Lamentations 3:55-66 (NRSVUE)
I called on your name, O Lord,
from the depths of the pit;
you heard my plea, “Do not close your ear
to my cry for help, but give me relief!”
You came near when I called on you;
you said, “Do not fear!”
You have taken up my cause, O Lord;
you have redeemed my life.
You have seen the wrong done to me, O Lord;
judge my cause.
You have seen all their malice,
all their plots against me.
You have heard their taunts, O Lord,
all their plots against me.
The whispers and murmurs of my assailants
are against me all day long.
Whether they sit or rise—see,
I am the object of their taunt songs.
Pay them back for their deeds, O Lord,
according to the work of their hands!
Give them anguish of heart;
your curse be on them!
Pursue them in anger and destroy them
from under the Lord’s heavens.
Mark 10:32-34 (NRSVUE)
They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the gentiles; they will mock him and spit upon him and flog him and kill him, and after three days he will rise again.”
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (NRSVUE)
For our slight, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen, for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
Devotion – Lord, Commission Us!
Lamentations 3:55-66.The writer’s anguished cry emanating “from the depths of the pit” (55) demands (not asks) that the Lord not “close your ear” (55) while reminding the Lord that as a good lawyer “…you took up my cause (58). In the event that the Lord needs reminding, the seething author says look, “You have seen all their malice, all their plots against me…the whispers and murmurs of my assailants are against me all day long.” (60-62). And what does this seething writer want, rather, what does he demand? Total payback. Scorched earth: “Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the Lord’s heavens.” (65)
Mark 10:32-34 stands in glaring contrast to Lamentation’s frightened, pained, and vengeful writer. In Mark’s two short verses lie the very heart of the gospel. En route to Jerusalem, the disciples who know they’re walking into trouble, were frightened. Jesus takes them aside, and comforts them, confiding in them that their fears are real, and that he will be tried, bound over, spit upon, flogged, and killed. But then, “after three days he will rise again.”
Picking up on Mark’s theme of hope, Paul in Corinthians 4:17-18 reassures and consoles his frightened disciples not to lose heart, that “momentary affliction” will cede to eternal glory, for the present is transient. Thus, exhorts Paul, we should fix our eyes not on what is seen, but unseen… “for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
Paul’s assurances echo that of enslaved Black Americans. In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, author James Cone asserts that “If the makers of the spirituals gloried in singing of the cross of Jesus, it was not because they were masochistic…Rather, the enslaved Americans sang because they saw on the rugged wooden planks One who had endured what was their daily portion…” (pp 150-52).
Prayer
Lord , you have gone before us, taking the weight for us, carrying our burden, thus liberating us from worry, from timidity and inaction, spurring us, freeing us to:
- Love our neighbors
- Feed the poor
- Comfort the widow
- Cloth the naked
- Free the prisoner
- Confront power that would mock, abuse, and exclude.
Lord give us heart and will to do the work for which you have cleared the path—the work of love and justice.
Jack Calhoun