Space for Lament
"Sometimes I sit in my room and pour out everything to God. Questions, anger, confusion. Sometimes love and affection. Everything.”
“A lot of other times I sit in the park, numb. Really I’ve been just isolated, lost.”
It’s been over seven years since my friend was the victim of a violent crime that left her disabled. A few times a year, I see her at church. It’s a big deal for her to make the effort to come. The wheelchair, the bus, and all that. But the main effort is in finding space for her private turmoil in a public worship service. We had a long talk about it after church this past Sunday.
“If I’m going to relate to God I’ve got to bring everything, the good and the bad. I don’t know if people really understand that.”
We’re a “Bible-believing church,” so we should. The Bible not only makes ample space for lament—cries of pain to God—but it elevates it to a high art and a form of public worship. Public worship! Pain in private is one thing, but neither our American culture in general nor our religious culture in particular is set up to handle pain in public.
I wonder what the cost is to our spirits.
I’m reading a book by Kathleen M. O’Connor, Lamentations and the Tears of the World. I’d always skimmed over the dreary book of Lamentations, until O’Connor awakened me to its beauty and power. Part biblical scholarship, part personal reflection and social critique, her little book (written almost poetically in its own right) shows Lamentations to be an intricate dance of voices from “the city” abandoned in the wake of Israel’s exile and captivity. The whole thing is an elaborate acrostic poem, with each verse starting with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Reading in English we might assume it to be rash outbursts best forgotten, rather than carefully crafted songs to be passed down through generations of worshippers. “Crushed spirits cannot worship unless that worship speaks from the pain,” O’Connor observes, and lament poetry in the Bible points the way.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing much from Lamentations on the overhead projector during our praise singing at church anytime soon (unless it’s the well-known “great is thy faithfulness” passage, all the more meaningful in context). As Dan Allender points out in "The Hidden Hope in Lament," Christians don’t like to sing in a minor key these days—heightening the isolation and shame of hurting people. It’s as if we’re trying to keep secrets from God and each other by smiling bigger and singing louder.
I will say my own church probably does better than most. With its African-American heritage, we have deep cultural wells to draw from when it comes to expressing pain in worship. Black History Month is coming up, an occasion to break out many of the old spirituals and gospel songs rooted in stories of exodus and exile. "Stony the path we trod/bitter the chastening rod" is not only history but shared personal testimony for many. And new hip-hop voices speak with a raw honesty that sometimes echoes scriptural worship more vividly than traditional favorites. We’re a little unsure about letting rap bust loose inside church walls, but on a good Sunday, it’s bustin’ anyhow.
Good thing, because we need the space.
Comments
You're helping bust out some of my interior walls...disturbing...but I don't want it any other way...God is rappin' on my own soul. Thanx!
Posted by: Wes Roberts | January 13, 2006 05:48 AM