It’s been another week for rage and tears. The growing response to Charlie Kirk’s lamentable and horrific killing has devolved into political threats carried through against whomever the current administration doesn’t like. It’s not an exaggeration to say that one of our bedrock freedoms – the freedom of speech – is under siege.
Let’s back up a minute. Are you in a church that is mostly progressive? Yes. So I just want to let you know that, in case you are new and wondering. We stand for the dignity of every human being and since Elizabethan times, back in England, we have affirmed the right of individuals to believe the way they want while also affirming the beauty of common prayer and gathering around a common altar. Our worship is both ancient and modern and personally, I am devoted to preaching from the scriptures without fear that it will look political – because often times it is political.
The prophets and Jesus spoke to the conditions of their times without fear and without favor – and our church attempts to do the same. And it is not possible at this time in our national history to just tuck our head down and be quiet and still be true to our faith. And so church, this church, is a place for tears, for lament, and yes, for rage.
There’s a young Episcopalian priest on Instagram, The Rev. Elizabeth Riley, who invites rage prayers – what do you need to scream at the universe about?
She says that when we are terrified and in despair, we need to know we ar not alone and that prayer is a way in which we can be unified. It’s a way we can speak truth. And it takes so many forms. Words. Lighting candles. Marching in the streets, writing postcards, banner drops along freeway overpasses. So this morning, if you are despairing for the world like me, here is one of her prayers:
let us pray +
Holy One, we see the pain and violence of the world, potential destruction and loss of life, the way in which we depart from love and peace towards hate and oppression and we fear for the world we find ourselves in, let us not make peace with this present, but continue to lift our voices in opposition, in truth – may we be loud where it is needed and gentle and comforting to those who are doing the hard and terrifying work of standing up to this incredibly deranged and oppressive power we find ourselves living in the midst of.
May we find our way towards peace. May we not lose hope that we can be voices for change, May we be inspired to continue to fight and speak for those in harm’s way. and let us not believe that this is how it must be, because we know, we know that there is a better way than this hell.
Lament is an art. It is a kind of praying that we have largely forgotten – that we are maybe embarrassed by or simply not familiar with – but it is a powerful form of prayer whether it is in words, in action, or in song.
Jon Batiste, a Grammy award winning R&B and Soul singer composer instrumentalist, wrote a song called Cry, Cry, Cry, and it could be straight out of the prophet Jeremiah.
Who do you love?
Who you gonna love?
Who do you love when push comes to shove?
How does it feel?
How’s it gonna feel?
How does it feel when it’s getting too real?
Why sometimes does it feel like all I wanna do
All I wanna do is cry, cry, cry
Cry, cry, cry
Floods keep on rising
Tears keep on falling down
Oh, why?
Cry
Cry, cry, cry, cry
For the loss of the innocence
For the struggle of the immigrants
For the wrongful imprisonment
Cry, cry, cry
Lament is for when hardship feels thick and hope seems desperately thin. Those times we all have. The doctor confirms your fears: the cancer has returned. Or your hope is crushed by the news of a miscarriage. For some of us, it’s rising to a new day only to be met by the dark and familiar clouds of depression. Or nationally: Charlie Kirk is murdered and social media and the White House kick into overdrive sowing further division between people and threatening one of the bedrock freedoms of our country: free speech. A shooting happens at Evergreen High School and is ignored by the same actors. Or internationally: the lack of any kind of restraint in the onslaught against Palestinian peoples.
At least 40% of the psalms are filled with lament. There is an entire book of the Bible called Lamentations. Jesus was filled with deep lament for the same reason Jeremiah is: the inability or unwillingness of the people to come to grips with reality and change.
Jesus is described as being so moved in his gut by lament that he wept over Jerusalem and the people who did not know what would bring them peace and consequentially were walking straight into disaster.
And it’s not just Jesus or the prophets who weep – it is God as well. If you look at this lament from our first reading – it can be difficult to separate out which is Jeremiah’s voice and which is God’s. They are intertwined.
My joy is gone, grief is upon me,
my heart is sick.
Hark, the cry of my poor people
from far and wide in the land:
For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
O that my head were a spring of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears,
so that I might weep day and night
for the slain of my poor people!
We are, for the most part, really uncomfortable with grief. With genuine heartbrokenness. We want to move it along. We want to fix it. To do something practical and helpful. Something that will change the situation.
But both prophets and psychologists invite us to allow ourselves space and time to grieve. To light a candle and offer prayers of rage and lament for truly lamentable situations.
One of our modern ecological prophets, Joanna Macy, who died this past July at 92 years old, spoke about our need to acknowledge grief and lament – not to wallow in it, but because it is the natural flip side of love. She often said that love and lament are intimately connected, and if we want to have hearts that are not stone, but hearts of flesh, as God promises, then we must let the truth of suffering penetrate us. Our pain for the world to touch us.
Church is a place we can do this. Where we can shed tears. Where we can give voice, alongside the prophets, to rage and lament. This is a place and a time in which our hearts can be warmed and revived so we don’t fall down in despair but move forward with greater resolve to stand up
- because we are Christian, for the value and dignity of every human being;
and
- because we are American, for the values of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.
We began our service with the cleansing lament of confession that we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves or God with our whole hearts, and we have been absolved, released, redeemed, strengthened in goodness, readied to receive the blessed body and blood of Christ and to be sent into the world in peace and strength and courage.
I just want to voice my own deep and profound gratitude for voices like Jeremiah’s, for the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, for the church, for you, for so many people of different faiths and of no faith, who courageously stand against oppressive powers on behalf of the suffering and for compassion and dignity and justice and all that is holy and blessed on this fragile and beautiful island home, our planet.
