Stephen Baldwin
OT: Lamentations 1.1-6 & 3.19-26
Lament--Let it Out!
Without knowing the context of Lamentations, it will
sound like a sad country song about a man longing after his woman…who has up
and left him in the middle of the night never to return! So let me tell you what’s going on behind the
scenes.
The Israelites—God’s
people who were delivered from slavery in Egypt and given the law and sent
prophets to guide them towards righteousness—are in trouble. Serious trouble. The prophets had been warning them for
decades, but they ignored it. They were
finally living the good life, and they didn’t want to think about anything else.
People once
without a land had been granted a homeland in Jerusalem. Their homes, jobs, religion, and families
were all in Jerusalem. Life was
pleasant. Business was good. Faith was strong. The year was 589 BC.
An invading
army led by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia (which is what we call Iraq today)
arrived at the city’s walls intent on conquering the ancient metropolis. It took them two years camped outside the
city walls, but they succeeded and took control of Jerusalem. No, that’s too tame a way of saying it. They laid siege to Jerusalem.
The first
thing they did was burn the temple to the ground. They thought this would break the people’s
spirits, and it did. Then they took as
many citizens as they could as slaves.
They did this regularly to those they conquered not only to flex their
muscle but also to gain free labor.
Finally, they burned everything else still standing. Houses, barns, everything. Those Israelites that weren’t killed or
enslaved ran for the hills. The
Babylonians left a few slaves behind to tend the fields which they would use to
feed their soldiers whenever they had to come back through town. And Jerusalem was no more.
The Jewish
remnant who ran for the hills are the ones who wrote Lamentations. Imagine them looking back at the city they
loved, now just smoldering ashes, as they try and makes sense of where they
should go from there.
Lamentations
lays bare the human soul. It shows
broken people at their very lowest, crying out in despair. It uses the image of a widow, and widows
surely know what it feels like to have your world torn out from under you. That kind of pain resides deep within the
soul. Like the pain of losing a child or
the pain of facing severe trauma. It’s
something so deep that we can’t talk about it.
In fact, when things that bad happen to us we’re often told not to talk
about it.
Rob Bell is a
popular Christian pastor and author who tells a story about his dad. When his
dad was 8, his father died. But nobody told him. His mother told him to put on his suit and
the whole family piled in the car on the way to church, so the 8 year old boy
eventually asked, “Where are we going?”
A cousin in the backseat said, “Your dad’s funeral.”
When they got
there, his mother told him, “We will not shed a tear today. Your father is in
Heaven, so we will celebrate.” He never
had time to grieve. He never was allowed
to lament. Lamentations reminds us there
is necessary and important power in lamenting.
When you hit
your thumb with a hammer, what do you do?
You say, “Well, that hurt,” and move on?
No, you yell and you curse. Admit
it. You get it out, and then you move
on.
When you have
a bad day at work or you’ve been waiting on the doctor’s office to call all
week and they don’t—again—do you yell and curse? Probably not.
You keep it all inside because that’s what a strong and mature person
does. You bottle it up and let no one in
on the secret that inside you’re heart is burning with anger and hurt.
One of the
most baffling things I have learned about human beings in my 34 years of life
is what happens to our grief when we don’t deal with it. I see this all the time, and it confounds
me. Something bad happens, but instead
of grieving we try our hardest to ignore it.
We downplay it, we ignore it, we push it aside. Then like a balloon it pops up somewhere else
about something that’s totally unrelated.
Have you ever found yourself yelling at your dog when you’re really mad
at yourself for backing into the garage?
Have you ever found yourself yelling at the person on the phone from the
phone company when you’re really upset because you’ve been sick and needed help
and your friends didn’t notice?
We can learn a
thing or two from Lamentations. When
something happens to us, we need to deal with it. Plenty of things happen to us on a daily
basis. If we keep it inside, it festers,
and the love of God is pushed out of us for the anger burns too hot to let
anything else stay close. We may not
face the agony of seeing our civilization burned to the ground like the
Israelites, but we have plenty to lament.
Don’t we?
Something
curious happens by the end of the book of Lamentations. It goes on for three chapters with the people
just pouring their hearts out because they’re so sick about what has happened
to them. After you lament out loud—like
when you yell after you hit your thumb with a hammer—something happens. After you get it out, you move on. Look with me at Lamentations 3.19-26.
After they get
it out, they make room once again for hope.
They have room in their hearts to see that the bad things that happen to
them do not define them. How many times
do you see people grieving over things that happened to them 20 or 30 years ago
that they’ve never gotten over?
Lament! Let it out!
Tell people what’s on your mind! Tell
God what’s on your mind! Bare your soul
when you have something to say. Then you
can move on and renew your faith in God’s good plans for your future. Because if the Israelites after their beloved
city of Jerusalem was burned to the ground can still believe and still trust in
God’s goodness, then surely we who are blessed beyond measure can believe and
trust in God’s goodness. Amen.
go on with our lives. But the Christian life proclaimed by Jesus in
today’s parable is much more involved than that. With the prophet Isaiah ringing in his head
Jesus’ parable proclaims that we are to be repairers of the breach. Our work as Christians is to see a thing from
both sides, minister to people on both sides of the breach, and offer love to
both sides. We as Christians are to be
repairers of the breach. We are to live in between two worlds, building bridges
on behalf of God.
I
was heartened to see that our college chaplain took her students to downtown
Charlotte this weekend to deliver coffee and bagels to police and protesters, provocateurs
and pastors, the poor and the politicians this weekend. That is our calling as Christians. We are to be repairers of the breach. We are to love fully, love wholly, and love
unconditionally.
What
breaches exist in your life? What walls
keep you from making things right?
Repair the breaches this week.
The ones in your homes, in your families, in your workplaces, in your
circle of friends. Our calling as
Christians is to occupy the space between two worlds. That’s what it means to be in the world but
not of the world. We are to stand in
between the breach and bring people together, for in so doing we enact the bold
love of God to a world which desperately needs it. Amen.
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