Lament

May 25, 2014

John 14:15-21

Easter 6a

In the bible, there is a genre of literature called the Laments. 

They are mostly found in the book of Lamentations, and the Psalms, but can be found in other pieces of biblical literature and speak of the fickleness of human nature, the frailty of human bodies, and the experience of wondering where God is in the midst of things that we cannot understand.  It also speaks of our need to mourn loss.   

David mourns the death of his best friend, Jonathan, and his enemy, Saul, in 2^nd Samuel after both lost their lives on the battle field.  Job laments three times that loss of everything he had.  Jeremiah wrote a whole book of poetic laments about the destruction of Jerusalem in Lamentations.

In Psalm 151, we hear “out of the depth I cry to you, o Lord.” Psalm 22, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me” repeated by Jesus on the cross.  John 10 “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

But these are not our texts for this morning…so why bring them up now?

It’s because our ability to lament as individuals and a community have been stifled. 

Many of us with gather tomorrow at grave sites to honor the dead, others will attend parades and ceremonies that honor the sacrifice of our nation’s military personnel.  But how many more Americans don’t remember the meaning of this day anymore beyond a day off to barbeque and kick off summer?  And what about our lament over the active duty soldiers and veterans who have taken their own lives because the psychological damages done during their service.  A statistic I found this week noted that in the 22 states that report it, 22 veterans and 1 active duty personnel commit suicide each day.  Where are our words of lament for these lives?

Friday night six people were left dead and other seven were wounded near the University of California Santa Barbara campus at the hands of a young man who was later the seventh person whose life ended in the incident.  As of February 13, 2014, the New York Times noted that between the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school and the day that edition of the newspaper went to print, there had been 44 other mass shootings resulting in 28 deaths.  Over the weekend of Easter in the city of Chicago at least 9 people were killed and 36 people injured in shootings. 

In the last month, there have been news reports about mudslides killing 41, ferry boat accidents killing almost 300, flooding in Eastern Europe, and fires in California and Colorado, mines collapsing in Turkey.  The Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Harran are still in captivity, and in this country 1 in 5 children will go to be hungry tonight, just like they did last night. 

Where are our words of lament in a world that seems to be falling apart?

My God, My God, why have you forsaken us?

Out of the depths we cry to you!

Lord, if you had been here, this wouldn’t have happened. 

We are not at ease, nor are we quiet, we are not at rest, but turmoil comes

We don’t lament well.  In the most well-meaning of ways, we put time frames on mourning losses.  I have two dear friends who have had children die either in the womb or shortly after birth.  Josiah was killed by a cord accident at 37 weeks.  Joseph was born too early, and died about an hour after he was born.  And my friends recall being told “not to mourn too long, God will give you another child.” But no child could ever replace their first born children, their sons.  One of my first funerals was for a man who committed suicide leaving his wife and four teenage sons.  And I witnessed as these boys were told that one day they would not miss their dad as much as they did on that day. 

We don’t lament well.  We lament as if it is not normal and that we need permission to be sad or to get angry or to wonder just what in the world our God is up to if such things in this world are allowed to happen.

We lament, I’m guessing, as if we were disciples sitting in the upper room with Jesus as he told them openly that he was going to leave them. 

We don’t know where you are going, Lord, how will we know the way?

The community to which the writer of the Gospel of John was addressing was a community in the midst of trying to figure out just where they fit in the grand scheme of things.  In the context of persecutions, ousting from the synagogues, etc., they were probably a community feeling abandoned, perhaps even betrayed.  They had put so much faith and trust in this Jesus and look at them now.  Bruised and beaten as a community they asked the same questions that every other generation, faithful and unfaithful alike, have asked at one time or another– where is God now? A God who allows young men and women to come home from combat so consumed by post-traumatic stress disorder that their only escape is to end their lives, a God who allows shooters to hold people captive to fear unless we ourselves are armed, a God who allows teenaged sons to be abandoned by their father, a God who allows the arms of brand new parents to be left empty, a God who would send his only son into the world to die a cruel and unusual death, is a God whose faithfulness and credibility we question. 

And it is to such circumstances that Jesus speaks as he did to the disciples “I will not leave you abandoned.”  “I will pray the Father, and he will give another advocate, to be with you forever.”

The disciples needed to hear this in the midst of losing their beloved teacher, and we need to hear this today just as much as they did.  For we are all people who have bumped up against lament inducing circumstances for which there is an allowance to look up into the heavens and to address our almighty, ever present, all loving God with the question “why?” 

And we hear again Jesus’ words “I will not leave you abandoned.” I will not leave you orphaned.  I am about to go to hell and back for you so that there will be no depth to which you can sink that I haven’t been to.  There is no put too deep for me to get to you.  We have a God who sent his son to die so that there was no depth of despair that we could reach that God’s own self hadn’t seen in person.

And though the world does not see God himself, in the flesh, coming to us the ultimate depths of our despair, we can still know that we are not abandoned, we are not left to our own devices.  We have a community to lament with, brothers and sisters who were baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection just as we were, who eat with us the body and blood of Christ, who walk on the earth letting the prisoners go free, healing the sick, standing with those who mourn, bringing life to the places where it seems that death dwells. 

And as weird as this may sound, knowing that we are surrounded by a community of brothers and sisters who walk with us when we are at our worst, knowing that we are being worried for so that we don’t have to worry about ourselves, gives us the freedom and the permission to lament, to cry out knowing that our cries will be heard, resting in the knowledge that our lament doesn’t need to end until we are ready, trusting that we are not alone, and that we never will be.