When Everything Sad Comes Untrue

Weekly at the Table, Sunday October 2, 2022

Lamentations 1:1-6

Psalm 137

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Luke 17:5-10

This week’s psalm and OT reading are downright sad. They tell a single story from two vantage points. Lamentations opens by introducing us to the plight of Judah in the wake of Babylon coming in fury like an unbridled flood. In a moment the damn of Israel’s promises and protection seemingly broke, unleashing a torrent of shadowy and fire and death. Everything was swept away like chaff in a hot summer wind. The scourge of Babylon laid upon Israel was unrelenting, brutality they had not known since the days of Egypt.

Jeremiah describes the scene in visceral and emotive terms. From the first note, he strikes a deep minor key that reverberates throughout the lament. The priests “groan” and the virgins “grieve…in bitter anguish”. The whole city, depicted as a single woman, “weeps bitterly” and the roads themselves, now empty of all festive travelers who sing joyous songs on flute and harp, mourn from the very rock and soil. The once splendorous city now lay as a slain fawn struck through the heart with a hunter’s arrow.

The psalmist fast-forwards the reader a few decades, but nothing has changed in them. The streaming tears that ran down Judah and Jeremiah’s faces have now become the river by which they sit. Still weeping. Still mourning. Still silent. Their harps hang from the trees like fruit in peak season. The scene in Psalm 137 is a twisted and inverted picture of Psalm 1 when the righteous are depicted as fruitful trees bringing healing to the nations. In this psalm the fruit is black and rotten, bringing death and not life to all who eat them. And so the psalmist ends his lament with an “anti-blessing”. In Psalm 1 the blessed are those in who the Word of God dwells. Now the blessed are those in whom a thirst for revenge upon even the most innocent dwells.

These are dark times in Israel’s history. Like a black shadow at midnight. But every seed must be plunged into the blackest earth in order to grow. Those seeds cast upon the surface are plucked away by the birds of the air, scorched by the sun, and trampled underfoot. Only those seeds thrown into the blackness of underground, the blackness of death and grave, are able to resurrect back into the light as a new tree.

This is what Paul reminds Timothy of. Paul reminds scared and uncertain Timothy that the seed of faith is alive in the soil of his heart. It was planted by their ancestors and personally in Timothy by his grandmother and mother. And that seed, like all seeds, has been watered. And by what water has Timothy’s faith been nurtured? By his own tears. Buried in the lament of Lamentations is the same promise, that those who sew in tears will someday reap in joy.

I’m reading the Lord of the Rings currently (50 pages left) and watching Rings of Power, so I have a lot of Tolkien running through my head. In the Lord of the Rings, this image of a garden is used repeatedly to depict the restoration of the world. It is set against the depictions of Mordor as barren, waste, black, cold, and burnt. We are told Sauron destroyed all the gardens of his land when he came to occupy it.

In the end, after the Dark Lord is cast down and destroyed, the whole land is said to have become a garden once again. We read:

“And standing there they surveyed the lands, for the morning was come; and they saw the towers of the City far below them like white pencils touched by the sunlight, and all the Vale of Anduin was like a garden, and the Mountains of Shadow were veiled in a golden mist.”

And also:

“From Deeping-coomb they rode to Isengard, and saw how the Ents had busied themselves. All the stone-circle had been thrown down and removed, and the land within was made into a garden filled with orchards and trees, and a stream ran through it...”

Tolkien summarizes the same idea said in a different way when Samwise finally wakes up after completing the quest and sees his friend Gandalf alive. He says:

“But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: ‘Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?’”

And this is what Paul and Jesus are getting at. The seeds of faith, though plunged into darkness and damp cold earth, will spring forth and bear new life in us even by the watering of our own tears. This is one of the most despicable and flagrant parts of the “Word of Faith” movement and its relatives. In the name of speaking life and faith they rob people of crying their own tears that will actually water the seeds of true faith in their hearts. The very thing they are claiming to give people that are in fact stripping from them by drying up their tears with shallow and twisted promises.

And this all plays out in the life of Christ. He becomes the seed of new life planted into the soil, watered by His own tears and blood, and by the tears of those who truly loved Him to the end (ie. Mary). Three days later He arose in a new garden, as a New Gardener, now able to bring life to all who are plunged into death.

This is how everything said will come untrue. It will not be erased, nor forgotten, nor destroyed, but healed by our Gardener.