Lament is Appropriate

Earlier this year, a performance artist was scheduled to do a day of lamenting at General Theological Seminary in the chapel of the Good Shepherd. It is my alma matter. But there was such an uproar about it - So many alumni had issue with crying and lament as a performance piece - that the seminary cancelled it.


I have wondered about why so many were opposed. (I had no comment, as I heard about it after the fact.)


In our Gospel today, we hear of those wailing and mourning at the news of Jairus’s daughter’s death. It was actually a common practice to hire mourners for funerals. It wasn’t fake. It was to set an example for others: that mourning: weeping; lament is appropriate.
In Judaism today, the mourner’s kaddish is said daily for a full year - and grieving members of synagogues are asked to stand up during this prayer each week. For a Year.


Most of society rushes to get past the pain or grief we are experiencing - or see others experiencing.


Young men are often told not to cry. It makes you look vulnerable. And as women we too often shut off our tears. …while Saint Francis and Saint Clare spoke of “the gift of tears.”




It just makes us uncomfortable…
So when people ask, how are you? We often reply “fine.”


What a loss of true connection.


Expressions of hurt are part of life’s communion.


Both Jarius and the ill woman lament in their appeal to Jesus. The woman tells "the whole truth” in her desire to connect with healing… with her reaching out for Jesus….


I chose lamentations today, because the writer feels utter rejection from God… and yet in the very first line we find hope.


Speaking the truth, as Job did last week, and as the ill woman does this week through lament is a signal to us of movement toward hope. Scripture in fact shows us that lament is a powerful stage of grief that provides that opening for healing, reparation, peace.


So much of the psalms are about this cathartic work.


As one commentator remarked Lamentations give “Sacred dignity to suffering.”


Lamentations is split up into five poems: It describes the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 587. These poems express the intense suffering of the people.


And because these stories of wailing to God are included in the Bible… we believe they are now God’s words to us. We believe lament is appropriate.


In the first part, Jerusalem is personified as lady Zion: a widow who is utterly abandoned (“on the rivers of Babylon where we sat and wept when we remembered Zion”).
The pain and sorrow and trauma the people felt is so great - that to relate the depth of its expression, the author writes of the trauma and grief, as the death of a loved one….the power of it..


18Zion, deep in your heart
you cried out to the Lord.
Now let your tears overflow
your walls day and night.
Don't ever lose hope
or let your tears stop.
19Get up and pray for help
all through the night.
Pour out your feelings
to the Lord,
as you would pour water
out of a jug.
Beg him to save your people,
who are starving to death
at every street crossing.


Still relevant today….very specifically in parts of our World.
This week I was introduced to a Palestinian/Israeli joint group called The Parents Circle - Family Forum. It is a group of 700 Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost someone to the conflict. They bring youth and adults together in discussion to lament and work toward reparations. There is an American Friends of this group. I was also delighted to see a photograph of Bishop Tutu on their website.


Their work is a direct expression of hope. They speak the truth, they’ve reached out to connect. They cry together - and they are committed to sharing their stories with the rest of the world.


One of their recent articles was subtitled:
“It is not naive to know that the only route to justice and equality is peace.”




This is hope.


These stories show how corporate lament as a form of healing is vital.




And as individuals: sometimes when someone has struggled with illness for a long time, or even facing death - they are able to lament and really come through it to a place with God in which they are at peace.


That is transformative, not just for the individual but for those who are with them, their caretakers, those they have touched and connected with in different manners….




Lament generally is so transformative that it leads us through the tunnel of darkness into praising God and life.


As the wisdom of Solomon said..
God did not make death,
And he does not delight in the death of the living.
For he created all things so that they might exist;
the generative forces of the world are wholesome,
and there is no destructive poison in them,
and the dominion of Hades is not on earth.
For righteousness is immortal.




"The Lord is my portion," says my soul...
meaning the Lord is my inheritance; the Lord is the hope and sustenance of my being.

Culturally: we are realizing that reparations and reconciliation, peace requires dialogue, lamenting…




Lamentations teaches us that if we can express our corporate grief just as one feels personal grief, things will change.


“Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning…”


Through scripture Today we recognize the lament of Israel  and Jerusalem as a lament for all of creation - for all of us.


When we hear Zion, we hear the heart of us all.
Not a political state… but the state of us all - Personal: like those psalms that put corporate suffering into words that allow us to perceive and digest suffering on a personal level.


Richard Rohr wrote “in my second half of life, I want to teach our children how to cry…”
Reading from Rohr:
“The “weeping mode” is a different way of being in the world. It’s different than the fixing, explaining, or controlling mode. We’re finally free to feel the tragedy of things, the sadness of things. Tears cleanse our eyes both physically and spiritually so we can begin to see more clearly. Sometimes we have to cry for a very long time because we’re not seeing truthfully or well at all. Tears only come when we realize we can’t fix and we can’t change reality. The situation is absurd, it’s unjust, it’s wrong, it’s impossible. ..
The way we can tell our tears have cleansed us is that afterwards we don’t need to blame anybody, even ourselves. It’s an utter transformation and cleansing of the soul, and we know it came from God. It is what it is, and somehow God is in it.”
Jesus also showed us how to lament - at his crying at the death of his friend Lazarus; in his cry out for the future of Jerusalem; and in the anguish of his anticipated arrest.


And through Jesus’ lament he raised Lazarus… and he raised the little girl, he was raised…and he raises us all into that eternal life in God.


Take comfort - that lament will transform you - and lament on behalf of others will change the fate of those who are suffering. It is appropriate.


Because it is not just for eternal life.. meaning in some future heaven… but will help to bring the kingdom of God on this earth now (as it is in heaven).


The coming again of Jesus Christ the Lord, the creator of all that is wholesome, the reconciler of us into justice and peace, and the sustainer of all that is good.    Amen