Grief. Mourning. Sorrow. Weeping.
These are elements of lament. As children of God, we are not immune to feelings of abandonment and desolation. In scripture, most of God’s chosen leaders enter into a time of lament – Jacob, Joseph, David, Job, all the prophets, the people of Israel and even Jesus, whose anguished cry in the Garden of Gethsemane was accompanied by blood oozing out of his skin’s pores. (A rare, medical phenomena, Hematohidrosis can occur when someone suffers extreme levels of stress.)
It’s important to find healthy ways to express pent up emotion, as a way of cleansing our spirit. A hard belly laugh is good for the soul. But so is a good cry, even if the term sounds like an oxymoron. Weeping is uncomfortable for many of us, especially in the company of others. We would rather keep our despair locked away than allow it to rise to the surface, threatening our carefully constructed cocoon of control. We are also uncomfortable in the presence of someone who weeps; what are we supposed to do with that?
Matt Ewert, Lead Pastor at South Abbotsford Church says Christians often attach shame to lament, reasoning, “If I really know Jesus, I should be able to get past this. If I’m sad too long, something’s wrong.” The reasons for our grief may also make us vulnerable. For example, openly grieving a wayward child’s lifestyle may somehow point a finger at my bad parenting. “So by inviting someone into my grief, I risk judgment,” he explains. “We don’t trust that someone will know how to walk well beside us.”
Answers please
It is our nature to seek answers to the devastation we see in our own lives and the world. We need to neatly place the last puzzle piece. That need, however, goes against the whole idea of faith in a God who is much bigger than we are – a God who allows things to happen, who comes alongside us in our pain, and is able to bring redemption to the situation. Ewert explains that lament is the opposite of trying to make sense of it all. “Lament is saying, ‘I don’t have an answer, I don’t have a reason and I can’t fix it – so all I can do is sit in the presence of God and be real about how I feel and cast myself on him.’” This was Job’s posture, while his friends were busy assigning answers and blame to Job’s suffering.
We like happy endings. Even the book of Job seems to resolve in the end (although Ewert makes the point that lost children can never be replaced). But life isn’t always like that. We clench our fists around the idea of certainty. “We’ve made faith about certainty, and I think faith is a word of trust,” Ewert says. “Certainty has to have no questions hanging…Faith says, ‘Even where I don’t have answers, I still trust.’ I think to have a robust faith, we need to say, ‘Even though everything about what I feel and experience is telling me otherwise, … I choose to trust, in the darkness.’ You can only really grow in that way if you are okay with letting the darkness be.” Ewert has experienced this, personally. “I’m a fix-it kind of guy,” he admits. We can’t fix everything and sometimes the journey of suffering doesn’t have answers. “God says, ‘I’m here, I need you to trust me, that I’m with you and you just need to figure out what your next step is.’” Ewert explains that we can respond to suffering by walking a path of sin and bitterness, or the path of lament. It’s a choice we make.
Authenticity
The psalms of disorientation invite us to be real – they are raw with emotion; the writer doesn’t hold back. It is precisely in this stance of honesty that reorientation is able to take place. The venting of anxiety, anger, and injustice eventually burns out, and the psalmist is once again able to remember God’s power, goodness and former deeds. There is one exception – Psalm 88. The end of this psalm leaves us sitting in the darkness. The bottom of the psalm opens a huge void, creating a grace-filled space for us to sit with our sorrow for as long as we need to.
Grieving in community assures us that we are not alone in our brokenness; bearing our sorrow together creates a precious bond. We find unity in honesty. While our society places high value on individual privacy, scripture assumes a community culture, even and especially in times of lament. In Romans 12, the apostle Paul exhorts us to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (vs 15). As different parts of the body of Christ, we need each other. Ewert says, “In the context of body life, if all we do is rejoice together, we’re actually only giving half of ourselves to one another. And that’s just not the biblical vision of Christian community. We’re not created to be in isolation, so we just do ourselves harm when we try to do it by ourselves.” If there’s anywhere we can present our whole selves as we are, it must be the church.
It is past time for the church to recapture the historical practice of lament, giving voice to the sorrow of our community and the world. When we suffer pain and loss, God – our Rock and Refuge -invites us to name our pain and bring it to him. Our rants and tears about disease, death, betrayal, injustice and senseless disaster are safe in his care, and by extension, with each other.
Marion Van Driel delights in her roles as a wife, mother and grandmother; her soul is fed by both composing and composting. Music, words, form and colour are ingredients on which she thrives. She considers her garden a gift where family and friends gather to visit, heal, reflect and celebrate. Called as writer, artist, worship leader, gardener and (sometimes reluctant) follower of Christ, she bears evidence of God’s abundant grace without which she’d be someone else entirely.
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