How to Lament

This has been a difficult week. Here’s how it’s been for me. This week, a guy I used to work with got arrested. He’s someone I’ve laughed with, prayed with, gone to lunch and Minnesota United soccer games with. He coached my oldest son’s soccer team. I actually asked him to do that. He’s someone who’s spent time alone with my kid. He’s someone I trusted to teach my son to be a Godly man. My oldest son is currently the age of one of the youngest victims listed in the charges. I feel angry. I feel betrayed. I feel scared. And in that, I recognize that my emotions are sky high, and because of that… my thinking has gone down. A lot.

I was here at the church when I first read the charges. I was shocked and disgusted. I knew it would be bad, I just didn’t know it would be that bad. I pretty quickly got up and left. I didn’t want to be here. I went to restaurant and grabbed a couple beers. I played some games on my phone. I binged Brooklynn 99. I haven’t been in this building since Wednesday.

The events of this past week have different amounts of impact on us. Some of us are deeply upset. And for others of us, this doesn’t really affect us all that much. Even if it’s not these circumstances, there are times in all of our lives that take the breath out of us and bring us to our knees in heartache.

This week made me realize that I don’t know what to hold on to in my distress. Lament is something I am learning right now. I know what and who I’m supposed to hold on to, but it’s not a well worn path, it’s like a new trail I’m trying to make by hacking through tall grass and weeds. Some of the things I’ve gone to this week aren’t good, and maybe they’re not exactly bad in and of themselves, but they’re also not lament.

I’m the kids pastor here and it’s my job to take complex ideas and frame them up in a way kids can developmentally and appropriately understand. In our culture, when it comes to lament, most of us are like preschoolers.

We need some major help to make sense of and begin to implement it in our lives. We’ve been talking about lament for going on 5 weeks now, and this week reminded me that I need something to cling onto when it feels like I’m flailing, panicking and trying to tread water. This morning, I hope to offer you 4 simple steps to travel across the bridge of lament. This bridge invites us to experience more of God’s presence, more of his love, a deeper faith, and gives us permission to wrestle with our grief, trauma and pain instead of rushing past it. Maybe we know we can bring our hurt to God and process it with him, but how do we actually do that?

The practical steps of lament guide us in the unexpected twists and turns of our despair. Lament teaches us to process our pain by turning towards God, sharing our honest frustrations with him, making bold requests and choosing to trust, hope and remain in relationship with him, even when it doesn’t make sense and there is no resolution.

Before we start our journey, let’s pause and pray. Because I don’t know about you, but I really need the Holy Spirit to show up and do something.

Come, Holy Spirit…..

The first step of lament is….

Step 1: Keep Turning to Prayer

Psalm 22 is going to walk us through these steps of lament. Let’s start in verses 1 and 2.

Psalm 22:1-2 “My God, my God, why have you deserted me? Why do you seem to be so far away when I need you to save me? Why do you seem to be so far away that you can’t hear my groans? My God, I cry out in the daytime. But you don’t answer. I cry out at night. I can’t keep quiet.”

Three times here David says “My God.” That implies a relationship. It’s someone he knows, someone he considers his own. This is how we address relationships in our own lives… my mom, my dad, my siblings, my spouse, my kids, my friends, my teacher, my coach… This possessive noun means we are in a relationship with someone. Our ability to turn towards God is based on a relationship.

Turning towards God in the terrible things that happen in our lives sounds simple. But it’s really a courageous act of faith.

It takes ridiculous faith to turn to the God of the universe in lament and sit with the one who controls everything and could change everything in an instant… but hasn’t yet. Lament begins in a conversation with God even when there’s no resolution, when justice hasn’t been served, when the news of the diagnosis comes, when the relationship is over, when our loved one dies, when we think our life is meaningless and wonder if anyone would miss us if we were gone... when we read the horrific details of young girls who were brutally taken advantage of by a predator. We’re invited to sit with the one who could fix it all, but for reasons we may never understand, hasn’t.

While many of us are novices in this whole lament thing, let’s take a look at someone else who demonstrates a really healthy response to pain. Jesus used the same words from the beginning of Psalm 22 when he was hanging on the cross.

Mark 15:34 “At three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” This means “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?””

When Jesus was dying, he wasn’t alone. Lots of people were watching. His mom and a few brave friends were around. He didn’t call out to any of them, he called out to God. He called out to his father, who sent him to the cross, turned his back on him and was silent when he died. He called out to the God who, in order to right what sin had made wrong, abandoned his own son as he hung from his hands and feet nailed to a cross dying a criminal's death.

It takes real faith to remain connected and turned towards God in the midst of the worst situations of our lives. Jesus believed in the plan to save us and stayed focused on his dad.

There’s a story in the gospels (Matthew 9, Mark 5, Luke 8) about a woman who had been sick for 12 years. She had a bleeding condition that made her culturally unclean. She lived as an outcast, alone, for over a decade. Then, one day, when Jesus is nearby, she goes to find him. There’s a crowd of people surrounding him and I imagine her wondering... “if it’s true, if this man can truly heal me, he’ll do it”. She was desperate for him to help her. And with the bit of faith she has, she gets close enough to touch the edge of Jesus’s clothes. She doesn’t want to interrupt, she doesn’t want to inconvenience Jesus. She just needed to get close enough to touch the edge of his clothes. That tiny act healed her. Jesus saw her and called her his daughter.

Can we imagine mustering the smallest amount of real faith that says if this is all true, I just need to get near enough to you? What Jesus shows us on the cross is real, authentic fait . And the woman who was bleeding had a drop of that real faith... And that was enough.

For some of us, our suffering or the suffering of someone we love seems impossible to overcome. We’re so angry, so hurt, so overwhelmed by the pain and chaos… we can’t imagine turning to God. But if we don’t deliberately turn towards God, what happens instead? We either turn away or do nothing and are silent.

Turning away means we think and believe God doesn’t care, he doesn’t hear us and nothing is going to change. Silence can mean we’ve given up on God. Even when we turn our backs on him, the pain is still there. We thinking closing the door on him will help, but does it?

I can’t count the number of times I’ve found a black mushy moldy scrap that used to be a banana one of my kids ate stashed in the back of my car. We hope our pain will be a like a forgotten banana peel. We’ll throw it somewhere out of sight and it’ll just disappear.

But the moldy peel is still there. Left alone, it festers. No matter how hard we try to bury it, the pain is still there. It surfaces and we push it down, thinking we can make it through until something else reminds us and there it is again. Suddenly we have this pile of moldy banana peels hidden in the door of our car and while we might not see it all the time, we sure smell the effects of it if we give it enough time. Wow, I can’t believe she’s still talking about moldy bananas, can we talk about literally anything else?

If we don’t deal with the pain, we’re reminded of its effects in our lives. And that, if not dealt with in the safe and loving care of the only one who actually can and does promise never to leave or forget us… leads us on a dark path of loneliness and gross moldy black garbage that our car may never recover from. That's the last of the banana stuff, I promise.

As we start to lament, as we begin turning to God in prayer, believing he is who he says he is and will do what he says he’ll do… we take a courageous step in choosing to consider that maybe He is really there to help us after all.

What do you do when you receive bad news? Where do you run? In order to really begin the process of healing, and moving towards a deeper relationship with God, we have to choose to step on the lament bridge and deal with all the hidden, gross, moldy banana peels.

That, for real, was the last time.

Step one, turn to God. Grab the hem of his clothes in one of the most beautiful acts of real faith imaginable. And step two is one we’re all much more comfortable with. Step two is complaining.

Bring Your Complaints

This is something we’re good at, aren’t we American followers of Jesus? We love to complain. Open up any of the socials and you’ll see all sorts of complaints masked as people sharing our opinions. We sigh when there are two people ahead of us in the checkout line. Our me yesterday in Bayfield when I had to wait 30 minutes for my apple donuts. They were delicious and worth it, by the way. We say things like “back in my day...”. We compare our clothes, our houses, our cars to our neighbors and friends. We think things like “If only I had a little more money...” Our culture seems to be hard-wired to complain.

Maybe complaining itself isn’t the problem. We have that figured out. What if the problem is who we’re complaining to?

Complaint gives voice to our unanswered questions. We end up in these fierce polemics with God like, “How could you let this happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? If you could fix it all, why don’t you? If you are all knowing, all good, in charge of all the things, why aren’t you doing something? How could you let a grown man attack and take advantage of young girls he was supposed to be leading? How could his parents lie about not knowing, insult victims and still lead this church?” Things get real when our questions get personal.

And maybe we don’t complain to God because we don’t think it’s allowed. Or we think we’ll be punished even worse. Or, since we’re complaining ABOUT someone we surely can’t complain to them about themself.

In lament, we get to say things that feel really true but aren’t true. As we complain to God, we are invited to let it out and to let him have it.

Let’s see how David does this in Psalm 22. Going back to verses 1 and 2 , David asks:

Psalm 22:1–2 NIrV

My God, my God, why have you deserted me? Why do you seem to be so far away when I need you to save me? Why do you seem to be so far away that you can’t hear my groans? My God, I cry out in the daytime. But you don’t answer. I cry out at night. I can’t keep quiet.

Jumping to Verse 6:

Psalm 22:6–8 NIrV

People treat me like a worm and not a man. They hate me and look down on me. All those who see me laugh at me. They shout at me and make fun of me. They shake their heads at me. They say, “He trusts in the Lord. Let the Lord help him. If the Lord is pleased with him, let him save him.”

Jumping to verse 12:

Psalm 22:12–18 NIrV

Many enemies are all around me. They are like strong bulls from the land of Bashan. They are like roaring lions that tear to pieces what they kill. They open their mouths wide to attack me. My strength is like water that is poured out on the ground. I feel as if my bones aren’t connected. My heart has turned to wax. It has melted away inside me. My strength is dried up like a piece of broken pottery. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You bring me down to the edge of the grave. A group of sinful people has closed in on me. They are all around me like a pack of dogs. They have pierced my hands and my feet. I can see all of my bones right through my skin. People stare at me. They laugh when I suffer. They divide up my clothes among them. They cast lots for what I am wearing.

Talk about honesty. David uses these powerful words to ask God where he is and why he’s left. David boldly shares his experience of what is happening and how he is doing. And it’s brutal. These words give voice to incredible heartache. Complaining to God gives us a place to process our thoughts and emotions. Some of what David says isn’t true but feels true. God hasn’t deserted him, God hasn’t stopped listening. But it sure feels that way.

There’s an interesting connection to this Psalm and the events of Jesus’ death. Jesus lived out David’s anguish.

Psalm 22:16 “A group of sinful people has closed in on me… They have pierced my hands and my feet.”

Mark 15:24 “They nailed him to the cross....”

Psalm 22:17 “People stare at me. They laugh when I suffer.”

Matthew 27:28-30 “They took off his clothes and put a purple robe on him. Then they twisted thorns together to make a crown. They placed it on his head. They put a stick in his right hand. Then they fell on their knees in front of him and made fun of him. “We honor you, king of the Jews!” they said. They spit on him. They hit him on the head with the stick again and again.”

Psalm 22:18 “They divide up my clothes among them. They cast lots for what I am wearing.”

Matthew 27:35 “When they had nailed him to the cross, they divided up his clothes by casting lots.”

Jesus knew pain and heartache in a very real way. He embodied David’s complaints. David’s experiences become Jesus’ experiences. Jesus identified with David in his grief and pain, and he identifies with ours too. Jesus carried all of our mistakes, emotions, pain and the very real and heart-breaking circumstances of our lives with him when sin and death were conquered on the cross.

(pause)

How do we complain to God? Something I’ve adopted on what I wish was a much more consistent basis is writing out my grievances. The only times I journal are to process pain. In those moments, I let the wave come, I pull out the stopper and allow myself to write out the things no other human should have to hear. I know we say as good Christians, we shouldn’t swear but man do I let it rip on those pages. There are words there I’m not sure I ever want anyone else to read. But Geez Louise do I feel better after letting it out.

Maybe writing is helpful for you, maybe it’s going on a walk and talking out loud to God. Maybe it’s screaming. What would it look like to turn your complaints toward God, even when they might be about him?

We’ve learned some really awful things this week. Have you processed that? If not, there’s grace, you’re not on a timeline. I know I haven’t fully. It takes time. Once we’ve taken the courageous step to turn toward God in prayer, let’s consider how God might be inviting us to share the pain, injustice and hurt on behalf of victims and in our own responses to what’s happened and how you feel being part of this community right now. This is a lot to take in and we need to lean on God and each other as we process and move through lament.

Before moving on, I want to end this section with a word of caution about complaining. We need to be really careful not to get stuck here. We complain with the goal in mind to move towards God, to continue moving forward on the bridge of lament. We need to move through our pain and not stagnate here.

We turn, we complain, and then we boldly ask God to friggin’ do something.

Boldly Ask God to Friggin’ Do Something

Our why questions shift to who God is, as we remember and remind ourselves of his character. And as we do that, we move forward from sitting in the pain to asking God to act.

David connects contrasting ideas in Psalm 22. In the NirV version of the Bible, we have the word “but”, and it’s sometimes the word “yet” in other translations. Those words begin an intentional pivot in the direction of his thoughts.

After David asks God why he’s deserted him, why he’s silent when he cries out, we read this beginning in verse 3:

Psalm 22:3-5 “But you rule from your throne as the Holy One. You are the God Israel praises. Our people of long ago put their trust in you. They trusted in you, and you saved them. They cried out to you and were saved. They trusted in you, and you didn’t let them down.”

But you rule from your throne as the Holy One. You are the God Israel praises. Do you see the shift happening? It’s like this pause happens in David’s thinking and he goes “Hold on a second. What do I know to be true?”.

Complaining happens again in verses 6-8, and then we see this shift again in verse 9. And before we read that, let me pause here. One of the things I love about this Psalm is the example that lament is not a linear journey. It’s a step forward, then a step back. And sometimes over and over and over again. David complains, then he shifts to reminding himself of God’s character and faithfulness. Then he complains again and then he shifts again. After the complaints of verses 6-8, we see this in verses 9 and 10:

Psalm 22:9-10 “But you brought me out of my mother’s body. You made me trust in you even when I was at my mother’s breast. From the time I was born, you took good care of me. Ever since I came out of my mother’s body, you have been my God.”

This shift in thinking, from what has happened and how he feels about it to focusing on who God is and what he’s done... sets the stage for David to plead with God to act. As we look to who God this, our complaints are eclipsed by the story of what God has done in the past and because of that track record, we ask God to show up and get to work. After this reminder of God’s character, that from birth, God was with him, took care of him and has been his God… David asks God to do something.

Psalm 22:19-21 “Lord, don’t be so far away. You give me strength. Come quickly to help me. Save me from the sword. Save the only life I have. Save me from the power of those dogs. Save me from the mouths of those lions. Save me from the horns of those wild oxen.”

In verse 19 David asks God to come quickly to help. What a great and simple prayer in our lament: get here right now! In these verses he asks God to come close, and he asks God to save him 4 times. This happens when we’re emotional and processing, doesn’t it? We sometimes ask or beg for something over and over again.

As a reminder, in lament, our emotions are high high and our thinking is low. We might not know exactly what to boldly ask God for. Let’s take a look at some options to consider in some other Psalms of lament.

What do we ask God for?

1. We ask God to fix what’s broken in the world.

Psalm 10:12 “Lord, rise up! God, show your power! Don’t forget those who are helpless.”

Psalm 69: 29 “I’m in pain. I’m in deep trouble. God, save me and keep me safe.”

2. Next, we can ask God to remember. Looking back reminds us that God showed up before and he’ll do it again.

Psalm 77:13-15 “God, everything you do is holy. What god is so great as our God? You are the God who does miracles. You show your power among the nations. With your mighty arm you set your people free. You set the children of Jacob and Joseph free.”

3. We can ask him to bring justice.

Psalm 83:16-18 “Lord, put them to shame so that people will worship you. May they always be filled with terror and shame. May they die in dishonor. Your name is the Lord. Let them know that you alone are the Most High God over the whole earth.”

For some of us, this one in particular might be pretty raw and spot on. Lament invites us to talk about unfairness and abuse and ask God to bring hidden wrongs into the light.

4. We can also address our own mistakes. We can ask God to forgive us.

Sometimes our lament is a personal regret about our own messes. We ask God not to give us what we deserve. After David raped Bathsheba and murdered her husband, he wrote Psalm 51.

Psalm 51:1 “God, show me your favor in keeping with your faithful love. Because your love is so tender and kind, wipe out my lawless acts.”

Lament works both when we’re the victims of abuse as well as the abuser. God doesn’t give up on any of us. I think this might be important for us so I’m gonna say it again: God doesn’t give up on any of us. God hasn’t given up on our former senior pastors Michael and Brenda and their son Jackson, just like he hasn’t given up on any of us.

5. We can ask God to Listen.

Psalm 86:6 “Lord, hear my prayer. Listen to my cry for your favor.”

6. Vindicate me. This just means to show what is right or true. Maybe you’ve been accused of something that wasn’t true. Or you’ve been unfairly treated. Or you feel like you’ve had to suffer silently alone because you weren’t believed or someone gaslit or bullied you.

Psalm 35:23-24 “Wake up! Rise up to help me! My God and Lord, stand up for me. Lord my God, when you hand down your sentence, let it be in my favor. You always do what is right. Don’t let my enemies have the joy of seeing me fall.”

7. And finally, we simply say Help: deliver me, rescue me, give me strength, take this painful thing away.

Psalm 60:11-12 “Help us against our enemies. The help people give doesn’t amount to anything. With your help we will win the battle. You will walk all over our enemies.”

Before Jesus dies, when he’s praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, when his friends fall asleep, when he’s so filled with anxiety that his sweat is like drops of blood, he tells God he doesn’t want to die.

Mark 14:36 “Abba,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup of suffering away from me. But let what you want be done, not what I want.” Jesus says God, please don’t make me do this. And what does God say? Jesus still goes to the cross. Ask God, even if he says no.

What do you need God to do in your life? How have you been hurt? What’s your loss? What keeps you up at night? What have you done that you wish you could take back? What’s been done to you?

No matter what is going on in our lives, we can bold ask God to show up and friggin’ do something.

Alright, this bridge of lament leads us somewhere important, and that’s to trust.

Trust

This is our destination. We must move through our complaints and requests to get there. We have to choose to trust.

This is where the already and the not yet of God’s kingdom confronts us. It’s a tension. God is the king on the throne. He decides when the kingdom will break into this world and into our lives. On earth as it is in heaven, right?

But what happens when we still have cancer, when the perpetrator is out on bail, when the pain we thought had long been buried surfaces, when someone we thought we’d never have to see again is suddenly back in our lives. Or when the statue of limitations means parents of an accused abuser who dismissed a victim’s mom and called her overprotective won’t have to actually pay for their crimes. And those same statue of limitations apply when that same perpetrator’s mom told another victim’s parent and I quote from the charges document “we know your daughter has issues.” This is terrible “not yet” of the kingdom.

God where are you? Where were you? Why did you let this happen? We don’t have answers for some of these questions and many of those questions may never be answered this side of heaven. And yet... even in the midst of that, we can experience God’s presence and love just as much if not more in the times when the healing and answers don’t come. Trust can grow in the anguish of the not yet of God’s kingdom.

This is a quote from a book called Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy that lays out these steps of lament. Author Mark VROGOP writes: “Trust is believing what you know to be true even though the facts of suffering might call that belief into question. Lament keeps us turning toward trust by giving us language to step into the wilderness between our painful realities and our hopeful longings.”

In the “not yet”, we have God. And that’s everything. That’s the lesson of lament, that’s the destination of trust. Lament builds up our trust muscles. Trust is saying I put my faith in you even without a resolution from the tragedies of this world.

Let’s take a look at how this Psalm ends in verses 22-31

Psalm 22:22-31 “I will announce your name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise you among those who worship you. You who have respect for the Lord, praise him! All you people of Jacob, honor him! All you people of Israel, worship him! He has not forgotten the one who is hurting. He has not turned away from his suffering. He has not turned his face away from him. He has listened to his cry for help. Because of what you have done, I will praise you in the whole community of those who worship you. In front of those who respect you, I will keep my promises.

Those who are poor will eat and be satisfied. Those who look to the Lord will praise him. May their hearts be filled with new hope! People from one end of the earth to the other will remember and turn to the Lord. The people of all the nations will bow down before him. The Lord is King. He rules over the nations.

All the rich people of the earth will worship God and take part in his feasts. All those who go down to the edge of the grave will fall on their knees in front of him. I’m talking about those who can hardly keep themselves alive. Those who are not yet born will serve him. Those who are born later will be told about the Lord. And they will tell people who have not yet been born that he has done what is right.”

Back at the beginning before verse one of this song there’s a note that says “For the director of music. A psalm of David to the tune of “The Doe of the Morning.”” Psalms like this one are meant to be sung together, in worship.

Psalm 22 ends in worship. It ends by saying even in our pain, we will praise you. Why? Because God took away all the wrong and made it right? No. It says I will worship God because I know he hasn’t forgotten me. He listened to my cry for help. In the not yet, I will turn to you, complain to you, ask you impossible questions and trust that no matter what happens, you are the answer I need. And because of that, I will sing your praises to the ends of the earth.

When you feel like you’ve been punched in the gut, when you feel sick to your stomach, when anger and shock and pain infiltrate… it forever changes us. There were moments this week where I couldn’t carry myself, even to the feet of Jesus. I found comfort in my lack of words in Psalm 46, and specifically the first part of verse 10, “be still and know that I am God.” For a good chunk of the week, that’s all I could do. Sit in the silence, zone out in a fog. I didn’t have words to say. So I reached out to some friends and told them I needed help, I needed prayer. I needed them to reach out and grab the hem of Jesus’s clothes for me. And amazingly, as they separately prayed with me and sent me messages, the theme of their prayers was the same… they prayed I would trust God and put my hope in him.

As David reminds us in this Psalm, God won’t ever leave us. He promises he never will. He left one person, one time. That was it. God turned his back on Jesus on the cross for us. Jesus asked God to take it away, to not make him go to the cross. And the next thing he says to God is a pivot: yet not my will but yours be done. God, I don’t want to do this, but I will. Because I trust you.

Our lament prayer might not end in resolution... and yet, we can hope. A simple way we might consider ending our prayer of lament could be “God I trust you to keep me trusting you.”

When our emotions are high and our thinking is low, lament gives us something to grab hold of, a bridge to walk across to build trust and dependence on the one who is the answer to absolutely everything in our lives. Hopefully you can remember these 4 steps, they can be summed up pretty simply: Turn. Complain. Ask. Trust.

Turn. Complain. Ask. Trust.

Our faith and love grows when we invite God to meet us and bring comfort and care to the deepest, darkest, most brutal scars in our lives. So let’s do that right now.

Would you stand up? We’re going to transition into ministry time.

Ministry time:

turn, our back is to God or we’ve never actually turned to him: God, come. Show up right now. I’m sorry for turning my back on you. I’m sorry for giving you the silent treatment. Forgive my mistakes and help me to one day forgive those who have hurt me. Thank you for turning your back on Jesus one time so that you’ll never turn your back on me. I need you, I need your help, your love and your presence. I want to learn to trust you more. Thank you for loving me, and calling me your own.

Like I did earlier this week, some of us need someone to pray for us, to ask and say things to God on our behalf. As I was praying about this specifically, I felt like God was saying yes, that thing. The thing that’s rising up in your mind that you wish would stay buried. That thing that you think surely this can’t be coming up again!?

sleep

stuck in the complaining.

rage

Ending prayer

We’re going to end our time together with a breath prayer. Things like lament can stir us up and we sometimes notice our hearts racing, our palms sweating and maybe we’re afraid we’re headed towards panic. A breath prayer helps calm us down and centers us so we don’t leave filled with anxiety. I wanna invite you to take a deep breath in and out. You can put your hands out or maybe over your heart to feel it beating.

Breathe in: God, I trust you...

Breathe out: … to keep me trusting you.

If you’ve been with us during lament, you’ve maybe been here when Steph has mentioned a container. I want to invite you to take your pain, frustrations, trauma, memories, heartache and imagine balling all those emotions into your hands and placing them in a container that Jesus is holding. And in that, you are choosing to trust that he will hold that container until you are ready to open it again. As we keep worshipping, I invite you to start to do that. And maybe even as you do that, you say the breath prayer again, maybe over and over.

Breathe in: God, I trust you...

Breathe out: … to keep me trusting you.