Creating Our Own Lament
Today’s Readings Friday:
AM Psalm 31; PM Psalm 35
Ezra 3:1-13; 1 Cor 16:10-24; Matt. 12:22-32
Today’s Reflection
In his landmark book, The Psalms and the Life of Faith, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann devotes an entire chapter to "The Costly Loss of Lament." Given that nearly half of the 150 psalms in our scripture are psalms of lament, we can trust that this way of praying to God was critical to our forefathers and mothers. Unfortunately, our current culture can dismiss the need to cry out to God in anguish and pain. There can be a misguided understanding that voicing our complaints, anxieties to God is a version of not trusting God.
A stark example of this happened to me when I was serving as an Emergency Room Chaplain during my required Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). Before entering one of the patient rooms, I looked on the patient's chart and recognized the name of a frail, elderly woman who had been in the Emergency Department a number of times in recent days. In our conversation she cried out in anguish that "God had forgotten her." I encouraged her to put words to her anger at God and her desires for God to alleviate her suffering. Immediately her son jumped out of his seat and asked me to leave. "We do not talk to God in that way! We give thanks to God the almighty!" I left the room a bit shaken and a lot sad that this woman wasn't given the space to lay out her concerns to God. I felt as if she was being forced into a one-dimensional relationship with God which was dismissive of the breadth and depth of our human emotions and experiences.
This morning's Psalm 31 is a psalm of lament. Brueggemann writes, "The lament psalms, ..., are a complaint that makes the shrill insistence that:
Things are not right in the present arrangement.
They need not stay this way and can be changed.
The speaker will not accept them in this way, for the present arrangement is intolerable.
It is God's obligation to Change things" (105)
Inherent in a lament psalm is the trust that God is listening--in relationship with us, and that we, as God's people, deserve an audience. All of the lament psalms, except Psalm 88, conclude in praise and thanksgiving.
Today we grieve the horrors in the Middle East, and Ukraine, in Lewiston, Maine, and the many heartbreaks in our personal lives. Perhaps there is a psalm of lament that you wish to cry out, to pray to God, trusting God loves all of God's creation; that God desires to be in relation with you. Or, perhaps you would like to write a lament using the four points outlined above and ending in praise and thanksgiving.
Here is my attempt at a psalm of lament. Please feel free to send yours to me.
Guns and greed,
religious wars and political misdeeds.
Where, Oh God
are you in our time of need?
Bombings and babies crying,
Nursing mothers starving.
Where, Oh God
are you in our time of need?
Shooter drills
way too many pills.
Where, Oh God
are you in our time of need?
Hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires
Emergency workers, police, teachers spent and tired.
Where, Oh God
are you in our time of need?
Stir up your power
and save your planet.
Stir up your compassion
and save your people.
Stir up your grace
and open our hearts to one another.
Into your hands
we commend our spirits.
Into your heart
we rest our souls.
We lift up our lives to you
and
praise your name
forever and ever.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Yours in Christ,
Mary Bea+