Untitled Sermon
Safe Space in Sacred Spaces
Keller’s main purpose for both books is to explain how Christianity makes sense emotionally, culturally, and rationally. Naturally, The Reason for God discussed the rational, while Making Sense of God focuses on the emotional and cultural, making the case for Christianity’s relevance in both spheres.
Making Sense of God addresses skeptics’ objections to faith by attempting to create a true secular “safe space” for those exploring faith and ideas. Keller argues that such space is needed since there is no “truly secular state” in which all beliefs and ideas can be presented in mutual respect and peace (p. 3). Keller frames this safe space:
Rather than unfairly asking only religious people to prove their views, we need to compare and contrast religious beliefs and their evidences with secular beliefs and theirs. We can and should argue about which beliefs account for what we see and experience in the world. We can and should debate the inner logical consistency of belief systems, asking whether they support or contradict one another. We can and should consult our deepest intuitions. (p. 50)
The specific context of Lamentations, as we have emphasised, is the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC, interpreted as the outworking of God’s judgment on the covenant nation of Israel after generations of unfaithfulness on their part and warnings on God’s part. That is the very clear theological understanding of the reason behind the suffering that generation endured in that event, even if, as we agree, it is not a sufficient explanation or justification for the extent of the suffering and its apparent unfairness in swallowing up women and children, old and young, in its jaws.
But there is a very great deal of suffering in our world. And most of it cannot and should not be interpreted in the way Lamentations interprets 587 BC. Nevertheless, it seems to me, Lamentations can provide a valid response. If the book voices the pain of those who knowingly suffered under the judgment of God, how much more does it speak for those who suffer for all kinds of other reasons—in inexplicable disasters, as refugees and ‘collateral damage’ in the endless wars of humanity, under persecution for the name of Christ, and many more. The imagery of the book captures so many scenes of suffering in our world, and the voices of the book express the turmoil of anger, shame, grief, abandonment, humiliation and protest, that such suffering generates. The book is an authentic portrayal of realities that many in our world today still endure. The brutality and the misery go on and on.
For that reason, the book provides, in Kathleen O’Connor’s very apt phrase, ‘a house for sorrow and a school for compassion’. Lamentations is a home for the sufferer. It provides the safe space, the rooms, in which grief can be expressed to its limits, over and over again, without interruption or denial, even if without comfort as yet. Or to change the metaphor, using the title of her book, Lamentations and the Tears of the World, we might think of Lamentations for the tears of the world.
And tears, we know, are precious to God. God sees and hears those who weep (whether he answers them immediately or not), and he does not forget their tears. There are, of course, tears of repentance (5:15–17). And there are tears of loneliness (1:16), tears of sympathy (2:11), tears of supplication (2:18–19). And they all have their own validity. ‘We need to acknowledge when the tears of lament are tears of pain, frustration, and anger rather than tears of pious repentance. And we need to recognize the legitimacy of such tears.’ For God does.
You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your book?
Lamentations is that book, that bottle for the tears of the exiles, and by extension for the tears of the world. Kathleen O’Connor, referring to that psalm, captures the power of tears in a most moving way.
The tears of Lamentations are of loss and grief, abandonment and outrage. They are a flag, a sign, a revelation of injury and destruction, an expression of resistance to the world’s arrangements. Lamentations validates tears. It has the power to gather bitter pain and bring tears to the surface. Then it accepts them …
God receives and tenderly holds tears as if they are precious, explosive testimony that must be preserved for some future day. Perhaps this vigilant, seeing, tear-collecting God weeps with the weeping world. Lamentations does not say this, of course, but … the book itself is a ‘sacred bottle’ for the tears of the world. It records them in a book, respects them, keeps account of them to present to God when God is ready to receive them.
Actually, there is no ‘perhaps’ about the weeping of God. We know from Jeremiah that God weeps with his people and his prophet. We know from Isaiah that ‘in all their affliction he was afflicted’. And we also know, for we have read the rest of the Bible, that ‘some future day’ is not a vague longing, but the certainty of God’s own promise that he will ‘wipe away the tears from all faces’, that ‘sorrow and sighing will flee away’, that ‘the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard no more’, because ‘he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’.31