One spiritual practice I recommend during this season of Lent and pretty much anytime is the practice of lament. Prayers of lament go back to ancient times. Many of the psalms are psalms of lament. To lament is to complain. We lament as we grieve, lamenting the death of a loved one. We lament over being mistreated or others being mistreated unjustly. We lament over the state of the nation or the world. We lament by naming the enemy and even wishing them harm. Most of all, the lament is directed to God as we heard in today’s psalm: “Hear me, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!” The praying is rather insistent, pleading for God to take up the cause of the one who laments. Also in today’s psalm: “Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen again me, and they are breathing out violence.” This is the lament of a broken and fearful heart. God hears our cries and these lament psalms often end up on a note of hope. Again, Psalm 27: “Wait for the Lord, be strong, and let your heart take courage.” We are free to lament to God because God is faithful and trustworthy.
This ancient practice has taken a long time to recover, but now the practice of lament seems to be growing as a way to pray for both individuals and communities. I appreciate it because it allows us to be honest with God and one another about the real hurts we experience in life and real injustices suffered by our neighbors and ourselves. The Psalms speak to all sorts and conditions in life. We might turn to the psalms more regularly to begin a practice of lament.
Remember, too, that Jesus embraced the practice of lament. In the Gospel of John we learn that Jesus wept. He cried over the death of his friend Lazarus. Today, from the Gospel of Luke we hear how Jesus laments over Jerusalem. Luke makes no mention of tears but I can’t help but think that Jesus wept when he lamented over Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was a symbol for all of Israel. It was the center of law and religion. The temple was there and in the temple you would find the “holy of holies.” Jerusalem, a sign or symbol for all Israel, had become distant from God. God is faithful, but God’s people were fickle or just downright rebellious. Jerusalem rejected God. Prophets are God’s truth-tellers but Jerusalem stoned and killed the prophets.
And this led Jesus to tears.
Living in the grip of Herod and many choosing Herod’s reign over God’s reign, they found themselves following the lead of a sly fox, a despot whose main purpose was to gain power over others.
Jesus named Herod a fox and himself as the nurturing mother hen. The rebellious nature of those who turned from God broke God’s heart. It may have raised God’s ire, but mostly the unfaithfulness of God’s people came from grief and that grief over the loss of God’s people to another way came from a deep longing. God’s longing that they return to their true home.
Jerusalem, the city that stones the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wing, and you were not willing?”
This was Jesus’ lament. He longed for the people of God to be gathered under his protective care and feeding. His lament comes from this deep longing and love for God’s people.
Should you go deeper with the practice of lament, you can turn to Jesus to see how it’s done and to find solace in a Savior who knows you and has shared with us every aspect of human life, including our grief and our death.
Can you resonate with Jesus’ lament?
Parents often find themselves weeping over their children who are estranged, longing for the day when they would return home. People long for a reunion with someone who has hurt them or been hurt by them. Loved ones may pay allegiance to a cause or movement that belies your values. For many reasons we are free to lament.
In recent years I’ve become very interested in something called “The Solemn Reproaches.” What are the solemn reproaches? They have become an option in the Good Friday liturgy and they are quite stunning because they reveal the lament of God.
Each of these laments begins with words of God’s frustration with us like, “O my people, O my church, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? What more could I have done to you? Answer me!”
Then the laments get specific. There are many of them, let me just share a few:
- I led you out of slavery and into freedom. And delivered you through the waters of rebirth, but you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
- Forty years I led you through the desert, feeding you with manna along the way. I led you on your way in a pillar of cloud and fire. I guided you by the light of the Holy Spirit. And you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
- I poured out saving water from the rock, but you gave me vinegar to drink, I poured out my life for you, I gave you my peace. And you have prepared a cross for your Savior
When these are prayed the response of the assembly is “Have mercy on us!”
Hear in the lament of Jesus the very lament of God. It is a lament that comes from deep within God’s heart. For you see, God loves you. And God loves all people and God’s longing is that all would gather beneath the wings of the Savior.
It is the lament and the longing of the one whose love is eternal. What God asks of us is to trust him. To trust him.
I remember a conversation with someone who was strengthened and encouraged by Jesus, especially in times of sorrow. Reading the passion narrative reminded him that God is well acquainted with suffering, even the pangs of death. My conversation partner said, “This is a God I can trust. One who has been there and is there with us.”
When I gaze upon the large crucifix in our chapel I am reminded of the same thing. Jesus is no stranger to our suffering and Jesus knows well the prayer of lament. God so loved us and loves us that Jesus gave up his life for us.
Now, the crucified one is risen and we see how God continues to pine for us and longs for us to settle under the Savior’s protective wings.
Friends in Christ: Jesus longs for you to make your home under the protective wings of the mother hen. Lent is a time to make Christ our home and for many of us to return to Christ as our true home. Without fail, what we discover there is love that is broad, wide, and deep. In fact, there is enough room under the wings of the mother hen for all of us. All the world. There is roominess under the wings of the Savior. Much room.
I wonder how we in the church have been faithful witnesses of this Savior. God knows that the church has been the source of God’s lament many times over. Too often people have not received a loving welcome but harsh judgment. I know many who have been hurt or injured by the church. We’ve heard the lament of too many people who have been rejected by church legalists who wallow in self-righteousness and reject people because of their economic status, country of origin, or sexual identity. Sadly, I think, we impose our fears and ideologies upon others and we project upon others what we think or feel.
Make you own lament before God and listen, listen to the lament of others who instead of finding the church a safe refuge of loving all have experienced rejection. Notice in their tears, in their lament, the lament of God. “O my people, what have you done!”
God knows there are plenty of people in the world without a home and those who consistently get a message that they are not welcome. Immigrants at the border, people who know oppression all too well, those who have been victims of xenophobia.
Perhaps the most important witness of the church is to be a place where the love of Jesus is learned and practiced and extended to others. The community called church is called to be terribly out of sync with the systems of hatred all around us. Our job is to love sinners and that, my friends, is all of us. Better yet, we know the grace of God who abounds in steadfast love. Belonging to the Christian community does not depend upon status, wealth, perfection, moral certainty, fierce judgment or anything else we imagine to be on the list of people and systems that exclude or turn away.
Friends in Christ, make lament part of your prayer life and as you do so, consider the lament of God who has given and given and given to us, yet “you prepared a cross for your Savior.”
Now this is the extend to which Jesus’ love goes – yes, we’ve prepared a cross for the Savior but in love poured out by the Savior, the tree of the cross has become for us the tree of life and under its shade we find forgiveness, mercy, wisdom, joy and life. Thanks to God, it is a safe place.
So, once again, come to the Table to receive Jesus in bread and cup. Come to find your place along with others beneath the healing wings of the Savior. Our refuge and safe place.
Amen.