Lament Finds a Place
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1, 1 Timothy 2:1-7
Win or lose, after a college football game, the head coach appears before the press junket to account for the outcome. Sometimes key players are included. Sports writers ask about the plays that went well and those that went wrong. Whether you’ve seen the game or not, the coach’s and players’ body language quickly reveals to anyone watching if they have experienced the thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat.[1] We’ve all seen coaches take their frustrations out on those asking the questions. We’ve seen them side-step blame as best they could or get down-right belligerent. But occasionally, there is the coach who can’t hide their despair; sitting alongside players who can barely look up into the cameras, towels hanging over their heads hiding their disappointment, and raw emotions. This is a version of American lament that we are familiar with.
Or perhaps when you drive away from the coffee shop and take that first sip of Maple Pecan Latte, expecting nutty sweetness paired with maple flavor and a whisper of vanilla and instead you get decaf, no-sugar, non-fat light roast (bleh). What follows is another version of American lament we are accustomed to – whining and complaining about the wrong coffee order. I know. It’s tough. Why me, Lord?!?
The truth is we are overwhelmed with, honest to God, reasons for lament much greater than the outcomes of football games and coffee orders. Even after going through a pandemic, in which I thought we learned a lot of good lessons about this, we are still not very good at holding space for tears and lament because it is uncomfortable. It makes us feel vulnerable. Lament asks us to admit to the cracks in our armor.
Clara Ruth Hayman was widowed when her husband John died suddenly from a respiratory illness. “That ended my life as I knew it,” she wrote in her little book, A Walk Through Darkness. But after the funeral, Clara Ruth insisted everyone leave and get back to their normal routine. She knew that eventually she would have to do the same, and for her, the sooner the better… “I come from a long line of strong women,” she wrote “and I was not going to be a wimp!” But when the last car pulled out of the drive, she went upstairs to her bedroom, took John’s photo in her hands, and for the first time the tears overflowed.” Her body shook from the sobs. What in God’s name was she going to do now?[2]
It’s been said, “The world is always ending for someone.”[3] Sometimes we experience this because of unexplainable, and frankly, undeserved events like in the life of Clara Ruth. Other times, we reap the consequences of words, actions, or inactions, decisions, or indecisions that we brought upon ourselves. This is the case with Israel.
The prophet, Jeremiah, is tasked with pronouncing the inevitable collapse of Israel at the hands of Babylonian armies. He struggles with his own sense of despair and hopelessness as one of them. He will not escape their fate. He is caught up in their complacency toward God and thus the consequences of Israel’s own making. “No healing, only grief. My heart is broken.” So begins our text today. The voices in the text talk past each other. Some thoughts belong to Israel, some to the prophet, and some to God(?).
[YHWY] Listen to the weeping of my people
all across the land:
[People] “Isn’t the Lord in Zion?
Is her king no longer there?”
[YHWH] Why then did they anger me with their images,
with pointless foreign gods?
[People] “The harvest is past,
the summer has ended, yet we aren’t saved.”
[Jeremiah] Because my people are crushed,
I am crushed; darkness and despair overwhelm me.
It’s ambiguous whether it is Jeremiah or God talking. Since the prophet is God’s messenger, perhaps, we can say, it is both.
And then the words that earn Jeremiah the name, the weeping prophet:
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
If only my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears,
I would weep day and night for the wounds of my people.
All the voices come together to sound the alarm - hope is eroding, giving way to despair.[4] YHWH, Jeremiah, and the people form a circle of pain.[5] For the children of God and certainly for us, we might need to hear:
God is not mad at us; God grieves for us that we can’t seem to get it right. God is not one who punishes us, but who lets the consequences of our choices fall where they may. We are not being destroyed; we are self-destructive. The image here is not one of God bent on vengeance but a God who laments. What brings us back from the hell of our own making is not God’s anger (which only pushes us farther away) but God’s deep grief for us, because God loves us.[6]
God loves us so…. God will come to sit in the circle of pain.[7] God is there to hear the words we hear:
“Inoperable,”
“Incurable”
“Police were called to a school when…”;
When half the country laments for their half and would be just as happy if the other half fell in the ocean, God laments for the whole [country.]
Sitting in the circle of pain with God, may feel like our undoing, but the way forward in this hurting world is through honest lament. Giving ourselves over to lament requires something different from us:
Offering our tears instead of withholding them
Setting aside judgment and solutions (for now)
Choosing connection
The practice of lament rescues us from drowning in our uncried tears. Anne Lamott had a difficult relationship with her mother. After her mother died, Anne searched for ways to understand her better. Clearing out her purse, she found it was jammed, as it always had been, with kleenex, which was so ironic Anne thought, for the woman who never cried. Uncried tears left her mother hypervigilant, unable to settle down into herself, and as only Anne Lamott could say it – to use the clinical term – cuckoo. She had drowned in those uncried tears.[8]
In Psalm 56, King David prays to God, "You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book". God knows our human need to express pain and sorrow. We engage in lament because we recognize that it is the tears we do not cry that cause us trouble.[9] Clara Ruth wanted to plow past her grief and avoid her tears, but the only way forward was through it.
Friends mean well when they offer reassurance or suggestions to someone going through a hard time. But too often these comments come off like judgment or premature remedies. We sure like to find or offer solutions when someone is hurting. Obviously. No one wants to see a friend or loved one hurt. But the “doing” part of compassion sometimes just looks like showing up with hot tea, or soup, and being willing to sit in your friend’s (or family member’s) circle of pain. This reminds me of something Brene Brown said she was learning about compassion and parenting - “I went from always wanting to fix things and make them better to literally sitting in the dark with my kids. Before I understood that the action part of compassion wasn’t making things better or fixing, I would rush to turn on the metaphorical lights when they were suffering.”[10] Being okay with sitting in the discomfort with another person is how we practice lamenting. Lament provides structure, permission, and language for us to feel what we truly feel and to say what we most need to say.[11]
When we join one another in the circle of pain, that’s lament. It’s sacred space - sitting in the dark - with another soul. It creates meaningful connection - the kind of connection that cultivates compassion and empathy.
I’ll close with this modern parable that I think illustrates what lament looks like in community and what it requires of us.
A guy's walkin' down a street when he falls in a hole. It’s a dark place. The walls are so steep he can't get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, "Hey you! Can you help me out?" The doctor says, you clearly weren’t watching where you were going. You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt. He writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole, and moves on. Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, "Father, I'm down in this hole; can you help me out?" The priest says, “oh, my child, that is a bad situation you have gotten yourself into. Well, at least you’re able to communicate with the outside world. He writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. "Hey, Joe, it's me. Can ya help me out?" And the friend climbs down in the hole. The guy says, "Are ya nuts? Now we're both down here." The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out."
The friend understands what it is to lament. He doesn’t tell him to quit complaining and get over it. He doesn’t pass judgment or flood him with pity or platitudes. He climbs in the hole with him.
Like the people of Israel we are not going to escape the consequences of our choices in this life, nor will we avoid pain, suffering, or death. Once in a while, we are going to find ourselves in a dark hole. My friends, God is already there and knows the way out.
[1] ABC Wide World of Sports opening montage 1970s-80s
[2] Hayman, Clara Ruth A Walk Through Darkness 2003
[3] Sanders, Cody “Preaching Your Way Through an Apocalypse” Festival of Homiletics, May 2023
[4] Clements, R. E. Interpretation Series commentary Jeremiah
[5] Davidson, Steed, Working Preaching commentary, Jeremiah 8:18-9:1, 2022
[6] https://unfoldinglight.net/2022/06/19/ot-25-15th-sunday-after-pentecost/
[7] Davidson, Steed, Working Preaching commentary, Jeremiah 8:18-9:1, 2022
[8] https://chchurches.org/part-two-hope-in-lament-a-regular-practice-of-worship/
[9] ibid.
[10] Brown, Brene, Atlas of the Heart
[11] https://chchurches.org/part-two-hope-in-lament-a-regular-practice-of-worship/