Help Me! The Wisdom of Lament Preached at Wollaston Congregational Church on October 10th, 2021 Scripture: Job 23:1-9, 16-17 Last week we began to read from the book of Job, and this week we continue this study. The scripture reading we heard today comes from much later in the book. And so we need to review what has happened since the day when the Lord struck down Job’s animals, possessions and children, and then inflicted Job with terrible skin sores all over his body. As Job sat in the ashes, three friends came to be with him. At first the friends did the thing that friends do. They sat down with him in the ashes and silently joined Job in his suffering. They sit for seven days, like the Jewish Shivah in which friends and family members of a deceased person sit and mourn together. When the seven days are over, Job begins to lament his suffering, cursing the day his was born. This seems to stir something up in the friends, who begin to analyze Job’s suffering. They conclude that he must have committed some egregious sin that caused the Lord to inflict suffering on him. They recommend that he tries to do better and tries to make amends for his sin. This does not go down well with Job who insists he is blameless. And so, in the passage we read today, Job laments. The usual way to make a lament, in religious terms, is to direct a complaint to God. But Job’s main complaint is that God is absent. If only Job could find God, then he could make his case to God. The silence and absence of God is unbearable. Judaism has a long tradition of Lament, which we Christians have inherited. The Wisdom Literature, that includes the psalms, contains many lamentations. There is even a book in this genre named Lamentations. In the Hebrew scriptures there are many communal lamentations over the destruction of the first Jerusalem temple by the Babylonians. The lamentation of the destruction of the second temple by the Romans continues to this day, as Jewish people gather at the one remaining temple wall in Jerusalem – the Western Wall – and cry out to God. The scriptures also include personal lamentations: cries of people who feel lost and abandoned. They are grieving the death of loved ones, or suffering from painful and terrible diseases. They have lost their livelihoods, their homes, or they have been ostracized from their communities. Our reading for today from the book of Job is paired with Psalm 22. This is formulated in the traditional structure of lament. The psalm begins “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Perhaps you remember this verse from the Good Friday readings. Jesus cries out on the cross "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt 27:46) Theologians have wrestled and argued about why Jesus, the Son of God, would cry out using this verse. How could Jesus feel forsaken by God, when he is God? Jürgen Moltmann, argues that “Jesus was indeed abandoned by God … [and at the same time] was never closer to God than in this absolute abandonment.” [1] According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus had been betrayed, abandoned by his friends, condemned by the crowd, flogged, stripped, and condemned to die on the cross. His feeling of abandonment may have been very much like that of Job. In all the accounts of Jesus on the cross there is no reply to his prayers and cries. God says nothing. I’m sure that we have all also felt abandoned, like Job, as some time or another. Perhaps we were dialing 911 for a loved one and felt a moment of panic and aloneness in such a frightening situation. Or perhaps we were receiving a devastating diagnosis, of terminal cancer or another incurable disease, for ourselves or a loved one. Perhaps we were terrified by impending danger: such as an active shooter in our school or workplace; our car about to crash; or there was an earthquake, hurricane or fire threatening our safety. I had a professor in seminary who used to say “the only prayer you have is the prayer you say when you haven’t got a prayer.” Or like the first of Anne Lammot’s three essential prayers “Help!” [2] Have you ever cried to God “help me, help me, help me”? In these days, we also experience the need for communal lament. In our church, we might lament the loss of the ways of the past. We lament the fact that we now have no choirs, or children, Sunday school, or youth events. The passing of these things is inescapable. We cannot turn things around. The culture has moved on and, for the most part, churches have not been able to keep up. We have been weighed down by facilities like ours. Here at Wollaston Congregational Church we lament what will probably be the loss of a large part of our building and all the memories that go with it. And yet, it is what is needed for this time and place. In our culture today we might well lament the deaths of more than 700,000 Americans due to COVID 19. This is now a greater loss that that of the 1918 flu pandemic. And we must mourn, grieve and lament the 645 children who have died in the US due to COVID. Theologian N.T. Wright wrote about the Christian tradition of lament for Time magazine at the beginning of the pandemic. He encouraged readers to avoid looking for an explanation for the crisis saying: “It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead. As the Spirit laments within us, so we become, even in our self-isolation, small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell. And out of that there can emerge new possibilities, new acts of kindness, new scientific understanding, new hope.” [3] Lament can come quite naturally and viscerally, from the gut. And there are also ways to create lamentations, so that we can share our cries, our hopes, our dreams with one another. Amy Rowe of the Incarnational Anglican Church writes, "In a lament, people pour out their complaints to God in an effort to persuade [God] to act on their behalf, all the while stating their trust in [God]. Laments can have seven parts:
Over the course of my life, I have been invited to write a Psalm of Lament on a number of occasions. One of those times was on a clergy retreat in November 2018. Looking back I notice that our culture had a great need to lament in 2018. Our community was polarized, isolated, separated. Many people were struggling with mental health and addictions. Ministry felt hard even then. Since the beginning of the pandemic, many of these problems have grown worse. Friends, we can remind ourselves that we have a deep need to lament even now. The suffering and struggle of our church and our culture goes on. These things have not yet been repaired. It is more healing to be truthful than to put on a “happy face.” And, most important of all lamenting provides an appropriate outlet for anger. God invites our anger by providing us with the practice of lament. God would rather take our anger, than have us direct it at one another. That is what God does on the cross: absorbs the anger, violence and pain of the world. I have discovered that a Psalm of Lament can pour out quite naturally, at least for me. Writing, drawing, singing, or speaking a lament is like a “good cry.” It gets things out. Generally, in scripture and in my own experience, God does not speak in response to lament. But, like Jesus on the cross, we can be the closest to God we’ve ever been when we dare to lament. And so, we do not hear from God in today’s passage from Job. Job’s lament does not even move on from the complaint to praise. As we leave him, Job is still searching for God, wondering where God is in all his suffering. Next week God will appear, but for now we leave Job praying the only true prayer he can utter, “help!” May all God’s people say, Amen [1] Bartlett, David L.; Taylor, Barbara Brown. Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle Locations 5474-5475). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition. [2] Anne Lammot, Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers, (New York, Riverhead Book, 2012) [3] https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/ [4] https://www.incarnationanglican.org/post/writing-a-lament
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