’s mercies are never ending/and are new every morning.”  “You are good to those who wait with patience….”

• OR Psalm 137

Presumably written in response to the same crisis that impelled the writer of Lamentations– the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of her citizens to captivity in Babylon– this psalm declares that it is impossible to sing “Zion’s songs,” as requested by their captors.  “How can we sing a song of the Lord/on foreign soil?”  If she wants to forget Jerusalem, the psalmist sings, “may my right hand wither/may my tongue cleave to my palate….”  She cannot wait for revenge against Babylon.

OR

• Habakkuk 1: 1-4, 2: 1-4

A man of conscience, “Habakkuk,” is distressed by the times in which he lives: “Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?”  “So the Law becomes slack and justice never prevails.”  The writer says he will position himself so he can hear the Lord’s response.  “Then the Lord answered me and said: write the vision…” so large and plain that even a runner rushing by it will be able to read it!  “…[T]here is still a vision for the appointed time….”  It describes how things will actually end.  “If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come….”  “…[T]he righteous live by their faith.”

• Psalm 37: 1-10

Do not be envious when it seems as if “evil doers” are getting away with their actions, the psalmist writes, “they will quickly wither….”  Rather, “Trust in the Lord and do good….”  “Trust” the Lord and the Lord will “bring forth your cause like the lights/and your justice like high noon.”

• II Timothy 1: 1-14

The writer of this “letter” to “Timothy” recalls their respective familial spiritual heritages before he exhorts him to “rekindle the gift of God that is within you….”  The writer references Paul’s well-known suffering for the faith, which included imprisonment and that Paul was “Appointed” as a “herald and an apostle and a teacher….”  He is not ashamed of these hardships he has endured to fulfill his calling.  “For I know in whom I have put my trust….”

• Luke 17: 5-10

Jesus turns his attention back to the apostles in Luke’s narrative.  In response to their request– “increase our faith”– Jesus suggests that “if you had faith the size of a mustard seed…” they could order tress to uproot themselves and replant themselves in the sea!  He continues with an admonition unique to Luke’s narrative about the expectations of discipleship.  If you are a worker who is expected to work all day for your “Master” and then prepare the evening meal, would you really expect to be invited to “Take your place at the table?”  Of course not.  You would know that you eat “later.”  Nor would you really expect any thanks.  Quite the contrary; you would simply say, “we have done only what we ought to have done.”

“You are good to those who wait with patience….” (Lamentations 3:36)  “There is still a vision for the appointed time….  If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come….” (Habakkuk)  “Trust in the Lord and do good….” (Psalm 37)  “I know in whom I have put my trust.” (II Timothy)  “We have only done what we ought to have done.” (Luke)

These readings and today’s gospel consider the situation in which people of faith can find themselves when the fulfillment of God’s vision for this world seems remote or even like a lost cause.  Such times really do happen in the lives of individuals and in our corporate lives.  At precisely such times we are advised to “wait” with “patience.”  But it is not a passive waiting– “Trust in the Lord and do good.”  Luke even considers those times when someone who is trying to be faithful feels as if her efforts are ignored or taken for granted; console yourself with the knowledge that you are dong “only what ought to be done.”

God’s vision for the world is justice.  (Habakkuk’s complaint is that he must live in a time when “wrongdoing” is everywhere.)  The psalmist’s (37) confidence is that justice will shine again.  The consistent biblical expectation is to do justice whether it is convenient or not, easy or difficult, rewarded or ignored (or worse, punished), acknowledged or unseen, required little or demands a lot from us, finally arrives or seems to never come.  Why?  Well, because at minimum we “trust” that God brings about justice occasionally and will bring it fully one day!  Luke’s Jesus provides a more basic reason: so that at the end we can at least say “we have done only what we ought to have done.”

For Emmanuel Levinas, justice was the question that trumps all others.  In Totality and Infinity, he teases out some implications of this primary belief.  “The Other” awakens one’s “moral conscience,” but more than that, the Other puts “in question my freedom.”  (p.84)  If one allows it, consciousness of the needs of others puts me in a permanent indebtedness; “the consciousness of my injustice,” Levinas writes (p. 86)  “The Other imposes himself as an exigency that dominates this [my personal] freedom….” (p.87)  A surprising result, Levinas continues, is that the demand of the Other “does not clash with [my] freedom but invests it….”  It “invites” me “to justice.” (p. 88)

If we give the biblical promise of  justice even the smallest consideration (as small as a “mustard seed,” for example), then that awakens our obligations to others.  And that awakening leads to action.  And the action itself is what saves us from despair and meaninglessness.  We might want to never loose hope (God’s “mercies are new every morning”), or trust that, in ways and times known only to God, justice will prevail!  And, we believe again the biblical promise that God’s full and final justice will be the last chapter in the story.  This puts our daily possibilities to do God’s justice in a clearer light, too: “we have done only what ought to be done.”  But we do not just wait for God’s justice to happen, we help make it happen in this meantime.