Clichés expose our inability to think critically or feel deeply.

Lamentations 3:19-33

September 5, 2010

Clichés from A-Z

Today’s sermon is all in a day’s work for me.  I don’t want to beat around the bush so I burned the candle at both ends.  Let’s get down to earth and put our ears to the ground as we talk about the facts of life. 

It gives me the creeps when a preacher has a hidden agenda.  In a nutshell I’m going to jump in with both feet and knock your socks off as a labor of love.  Make my day because there’s no time like the present to go out on a limb in a perfect storm. 

Both the quick and the dead need to read my lips because still waters run deep.  So I’ll take the plunge up the creek with very real concern about the whole ball of wax.  X-perts agree you can run but you can’t hide from clichés that go from A-Z.

The word “cliché” comes from the world of the printing press.  It refers to a phrase used so often that instead of inserting individual letters, the printer could drop in an entire phrase at once. 

Often a cliché was striking and original when first used.  Salvador Dali said, “The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.”

Christians are notorious for our clichés.  God will work it out for good.  What would Jesus do?  God has a special plan for you.  Praise the Lord!  God always answers prayers – sometimes he just says no.

Sometimes unbelievers mock Christians for their clichés (see www.weirdcrap.com/recreational/cliche.html), but the need to do so may reflect their own pain.  Still, our clichés expose our inability to think critically or feel deeply.

During the last few weeks, and for the rest of this month, we are asking what it means to be an extraordinary Christian.  We’ve said that Christians who refuse to be ordinary serve the forgotten.  They love God’s word.  They live life out of a sense of calling.  They pray the ridiculous.  They tell their story, and the Story.

Christians who refuse to be ordinary also speak the unexpected. That’s what I find when I turn to the Old Testament book of Lamentations.

Unexpected honesty

If you conducted a poll of ten thousand Christians about their favorite book in the Bible, I doubt if even one would name Lamentations.  Even the name is a turnoff.  Who wants to read a book of really sad poems?

The Hebrews call this book “Ekah,” which means “How.”  It’s the first Hebrew word in the book, but I like that title better.   It’s not a question, as in, “How did this happen?”  It’s an exclamation: “How lonely is the city!” (1:1).

The writer of Lamentations speaks with unexpected honesty.  He writes anonymously, though the tradition is that he is Jeremiah.  Certainly his time frame is shared with Jeremiah – just after the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586 B.C.

I commented at Bible study the other morning that what happened in Jerusalem was so much worse than 9-11, and a couple of our group members commented that being in New York in the fall of 2001 was terrible as the rubble remained and the city reeled.  There certainly are some parallels, and only those who have been in an area devastated by war or earthquake can come close to feeling what this writer felt.

But consider this.  In the siege leading up to the fall of Jerusalem, the city insiders were terrorized in advance.  That would be like being locked in the Twin Towers for months knowing what was coming.  Further, there was no food in the besieged city.  Lamentations 2:20 says that mothers even cooked and ate their own children to survive.

And that was just the advance horror.  The other difference between the fall of Jerusalem and our own disaster was that we immediately started cleaning up, removing the rubble, and making plans to rebuild.  The Jews were under the domination of their attackers for decades while the burned city and temple lay in ruins.

The writer of Lamentations is no spewer of clichés.  You don’t find him saying, “Praise the Lord anyway” and “It will all turn out for the best.”  His raw emotion is transferred from heart to pen, and he rails at God in the beginning of chapter 3.

He opens, “I am the man who has seen affliction,” but the word he uses for “man” implies strength.  This is an acrostic poem, a carefully constructed lament in 22 stanzas of three lines.  Each successive stanza has each line beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  But it’s no A-Z of clichés.

“I am,” he begins, emphasizing the first person. “I am the strong man who has seen affliction.”  I am witness to horrendous destruction.  Then he lays blame for that devastation directly at the feet of God.

“He has turned his hand against me again and again” (3).

“He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead” (6).

“He shuts out my prayer” (8).

Look at how he concludes his accusation against God in verses 16-18 –

He has broken my teeth with gravel;

            He has trampled me in the dust.

I have been deprived of peace;

            I have forgotten what prosperity is.

So I say, ‘My splendor is gone

                        And all that I had hoped from the LORD.

That’s no set of clichés.  This strong man speaks with unexpected honesty. 

I’m not sure where we came up with the idea that church is a place you’re supposed to clean up your thoughts and express only the sterilized party line.  We didn’t learn from the Bible that God wants us to squelch our true feelings.

Nor did we learn it from believers who preceded us.  Faithful Jews preserved these wrenching poems as expressions of faith that’s real.  If you don’t believe in God, you have no questions about why things happen.  They just do.  It’s only believers who feel the tension.  Sometimes we all think it would be easier just to abandon faith and embrace a random universe.  Much easier.  Do to God what we do with anyone else we don’t understand or like very much at the moment.  Walk away.

Extraordinary Christians know that’s not the answer.   They know God is big enough to take whatever punch we want to throw at him.  He’s been taking those punches for a long time – and sometimes from some of his best people.

Unexpected loyalty

I must confess I’m glad the chapter doesn’t end there, however.  This anonymous writer moves from unexpected honesty to unexpected loyalty. 

His hinge is found in verses 19-21.  He remembers his affliction and bitterness.  He well remembers his despair.  But he remembers something else and finds a foothold for hope.

Unexpected loyalty

The change from verses 1-18 to 19-33 is so dramatic some commentators even wonder if the same person could have written both parts of the poem, especially at the same time.  I’m going to read it to you again, this time in Eugene Peterson’s Bible paraphrase, The Message.

God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
   his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
   How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
   He’s all I’ve got left.

God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,
   to the woman who diligently seeks.
It’s a good thing to quietly hope,
   quietly hope for help from God.
It’s a good thing when you’re young
   to stick it out through the hard times.

When life is heavy and hard to take,
   go off by yourself. Enter the silence.
Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions:
   Wait for hope to appear.
Don’t run from trouble. Take it full-face.
   The “worst” is never the worst.

Why? Because the Master won’t ever
   walk out and fail to return.
If he works severely, he also works tenderly.
   His stockpiles of loyal love are immense.
He takes no pleasure in making life hard,
   in throwing roadblocks in the way.

The struggle about where God is in the middle of our worst trials is not new.  From the time of Job until now people have faced cancer or economic ruin or betrayal and measured the circumstance against their theology. 

Almost everyone starts where Lamentations 3 starts.  “God, you did this to me!  Who are you?  Where are you?  Why did you?”

Many stay there.  They live out their lives in unbelief and cynicism that anyone could hold on to the crutch of faith when there is so much evidence to the contrary.  They run away.

The extraordinary poet of Lamentations 3 speaks the unexpected.  He chooses to believe, against evidence, that God is there.  That God is good.  That God worth hanging on to.  That in the end, he will be true to his side of the bargain, his mercy.

Thomas Chisholm was born in a Kentucky log cabin in 1866.  He began his teaching career at age 16, unable to complete even a high school education himself.  He taught elementary school kids what he had learned in elementary school, and what he taught himself.  He became a Christian at age 27.

Chisholm had poor health all his life, and was unable to stick with one career, much less one job.  At various times he worked as a teacher, a journalist, an insurance salesman, and a traveling preacher.  In 1941, when he was 75 years old, he wrote a letter in which he declared he had never had enough money all his life because of his illnesses.

Nevertheless, he said in that same letter he was “filled with astonishing gratefulness” for the “wonderful displays of (God’s) providing care.”  During his life Thomas Chisholm wrote 1200 poems.  In 1923 he had sent a handful of those to a musician friend named William Runyan, who was moved to write music for it. 

The hymn was based on Lamentations 3:22-23, and became the official theme song for Moody Bible Institute.   It was later popularized by George Beverly Shea and the Billy Graham crusades.

“Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father.  There is no shadow of turning with Thee.  Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not.  As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.  Great is Thy faithfulness!  Great is Thy faithfulness!  Morning by morning new mercies I see!  All I have needed Thy hand hath provided.  Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”

I love the fact that the hymn was written by someone who had such illness and such need in his life.  He learned to speak the unexpected – to say with the writer of Lamentations, “I’m sticking with God.” 

The unexpected

Extraordinary Christians say the darnedest things.  Ordinary Christians are stuck with “conventional wisdom.”

When faced with another’s grief, conventional wisdom says, “You need to be strong.”  An extraordinary Christian will speak the unexpected: “It’s OK to hurt, OK to be angry.  I’ll be here with you.”

When faced with an uncertain economy, conventional wisdom says, “I need to conserve.  I don’t know what will happen next.”  An extraordinary Christian will speak the unexpected: “Now is the time to give.”

When faced with a loved one who has wandered down the wrong path, conventional wisdom says, “You disappointed me.”  An extraordinary Christian will speak the unexpected: “It’s not about me.  It’s about God’s grace in you.  You are never out of his reach when you open yourself up to what he wants to change in you.”

When faced with a “sinner” – one whose choices in life we might find particularly revolting, conventional wisdom says, “I can’t be around you.”  An extraordinary Christian will speak the unexpected: “I will be your friend.  I won’t worry what others think.  Let’s see what God’s grace will do in you – and in me.”

When faced with unspeakable personal tragedy, conventional wisdom says, “I’m giving up on you, God!”  An extraordinary Christian will speak unexpected honesty: “God, why have you abandoned me.”  And then will add unexpected loyalty: “Your mercies are new every morning.  Great is your faithfulness.” 

Amen.