Practise of lament can open the door to hope
In the week before Easter, stories central to Christianity are re-told. This year the stories of betrayal arrest and trial of Jesus evoked something different in me. I felt the parallels between our current global reality with its cruelty, war, senseless violence, and dehumanization of many was no different from the experience of the people who followed Jesus. This could not be ignored. I was called into lament.
The practise of lament is ancient and deeply connected to faith. It is not simply sadness, frustration, complaint, nor tears. Lament acknowledges pain and disorientation and is an admission that life contains suffering.
Make no mistake, lament is risky. By its very expression it challenges power structures and points to injustice. In allowing the pain to escape through telling story, we become joined to our neighbours in a new and meaningful way. Lament allows us to find love with them in the stories of suffering. Walter Brueggemann wrote “Lament refuses to settle for things as they are and so it asserts hope.” The collective “wail” shows we are not alone and allows for something different to grow.
Let’s not forget that those who followed Jesus had high hopes. They ached for freedom from subjugation. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem was symbolic of prophetic hope. Soon hope turned to lament through betrayal, defeat, and death.
Conqueror’s power along with religious fear-driven “justice” forced a cruel dehumanizing death of an innocent. Yet resurrection, unexplainable and beautiful, bloomed out of the rubble of deceit and injustice. Resurrection is a story of love and lament birthing hope.
I came to recognise my lament was not driven by frustration but the numbness of fear and hopelessness.
As Emilie Townes reminds us, “Lament can serve as an anchor to help us find our bearings on how to live. We learn from biblical laments that it is imperative to name what is wrong with as much precision and honesty as possible, even if it hurts.”
During another holy week I was meeting with a group of multifaith leaders. We were planning joint gatherings in each others’ places of worship. In the middle of the conversation, I received a phone call that a young family member was gravely ill in hospital. I whispered apologies to a colleague and got up to leave. But my colleague stopped the meeting and explained the situation. The group asked me to stay a moment. As a group, following their own traditions, they prayed into the situation. As I dashed to the hospital, I realised I was not alone. I was wrapped in the relationship of shared lament and caring. As Townes said: “Hope refuses to believe that evil and suffering and sorrow and hatred are God’s final words to us in a world that is a spinning top of war and violence.”
This, the disciples who walked the road to Emmaus discovered. They talked and listened to a “stranger” who walked beside them. They told their story, from the triumphal Jerusalem entry to the betrayal, the capture, trial and crucifixion of Jesus, and now the empty tomb. Their reality had not yet caught up with the risen Jesus who was walking with them. It was in the everyday act of breaking bread together did they discover hope, realising that love had walked with them in their lament.
Lament is normal and necessary. It is a doorway into something beyond suffering, sadness, and anger. It provides the opportunity to find hope through our tears. Neither must ever be neglected.