A few weeks ago, I had coffee with a female pastor from my area. She told me that her church had become a refuge of sorts for people who have been hurt by religion. Some have been hurt by pastors or members of churches. Some are angry at how their faith has been hijacked by Christian Nationalism and far-right politics. Some are reeling from rejection by their conservative brothers and sisters in Christ. They grieve the days when you could open your news app and not be bracing yourself for whatever the bad news of the day would be.
I understood. I’ve been there. Heck, I am there. I have got my share of church hurt and anger and grief.
For their New Year’s Eve service this year, they have decided to hold a service of lament. I loved the idea. We don't lament enough in our culture.
Lament means to passionately express regret, grief, or sorrow. It is to mourn vocally. It was very common back in the Old Testament days. There are many examples of lament in the Old Testament, such as David in 2 Samuel 1. The entire book of Lamentations includes laments from the prophet Jeremiah. There are also many psalms of lament. In fact, as many as one-third of all psalms qualify as a lament. Even Jesus laments in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest.
Lament expresses our suffering and asks God for relief. Lament is not afraid to ask hard questions of God: Why is this happening to me? For how long will You let this go on? Why are the evildoers succeeding but the righteous are failing? Today we are often discouraged in our churches from asking such questions, as though our God were too small to handle them. Lament calls on God to act and move.
One of my professors says lament is a lost art in Christian circles. I wonder if it’s because of the way that Christianity separated from Judaism. In the beginning, Christianity wasn’t its own religion. The early believers saw themselves as messianic Jews or as Jews living in the messianic age. It was never their intention to start a separate church or a separate religion. Many of the disciples in the early church even continued going to the temple and the synagogue long after Jesus' resurrection. It was part of their culture and their identity.
However, after the collapse of the Second Temple and the Roman invasion of Jerusalem, Christianity began to separate itself more from Judaism. It spread more to the Gentiles, who were not required to convert to Judaism in order to worship Jesus. And as Christianity became more and more Gentile and less and less Jewish, I think that is when we lost lament. Lament is more of a Jewish cultural expression than a Greek or Roman one.
It is something we could certainly benefit from engaging in. My professor says that lament draws you closer to God because you open yourself up to express your true feelings and questions and anguish. He said one of the ways that he practices lament is by reading the lament psalms. Some of the lament psalms are examples of individual lament, such as Psalm 22, 54-57, or 86. Others are examples of communal laments, meant to be read in community, such as Psalm 60, 79-80, or 89-90. Reading these out loud whether individually or collectively can be a powerful way of expressing our lament.
There are many reasons why we may need to lament this year. Here's a lament to get us started, found in Psalm 6:
1 Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.
2 Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint;
heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.
3 My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?
4 Turn, Lord, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.
5 Among the dead no one proclaims your name.
Who praises you from the grave?
6 I am worn out from my groaning.
All night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.
7 My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.
8 Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the Lord has heard my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my cry for mercy;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
10 All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish;
they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame.
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