Lamentations: Trudging the Road

How Long

Probably the most repeated refrain from the back seats of cars when you have kids is “How much longer? Are we there yet?” And as parents you’re thinking the whole time that’s going on “how much longer until these people get their own car and move out of my house?”

I feel like most of life is this way. Just wondering how much longer we are going to have to endure whatever unpleasant reality we find ourselves in currently. And then realizing that what’s around the bend is just another unpleasant reality. That’s just how life is, and we know it, but it doesn’t stop us from trying to get our from underneath it.

A lot of times we try to take short cuts, only to realize that they seldom work. Maybe all of you are like “how much longer until this sermon series is over because its terribly depressing.” Well, there’s hope for you yet friends, because this is it. We are at the end of this series on the book of Lamentations. Well almost. You’ve still gotta listen to this one.

So just a quick recap of what we’ve gone over for the past several weeks. We’ve been using the book of Lamentations as a road map for how we, as human beings, move through the grieving process. The book of Lamentations is a series of prophetic poems that detail the communal grief that the nation of Israel experienced at the hands of the nation of Babylon. Their home was destroyed, their armies killed off, and their people were carted off into exile.

What we find in the midst of these very depressing yet very honest poems is the grieving process of Israel — and that process as we have talked about is Tears, Talk, and Time. Now we’ve talked about the importance of crying and crying out to God as a fundamental expression of our humanity. To be authentically human is to cry out in anguish when confronted by the pain and evil of this world, because that is also God’s reaction and we all carry the image of God inside of us.

Then we talked about how talking is the fundamental driving force behind our healing. Talking about our pain shares the burden of it, allows us to process it in a healthy and productive way, and keeps us moving forward towards restoration. So I hope you found a way to be honest about your grief over this last week and start that process for yourself.

But you’re likely thinking — yeah that’s all great but how long is this healing process going to take? Like, are we there yet… how many more miles? The answer is, not yet and I don’t really know how long. As long as it takes. That’s the next step in the healing process… allowing time to take its time. Which can seem arduous and monotonous, however thats just the way that things are. The difference between people who are swallowed up by the time that grief takes and those who move forward and grow during the process comes down to whether or not they hold onto the ultimate hope that restoration is coming.

For the Ancient Israelites, their ultimate hope was that Yahweh would some day restore them from exile. Now, for these folks in particular, their grief was very much self inflicted. And the poems of Lamentations speak to this reality. They knew that what happened to them was a direct result of their failure as a nation to follow Yahweh. So infused in the lament poems is an element of honest confession. Sometimes that’s not the case for us, sometimes our grief is not self inflicted. So don’t get hung up on that language in this portion of the Scripture. This comes from Lamentations 4:17-22

Lamentations 4:17–22 NRSV

Our eyes failed, ever watching vainly for help; we were watching eagerly for a nation that could not save. They dogged our steps so that we could not walk in our streets; our end drew near; our days were numbered; for our end had come. Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles in the heavens; they chased us on the mountains, they lay in wait for us in the wilderness. The Lord’s anointed, the breath of our life, was taken in their pits— the one of whom we said, “Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.” Rejoice and be glad, O daughter Edom, you that live in the land of Uz; but to you also the cup shall pass; you shall become drunk and strip yourself bare. The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter Zion, is accomplished, he will keep you in exile no longer; but your iniquity, O daughter Edom, he will punish, he will uncover your sins.

Most of poem 4 details the arduousness of time spent waiting, and it reaches its climax here in this text. And the final words are words are words of hope. The time of Exile will come to an end, and the nations that commited atrocious crimes against Israel will be dealt with Justly.

Through

There’s a saying that goes “the only way out is through.” What this means is that there’s no magic or miraculous way out of any situation that we find ourselves in. Healing is a process. And one of the things I really hate about that is that processes imply 2 things: Work and Time. And I hate that because I’m impatient and lazy. I want the discomfort to end now and I don’t wanna have to do anything to make it happen. But that’s not how things work.

And the even more annoying reality is that we can’t sprint our way through the pain. Its not a nicely paved blacktop, its more like sugar sand or mud. But you’ve got to keep moving forward, trudging the road to healing. And if you’ve ever trudged you know its tough work.

The GIs who landed in Normandy in World War 2 trudged their way across Europe. The journey was treacherous and laborious, and I can only imagine there was a deep desire that crept up in them late at night to just come home, and to come home the easy way. But what the GIs knew was that there was no easy way home. So they developed a saying — “The only way home is through Berlin.”

What the GIs knew was that the only way out was through, unfortunately that meant through the trial that was the Nazi front lines. While our own grief is likely not as physically threatening as pushing forward through Hitler’s War Machine, the sentiment is similar.

The 16th Century Christian Mystic Saint John of the Cross called a spiritual crisis such as those we have when moving through times of extreme grief as “The Dark Night of the Soul.” What that means is that we are moving through a time in life that profoundly challenges our core beliefs about God, ourselves, and the world around us. It is in these times of deep grief, depression, or spiritual turmoil that we are given the opportunity to change. For St. John of the Cross, he believed that, however painful, the dark night of the soul was a means of personal growth in which a person’s ego fades and they become more aware and capable of loving the world around them.

Basically the process, though painful, has a purpose. That purpose is to allow us to come out of our grief and our pain transformed for the purpose of healing the world around us. This is not to say that God inflicts us with pain, but it is to say that God meets us in our pain and walks with us through it so that over time we might be able to find our way out of it, and be better for it.

The Apostle Paul was no stranger to the dark night of the soul and to suffering. He was a man who suffered greatly, both physically and emotionally throughout his ministry to the world. He was booed, rioted against, beaten, arrested, ,jailed, and held captive for most of his ministry. He was a man who embodied the reality that people who live for God still suffer, and suffer greatly. We experience all that the brokenness of the world has to offer us. We deal with depression, with death, with mental illness, with the fact that things just aren’t fair, the fact that sometimes we just don’t feel blessed by God.

Paul’s response to this, and particularly to the Christians in Rome who faced great persecution from the Roman Government, was to frame the reality of suffering on a cosmic scale. So in Romans Chapter 8, Paul says these words:

Romans 8:18–25 NRSV

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

What Paul is trying to point at here is that the entire world, the earth included, is in this process of allowing time to heal it. When evil entered the world it actually broke the earth. All of creation has been affected and is dealing with the consequences of sin. But the ultimate hope is that eventually, all that is broken will be made right.

While that reality may be long after our time, what is important for us to understand is that there is a glimmer of that grand hope for us in our time here on earth. That glimmer of hope is the promise that Jesus can and will restore the brokenness of our lives. That Jesus can and will help us build something new out of the rubble of our lives when it feels like everything is broken.

What I really love about Paul’s letter to the Romans is what he says just a few lines later.

Romans 8:28 NRSV

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

And I know that this is one of those very overused verses, but this right here, this discussion is the context that this verse is meant to be spoken into. Our grief, and the ultimate hope, the reason that we can keep moving through the process of healing is that deep down we know that God is and will continue to work it for our good.

That good informs what St. John of the Cross believed about the dark night of the soul. It was a process of moving us towards having lives that are more in line with God’s purpose in this world. And God’s purpose in this world is to reach those who are hurting and broken. And just who do you think that God uses to reach people who are hurting and broken? People who were hurting and broken the way that they are. People who know what it’s like to experience that very same type of hell that they are experiencing and can help them out.

The purpose is that we become wounded healers. People who’s suffering stretches their hearts to reach out and bring comfort and hope to those who are being consumed by their grief. We become people who allow the time that it takes for us to heal to be molded into people who more accurately reflect Christ, the ultimate wounded healer.

The Wounded Healer

Today I’d like to tell you a story about healing, particularly about my own healing journey from grief. It’s a journey that I’m still on. But it’s a journey that has deeply shaped my theology of suffering, lament, and grief over the past several years.

In 2013 I met a man named Leslie, within the context of a recovery meeting. I was really struggling with the brokenness of my life, and I was honestly just really really sad all of the time. And what initially struck me about Leslie was that he was happy all of the time, and he had time for anyone and everyone all of the time. He didn’t strike me as the kind of person who needed to be in a recovery program.

Eventually I asked Leslie to help me. And Leslie began to pour into my life in a way that fundamentally transformed me. As we talked about my mess of a life, he also shared with me the pain that he had lived with and lived through. Leslie was a hospice nurse. He cared for and loved people every single day who were not long for this world. But the pain was deeper than that. The man who presented as a nearly 7ft tall jolly and gentle giant was a man who had grown up struggling with being a gay man in Alabama. Life had not been easy.

But what Leslie committed himself to was a life of serving others who had struggled with drugs and alcohol like he did. And there is an untold number of persons whose life he impacted, who found hope through the role he played in being a wounded healer.

In 2016 I was called by some friends who were concerned about Leslie as he hadn’t been in contact and hadn’t shown up to work. I had a key to his house. So I went over with some other friends, and what we found was that his home had been burglarized, and Leslie had been the victim of homicide.

As I stood in the road out front of his house for several hours, numb, watching police and forensic investigators enter the house of my friend, the person who had drug me out of some pretty deep emotional holes, I looked around at the group of people that began to assemble there. All people who were experiencing that very same loss. And what I continue to hold onto is that through the entire journey of healing that I’ve embarked on I have not been alone.

What this entire grieving process has shown me is that time takes a long time. And when I think I’m over it, it comes back in waves. But what I’ve also learned is the deep empathy that I have for those who experience loss. What it has done is it has added another dimension to my own role as a wounded healer.

God has worked this senseless mess, this painful loss into something that I can use to help people in the way that Leslie helped me. And on the days when it’s the hardest, I can lean on that fact. It doesn’t make it ok. It doesn’t make me less angry that he wasn’t standing next to me when I got married. That he’s not here to see us become parents, to watch me follow the call that God placed on my life. But it does help me to understand that the anger doesn’t help me help anyone. And Leslie would be disappointed if I let it stand in the way of that.

So I tell you all of that to let you know that I know. I know it hurts. And I know that it doesn’t ever really go away. That time drags on and sometimes we wonder if it’ll ever get any better. And my answer is really — yes. It gets better, but not because the pain isn’t there. It gets better because you resolve to do something constructive with it. Because you choose to let the pain fuel your compassion for the people that are just like you. Because you’ve let that compassion drive you to bring the hope of God into the lives of people who need a reason to keep trudging forward through their dark night of the soul.

The reality is that I’ve kind of misled you. I told you that you’d move through grief through a process of tears, talk, and time — but the reality is that there’s no real expiration on that time. It’s really more about how you use it that allows healing to happen. So I offer you the option of becoming a wounded healer. I invite you to use the brokenness and grief to God’s advantage, to reach out and touch the lives of those who God puts in your path. Offer them the healing hope of God’s love as you trudge the road together into a renewed life together.