2 October 2016
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 22C (RCL)
Lamentations 1:1-6
Psalm 137
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10
We do not like the ninth verse of Psalm 137, “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” In the LXX the word for “happy” is makarios, which means something like “how honorable.” I suppose this might make more sense if we had ever been in the position of a vanquished people. Even so, we think, surely God does not desire that kind of vengeance, right? That’s why the psalmist can express it to God and then just leave it there. Reading the Lamentations and singing the psalm puts the word of the oppressed on our lips, and forces us to begin to see things from another perspective. Continue reading “Uprooting sin”