The reading for morning prayer today was from the first chapter of the book of Lamentations, a beautiful and honest piece of writing. That Jesus laments is really good news for us as it proves he lives the same life as us.
“Is any suffering like my suffering...that the Lord inflicted on me...?”
That sounds just like what Jesus must have felt, doesn’t it? You can imagine him framing that question in his mind, wanting to fling it at those who passed him that day in Jerusalem, as he was led through the busy streets carrying a cross, and then, just outside the walls, was lifted high—stretched out, nailed, and naked for all to see. “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering...?”
Those words were written about six centuries before Christ, by another sufferer in Jerusalem —some anonymous Jew who had survived (barely) the devastating siege and total destruction of the city by the Babylonian army. The poems that make up the book of Lamentations were composed by the shocked and shaken. The poems were ancient already in Jesus’ time, and almost certainly he knew them. So it is appropriate that Christians have traditionally read from the book of Lamentations on Good Friday, as though the words came from Jesus’ own mouth contemplating the worst humanity can do to another and the absence of God his Father, at least in his head:
“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that he dealt me,
that the Lord inflicted on me on the day of his heated wrath.”
Why is lament an important part of Holy Week and indeed our lives? Some people might say “get over it”; “pray harder”; “have more faith”; “God has a plan.” But the Bible is full of it! It has in it terrible cries of anguish and bewilderment, accusations directed against God. We hear them from Psalmists, from prophets, especially Jeremiah; from Job and Lamentations. We hear Jesus’ own cry from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Taking their clue from that cry from the cross, real Christians, not fluffy bunny ones, through the ages have not been afraid to say that these terrible words from the third chapter of Lamentations sound just like Jesus on the cross, having his say about God:
He has shattered my bones....
He has walled me in so I cannot break out.... He shuts out my prayer....
He makes me the target for his arrows....
He has filled me with bitterness....
So the biblical witness and the church’s tradition together declare this truth about the suffering of the faithful: it often feels like abandonment by God, or worse, like God is aiming at you with a deadly weapon.
I read this in a commentary earlier today:
“Suffering is one of the deepest mysteries of life with God.”
Believing that God is implicated in our suffering and yet somehow not being able to give up on God entirely—this is an abiding problem for us. It is not a problem we solve once and for all, either as individuals or as a community of faith; it is a problem with which we are struggling to live. Part of the honest struggle is crying out to God and others who share both our faith and our outrage. That crying out is itself part of our answer to Jesus’ question: Yes, Jesus, my sense of abandonment by God is a lot like yours.”
Life is hard and unjust and unfair and horrible sometimes. The innocent pay. The evil persists. It feels so wrong. But not admitting that I think makes it worse. To pretend everything is okay when it is not okay and to hide our feelings inside us and put on a fake smile because we don’t want to be vulnerable really doesn’t help our longer term healing from stuff that hits us.
To really get Holy Week and the agony of torment, abandonment and crucifixion, we need to stand with Jesus in those things and not gloss over them too quickly. Before we can move on, we need to identity the hurt, name the pain and lament the loss, and yes —- get angry.
Remember on this Monday of our Holy Week journey, the depths of human experience we go through. Remember it’s okay whatever we face to voice it. Who are the people you can safely be honest with? Say thank you to God for them tonight. Remember too God works from within the lament - resurrection comes out of brutality and injustice and the most hopeful words the poet says are still said on the rubble.
“I thought...my hope had died before God.
...This I recall to my heart—therefore I do have hope:
The faithful acts of the Lord are not ended; his mercies are not finished; they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.”
Lamentations chapter 1:
8 Jerusalem sinned grievously,
so she has become a mockery;
all who honoured her despise her,
for they have seen her nakedness;
she herself groans,
and turns her face away.
9 Her uncleanness was in her skirts;
she took no thought of her future;
her downfall was appalling,
with none to comfort her.
‘O Lord, look at my affliction,
for the enemy has triumphed!’
10 Enemies have stretched out their hands
over all her precious things;
she has even seen the nations
invade her sanctuary,
those whom you forbade
to enter your congregation.
11 All her people groan
as they search for bread;
they trade their treasures for food
to revive their strength.
Look, O Lord, and see how worthless I have become.
12 Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
which was brought upon me,
which the Lord inflicted
on the day of his fierce anger.”
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