If you have ever experienced the loss of someone who was close to you - someone you loved and perhaps even said, "I don't know how I could live without you..." - you know what Mary was feeling.

It's these flashes of honesty that Ezekiel is talking about in our Old Testament Lesson. The Lord asks, "Can these bones live?" Elijah answers, "Oh, Lord God, you know." I love how Elijah turns the question back on God. I would have said, "I have no idea! - but, if these dry bones are my family and friends - the people I don't want to live without" - I would add, "but I hope so!"

St. Paul says, "if we only have hope in Jesus for this life - we are to be pitied more than anyone" - and he's right. If all we're doing is fooling ourselves - pretending there is something after this life - we should not only be pitied, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Black is a color. White is a color. But light and darkness are completely different. Darkness - especially deep darkness - only hides what is actually there. When the darkness is complete - you discover the table, the chair, the marbles on the floor. They were always there - the darkness didn't make them go away - you just couldn't see them.

You can't see light - but you see what it lights up. I suppose light is visible - but if it doesn't illuminate anything - if there isn't anything to see - light doesn't serve a purpose. If you were out in the deepest part of space - and a beam of light went past - you would only know it because one moment it was pitch black and the next it's wasn't. But what do you need light for if there isn't anything to see?

Would you rather see nothing clearly - or know even though something is there and you can't see it - there is someone who can see it and will keep you safe? This is the question we need to answer.

What Isaiah and Jeremiah want you to know is - the worst thing in your day, your week, your month or even the worst thing in your entire life is not the last thing. Did you get that? Like daughter Zion, we can be tempted to give up - to think we've been forgotten - if we were ever remembered in the first place. Like her, we might even write "it looks like...you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure" in our diary, and then lay down our pen and close the book.

Fortunately our story does not end with our sin or hurts or pains or losses. God will not allow those things to be the final words of our life. Psalm 139 says, "your eyes, O God, saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Some people think that means we have no freedom or choice in our lives - God is pulling the strings and we're just puppets. But if that were true - why would God let us sin in the first place? One of the hallmarks of Lutheran theology is Eternal Foreknowledge. God knows what we are going to say and do - and He lets us choose for or against Him, for or against our world, for our against us - but always places within our grasp everything we need to know He is still here - still loves us - and won't give up on us. Divine love always conquers divine justice because of the cross and empty tomb.

What does it take to move you from apathy to action? You know those late night commercials with children and animals in need? Or St. Jude's hospital? Which commercials do you have to leave the room otherwise you would max your credit card and empty your bank? What news stories get you out of your chair and onto the street or into a school or gathered with a group of people setting forth to make things right?

For Jeremiah - it was no longer just The Woman's suffering - it became personal. Because I want you to be able sleep tonight, I will not read or even summarize the verses. As the Narrator watched this pain and suffering and loss unfold he could not remain on the outside - he stepped forward - his words softening - his eyes crying - his suffering visible.

At first, Jeremiah found himself praying for The Woman. Then he found himself being a pastor to The Woman. He went from narrating her sins - to walking beside her - crying out to God for her and searching for a way for her to be redeemed. Jeremiah became a pastor instead of a prophet.

500 years ago someone supposedly asked Martin Luther what he would do if he knew he was going to die tomorrow. Luther replied, "I'd plant an apple tree." When they asked why he would do such a crazy thing - he said, "it was on my list for today." Luther was saying - if it was important enough for me to do - then it doesn't matter whether I get to enjoy the fruit or not - someone will - and that is enough for me.

As believers - our life is always about buying a piece of land or planting an apple tree because we are theological optimists. Our hope is not naive - nor is it the easy way out as some suggest. In fact, it is the hard way out. C.S. Lewis, in his work, The Problem of Pain, notes, "love may cause pain to its object, but only on the supposition that the object needs alteration to become fully lovable."

The Woman of Lamenations represents all of us. We are so proud of being God's people - all the things we said and did in Jesus' name. We are the chosen - the saved - the redeemed. And yet if we step outside of our churches and put down our crosses and Bibles and prayers and see ourselves from the world's view - what do we look like? Are we the Bride of Christ - or the Bride of Frankstein?

There could be no book of Lamentions if there were no God. If there is no God, no grand plan, no purpose or reason for our existence other than being an accident of time and space - then lamenting makes no sense. If you cry out, "Why?" - the answer is "Why not?" If you ask, "How can this be?" - the answer is, "why shouldn't it be?"

But the response changes if there is a God, a grand plan, a purpose, a reason. If - as Christians claim - the Book of Revelation is not just a hopeful vision - but rather an actuality that is already real in God's timeline even if it hasn't happened in ours yet - then a lament is not only perfectly acceptable - but necessary. "How can this be?" - we ask. And we expect God to answer. And the most important part of the grieving and mourning process is the waiting for that answer.

I normally don't like to spoil the ending - but in this case, I must. As dark and smelly and loud as it is going to get when we ask God, "how can this be?" - there is a reason to stick around until the end.

We are paying the price of our sin - and the sin of our family and neighbors and community and the strangers we've never met. "Everything happens for a reason" - and our reason is sin. I get that we don't like it. And it's possible we aren't as guilty as others. But we are guilty. That's what this day is all about. And sitting by the river, refusing to sing while we wait for God to fix things - isn't going to help.

It's a day of penitence. A day to be honest about who we are as fragile, mortal creatures. We lament the condition of the world - and our own condition. We think about the sins which brought us to where we are today. I'll go first - I'm sorry for all the things I ever said that hurt or offended you. I'm sorry for not being the person you needed me to be. Hebrews 5 says the pastor has to first confess his sins and receive God's forgiveness before he can hear the sins of God's people and speak to them God's word of forgiveness. Something I need to take to heart.

There is a very tiny speck of light in all this darkness. There is a muted echo of the word alleluia wafting in the wind. There is the smell of incense as our prayers rise to God. There is still the promise of our laments turning into songs of joy.