As Jesus enters Jerusalem and draws near to his death, we find the language of lament on his lips with increasing frequency. Just after entering the city and receiving the praise and hosannas of the crowd, our Lord weeps and laments: "And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, 'Would that you, even you, had known this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes'" (Luke 19:41-42). In the Garden of Gethsemane we overhear Jesus' prayers, sad and anguished: "He began to be sorrowful and troubled. The he said to them, 'My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here and watch with me.' And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed" (Matthew 26:37-39). While he makes his way to Golgotha he turns aside only once, to redirect the laments of a group of women who were following him. "But turning to them Jesus said, 'Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children" (Luke 23:28). And on the cross he seizes the words of a psalm of lament, Psalm 22, as he prepares to breathe his last: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
The climax of Jesus' ministry necessitates the language of lament, the voicing of pain and sadness to the Father. The powers of sin and death gather all they can muster against the Son of God. In this moment things reveal their true nature and are seen for what they truly are. The empire, the justice system and religious institutions all conspire against the King of Glory. Crowds that adored now jeer. Disciples and friends betray, desert and deny. And in response to sin and evil, in anticipation of both his own imminent and Jerusalem's future suffering, Jesus brings his Father in prayer what is the only righteous response to these realities. He laments.
On Good Friday, we need the language of lament. We have always needed it, required it so that we can wrap words around the evil and suffering that persists with us and today comes into focus as sin's power and penalty is born by the innocent Son. But this Good Friday, arriving in the middle of the death and chaos that the coronavirus epidemic has brought, there is a particular need for us to pray and sing the song of lament. Because in a way that echoes that first Good Friday, this virus both reveals and amplifies evil and sin.
Over the past two weeks I have learned of members of my congregation who have newly lost their jobs. I have heard of a family of eight, with three foster kids, whose house burned down in the middle of our city's shelter in place order. I have spoken with a pastor in Brooklyn about the arrival of refrigerator trucks at the hospital next to his apartment, a temporary morgue for those who have succumbed to coronavirus. I have been reminded that in my city the closure of public schools has exacerbated the lack of security and stability in the lives of many students. And I have observed how lockdowns and social distancing aggravate domestic brokenness and intensify mental illness and addiction.
The invitation to me in this moment has been to lament. To do so is not to take a posture of resignation, but rather one of protest, an act of resistance to evil, an act of faith that this is not how it should be and indeed not how it will be. This Good Friday is an invitation for the Church to join its Lord in lament as a necessary and crucial part of the movement through the Cross and to the Empty Tomb. In doing so, lament gives us three important gifts - in every season, but certainly in this season.
The Gifts of Lament
Resisting Triumphalism. The tone of Easter is surprise and joy. This is as it should be; we are an Easter people, and we do not "grieve as others do, who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13). But note that for Paul, the resurrection does not remove grief. For the Thessalonians and for us the two are together, grief and hope coexisting side-by-side. While sorrow will not have the last word, it nevertheless persists. Not all wounds are healed in this world, and not all tears will be wiped away before we sit down for the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.
In certain corners of the North American church, this an alien and uncomfortable message. Implicit in our worship and our ways of life is this message: "Get over it."[1] Sin is not that persistent, evil is not that insidious, and death is not that great of an enemy. The lack of lament in our hymnody and our corporate worship give witness to our discomfort with lament, a striking contrast to the shape of the Psalter. We would rather forget than sing and pray about the pain we bear when we gather.
But what if lament was required to tell the truth? What if the truth is that this Sunday, our people will bring their unemployment to worship alongside their trust in the resurrection? What if the truth is that my belief that love is stronger than death lives alongside an estranged relationship with long-deceased parents? What if the truth is that every Sunday - and even Easter Sunday - honest tears coexist with unshakable joy?
We lament because when we live in the overlap of the ages, we will both hope and lament. To refuse either of these is to be less than truthful about the world we live in and the God who loves it.
Framing and Naming Our Grief. We find the language of lament throughout Scripture, but particularly in the Psalms. Psalms of Lament make up almost half of the psalter. These are words that are given not merely for information, but for formation. The Psalms teach us to take all of the complexities of our experiences and the world and to bring them to God in prayer. "Rather than being one-dimensional, our affections need to become agile and multi-dimensional through being reshaped by God through the Psalms.... The Psalms give us a way to pray in many keys, major and minor, while directing us to the source of our one true hope: the Lord and his promises."[2]
Grief is chaotic. In the face of death, destruction and evil, we are easily overwhelmed. One gift of lament is that it allows us to begin to frame its reality. In his book Embodied Hope, Kelly Kapic describes how the practice of lament both gives space to pain and also prevents it from consuming our lives.[3] Framing our grief with lament constrains, heightens, and clarifies our experience. We need to constrain our grief, because it threatens to take over our lives. Lament as a frame sets limits on grief even as it validates our grief. But we also heighten our awareness of pain. We can also sleepwalk through our grief, numbing ourselves in various ways to its reality. The frame puts us face to face with the realities of life in a fallen world. And then finally, lament clarifies our grief, allowing us to understand it within the biblical perspective. Lament places our pain before the Lord, naming both God's sovereignty over all things and also God's compassionate care for His people.
It is so important that we learn to lament that there is an entire book of the Bible devoted specifically to it: Lamentations. One entire book - five chapters of poetry - is in our canon, a response to disaster that fell upon the people of God and a source of instruction to a people who live in a fallen world. And in Lamentations, we are shown how to lament through a specific literary device: the acrostic.
An acrostic follows the order of an alphabet, each line of poetry beginning with a letter. The following line begins with the next letter of the alphabet, carrying on until the final letter of the alphabet is utilized. Lamentations follows the acrostic pattern of the twenty-two letter Hebrew alphabet not once, but five times. Every chapter of Jeremiah's grief-stricken poetry is organized by the acrostic.
Why does Lamentations proceed this way and what can we learn about lament from this? Lamentations uses the acrostic to teach us to name grief and evil, intentionally and seriously. Eugene Peterson writes that the acrostic is used "to guarantee that the grief and despair are expressed completely. The acrostic patiently, and carefully, goes through the letters of the alphabet and covers the ground of suffering. Every detail of suffering comes under consideration."[4] Uncomfortable with pain, ashamed to name our sorrows, we are tempted to cut short our lament. But biblical lament teaches us that God notices our pain and keeps company with our sorrows. "You have kept count of my tossings, / put my tears in your bottle. / Are they not in your book?” (Psalms 56:8). God invites us to name, describe and even catalogue our pain.
Telling the Whole Story. In chapter 3 of Lamentations, the acrostic pattern of Jeremiah's poetry intensifies. Not only does each the first word of the verse follow the Hebrew alphabet; here each of the three lines within the verse also corresponds. Jeremiah's lament requires even more specific naming as it is prayed to the Lord. Why?
As we give voice to pain and grief in the ordered pattern of the acrostic, truth comes more and more into focus. Lament comforts us with the truth that God cares for our suffering; but lament also humbles us as we enter into the presence of a holy and righteous God. The more clearly we see our own suffering and the world's pain, the more we see our own complicity. And so Jeremiah prays, "Who has spoken and it came to pass, / unless the Lord has commanded it? / Is it not from the mouth of the Most High / that good and bad come? Why should a living man complain, / a man, about the punishment of his sins? (Lamentations 3:37-39). Lament turns inward. We find ourselves lamenting our own sin.
And so as I lament the pain the coronavirus has left in its wake, I am invited to see how I am implicated in what I see. I lament the ways that brothers and sisters in my congregation are struggling as we are unable to gather as a church for worship and programming. But as I do so, I see ways I have failed to teach and disciple men and women to follow Jesus in times of crisis. I lament the pain of loss of livelihood and the fear and sadness that accompany it. But as I do, I see that my teaching has too often assumed the American Dream and not simplicity and biblical stewardship. I lament what I hear about the communities that are first and most deeply affected by this crisis. But as I do, I am reminded again that there is a deeper history of segregation, white flight and gentrification that have created these conditions - a history in which I am implicated.[5]
Biblical lament tells the whole story. This is a story that takes seriously our pain and our grief. It is also a story that takes seriously that we are not merely victims, but are also implicated in the sin and evil we see around us. But finally it is a story that gives mercy and grace the final word: "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 Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him'" (Lamentations 3:22-24).
The Song of the Lord in a Strange Land
"How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" (Psalms 137:4). The Psalmist's question is not just existential, a cry of a bewildered heart that is wondering how to sing of God's goodness in the conditions of exile. It is also practical, a recognition that faithfulness now demands that we learn new habits and patterns of prayer and worship. If the people of God are to live faithfully in this experience of exile, we will have to learn, for the first time or anew, the language of lament. How can we do that?
First, we can apprentice ourselves to others who know the language of lament far better than we do. Depending on who we are, this may require us to step outside of our culture and our age. We can apprentice ourselves to the black church and their spirituals, a tradition forged in the fires of suffering and persecution. We can move ourselves out of the major key that dominates so much of our listening and worship habits and into the minor key of lament, whether it is J.S. Bach's St Matthew's Passion or Henryk Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. And above all, we can make use of the psalms, in particular the ones we have perhaps been hesitant to pray: 22, 44, and even 88.
Second, we can intentionally teach lament. Lamentation is a muscle that has atrophied in many parts of the Church; strengthening it will mean we must be intentional in providing 'exercises' of lament. Lament belongs in corporate worship, and how we do this in a season of online worship will require pastoral wisdom and contextual discernment. Alongside gathered worship, we can create more intimate places for our people to learn to lament. Soong-Chan Rah suggests that small groups can become "embodied acrostics for engagement with the narrative of suffering."[6] At the top of my own pastoral tasks in the coming weeks is creating a study where people learn to write their own laments.
And third, we can entrust our laments to the man of sorrows. In the climactic servant song, Isaiah describes the Messiah as one who "has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows"(Isaiah 53:4). We cannot bear the burden of lamenting ourselves. "A full lament is deadly. We know this because when Jesus fully and truly enters into lament, it kills him. He dies. But in his case his lament was not for himself but for others. He enters in so that our laments don't have to kill us."[7] This Good Friday, we rest in the truth that our savior sees our world and us fully and truly, and that his own lament and death has been accomplished so that one day there will be no more tears.
Joey Sherrard is Associate Pastor of Discipleship at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church in Tennessee. He received his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, UK. Joey is a member of the St. John Fellowship of the Center For Pastor Theologians.
[1] "There has been a deep and tragic loss in the American story because we have not acknowledged the reality of death. Stories remain untold or ignored in our quest to 'get over' it." Soong Chan-Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times (Downer's Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2015), 51.
[2] J. Todd Billings, Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling With Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Braxos, 2015), 40.
[3] Kelly Kapic, Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering (Downer's Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 36.
[4] Eugene H. Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), 118.
[5] "Part of our discomfort with Lamentations is the sense that suffering may be an appropriate reality given our words and our deeds. Have we behaved inappropriately as a church endowed with great affluence? Have we sinned against God in squandering our many blessings?" Rah, Prophetic Lament., 78.
[6] Rah, Prophetic Lament, 118.
[7] Kapic, Embodied Hope, 39.
