A Living Faith of Lament and Hope (Oct 5)

Readings, Lamentations 3:19-25 and 2 Timothy 1:1-14
Image, Study for 'Painting with white border’ (1913) Vasily Kandinsky

Since 2022, this Sunday has been designated in the Uniting Church calendar, “UCA Older Persons Sunday.” A Sunday allowing us to reflect “on what it means to be a faith community of people who are continually ageing.” As the rationale notes, “We are all together in this ageing transition process; we are all slightly older than we were at breakfast time this morning. Some of us are experiencing faster ageing transitions than others, which can be uncomfortable, disorienting and hard to accept. This has implications in our church community for education, planning and pastoral care. As the people of Jesus Christ, we need to consider and prepare as a church community for the life-long transition called ageing.”
 
The Assembly provides possible readings for this service, instead of what is provided in the lectionary. However, I didn’t feel we needed those today, as this section of the Second Letter of Timothy celebrates well already, “what it means to be a faith community of people who are continually ageing.” Recalling your tears, the letter writer declares of Timothy, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.
 
Faith here is a living thing, shared amongst and across the generations, weaving together the people of God as the body of Christ. Paul, reminded of Timothy’s sincere faith (as well as his palpable emotion) longs to see him again to be filled with joy. But in remembering Timothy’s faith, he also brings to mind those the faith lived in first – Timothy’s grandmother Lois and mother Eunice. This living faith moves through this constellation of people and so even when they are apart, or even when they are gone, it breathes and beats in new bodies.
 
Back when we were preparing to host Campfire at the Kirk the team came here for a meeting, which happened to overlap with a women’s fellowship meeting. It was great because it allowed the two groups to meet and talk. And I got to see folks like Mary, Gwen, and others sharing about the Sunday School/kids ministry of the Kirk and how the rooms were used, and how many kids were here, and where they used to take them when there was spill over, all while we were talking about how to use these rooms for a whole different group of kids, a whole different program, a whole new generation. What a witness to the living faith being shared across and amongst the generations, weaving together the people of God, making two distinct programs one shared ministry. The same faith, the same heart for kids, the same joy, beating in new bodies, all of it a reminder of the goodness of the Lord.
 
The goodness of the Lord which, through the Spirit and the saints preserves the church across time. Even when programs cease or shift, even if ministries move or merge, even if churches close or consolidate, the faith, our faith, is a living faith; not bound or diminished by any of these changes, but carried on in hearts and minds taking new forms and new voice rekindling the gifts of God. It is our trust and hope in the power of the Spirit and the livingness of faith that equips the church community for the lifelong transition called aging.
 
However, while we celebrate the faithfulness of God, whose steadfast love never ends and whose mercies never cease, we also recognise with the stated rationale of today, that aging can be hard and disorienting. Sometimes it feels like it happens all at once, sometimes it feels like time ravages some more than others. Sometimes, in the words of Philip Roth, “old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.”  
 
And this reality, this feeling, this hurt, is not something to run away from or hide. Denial and sugar-coating only isolates those already struggling. For this reason, the act of lament takes on vital importance. The words we heard read from Lamentations 3 are filled with hope, but it is a hope that comes amidst and through honest lament. Because before we reached today’s words, this is what we find:
I have become the laughing-stock of all my people,
   the object of their taunt-songs all day long.
He has filled me with bitterness,
   he has glutted me with wormwood…
my soul is bereft of peace;
   I have forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, ‘Gone is my glory,
   and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.’
This kind of lament should not be confined to our scriptures alone, but allowed to find voice in our individual and collective piety and prayer. We need to be able to lament the pain (physical and spiritual), the harm (emotional and social), the injustice and indignity that afflicts the aging. There are ample causes for lament –royal commissions have exposed the systemic and profound abuse and neglect that has occurred in aged care facilities, research has detailed the increasing amount of elder abuse perpetrated by families, and we would have here today a profundity of stories of quiet dismissals, subtle denigrations, and decreased visibility. The bitterness, pain, and fear this evokes needs to be given voice in the community and before God in order to form the community into one which is able to bear one another’s burdens, share one another’s tears, and stand together in the struggle for justice and dignity. It is honest lament which allows for the truthful proclamation of hope in the community of struggle (as opposed to the cheap optimism of shiny happy people).
 
Because it is only after those verses of lament that the reading reaches this moment:
But this I call to mind,
   and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
   his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
   great is your faithfulness.
The call to hope and faith, the call to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord, can only be made with integrity if we have allowed each other to give voice to lament, and if we have proven ourselves a people of refuge and dignity for all members. At this point the word of hope, the promise of Christ, the immortality of the gospel can be broached as a testament to the living faith which cannot be crushed, not even by death (let alone the little deaths of societal disregard or bodily limit).  
 
But the reason for this movement is not based only in the structure of Lamentations. Christ himself did not live his life in one mood (he wept and raged as much as he rejoiced and gave thanks). And so the church as the body of Christ must not live in one mood. To be a faith community of those continually aging involves both the thanksgiving for the sincere faith we see living from one generation to the next, and the lament for the pain and heartbreak that befalls our elders (particularly that which is inflicted through social neglect or injustice). Without hope we have despair, but without lament, we have ignorance, and the church as the body of Christ, an aging faith community, can give into neither of these temptations.
 
In the end, like Lois, Eunice, Timothy, and Paul, we must guard the calling of Christ for each other. Guard the good treasure of faith entrusted to [us]. For this was given in Christ before the ages began. And just as it cannot be denied to the young for their youth and supposed inexperience, it must not be denied or presumed diluted because of age and supposed diminishment. As a body made up of many (indispensable) members, we make room for the truth and look at one another as sites of sincere, living faith. A faith which is ever moving and growing, which, through the power of the Holy Spirit beats and breathes in our bodies. This faith (which is first and always Christ’s faith) shares in the immortality of the gospel and thus will continue to live in the community of the faithful, until the fulfilment of time, when Christ who abolished death, appears again, bringing the restoration of all things on his heels.