Sermon Illustrations on lament
Background
The Importance of Lament to Create a Healthy Society
In the book of Lamentations, Jeremiah responds to the tragedy and suffering of the fallen city of Jerusalem. The proper response to a tragedy of this proportion is to offer up a lament. The book begins with the poignant words, “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!” How can it be? In the historical moment of crisis and destruction, it is proper to express to God our lack of understanding. It is appropriate to lament a situation that is not a fulfillment of God’s plan of shalom for the world. The Septuagint translation of the title of this book is “wailing.” Wailing in Near Eastern culture refers to a funeral dirge—when something has been lost or taken away, in this case the vibrancy of Jerusalem, the proper response is wailing. But the lament Jeremiah offers comes with power.
His wailing helps bring closure to this particular chapter of Israel’s history. Through his lament, Jeremiah embraces a troubled history and he is also able to look toward the future. American history tends to be filled with a sense of triumphalism. America’s greatest moments are found in winning wars, conquering economic difficulties, and inventing new modern conveniences. The story of America is often portrayed as the story of tremendous success. There have been, however, times in American history for which we should recognize the need to lament, following the biblical example that calls us to engage in the painful stories as well as the victorious ones. Celebration without suffering can become dysfunctional and provide a myopic view of God’s work. Our story needs to include lament.
Soong-Chan Rah, Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church, Moody, 2010.
The Journey of Reconciliation is Grounded in the Practice of Lament
The first language of the church in a deeply broken world is not strategy, but prayer. The journey of reconciliation is grounded in a call to see and encounter the rupture of this world so truthfully that we are literally slowed down. We are called to a space where any explanation or action is too easy, too fast, too shallow—a space where the right response can only be a desperate cry directed to God.
We are called to learn the anguished cry of lament. Lament is the cry of Martin Luther King Jr. from his kitchen table in Montgomery after hearing yet another death threat: “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. . . . But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now, I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. Now, I am afraid. . . . I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”
… Lament is not despair. It is not whining. It is not a cry into a void. Lament is a cry directed to God. It is the cry of those who see the truth of the world’s deep wounds and the cost of seeking peace. It is the prayer of those who are deeply disturbed by the way things are. We are enjoined to learn to see and feel what the psalmists see and feel and to join our prayers with theirs. The journey of reconciliation is grounded in the practice of lament.
Taken from Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing by Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice Copyright (c) 2008 by Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Lament: A Definition and Example
In his faithful memior/treatment of the subject of lament, professor J. Todd Billings defines the practice of lament through his own experience of receiving a diagnosis of Multiple Myloma:
Lament. The English word has some ambiguity, particularly as it relates to the laments in Scripture. It can mean grieving and mourning, such as those weeping for a lost loved one at a funeral; or it can mean protest, a form of petition—seeking to take God to “court” to make one’s case. Both senses of “lament” are important in the Bible, and although they differ, there is also a continuum between the two.
Writers of laments and complaints in the Psalms often seek to make their “case” against God, frequently citing God’s promises in order to complain that God seems to be forgetting his promises. They throw the promises of God back at him.
I say to God, my rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
because the enemy oppresses me?”
As with a deadly wound in my body,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
“Where is your God?” (Ps. 42:9–10)
God is the rock and refuge to his people, the One who always remembers Israel. Based on this promise, the psalmist thrusts the promise back to God in protest: “Why have you forgotten me?” Why does God allow the psalmist’s enemies to mock God’s promises, tauntingly saying, “Where is your God?”
When I shared the news of my cancer diagnosis, the response of my friends and family was varied. Sometimes it was lament, in the sense of mourning and grieving. There were many tears. Sometimes those responding quickly moved to remind me of God’s promises and of their commitment to pray for me and my family. And, less often, there were responses in the mode of protest-lament, as in this note from a friend (used with permission).
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk tonight. . . .
I wanted to apologize because what I wanted to say didn’t manage to come out. It’s beautiful just how much better the little girl from your church was able to articulate it. God is bigger than cancer. It’s true. And also, perhaps less faithfully . . . I hate this f or you more than anything. I hate this for your family. I want you to beat the heck out of it. Forgive us all for the stupid things we say and don’t say. I am praying tonight for you and Rachel.
A Time to Lament
In a time of acute crisis, when death sneaks into houses and shops, when you may feel healthy yourself but you may be carrying the virus without knowing it, when every stranger on the street is a threat, when we go around in masks, when churches are shut and people are dying with nobody to pray by their bedside – this is a time for lament.
For admitting we don’t have easy answers. For refusing to use the crisis as a loudspeaker for what we’d been wanting to say in any case. For weeping at the tomb of our friends. For the inarticulate groaning of the Spirit. ‘Rejoice with those who rejoice,’ said Paul, ‘and weep with those who weep.’ Yes, and the world is weeping right now. The initial calling of the Church, first and foremost, is to take our place humbly among the mourners.
Grief, after all, is part of love. Not to grieve, not to lament, is to slam the door on the same place in the innermost heart from which love itself comes.
The Two Poles of Speaking to God (And What’s Often Missing in the Western Church)
Old Testament scholar Claus Westermann situates the Hebrew poetic material into two broad categories: praise and lament. Westermann asserts that “as the two poles, they determine the nature of all speaking to God.” Psalms that express worship for the good things that God has done are categorized as praise hymns.
Laments are prayers of petition arising out of need. But lament is not simply the presentation of a list of complaints, nor merely the expression of sadness over difficult circumstances. Lament in the Bible is a liturgical response to the reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and trouble. The hope of lament is that God would respond to human suffering that is wholeheartedly communicated through lament.
Unfortunately, lament is often missing from the narrative of the American church. In Journey Through the Psalms, Denise Hopkins examines the use of lament in the major liturgical denominations in America. The study found that in the Lutheran Book of Worship, the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer, the Catholic Lectionary for Mass, the Hymnal of the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Hymnal, “the majority of Psalms omitted from liturgical use are the laments.” This trend is found not only in the mainline traditions but in less liturgical traditions as well.
In Hurting with God, Glenn Pemberton notes that lament constitutes 40 percent of all psalms, but only 13 percent of the hymnal for the Churches of Christ, 19 percent of the Presbyterian hymnal and 13 percent of the Baptist hymnal. Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) licenses local churches in the use of contemporary worship songs and tracks the songs that are most frequently sung in local churches. CCLI’s list of the top one hundred worship songs in August of 2012 reveals that only five of the songs would qualify as a lament. Most of the songs reflect themes of praise: “How Great Is Our God,” “Here I Am to Worship,” “Happy Day,” “Indescribable,” “Friend of God,” “Glorious Day,” “Marvelous Light” and “Victory in Jesus.”
Taken from Prophetic Lament by Soong-Chan Rah Copyright (c) 2015 by Soong-Chan Rah. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Whatever Your Need
From the early centuries of the church, the Psalms were memorized and used regularly in Christian worship. Fourth-century bishop Athanasius spoke eloquently about how they are God’s medicine for humans in all different circumstances:
“Whatever your particular need or trouble, from the same book you can select a form of words to fit it, so that you not merely hear and pass on, but learn the way to remedy your ill.” Whether in St. Benedict’s monasteries or John Calvin’s Geneva, a wide range of Christians have experienced the Psalms-in good times and bad-through meditating, praying, and singing. They are ideal for corporate worship as well as personal devotion.
Traversing a Timeless Biblical Demand & Our Particular Place and Time
During the 1992 presidential election, I (Rick) was directing the small group ministry at our church. Bill Clinton was running against George H. W. Bush, and given that many evangelicals found Bill Clinton to be an unsavory political figure, a large majority of White evangelicals voted against him.
A few days after Bill Clinton was elected, I was facilitating a small-group leaders’ meeting. One of the leaders whose political convictions leaned strongly Republican suggested that our small groups should have a time of lament in light of the recent election. Some others nodded in agreement. Was this a good idea? I thought not.
There were some assumptions hidden here. First, there was a political assumption of a clear alignment between the Republican party and the Christian faith. Hence, if the Republicans lost, it would be a cause for Christians to lament. Pastor Tim Keller offers a helpful critique of this notion: Another reason not to align the Christian faith with one party is that most political positions are not matters of biblical command but of practical wisdom. . . .
The biblical commands to lift up the poor and to defend the rights of the oppressed are moral imperatives for believers. . . . However, there are many possible ways to help the poor. Should we shrink government and let private capital markets allocate resources, or should we expand the government and give the state more of the power to redistribute wealth?
Or is the right path one of the many possibilities in between? The Bible does not give exact answers to these questions for every time, place and culture. Keller nicely states the first problem with having a season of lament. He reminds us that there is always a distance that has to be traversed between a timeless biblical command and a social policy governing affairs at a particular place and time.
Adapted from Winsome Conviction by Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer Copyright (c) 2020 by Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Stories
Biblical Lament and Tahlequah the Orca
Lament is the practice of mourning what is wrong in the world and calling on God to repair it. We lament the sins for which we are responsible, the sins for which we are only indirectly responsible, and, perhaps especially, the sins for which we are not remotely responsible. We lament the things that are broken, whether or not we broke them. Lament, then, is part of repentance—of grieving personal sins and turning away from them.
But it’s also part of grieving the large-scale injustices for which we may be only indirectly complicit, and those losses that have no evident moral failure or culpability attached to them, but which result from living in a fractured world. In other words, lament is a practice that is appropriate whether I am repenting of the lustful thoughts I’ve been nurturing yet again, or whether I am grieving the death of Michael Brown and the structural injustices that have historically privileged white people in America, or whether I am mourning the death of a friend to cancer. Lament is a fitting response in any of these situations.
Tahlequah lamented the loss of her daughter for a thousand miles, off the coast of Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria, British Columbia, swimming unceasingly through the same cold waters that had held her safe through seventeen months of pregnancy. An orca, Tahlequah pushed her calf, who had lived for less than an hour, through the Pacific Ocean for seventeen days before letting her go—an unprecedented show of mourning that drew international attention. Tahlequah’s pod of killer whales is endangered; they are dependent on Chinook salmon for food, but Chinook salmon are also endangered, so food is scarce.
Tahlequah’s baby wasn’t just her baby; it was her pod’s hope for the future. Now scientists say the seventy-five killer whales in the Salish Sea have only five years to produce offspring if they hope to continue to exist. I can’t help but think Tahlequah knows this, and her unparalleled tour of grief was a cry for humans to notice the damage we have done to natural habitats. Orcas gestate for seventeen months. Tahlequah mourned one day for every month she’d bonded with her calf. Perhaps this is coincidental, but I doubt it. Lament needs structure. Lament needs form. It will come in waves that cannot be entirely predicted. God will seem silent. The suffering must be honored. Relief, when it comes, may be minor, more exhausted than triumphant. And we must expect to be changed by our grief.
A Christian Approach to Suffering
In the summer of 2012, I knelt over the frail shell of a child, my son, strapped to all manner of medical monitoring equipment. His body failing, his frame thinning, the medical staff at Arkansas Children’s Hospital was at a loss. They had no answers, no direction. He was an anomaly, they said, and they’d need to regroup after making him as comfortable as possible. Though the medical community struggled to sort it all out, my faith community seemed to have every answer.
God would provide, one said, because God would respond to my great faith. God was setting up a miracle, another said. God works all things together for good, I was reminded. Platitude, platitude, platitude. I smiled through all of them, even nodded. Silently I wondered, Did all those words amount to anything, well-meaning though they were? Hunched over my son, all those platitudes haunting, my phone rang.
I looked at the screen, read the name. It was a pastor from a more reformed church in my hometown, and as I answered the phone, I wondered what platitude I might hear. There was a purpose in my son’s suffering? Everything has a Kingdom purpose? After an exchange of greetings, I clenched my jaw. Stiffened. Braced myself.
Through the phone, I heard only three words: “I’m so sorry.” There was a pause, and he told me to holler if I needed anything. He said he’d be praying, and that was that. It was a moment of selfless solidarity, a moment in which this man of the cloth didn’t force-feed me anemic answers or sell me some fix-all version of a bright-and-shiny gospel.
Instead, he did the work of Christ himself; he entered into my suffering. And years later, after a long season of healing (both my son’s and my own), his words served as a reminder of the Christian response to suffering—we enter into it together, share in it together, lament with each other.
I suppose it’s natural, our tendency to try to run from suffering, to somehow try to drag other folks from their own. We Christians use the holy tools at our disposal (particularly, the misinterpretation of Scripture) in an attempt to pave a path around suffering. The problem is that’s not the way of Christ. Christ—God with us—entered into the suffering of humanity. He lamented with those who lamented, extended compassion and healing to the hurting. Ultimately, he took on the existential suffering of all mankind as he endured his own suffering on the cross.
Alia Joy, Glorious Weakness: Discovering God in All We Lack, Baker Books, 2019.
Traversing a Timeless Biblical Demand & Our Particular Place and Time
During the 1992 presidential election, I (Rick) was directing the small group ministry at our church. Bill Clinton was running against George H. W. Bush, and given that many evangelicals found Bill Clinton to be an unsavory political figure, a large majority of White evangelicals voted against him.
A few days after Bill Clinton was elected, I was facilitating a small-group leaders’ meeting. One of the leaders whose political convictions leaned strongly Republican suggested that our small groups should have a time of lament in light of the recent election. Some others nodded in agreement. Was this a good idea? I thought not.
There were some assumptions hidden here. First, there was a political assumption of a clear alignment between the Republican party and the Christian faith. Hence, if the Republicans lost, it would be a cause for Christians to lament. Pastor Tim Keller offers a helpful critique of this notion: Another reason not to align the Christian faith with one party is that most political positions are not matters of biblical command but of practical wisdom. . . .
The biblical commands to lift up the poor and to defend the rights of the oppressed are moral imperatives for believers. . . . However, there are many possible ways to help the poor. Should we shrink government and let private capital markets allocate resources, or should we expand the government and give the state more of the power to redistribute wealth?
Or is the right path one of the many possibilities in between? The Bible does not give exact answers to these questions for every time, place and culture. Keller nicely states the first problem with having a season of lament. He reminds us that there is always a distance that has to be traversed between a timeless biblical command and a social policy governing affairs at a particular place and time.
Adapted from Winsome Conviction by Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer Copyright (c) 2020 by Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Analogies
Biblical Lament and Tahlequah the Orca
Lament is the practice of mourning what is wrong in the world and calling on God to repair it. We lament the sins for which we are responsible, the sins for which we are only indirectly responsible, and, perhaps especially, the sins for which we are not remotely responsible. We lament the things that are broken, whether or not we broke them. Lament, then, is part of repentance—of grieving personal sins and turning away from them.
But it’s also part of grieving the large-scale injustices for which we may be only indirectly complicit, and those losses that have no evident moral failure or culpability attached to them, but which result from living in a fractured world. In other words, lament is a practice that is appropriate whether I am repenting of the lustful thoughts I’ve been nurturing yet again, or whether I am grieving the death of Michael Brown and the structural injustices that have historically privileged white people in America, or whether I am mourning the death of a friend to cancer. Lament is a fitting response in any of these situations.
Tahlequah lamented the loss of her daughter for a thousand miles, off the coast of Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria, British Columbia, swimming unceasingly through the same cold waters that had held her safe through seventeen months of pregnancy. An orca, Tahlequah pushed her calf, who had lived for less than an hour, through the Pacific Ocean for seventeen days before letting her go—an unprecedented show of mourning that drew international attention. Tahlequah’s pod of killer whales is endangered; they are dependent on Chinook salmon for food, but Chinook salmon are also endangered, so food is scarce.
Tahlequah’s baby wasn’t just her baby; it was her pod’s hope for the future. Now scientists say the seventy-five killer whales in the Salish Sea have only five years to produce offspring if they hope to continue to exist. I can’t help but think Tahlequah knows this, and her unparalleled tour of grief was a cry for humans to notice the damage we have done to natural habitats. Orcas gestate for seventeen months. Tahlequah mourned one day for every month she’d bonded with her calf. Perhaps this is coincidental, but I doubt it. Lament needs structure. Lament needs form. It will come in waves that cannot be entirely predicted. God will seem silent. The suffering must be honored. Relief, when it comes, may be minor, more exhausted than triumphant. And we must expect to be changed by our grief.
What You’re Missing
James “Jim” Moore owned a famous midtown (New York City) eatery that was known as “Dinty Moore’s.” The restaurant attracted a lot of actors from the theater industry due to the quality of its food and its proximity to Broadway. Over time, Moore became close to many of these well-known denizens of his restaurant. But as time went on, and many of his close friends passed away, he missed them so much he took to visiting their graves.
One day, as he passed his old friends, he came upon the grave of George M. Cohan, the prolific playwright. At that point, he pulled out a piece of fish and thumped Cohan’s headstone with it. “In case you don’t know,” he shouted, “today’s Friday, and I just want you to see what you’re missing.”
Stuart Strachan Jr.