Week 1—Lamentations 1
Setting the Scene
For justice-minded Christians at this moment in American history, these are times of great pain and even despair. We have much that we are holding. There is much work to be done. The biblical pattern of lament provides a way of finding God’s love and presence during anxious times
Throughout our time we will draw on an excellent resource: Prophetic Lament, by scholar Soong-Chan Rah, which follows the book of Lamentations. Much of our time together lamenting injustice will focus on the current treatment of immigrants in the United States. Sometimes we see photos of refugees, migrant workers, or asylum seekers, but we seldom learn their names or hear their voices. Each week we will begin our time together by hearing immigrants share their experiences in their own words. But first a bit of background information from the International Rescue committee:
1.According to the UN, at least 26 million people in the world are refugees.
2. The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone with a reasonable fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
3. Asylum seekers are people who are in the process of claiming protection in another country. If the claim is recognized, the individual can live there as a refugee.
4. Internally displaced persons are those unable to return home due to war or persecution, but who have been relocated into camps within their nation’s borders.
5. The wealthiest countries host just 24% of refugees. 76% are hosted by poor, low and middle-income countries. Turkey is the biggest host country, most coming from Syria.
6.Most refugees live in places immediately bordering their home country. Jordan has the second-highest number of refugees, more than 2 million, from Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia.
7.52% of all refugees were displaced from Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine.
8. 149 countries have agreed to provide refugees with protections under the 1951 Refugee Convention, including the United States.
Defining Lament
I've only had to officiate at a funeral for a child once– the sudden death of a 10 year old boy. I knew him well, knew the family well. It was devastating, heartbreaking. As the sanctuary filled, the heaviness, the weight of pain and grief, was palpable.
My co-pastor began his homily with the words: "There is something wrong with a world where this could happen.” There was an audible sigh. Relief that he hadn't offered the usual pat words. There was something powerful in just saying out loud: This. Is. Not. Right.
That deep emotion that resists all our feeble attempts to placate, to offer meager crumbs of solace, is what drives the biblical practice of lament.
We find ourselves now, as a nation, as global community, witnessing unspeakable violence and terror, loss and degradation. In the face of unimagined injustice, there are no words, no pat answers. Only the deep, raw language of lament. Rah writes that lament is a “response to the reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and trouble… Lament is the language of suffering” (Rah, p. 21-22).
One of the largest libraries of lament is in the book of Psalms. There are many types of psalms—praise, creation, royal, liturgical, confessional. But about 40% of the book is lament psalms. Because life is hard. Because when life is hard, when there is suffering, we need words to cry out to God. The lament psalms give us that language.
Why, O LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
—Psalm 10:1 NRSVue
Will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time?
—Psalm 77:7-8 NRSVue
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and every day have sorrow in my heart?
—Psalm 13:1-2 NRSVue
One of the striking things about biblical lament is the brutal honesty. Lament is about laying it all on the table, all the losses, all the suffering, all the pain, without reservation or filtering. Rah writes, “Lament is an act of protest as the lamenter is allowed to express indignation and even outrage about the experience of suffering… It is not the moment to explain or justify. It is not even a moment to plead for a better future. Lamentations provides the space and time to mourn… Rather than denying reality, Lamentations portrays suffering and death in gritty detail” (Rah, p. 44, 46).
And so we will take the time to name all the things. To speak of the suffering. Global suffering and insecurity with the loss of USAID, leading to starvation and disease, coupled with warmongering in Venezuela, Ukraine, Congo, Gaza. In Iran and Cuba. Suffering in the U.S. with casual cruelty, violence, detention. Families shattered.
We will name the names of the lives lost, the families disrupted.
Context of Lamentations
Our focus each week will be on the book Lamentations, traditionally understood to be written by Jeremiah, dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 586 BC. When the Babylonians captured Judah in 586 BC, they took all of the young men, the leaders, the strongest and best of Israel, back to Babylon as captives—exiles. The books of Daniel and Jeremiah are speaking to the exiles—those far from home, adapting to new and challenging circumstances. But Lamentations is speaking to those left behind. The elderly, the vulnerable who are left in a once great city now in ruins, with their very survival imperiled.
Historian John Bright describes what life was like for those left behind in Jerusalem: "the land had been completely wrecked. It's cities destroyed, it's economy ruined, its leading citizens killed or deported, the population consisted chiefly of poor peasants considered incapable of making trouble."
It is here I believe we might find some words that will help frame our response to the suffering we experience today or see in the world around us. Though the historical context of Lamentations is quite different than our own, there is so much in the text that speaks deeply and powerfully to us, as we see the devastation left behind after incursions in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago. In Minneapolis. The destruction left behind in Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, Cuba.
Lamentations 1: A Funeral Dirge
Rah notes that there are characteristics of Lam. 1 that are similar to those of an ancient Hebrew funeral dirge. Chapter 1 begins with the Hebrew word eka translated as “alas” or “how tragic.” It echoes the words we may have said several times in the last year, “How can it be???” The disbelief that things could devolve so quickly, our security, our safety swept away.
How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks…
Look, O LORD, at how distressed I am; my stomach churns; my heart is wrung within me… In the street the sword bereaves; in the house it is like death.
They heard how I was groaning, with no one to comfort me…for my groans are many, and my heart is faint.
—Lam. 1: 1-2, 20-22 NRSVue
Lam. 1 alternates between two voices: the more impersonal, matter of fact recitation of events by the narrator (presumed to be Jeremiah), and the personified voice of Jerusalem called "Daughter Zion." Rah notes that it is this personification of Jerusalem– speaking of the city as represented by a single, lone woman– that draws us into a more direct experience of suffering.
How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become subject to forced labor
She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers, she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
they have become her enemies, and her lot is bitter.
—Lam. 1:1-2
Rah notes: “The voices of suffering women in the book of Lamentations offer an important counternarrative to the triumphalistic tendencies of God’s people in the United States. We are likely to tune out the stories of suffering and struggle that undermine our success narratives, in contrast to the women’s voices in Lamentations 1 that rise up to speak truth when experiencing a painful reality... American evangelical inability to move beyond Christian triumphalism arises from the inability to hear voices outside the dominant white male narrative” (Rah p. 60).
Lamenting Injustice
In Prophetic Lament, Rah draws a connection between the cycles of suffering and confession in the book of Lamentations, with the need for America and the Church to contend with our own complicity in the sins of racism.
This is not an easy path to take. We want to resist looking too closely at our painful past. But centuries of pain and suffering cannot remain buried forever. And so we can see the injustice being brought upon our cities being played out in starkly racial terms, with racial profiling and dehumanizing language. With detention. Deportation. Devastation. The casual cruelty and warmongering against anyone who is “other.”
“In the United States, grief and pain related to race are often suppressed, and the stories of suffering are often untold. Our history is incomplete. The painful stories of the suffering of the African American community, in particular, remain hidden. Often, American Christians may even deny the narrative of suffering, claiming that things weren’t so bad for the slaves or that at least the African Americans had the chance to convert to Christianity. The story of suffering is often swept under the rug in order not to create discomfort or bad feelings...”
“True reconciliation, justice and shalom require a remembering of suffering, an unearthing of a shameful history and a willingness to enter into lament” (Rah, p. 47-48, 57-58).
Accommodation vs. Isolation
When the people of Israel find themselves in this devastated and occupied city, they have two choices: look away and withdraw from the world, or give in and accommodate to Babylon.
When we get to the New Testament, we see something similar as the people of Judah respond to Roman rule. There were Zealots who wanted to overthrow the Romans violently. Scribes and Pharisees, who were able to prosper by cooperating with and accommodating the Roman government. Then there were Essenes, who responded by withdrawing entirely, going into the desert to live in isolated monastic communities. Yet the example of Jesus is one who avoids both extremes, moving toward the marginalized and giving grace and healing even to their Roman enemies.
Rah describes how American evangelicalism has tended at times to fall into both extremes. During the 2nd Great Awakening (1790-1840) the conservatives (proto-evangelicals) were at the forefront of progressive social causes. Sadly, as evangelicals became more prosperous, that changed to focus only on individual salvation.
There has been a trend toward isolation and separatism—eschewing everything that seems to be “worldly”—public schools, popular music, Superbowl halftime shows. At other times, it has accommodated: leaning into the triumphalism, militarism, and materialism of American culture.
The church growth movement of the 80’s and 90’s birthed most of our megachurches. A key component was leaning on secular business practices to make a “comfortable” church that doesn’t challenge the congregation, that tells them what they want to hear—much like false prophets told the Israelites what they wanted to hear.
This is relevant now, as churches and individuals, institutions like news media and universities, are similarly tempted either to accommodate the powerful Trump administration, say what they need to say to curry favor—or to just be silent, look away, and talk about something else. To ignore what is happening all around.
In contrast, in John 17:18, Jesus teaches his followers to be “in the world but not of the world.” Not to withdraw, but to engage the world, without being conformed to it.
In Jer. 29, the prophet addresses the changed circumstances of the Babylonian exiles. He tells them this will be a long, long process. Not the quick turn around the false prophets promised, but 70 years. Most of his listeners will never see Jerusalem again. But then he says to them:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:
Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
—Jer. 29:4-7
Jeremiah’s call to marry, plant a garden reminds us that joy is resistance. There is joy in continuing to thrive. His call to pray for the city reminds us that we cannot divorce ourselves from the communities in which we live, cannot look away and pretend it doesn’t touch us..
Next week we will explore Lamentations 2 and Rah ch. 4-7, and hear the first of our stories of immigration.
Loving God, we dream of a world where bellies are full and everyone has a home that is safe and secure. We mourn for dreams that have been shattered.
We dream of a world where there’s mercy and kindness and justice and joy. We weep for all those in fear because of racism and injustice and the fear of strangers and difference.
We grieve for the nations at war: Ukraine. Gaza. Congo. Sudan. And now, today, we pray for Iran and Cuba. We yearn for peace.
May those who govern with cruelty, fear and violence have their hearts softened toward justice, mercy, and human dignity. May they experience the Living God who dwells among us and within us. Amen.
—adapted from Christy Berghoef; Lenora and Gary Rand, sanctifiedart.org