The Grace of Lament

Based on Lamentations 1:1-6
First delivered October 6, 2019
Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr


            When was the last time you heard a sermon based on a passage from Lamentations? I bet it’s been awhile. And I doubt you have heard many of them in your whole life. Lamentations is not exactly a common book of the Bible for sermons or, really, for anything. It is one of those books where you may have to use the table of contents to find. We just aren’t familiar with this book.

            A colleague asked me a few days ago what I was going to preach on this Sunday. We are both lectionary preachers. He serves in the Lutheran church. He asked if I was going to preach on the parable of the mustard seed. I said no, that I was going to preach on the Lamentations passage. He looked at me and said, “Whoa!” I said, “Yeah, I’m going dark.” When given the choice between the parable of the mustard seed and Lamentations, most preachers would choose the mustard seed parable.

            Why do preachers tend to avoid preaching from Lamentations? It’s not like the book is hard to understand, like Revelation or Ezekiel or the Song of Solomon. It doesn’t read like Leviticus, a collection of religious laws that don’t apply to us. If you read through Lamentations, it is pretty clear what is going on. It is essentially one long funeral dirge. It is a poetic expression of deep grief and utter despair with a dash of hope. And maybe that’s why preachers tend to steer clear from this book. It’s too depressing. It’s too dark and gloomy. Who wants to hear a sermon about gloom and doom on a Sunday morning? Not many.

            Let’s be honest; we generally don’t do lamenting very well. Even if we have to fake it, we have this idea that in church we have to be happy and have it all together. Many folks come to church fresh and clean, wearing their church clothes, a smile on their face and a more or less cheery attitude. Even if it’s a forced smile.

            Earlier this week I was at a two day seminar at the VA, learning about how deployments affect our warriors, the hidden wounds of war they bring home with them, and how that affects their families. We learned some ways that churches can be supportive of warriors and their families. In one of the PowerPoint presentations there was a picture of this young man who was clean cut, dressed sharp, a big, toothy grin on his face and a sparkle in his eye. The presenter said that this is the face of the Sunday morning guy. It’s the face you present on Sunday morning. Everything is fine, you are filled with the joy of the Lord, you are blessed. The next slide was a picture of the same person. This one was in black and white. You see his side profile with his head bowed down. His toothy grin is gone. He looks burdened and sad. The presenter suggested that this picture captured how this man really felt. Things weren’t fine. He was filled with anxiety and guilt. It was hard for him to see any blessings in his life. And the tragedy is that when he was in church, he didn’t think he could show his true self to others. To do so would have been to make himself vulnerable. People would be uncomfortable around him. He doesn’t want to be pitied. He doesn’t want to come across as a failure or not having it all together. He wants to give the impression that he’s handling his business, he’s confident and competent. When the truth is that he is wounded and lost. And for him, like so many, church is the one place where we can’t be honest about our feelings and the true state of things. It is in church where we slap on a smile, pat everyone on the back, say everything is fine and fake our happiness until we get back in our cars. Then the smile can be put away for another time when we need to pull it out again to assure people that we’re fine when we aren’t fine.

            If there is any place where there needs to be authenticity, it should be the church. The church is supposed to be a hospital for sinners. It is supposed to be a community where one beggar points to another beggar where to find bread. It is supposed to be a community where we believe in grace, where we acknowledge that we are saved by grace and not by our own goodness, where we acknowledge that we are broken, that we are in need of healing, that we are not living our best lives, that we are not living heaven on earth. The church is where we are to value mercy, compassion, empathy, support, understanding. The church is where we are to value honesty, truthfulness, and vulnerability.

            And yet…we can sometimes do a good job of faking it. There is something about coming together on Sunday morning for worship that we want to, as I heard someone say once, “get our Jesus on.” We choose to leave our mess at the door and come in to church with a smile on our face, with no cares in the world, and a song in our heart. For an hour or so, we can pretend that everything’s fine. And if we can’t fake it, well, maybe we can skip church until we can get ourselves together.

            I will never forget this woman who had been a faithful member of the church that I was pastoring. She was there every Sunday. She did the children’s moment. She was a delightful person. But her husband never came with her to church. He wasn’t the church going kind. Well, one Sunday she didn’t come to church. And then another. I reached out to her. She said she and her husband got a divorce. She was going through a lot of strain in her personal life. And she told me that once she felt like she had her life together and was in a better place emotionally then she would come back to church. I told her the door was always open for her. But in the back of my mind I wanted to tell her this is when you need the church the most, when your life is falling apart, when there is no joy, when you are going through loss and grief and sorrow, when all you feel like doing is to lament. But she was like so many others. If they can’t fake happiness and having their life together, then they can’t come to church.

            Why do we feel the need to fake it and not allow ourselves as a community to lament? Why do we not make space in our life together to grieve? Maybe because it’s too painful. It’s too emotional. We want the sanctuary to be a place set apart from all the grief and loss and mess. We want this space and this time to be full of happiness and have-it-all-togetherness. Maybe we don’t want lament in our worship because it would make us vulnerable. We would have to make it plain that we don’t have it all together, that we aren’t happy about how our lives are going, that the current reality of our church is a shadow of how it used to be, it hurts, and we don’t know how to fix it. Rather than acknowledge the grief, we would rather sweep it all under the rug, put on a happy face, and pretend everything’s fine when we know it isn’t.

            Jeremiah, the one believed to be the source of Lamentations, had no problem lamenting the state of Jerusalem and of Israel in their current reality of exile. “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people.” Once upon a time, Jerusalem was a cosmopolitan city. It was full of wealth. All the important people lived there. Foreign dignitaries would travel to Jerusalem to meet with the king of Israel. People from across the land would travel to Jerusalem to do business, to buy and sell, and to worship at the Temple on festival days. The city gates were busy with business dealings, the settling of disputes among the elders of the city, and good old-fashioned gossip and the sharing of news from the hinterlands. But now…Jerusalem is barren. The streets are nearly empty. The hubbub of the crowds is long gone. The gates are rusty. The few remaining elders could sit at the city gates all day long and hardly anyone would pass by. The priests are left to groan because hardly anyone goes to the Temple anymore. The surrounding nations are doing just fine, but Israel suffers, the people dispersed across the world, the former glory days far in the rear-view mirror. Jeremiah is not afraid to name the current reality of Jerusalem and of Israel, of how things used to be and how they are now. Jerusalem weeps at night and there is no one to comfort her. Her friends have betrayed her. Jerusalem is in bitter anguish. All the splendor has departed.

            Reflecting on this passage, we may find our thoughts directed toward how much loss we have endured as a church and as a denomination since the 1960s. For as long as I have been alive the United Methodist Church has been in decline. It is obvious to all of us that our church is not thriving like it once did. Now, it isn’t as dire as how Jeremiah describes Jerusalem and Israel. But there is much less activity in our churches. Fewer people go to church these days. Yes, there are exceptions. Some churches experience impressive growth. There are churches that are thriving. But for most of us, things aren’t so good. More and more churches close every year. And it’s not just our denomination that is going through an extended period of so much loss. People haven’t given up on God necessarily. But an increasing number of people have given up on the church, especially young people. If we allow ourselves, we can resonate with the lamentation of Jeremiah. We can allow ourselves to grieve, to weep, to lament.

            A few years ago, I was pastoring a church that, when I arrived, had an average attendance of six. It was never a large congregation. But in their hey day they had over 100 in regular attendance. But, for a number of reasons, the congregation had dwindled to a mere handful. So much loss. It was All Saints Sunday, and during my sermon, I invited everyone to look around and remember those who used to sit at that pew, and to affirm that those beloveds who were now in heaven were still with us, worshiping with us, and that one day we will see them again.

            At that church, we had joys and concerns and the pastoral prayer after the sermon. During the sharing time, Walt stood up. He and his wife Mary were the pillars of this church. Walt gave the names of a few of the people that were no longer at Bethel but had made their way to the church triumphant. He choked up. It wasn’t a full-on lament, but you could hear in his voice the sorrow of loss. When you are in a sanctuary that can comfortably hold 100 and there is only 6, the loss can’t be avoided. Of course, we didn’t spend all our time together lamenting the loss and knowing that the survival of the church was on life support. There was lots of laughter. We did life together. And every now and again we allowed ourselves to grieve our current reality.

            To lament, to have the courage and honesty to acknowledge that the current reality is one of loss, this opens the door for hope. And with hope comes the capacity to move forward rather than be stuck in despair or frozen in denial. How does hope show up? Hope is what you have when there’s nothing else. Hope is the belief that this isn’t all there is, that God is still with us, that regardless of our current reality of loss and grief that God has not abandoned us, that we are still loved, and that God’s grace is sufficient. Hope is what you have when everything else fails. Hope is the final line of defense against the abyss of despair. Hope is to have confidence in resurrection. It is in times of grief, of loss, of being confronted with death, that hope can really shine. And with that hope we can keep going. It is hope that gets us out of bed in the morning. It is hope that keeps us coming to church every Sunday. It is hope that prompts us to keep giving of our resources, our time and energy to support the church. It is hope that keeps us believing that God isn’t finished with us yet. Hope gives us the capacity to move forward with faith in God.

            There is something powerful and even sacred, to have a good cry while someone else sits with you and shares your sorrow. Mom Nora was the dorm mom for my residence hall in college. She had worked on military airplanes in WW II. She was big and no non-sense. And whenever she introduced herself to all the new residents at Smith Hall, she would say in her gruff voice, “I’m Mom Nora, and I’m a hugger.” And she was. She was the best dorm mom for a bunch of college boys. And on that night, when I was in the living room of her suite, sobbing until I ran out of tears after telling her my mom had just passed, Mom Nora sat in her Lazy Boy, offered an occasional word of comfort, but mostly sat quietly while I allowed the grief to flow out of me while I sat on her couch. A couple other people came in to say a few words of comfort but mostly Mom Nora kept everyone else out so I could have all the time I needed. To have that space to grieve was precious. It was cathartic. It was healing. Lament can do that.

            Mom Nora was there for me as an act of love. I don’t know if she cried also because I was lost in my grief. But surely she shared my sorrow to some degree. And this points to God, the One who loves us with a perfect love. When we allow ourselves to lament, surely God laments right with us. When our hearts are broken, so is God’s. When we mourn our loss, God surely mourns with us. Even in the situation of Jerusalem and Israel, who were desolate, exiled, scattered across the world as a consequence of their unfaithfulness to God, God surely shared their pain. If God is love, then God does not gloat or look down with a scolding eye even when people suffer as a consequence of their sinfulness. There is comfort in knowing that in our grief God grieves with us. God is there to hold us in our times of sorrow.

            We also find strength in times of lament by remembering we are not alone. Not only is God always with us, we have brothers and sisters in Christ all around us. Many of them share in our grief over so much loss over the decades. We are not alone in the loss of membership and resources. But also, with those congregations that are doing well, they are part of our family too. We belong to each other. And World Communion Sunday is an opportunity to remember that we are a part of a community that is much larger than our own little church. We are just one manifestation of a global body of believers, rich in diversity and resources. I don’t know about you but just by remembering how large the Church is as a whole, with a billion members spread all across the world, it gives me encouragement and confidence that not all is lost. We are part of something so much bigger than ourselves. And this eases the pain of acknowledging the losses we have experienced as a church. The more we do things together as a community of churches, the more encouraged we can be to keep moving forward into what God desires for us.

            And that brings me to this challenge laid before you. In your bulletin you find a breakthrough prayer. This prayer was written collaboratively by the Bible study class. The purpose of this prayer is to collectively ask God to reveal to us what God’s hopes and dreams are for us as a church. We all want to see our church be revitalized. The first step is to pray together and seek God’s direction so that once we have a clearer picture we can then creatively put to work the resources we have toward that dream. We don’t want to put our energies going in a direction that does not align with what God’s preferred direction is for us. And so, we pray. I am asking you to pray this prayer every day for forty days. Remember, prayer is a conversation. So, don’t just read the prayer and then move on. Let this prayer be the opening of a conversation with God. Pray the prayer and then sit still for a few minutes and pay attention to what comes to your mind. What images or visions do you see? What kind of people come to mind? It could be that God is placing those images in your mind as a response to this prayer. If you do receive some kind of answer, please share it with me. My hope is that several of you will receive a response from God that, collectively, will give us a rich vision of where God wants us to go in the next chapter of our life together.