Alistair McKenzie: 11/9/2011- Lament and Hope 1
admin January 6th, 2012
Kia ora!
This morning’s message is brought to you by the holy trinity of Helen Sturgeon, Pete Majendie and myself and hopefully also with the participation of the real Holy Trinity.
And today we’re thinking about Lamenting. And if some of you who were here last time I preached think but that’s what he talked about last time just after the first earthquake last September – has he only got one message?
Well let me just quickly explain that this is what Rod asked me to come and speak about – lament this week and hope next week. Because you have a document that says “We want to grow as a worshipping community that is characterised by qualities that include healthy lament over our personal and collective losses while being held in the hope of the Gospel.”
And there have been lots of losses both personally and collectively in this year. And last Sunday was the anniversary of the first quake in Christchurch last year. And today is the 10th anniversary of fall of the twin towers in New York on September 11th. And then there was the tsunami in Japan, Not to mention the famine in East Africa right now. Huge catastrophes. But also all the personal losses that can loom just as large for us as individuals through a death or disability or infertility or conflict or just huge disappointment and disillusionment. So how do we deal with the anguish that accompanies these sorts of losses?
In the Bible half of the Psalms are poems or songs of lament or complaint. Even the psalmists themselves call them complaints. Cries of anguish and desperation. Some are based on much more personal and private experiences while some are clearly more communal crises. But whatever the case this is the prayerbook of the people of God and we are being invited to let their responses teach us how to respond. But do we really? According to the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, “ in her songs, testimonies and prayers the church only knows of praise.” Someone else concluded in their study of church worship “Psalms of lament are poorly represented in the worship of most denominations…..it would appear that prayer and worship in most Christian congregations fail to make room for the experiences of lament, and protest and remonstration with God”. And yet another writer says about the worship of churches shaped by the charismatic renewal “Charismatics are good at the highs….but not so good at the lows”. Because charismatic spirituality identifies with the ‘Romantic’ adventure which overcomes a succession of trials, often with supernatural help, but also wants to rush towards the happy ending in a way that often doesn’t deal very well with ongoing pain and suffering and grief. And a Philipino church leader commenting on the sort of worship life that westerners have exported around the world says “that there seems to be no way for dealing with unanswered prayers in the church”.
But we want to suggest this morning that the Bible says something different. That even if the laments have been largely purged from the worship of most churches this church has said that you think this is something important to rediscover. And we think so too. And so Helen is going start by leading us in some reflections on this theme and then I will say some more and then Pete will lead us to our conclusion today but also conscious that what we do today is also connected to our celebration of hope next week, but not because we need to rush there. In fact its important that we don’t. But its because there is the promise of hope beyond the pain and confusion that we can be brave to enter into this experience. Because telling the truth about suffering and honestly expressing our complaints where people and even whole communities are groaning under stress is not only appropriate, but also very necessary.
If even Jesus himself enters into the experience of the Psalmist when he uses those words from the first verse of Psalm 22 to cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” How much more should we expect this to be part of our experience as his followers? And so the Bible encourages us to take our complaints and confusion and grief and anguish to God so that we can experience his help in sorting things out. Or at least find a source of hope in the midst of our pain and confusion. And so it might seem strange but there is a point in those words of the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 9 verse 20 when he says “Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament” “Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament”And so this morning we will. So over to you Helen.
(Helen)
Reading Psalm 13.
Actually I have been doing some homework about laments since I last preached here because I wrote a paper comparing biblical laments with Maori laments. I got interested because I not only found that half of the Psalms are laments but also half of traditional Maori waiata. I found this from a collection of more than 300 waiata collected by Sir Apirana Ngata which have just been republished. And I was interested because I have learned a lot about dealing with death and grief publicly from Maori approaches to tangi. And Maori laments are often sung or chanted at tangi.
In fact I discovered along the way that most cultures have developed mourning rituals to express their grief and recent Western culture is a bit of an exception is this. As if we have tried to keep the reality of death at a distance and in the process have lost language to cope with it. Anyway in most cultures laments are very common. But for all sorts of reasons. Not just for the dead. There are laments about the fall of great cities, about emigration from the points of view of both those who leave and those who are left behind, and laments related to marriage rituals as a bride leaves to join her husband’s household, as well as laments for those who have died. Because the grief that accompanies loss is a universal experience. But most often Maori laments are written in response to someone’s death.
And even the form of Maori laments has a lot in common with biblical laments. Both of them have a poetic form that is designed to be sung or chanted. They both involve public expressions of deep personal pain and grief and disappointment in disarmingly honest and graphic ways. They both often talk about the distress of feeling separated and left behind by one who has previously been a huge source of encouragement and consolation. They tell the story of the events that have led to this and then often offer strong and very raw expressions of complaint and blame and anger, especially if some accident or foul play has been involved. And these are often accompanied by aggressive calls for vengeance and the desire for revenge. And so in both the lament psalms and the Maori laments we find similar expressions of disorientation and deep longings and loss and complaints and cries of anguish and calls for revenge. There are many similarities. And I think when it comes to honesty in dealing with our confusion and grief Maori have a lot to teach us about lamenting in Aotearoa.
But at the same time there is also something else that you don’t find in Maori laments that you do find in biblical laments. And that is strong complaints directed straight at God. In traditional Maori contexts even priests are careful about how they relate to God. Generally there is a hesitancy about addressing the gods directly and when you do you better get it right or bad things might happen. Direct appeals to God especially in the form of these sorts of complaints and especially by ordinary people are very rare in Maoridom. Not only in laments but even in pre Christian karakia – that is Maori invocations and prayers – making a direct appeal to a god, is a rare occurrence.
But by contrast the Psalmist usually begins by addressing God very intimately “My God” or “God of my fathers”. “How long O Lord” or “Help O Lord”. This is not a complaint offered to a stranger, but a cry of pain asking for help from a God who is believed to be listening.
And the complaint is no nicely crafted polite request. Just a holler. Complaining how troubled life is and how their world is caving in, everyone is against them and God is absent, silent, indifferent and uncaring.
They demand that God take notice and demonstrate that he cares by turning and acting to change things and do something to rescue them.
And the Psalmist typically goes on to heap up reasons why God must act – some honourable reasons, but also some much more dubious reasons.
The Psalmist often talks about wanting vengeance and asks for God’s help to make sure that something hurtful and punishing and destructive happens to the people who have caused their pain.
And then when the anger and pain of the Psalmist has been vented enough to allow for a turning, other more positive themes may be sounded. Sometimes with a resolution that is expressed in rejoicing and praise, but at other times more muted than this, however usually with more hope than the Psalmist began with.
But it is such an honest interaction the way the Psalmist unloads to God. And encouragement for us to be just as honest with God. For a Christian prayer that pretends is not prayer at all. Just a religious act that is trying to earn God’s favour or manipulate God in a way that expresses faith in a Gospel of works rather than grace.
The God of Israel and of Jesus is a God to be wrestled with in the face of danger and disillusionment. Please take this cup from me. Yet not what I want but what you want. “My God my God why have you turned your back on me?” Or think of the cry of Job in Job chapter 10 from the 1 on “I loathe my life, I will give free utterance to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God do not condemn me: let me know what you contend against me. Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favour the schemes of the wicked?” And we can remember that recurring cry of the Psalmist why do the wicked have it so good yet the righteous have it so bad?
For Israel loss, grief, and disappointment and oppression and famine and infertility and death are all present realities and real dangers, but its God we must turn to for help. Not in the belief that God will always promise a simple solution. But God is not apathetic and untouched by the cries of his people. God is moved by such prayers and We think of his message to Moses in Exodus chapter 3. When God says “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry. I do indeed know their suffering and I have come down to deliver them. I do see. I do hear. I do care and I have come down.
Of course there are also other things we should lament about like our own sin and the sin we see screwing up the world around us. The Psalmist knows about that too. Although sometimes I wonder if we don’t believe in sin any more. Because in the churches I most often go to these days there is often no prayer of confession or reaching out for forgiveness. Do we believe in sin? And I wonder if there are other things we ought to be lamenting about if we could really see the world from God’s perspective?
Anyway it is this sense that the king of the universe invites us to come to him and lodge our complaints with him that is the dimension we don’t find in other lament traditions. The Maori laments do underline for us the importance of naming and expressing our grief but its very easy for us from our culture to just interpret this in a personally therapeutic way. Expressing our angst so that we can feel more at peace.
But there’s more to it than that in the Bible. It is the recognition that in a moral universe there’s a lot that happens that at best is very perplexing and at worst is totally unfair. And we have to have that out with God. To question God about it. To wrestle with God about it. To argue with God about it. Our God is not too far removed from us to do that. And nor is God too small or too threatened to invite us to do that.
And so the biblical laments not only invite us to honestly express our grief and disappointment and alienation, and pain. But to also deliberately take these expressions and the hard questions they give rise to into the presence of the only one who can really offer a decisive word to those who suffer. And probably not to provide an instant rational answer to the question that is asked that can explain why. But at least enough of an answer to introduce us to the one who does understand and who can walk the road with us.
Anyway that’s what I think is really distinct about the way the Bible invites us to lament.
Ann Weems is a Christian writer and her son was killed less than one hour after his 21st birthday. Naturally she was absolutely devastated and thought she would never recover. When Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann asked her if Rachel would ever be comforted because he was working on a commentary on Jeremiah she said no Rachel will not be comforted. Not here. Not now. Not in the sense of being ultimately comforted. Of course those people who are surrounding me with compassion are doing the work of angels and I bid them come. But Rachel will be comforted only when God wipes the tears from her eyes. And it was then that Walter Brueggemann suggested that she might like to write some lament Psalms of her own. And in time she did. And this is one of them.
(Read Anne Weems p23)
Its not just about lamenting. Its about knowing that there is a God who does see and does hear and does care and has come down to rescue us. And who is growing a community of people who are also learning to lament with us when that’s needed so we can also celebrate together when that’s needed. But I think Pete’s going to talk some more about that.
