Lamentations is an oft-under-discussed book of the bible. This is likely for two reasons. 1. It is a very short book that only contains 5 poems. But even more likely is the second reason- it’s a book about pain. The poems here are those of pain and frustration and crying to God for help. This book is a raw expression of pain. Kathleen M. O’Connor puts it this way, “Its stinging cries for help, its voices begging God to see, its protests to God who hides behind a cloud– all create a space where communal and personal pain can be reexperienced, seen, and perhaps healed.”
This, I feel, is the true role of the lament. A lament is a very human moment that invites other humans in so that shared pain can be processed and overcome together. The lament is that place where we can express our deepest longings and most heartfelt cries to God. IT is truly where we can CRY, and scream, and pray all at once. Those moments where we are at our very lowest and need God most are when the lament is called for.
It’s fitting that there is an entire book of laments in the bible- Israel has much to mourn. The book of Lamentations is a poetic response that was likely recorded in response to the invasion and defeat of Judah by the Babylonian military in 597, 587, and 582 BCE. The city would have been destroyed and anyone who survived would have been caught up in an overwhelming social and religious upheaval that left the people hungry for food and salvation. Of course they would have been crying out to God- hadn’t they been promised a land of their own and the protection of God?
At the heart of the book, it is simply a communal expression of collective grief. And Communal grief has power. ““Communal grieving offers something that we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves. Through acknowledgement, validation and witnessing, communal grieving allows us to experience a level of healing that is deeply and profoundly freeing.” There is healing when we grieve as a community, and is should come as no surprise that when we do not have some form of communal response, we are often unable to find a resolution to our grief. Without grieveing together, we don’t finish the process.
This was one of the hardest things for many folks during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic- the inability to have funerals and grieve communally. People were suddenly faced with losing loved ones without the support of a community that could grieve by their side. These losses seemed somehow larger and more tragic because of our lack of ability to grieve them together.
A common proverb says, in some form or another, that Grief shared is grief halved, joy shared is joy doubled. Scientific research has even shown that if sorrows cannot be shared, suffering actually increases. Truly, sharing grief is necessary for finishing the grieving process. That’s one of the reasons that funerals are such an imnportant ritual, it gives us a place to share our grief.
In Jewish tradition, there is the additional ritual of shiva, in which people come grieve with the mourners for the seven days following a funeral. It’s commonly said that each person that leaves a shiva takes a piece of the grief with them, and therefore the family has less to bear. That idea is one that really resonates with me- the concept that in visiting someone who is mourning we remove some of the grief for them- what a beautiful concept.
And that’s part of what makes a lament so powerful, not just the heartfelt prayer to god or the literal crying out loud for help, but in the shared experience of that moment.
But the book of the bible we call Lamentations is not the only place that lament takes place in the bible. In fact, over sixty laments appear in the psalms, including the psalm we read together today. And they all have some common threads- they are all expressing powerful emotions.
My beloved seminary professor Dr. Lisa Davison says these laments are, “prayers describing a world that seems to be spinning out of control and is marked by one or more of these emotions: suffering, despair, anger, and doubt. These prayers of “disorientation” expressed the concerns and needs of an individual/community experiencing oppression (either real or imagined) and feeling that God could (should) do something to make the situation better.” Laments are raw and real and get to the heart of the relationship between human and God, and sometimes they really do demand that God does something to right whatever has gone wrong. This of course does not mean that God *IS* going to do something or that God *MUST* do something, but it is our right to lament- to scream out and cry for help.
Most Laments follow a fairly consistent structure. Again, Dr. Davison explains it this way, “In a lament, the person(s) praying would name what was wrong with the world, ask God to do specific things in order to fix the problem, and promise to sing God’s praises to others, once the situation had improved. Sometimes a lament calls God to task for not acting like God, even questioning whether God cares about humanity or creation.”
It’s a fairly simple formula. 1. State the problem, 2. Ask for help, 3. Promise to be grateful. I feel like this is a pretty good formula for really getting to the heart of the matter when things are going wrong. And I think, for the most part we’re pretty good at step one. Our laments are probably really great at stating what the problem is and telling God what is wrong. But I think steps 2 and 3 are perhaps a bit harder. I think it’s hard for us to ask for help and even harder to promise to be grateful. But here’s the thing about lamentations, like I said earlier, they are most effective when practice communally. When we publicly share our grief.
If lamenting privately to God is hard, doing so in front of and with others is even harder. And yet? It’s exactly perfect. Because when we do this process out loud and in front of other humans what can happen? There are those who can help bear our grief, help us find a solution, and help us find gratitude. In sharing our laments with each other, we are seeking a communal solution to our individual problems- or a communal solution to a community’s problems. But by making therse pleas in public, the public can help us find an answer. In fact sharing these laments challenge those listening to respond- it propels the entire group forward towards a solution.
Whenever there is a prayer vigil? That’s a community lament- a calling out to god for help and praying for a way to move forward in gratitude. “A prayer vigil can be a communal lament, an act of solidarity, or a time to bring light to brokenness in society. As an act of public witness, it offers the community a space to connect with God so that God’s vision for love and justice can be carried out through us.” And that, I think is the entire point of a public lament- it’s a pace connect with God in a way that moves us to action. And that action can be the cause for gratitude.
There is power in catharsis- in letting everything go in anger and in tears and in whatever feelings come to the surface. There is even more power when that catharsis has witnesses- witnesses that can help us move past the outburst of emotion and into action and gratitude. And that’s what happens here in Lamentations and also in the psalms- catharsis, communion, and moving forward in gratitude.
And that’s the good news- that we are allowed to cry and scream and pray whatever it is we are feeling and that we are not expected to bear any of it alone. God has given us our voices and has given us each other so that we may share our pain and have help in our grieving. What a blessing that is indeed.