“O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever?
How long will you look the other way?
How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day?
How long will my enemy have the upper hand?” Psalm 13:1-2, NLT
“O Lord, why do you stand far away?
Why do you hide when I am in trouble?” Psalm 10:1, NLT
“You have tossed us aside in dishonor.
You no longer lead our armies to battle.
You make us retreat from our enemies and allow those who hate us to plunder our land.
You have butchered us like sheep and scattered us among the nations.
You sold your precious people for a pittance, making nothing on the sale.
You let our neighbors mock us…
You have made us the butt of their jokes…” Psalm 44:9-14, NLT
If you start reading the lament psalms, or any other passages of lament found in the Scriptures, you will soon be affronted by the anguished cries of protest, complaint, and even accusation against God, and the vociferous cries of grief, revenge, and woundedness. Heavily influenced by Hellenistic thought, the Western Church has largely ignored lament as an act of worship, and is uncomfortable with its visceral expression. The Hellenized mind would seek to counsel the Hebrew poet with patronizing words, “Get a grip on yourself! It’s not that bad. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you!” But, there is something powerful about lament the Hebrew poet knew that the Hellenized mind has not grasped. It behooves us to ask the Hebrew poet, “What difference does it make to have a faith that permits such bold speech with the Almighty God? Why is lament such an important part of the worship experience?”
Lament is a bold, disturbing form of prayer that often includes, “expressions of raw anger, cries for vengeance against enemies as well as elements of protest in which the one who prays enters into intense even angry argument with God.”(1) It lifts up and draw attention to the human reality of suffering, pain, and loss, gives voice to the soul trying to make sense of such realities, and moves God to act. After giving voice to the pain, the worshiper is moved “from the articulation of hurt and anger to submission of them to God, and finally to relinquishment.”(2)
To the Hellenized mind, lament seems to be a prayer of one on the verge of losing their faith. It’s anguished questions and accusations seem to be voicing a lack of faith when in reality, lament is a faith expressed. The Hebrew poet is not raging to an a vague, unnamed deity, but the God in whom he has trusted, the covenant God whose promise seems to have failed. Lament allows us to be honest with our perception of God’s abandonment or unfaithfulness and how that perception challenges our understanding of God. Because our complaint is against God, to bring it to God in dialogue is an act of faith. Walter Brueggeman suggests that “[Lament] is an act of bold faith on the one hand, because it insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way. On the other hand, it is bold because it insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. Everything properly belongs in this conversation of the heart. To withhold parts of life from that conversation is in fact to withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God. Thus these psalms make the important connection: everything must be brought to speech, and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God, who is the final reference for all life” (3)
According to Brueggemann, “faith expressed in lament is nerve—it is a faith that knows that honest facing of distress can be done effectively only in dialogue with God who acts in transforming ways. It is a remarkable combination of honesty and dialogue.”(4) We are in a covenant relationship with God in which He allows and invites open and honest dialogue between Himself and His covenant partner. In fact, genuine covenant interaction is compromised when one party is either voiceless or has voice that is limited to only praise and doxology.
Unfortunately, for many of us, our relationship with God has not been both honest and dialogic. We hold to a view of God that does not permit us to engage in prayer that is even remotely similar to that of the Hebrew poet. Brueggemann asserts, “If we are dialogic at all, we think it must be polite and positive and filled only with gratitude. So little do our liturgies bring to expression our anger and hatred, our sense of betrayal and absurdity. But even more acutely, with our failure of nerve and our refusal to presume upon our partner in dialogue, we are seduced into nondialogic forms of faith, as though we were the only ones there; and so we settle for meditation and reflection or bootstrap operations of resolve to alter our situation.”(5) The leads to a grievous loss in that we are not only missing out on authentic dialogue with our covenant partner, we are being strengthened primarily by our own resolve in the midst of our suffering and pain, thereby weakening our faith. Therefore, in an upside-down manner so characteristic of the Kingdom, lament, which seems to be evidence of a weakened faith, actually strengthens our faith; and refraining from lament, which seems to reveal a strong faith, actually weakens our faith.
This is not the only loss we suffer when lament is absent from our journey and our worship.
When we ignore lament, or do not allow for it, we inadvertently communicate one of two things. We tell ourselves, and others, don’t feel that way. But, if you do, please express it elsewhere. The church has not been a place for the soul to voice its pain in all of its ugliness. We have prioritized joy and happiness at the expense of honesty when that honesty includes raw emotion and pain. As a result, when our soul is vociferous in its complaint or protest during times when it seems as if God has failed us, we feel guilty about such feelings, or deny them.
Our journeys will take us through seasons of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. Lament is the voice of disorientation. When lament is absent or discouraged, we deny the church and the worship the language of disorientation. Only in expressing disorientation can we come to a place of reorientation. In that place, praise is then given voice one again, a voice that is characteristically more powerful than it was before the season of disorientation. But, without lament, praise lacks both context and meaning. There is no Promised Land apart from bondage; there is no Easter apart from Good Friday; there is no spring apart from winter. For praise to be authentic, it must be sung “back down to pain, where hope lives; to hurt, where newness surfaces; to death, where life is strangely given.”(6) In its truest form, lament has the power to lead us to praise that is full and unfettered. It’s absence has the power to temper our praise.
Reclaiming the prayer of lament is aimed at the recovery of the wholeness of the Christian life and entire language of Christian prayer; it aims to be responsive to the realities of human experience and the struggle of the Christian life as we live our lives in the “now and the not yet” of the Kingdom reality. It is convinced, as Soren Kierkegaard was, that “God is great enough to harbour our little lives with all their grievances, and that he can lead us from darkness to the other side.”(7)
Lament is the language of dissonance when there is an incongruity between what is promised and what is experienced. It was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of God’s character or role in the lives of His people but as a means of expressing what we perceive His part to be, particularly during those times in which we believe Him to be unfaithful to His character or His promises. Lament gives our soul a voice during those times it seems that God has been unfaithful or has abandoned us, when He doesn’t come through for us or acts in ways that are inconsistent with our understanding of Him. Lament allows us to be honest with how our suffering challenges our understanding of God.
Just as the intimate exchanges in the Song of Songs are scandalizing to those who cannot see God in intimate ways, the expressions of lament are so intense and passionate, so extraordinary in the freedom displayed in relation to God, that many find it excessive, even breathtaking. But, just as intimacy is a freedom afforded within relationship, lament is an expression encouraged within the context of relationship. We are in a relationship with the Almighty God who invites us to come boldly to His throne. According the Greek word, this boldness involves freedom, openness, and candor in one’s speech. He invites us to come to Him with our greatest doubts, bitterest resentments and deepest anger. Nothing we say is too scathing or too coarse. The relationship we enjoy with Him is not stigmatized nor compromised by raw emotion or honest communication. He doesn’t take it personal or get offended. Relationship are built upon real, upon honesty, upon authenticity. Sometimes in the midst of real life, we grieve, moan and cry; sometimes honest dialogue includes questions, complains, and protestations; sometimes authenticity lays everything out on the table—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Relationship asks that nothing be hidden, masked or pretended. There is no need to get a grip on our emotions or anything else because He has a grip on us. He wants our pain and often the first step to relinquishing it is allowing our soul to voice it through the prayer of lament. As we dialogue honestly with Him, we find in Him the comfort we need. We take hold of the hem of His garment through lament, are healed of our pain, and can freely enter into unfettered praise. Those seeking real, honest, authentic dialogue with their Heavenly Father can begin by reclaiming the lost language of the Hebrew poet, the prayer of lament.
Endnotes:
1. Kathleen D. Billman and Daniel L. Migliore. 1999. Rachel’s Cry, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, p.31.
2. Walter Brueggeman. 1995. The Psalms and the Life of Faith. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, Loc 1165.
3. as quoted on https://catholicmoraltheology.com/lament-in-the-judeo-christian-tradition-why-it-is-ok-to-tell-god-how-you-really-feel/
4. Brueggemann, Loc. 854
5. Brueggemann, Loc. 849-852
6. Samuel Ballentine, as quoted in Billman & Migliore, 1999. Rachel’s Cry. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, p. 30.
7. Soren Kierkegaard, as quoted in Waltke, Houston, & Moore. 2014.The Psalms as Christian Lament. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman Publishing Co., p. 5.
