Lament: Psalm 13
164,462, that’s the number of Americans who have died from COVID-19. At this point, over 737,000 people in the world have died from the COVID-19 virus. Besides deaths from the virus, experts predict that “deaths of despair” (suicide, drug overdoses, etc.) may increase by 20-30 percent this year. The unemployment rate is in the double digits even as that is better than it was in the spring. We’ve seen many tragedies in the country and world other than virus. Just recently, over 200 died in the explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. Pain is a consistent experience in this life, and 2020 has only made that clearer.
Over the last five months, I’ve had countless conversations, read countless articles, and listened to countless podcasts all on this theme, “How Should Christians respond to the reality of 2020?” To the loss of life and pain caused by the COVID-19 virus, to the persistent evil of racism, to the fractured relationships and seeming inability to have constructive, reconciling conversations in our society-how should people of Jesus respond?
Lament. I think our response begins with the biblical category of lament, seen specifically in the Psalms, Job, Lamentations, and Jesus. Lament is honest hope.
As people of the resurrection, we are not without hope. At the same time, as people of truth, we are honest. How do we do both? Ryan Sullenberger says, “lament is the language which truth makes possible.” We tell the truth about the devastation of death, disease, abuse, racism, poverty, immorality, and alienation. But we also tell the truth about the Jesus who is making all things new. The author Marilynne Robinson describes biblical hope as “constantly and intensely vulnerable.” The author G.K. Chesterton calls biblical hope as “unreasonable as it is indispensable.”
Over the next five weeks, our sermons will focus on the theme of lament. You’ll want to have an open Bible as we study, because we’ll closely read the scriptures to see the movements of lament. I pray that lament can become more of a practice in our common life together, as well as our individual discipleship.
To lay some groundwork for this conversation, Ryan Sullenberger recorded a meditation on lament flowing out of some of Jemar Tisby’s thoughts in The Color of Compromise, our Wednesday night book study. If you haven’t listened to that yet, I encourage you to do so. (You can find that by searching for the 900 Acklen Avenue podcast.)
This week, we’ll begin this conversation by hearing a lament from Jesus and then by seeing the movement of a lament in a short psalm, Psalm 13. Matthew 27:45-54 45 From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land.46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). 47 When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.” 48 Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49 The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.” 50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. 51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. 54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
On the cross, Jesus cried out perhaps the most problematic words he ever spoke. “My God My God, why have you forsaken me?” The centurion responds to this quote and the whole scene by saying, “Surely he was the Son of God.” A forsaken Son of God? What does this say about God? What does this say about what it means to believe in and follow God?
For Christians, at least two truths loom large in this conversation. There is a God. Life is painful. If life is hard and God is real, what does this say about God? Does God care? If God does care, is God too weak to do anything about it? Do we worship a powerful God who doesn’t care or a weak God who does care? For people of faith, we’ve wrestled with this forever, as seen in the Scriptures.
The God of the Bible says, “I will not forsake you.” In Deuteronomy 31:6, near the end of his life, Moses tells the people. “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” This mantra continues to be repeated throughout the Bible. Hebrews 13:5 says, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Yet, Jesus says, “My God My God, why have you forsaken me?” He’s not the first to say that. He’s quoting David in Psalm 22, a psalm we’ll look at next week. God says, I will not forsake you. Yet, people certainly feel forsaken. What’s going on?
There are two main responses to this dilemma. Some minimize the power of God. To these Christians, God is well-intentioned but somewhat weak. This small god desperately needs human help. This small god can’t do much alone. Other Christians minimize the reality of pain. Oh, it’s not the bad. You’ll be okay. If it doesn’t kill you, it only makes you stronger. Look on the bright side. You’ve probably seen this in the proverbial church face. This Pollyanna type of faith refuses to look at pain directly. I’m not interested in either of these. I don’t want a small god. I don’t want to ignore the reality of pain. Neither of those choices prove compelling to me. More than that, neither seem to be the approach taken by our spiritual ancestors in the Bible.
So what is the right posture towards this dilemma? Lament embraces both truths. God is real and strong. Life is painful. Lament embraces both. To be a person of truth is to claim both. Truth makes the language of lament possible, the language of honest hope.
So what does it look like when we lament? Let’s look at Psalm 13. It’s relatively short. Therefore, it’s easy to see the movements. Psalm 13 1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, 4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. 5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.
Most scholars see the rhythm as follows-orientation, disorientation, reorientation. You have a sense of normalcy. Something shakes you from that. Eventually, you get your bearings and feel reoriented. In terms of the virus, we had a sense of orientation in early March. Very quickly, we experienced a vast disorientation. If you look around, you see people grasping for a sense of normalcy and orientation. Lament enables us to enter into a new normal, a reorientation.
Normally, a lament begins with the cry of disorientation. We see that in the first two verses. How long oh Lord? Notice that laments ask questions. They ask questions that may seem jarring, even borderline disrespectful, to us. We’re comfortable reading the psalms, but if we prayed publicly like this, I think it would make us feel uncomfortable. Laments are incredibly honest. They are transparent. They are vulnerable, going back to the quote from Marilynne Robinson. Consider this interaction. You approach a friend. “How are you doing?” “I feel totally forsaken, as if God has completely abandoned me.” We’re not accustomed to talking that way. But we maybe we should start to get comfortable with that.
Laments ask questions. Laments ask vulnerable, intimate questions. Laments begin by saying out loud what we don’t know. Why has God allowed this virus? I don’t know. Why is there so much immorality in our world? I don’t know. Why has Jesus not yet come back? I don’t know. I have so many questions and the lack of answers gets discouraging. Laments are comfortable with questions, even unanswered questions.
Lament does not wallow in unanswered questions forever, though. Lament moves on from what we don’t know to what we do know. We have unanswered questions for sure, but we take hope in the questions that do have answers. Is there a God? Yes. Does God love us? Yes. Notice verses 5-6. 5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me. I don’t know why God has allowed this virus, but I believe that God loves us. I can’t explain all the evil in the world, but I know I’m not alone. A God exists who cares about me. There’s a lot of things I don’t know, but I know there is a God. There is a better future somewhere out there. This is the beginning of the reorientation. This is the beginning of constructing the new normal.
So as Ryan says, “lament is the language which truth makes possible.” We must tell the truth. God is real. God loves us. Jesus is among us now through the Spirit. Jesus will come back some day. This is truth. At the same time, life is really hard. We have lots of unresolved, unanswered questions. We hurt, and we must say this out loud.
At first, laments may make us feel uncomfortable. They may seem to harbor too much doubt. They may appear cynical and negative. Their vulnerability may take us to complicated places. But in reality, laments are an act of faith because you don’t talk to a person you don’t believe exists. Laments are respectful because you speak to someone you believe has the power to act. Laments are positive because you believe something good lies in the future, even as you can’t fully explain it.
Laments serve a vital part of the Christian response to pain and suffering. As I step back and reflect at why I continue to follow Jesus, the Christian response to pain and suffering places a central role. We’ll talk more about this next week when we read Psalm 22, what Jesus quoted on the cross. Jesus modeled an honest hope, positive but realistic. I’m drawn to this posture.
164,462, that’s the number of Americans who have died from COVID-19. What is our response? It should begin with lament. So, I’ve taken Psalm 13 and changed the words to fit our moment. I encourage you to pray through the psalms in this manner.
1 How long, Lord? Will you forget us forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must we wrestle with this virus? How long will the loss of life and the loss of physical connection loom over us? How long will our desire to be together and touch be dangerous? 3 Look on us and answer, Lord my God. Give us some type of answer, some type of sign, for the pain threatens to overwhelm us, 4 and death, division, fear, and anxiety seem like they are winning. We feel lost 5 But we trust in your unfailing love; our hearts remember that you beat death and live now. We remember what you have done for us in the past. 6 We will keep praising you, even when we don’t understand, for you are good.
