Learning to Lament: A Lenten exploration of pain, sadness, discomfort and loss. Part 1

Hello all, this blog is meant to be about the journey we are taking through life and ministry together.  However many journeys are inward and only reflect spiritual, emotional or intellectual movement.  Over the next 40 or so days leading up to Easter, I am going to attempt a series of posts that reflects such a journey.  I apologize in advance for its sprawling, rambling nature.  It is hard as a writer to post ideas when you know that they are not your ideas in their final form, but in order to be true to the process, thats what I feel is required.  Hopefully you can identify with it anyways and find something helpful.

Also, its about death, which is uncomfortable.  So if you don't read past the next two sentences, I won't be offended.

SPOILER ALERT: You are going to die. The people you love are going to die too.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but its going to happen.  Also, if you are just now realizing this, you likely have bigger problems than just mortality.  You don't exactly have to be a doctor or historian to recognize that all people die.   

Life is a terminal condition.  It is not a matter of if death will catch up with with you, but when.  Along with taxes, the old joke goes, death is a universal aspect of human existence. 

We do a pretty good job of insulating ourselves from this fact. Human tendency to deny or deflect questions about our own mortality have been greatly aided by giant leaps in medicine which have made premature death much less common and allow us to carry on the immortal charade longer than we could just a couple of generations ago.

Antibiotics, blood transfusions, vaccines, and other other major advances in medical intervention have revolutionized human expectations around health, vitality and longevity.  When we couple this with increased societal awareness to matters such as safety, sanitation, nutrition, and the myriad of other factors involved in public health,  we can rightfully pat ourselves on the back for the astounding progress we have made in keeping death at bay.   

Yet the uncomfortable truth remains. We are all going to die. Tragedies are still going to happen. No form of human advancement is going to change the fact that we live in a world where death is the norm and pain is everywhere. Our bodies are simply not able to stay alive indefinitely, thus an important part of living well is making peace with the fact that we are going to die.  

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of lent, and a time we pause to remember the prominent place death still has in our world.  “Remember that you are dust, and to the dust you shall return” the priest says as he or she makes a sign of the cross with ash on your forehead. The ceremony harkens back to the genesis account, where God creates Adam from the dust, and reverberates the experience of Job, who upon loosing everything, sat morning in a pile of ash. 

Not all Christians observe this strange ritual. Many traditions (including my own) tend to overlook or ignore it altogether. However, the more I exist in this space where death is often ignored but never overcome the more I recognize the need for the Church to speak openly about death and loss. The sadness, fear and emptiness associated with death all serve as a reminder that the world as we know it is not the world as it should be.  Once again, this is no great revelation. Life is hard and bad things happen.  What is surprising is how unprepared we are when tragedy does strike.  The biblical response to such loss is lament, and while I can only speak from my own perspective, it seems as though lament is becoming a dying art form.   

Lament is everywhere in the Bible: From the longing of Abram and Sarai for a child, to Israel’s pleas for deliverance. Its in the raw, emotive songs of David, and the nihilism of Solomon.  The words of the prophets dripped with lament as they mourned the stubbornness and wickedness of an exiled people.  The story of Job is a story of loss and grief, and of course there is a whole book simply called Lamentations. Jesus morned many times, perhaps most memorably while quoting Psalm 22 on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus even goes so far as to bless those who morn, promising that they will be comforted.  

Despite an abundance of biblical examples, we struggle mightily with the ability discuss sorrow or express lament. Recently, I have had the hard privilege of sitting with a few people who have been in in the tender stages of loss. Such moments always remind me of how little I have personally to offer someone in such a position.

Especially for those of us who grew up in the relative affluence and comfort of the American Church, our lack of experience with hardship betrays itself in the form of shallow platitudes, or moralistic tropes frequently offered up mindlessly more as a reassurance to the would be comforter than the one who is actually hurting.  Aside from a number of shining examples to the contrary, I fear we are in danger of becoming fundamentally unequipped to do offer comfort and peace to a world that is seriously hurting.

One of the most beautiful parts of the Christ story is God’s willingness to enter into the brokenness of the world for our sake.  Pain, frailty, loss, and death are all qualities inseparable from human experience.  However, these qualities quite foreign to God’s.  His willingness to suffer pain, hardship, and loss did just begin on the cross, it was present in the manger as well as everything in between.  Jesus did not shy away from death, pain or loss, he embraced them gladly out of love.

Its a shame that when I get the opportunity to choose love over comfort, I choose comfort the majority of the time.  My primary default is to avoid certain people, situations or conversations if I think they will make me feel even slightly awkward or vulnerable.  I wrestle frequently with the knowledge that this puts me at odds with my faith.  I made a commitment a long time ago to follow Jesus, but I am realizing more and more that he is always running in the direction those who are in pain and there is much within me that resists his lead.  I am trying to learn to lean in to lament, both as a way of existing authentically in a world where brokenness and death is the norm, and also as a way of offering comfort to those who experiencing it too.

Over the coming weeks leading up to Easter, as my own form Lenten exercise, I am going to take some time to explore some of these feelings and some of the themes associated with pain, loss and lament as a way of searching my own heart, and hopefully expressing some important truths I have overlooked.  Hopefully you can read along and relate.  If you have any thoughts, experiences, books, passages or anything you would like to share or explore together I would welcome your input as well.