The Necessity of Lament
Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash
“Grief is the price we pay for love,” Queen Elizabeth II supposedly said in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Great Britain. Some cultures pay professional mourners to express words that are too deep and painful for the bereaved to utter. But utter them they must. At some point, we must name our pain or forever bear it unhealed within our spirit. Life does not leave any of us without the pain of searing loss. Denominationally, in our time we as Methodists stand at a crossroads where we must grieve, name our losses, build a remembrance to them, and walk away from them before we can fully embrace any new life we may be offered. My heart is breaking for the church I vowed to serve and have loved all my life. The church is the body of Christ at work in the world. At its best, it is the heart of worship and work, created by God the Father, redeemed by Jesus the Son, resurrected and empowered by God the Holy Spirit. The church is the palace God created for us to live balanced, coherent lives both with Him and each other.
The wounds of this schism run deep. Many on both sides continue to tell the stories that are wrapped in pain of situations and circumstances for which there seem to be no good answers. It is not unreasonable to propose some work along the lines of Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to face the anguish that currently divides us in American Methodism and in the global places where the earthquake tremors are felt. For so long, it seems that United Methodists have been talking past each other and legislating change for their own particular sector of the community. Interestingly and sadly, there is conversation that the original 1968 unification of Methodism and the Evangelical United Brethren was marked by unrecognized controversy that planted the seeds of our current thicket. If this current pain goes unaddressed, will we wait for our grandchildren in fifty years’ time to try to find some resolution and a way forward?
One of the less pleasant rhythms of life is the necessity of lament. Living through difficult circumstances as they happen is hard. Watching a loved one die, seeing the possibility of a lifelong dream fade away, having to admit our own selfishness, error, or pride are all things that are painful enough in the moment. Those circumstances force us to change, to act and believe differently afterward than we did before.
Lament comes to us authentically as Christians, since it is a time-honored and God-honored process we have inherited from Judaism. The Psalms are full of raw lament, as are many of the words of the prophets. Elijah, Jeremiah, and Amos all spoke words of grief and sorrow over Israel and Judah. Jesus himself spoke of weeping for Jerusalem, and he wept outside the tomb of Lazarus. The New Testament doesn’t make us privy to every conversation Jesus had with his Father as he walked the dark hills in prayer during his earth-bound life.
It is time and past time to tell the truth to each other, to name the hurt and memorialize it in some tangible way so it does not get cyclically and eternally inflicted on innocent bystanders. Jewish theology describes stages of lament, especially in the way the Psalms are constructed. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross introduced the idea of stages of grief. Both are listed here, side by side for comparison and contrast.
Lament in Psalms
An address to God
A complaint or lament
A petition for help
A vow of trust
A vow of praise
Kübler-Ross
denial
anger
bargaining
depression
acceptance
The first list is seated firmly in a Judeo-Christian context, and the second has no such explicit undergirding. Yet the two lists have several things in common. Although each list looks tidy and neat, anyone who has grieved knows it is possible to feel all these things at once to different degrees. Like a poorly executed watercolor painting, sometimes the emotions and thoughts bleed into each other with no firm boundaries and the result looks (and feels) like a muddy mess. The way to avoid such overlap is to grieve or lament intentionally, not just once but again and again over a long period of time. The inherent advantage of Judeo-Christian lament is that God transforms the grief into the right elements for his purposes.
What is helpful here is to remember Jesus’ I AM statements from the Gospel of John. Jesus said “I am the living water” in John 7. From a scientific standpoint, we know that water exists in three states: vapor, liquid, and solid. And we know that it is made up of three molecules: two hydrogen and one oxygen. These scientific images help us understand the both/and nature of our lives and God’s transforming work in our lives. My life can seem like the mist that rises off a cold glass of iced water suddenly plunged into a warm room. The water in that example exists in all the stages at once, just like our intentional lament can contain all the phases listed above. Just because it’s complicated, messy, and painful doesn’t mean it’s not worth the work.
How do we lament intentionally? We name our losses. We tell the story of our hopes and dreams that are now lost. We remember our commitments and the vows we made that no longer seem to be equally respected. Then we feel the hurt those admissions and stories bring. We don’t run from it, try to escape, or medicate it. We feel the pain in our bodies. It releases as tears, groaning, stomachaches, headaches, muscle tension, forgetfulness, and anxiety. This pain feels frightening and like it’s the end of the world. And it is. It is the end of the world as we have known it and wanted it to be. It’s the end of the world for which we have prayed.
But we do not grieve as those who have no hope.
And regarding the question, friends, that has come up about what happens to those already dead and buried, we don’t want you in the dark any longer. First off, you must not carry on over them like people who have nothing to look forward to, as if the grave were the last word. Since Jesus died and broke loose from the grave, God will most certainly bring back to life those who died in Jesus (I Thessalonians 4:13-14, MSG).
Yes, this kind of grieving is a kind of dying, so the Apostle Paul’s words are appropriate here. It feels like dying, and somehow it is the kind of cross-carrying of which Jesus spoke. In the power of the Holy Spirit, it is not impossible for us to grieve this way, to carry intentionally the world’s hurts and our own in ways that honor God and expand the borders of his kingdom. The creative power of the resurrection of Jesus means that even this lament is life-giving in ways that we can’t conceive or imagine.
For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21, NIVU).
This is Paul’s benediction to the church at Ephesus. This is Paul’s benediction to you and me as we live in this mysterious 21st century riddled with fear, violence and amazingly, glory. I don’t know how it works but I know it works. Or, rather, God does. We cannot proceed into a healthy future of life, love, and ministry in any place without a season of intentional grieving and lament for all we have lost. That is not to say that God is not with all of us like he was with Job, but we cannot move past the potsherds and ashes until they have done their work of transformation and healing. We must build altars to the God we know, lay upon them the pieces of our lives, our churches, our families and friends, and wait for the Spirit to fall, to heal, to send. Only then can we go, carrying the yeast of love and holiness with us into an unknown but promised land.
Kelli Summers Sorg is a student at Asbury Theological Seminary and a former Elder in Full Connection in the United Methodist Church.