Unspeakable: Finding A Voice Amid Tragedy

Triggers: Death, Starvation, Sexual Violation with victim blaming.

Jerusalem lies in ruins, but a few poor remain.

Jerusalem is like a widow in mourning.

She wept deeply and finds no comfort.

She had been betrayed by her lovers and friends.

Her children (the leaders of Judah) had been taken into exile, and all the high places ravaged.

Jerusalem is “Daughter Zion”

Her young men fled in fear of the enemy.

She remembered the day of her beautiful youth.

She was shamed and violated by the enemy.

Daughter Zion groans because of her deep sense of shame.

The poet accuses Jerusalem of sinning greatly, calling her unclean.

She is shamed in her “nakedness”

Her “filthiness clung to her skirts”

Again, “there was none to comfort her.”

The enemy had “plundered her treasures,” and “enter[ed] her sanctuary” (intimate places)

There were real people scarred by the ravages of war which included violations of women & children.

All her people groan in starvation and the constant evidence of death.

Sometimes, groaning is the only sound that we can make in the face of great loss.

This groaning is the unspeakable language of the wounded soul.

When I was in high school, my brother and I attended a church where we felt a strong connection. We made friends with many of the other youth, and one of them in particular, Blake was not afraid of sharing his family with us. His mother and father, Darrell & Jackie soon became good friends and they invited us to go to lunch or even to go home with them after church.

Our home life back then wasn’t the most steady and because we came out of the military, we moved frequently. Finding friends that were open to share their life with us was critical for our stability. Darrell and Jackie opened their home to us. Shared meals with us. Even shared their messes with us.

Before too long, I went off to college and had to leave my friends behind but still kept in touch.

And after college, we invited the Richardsons to come to Becky and my wedding: though only Jackie and one of her daughters could attend.

Less than a year after our wedding, I received word that Jackie had suddenly died from complications from a medical procedure. She had known that there would be some risk to the procedure, but none of us expected the worst to happen. I hadn’t even known about the procedure, and I was stunned by her loss, and their family’s loss. Most of her children were still teenagers.

Jackie had been a person full of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and spirited worship leader. A truly beautiful soul.

I just did not know what to say, how I could say anything to Darrell or the kids that would help. In my own grief, and at a distance, I was not available to comfort them. The questions that I left hung in the air was, “How could God let such a thing happen?” especially to someone who loved God so demonstratively? How could the doctors not have known it was that bad?

When there is a violation resulting from a medical procedure, our trust in the medical professional is shaken.

Not everyone has others close to them from whom they can receive comfort and strength. The widows or daughters who experienced the reality of Jerusalem’s destruction had no such comforts. When we are isolated because of perceived uncleanness/discomfort, we many find themselves without the ability to speak or express ourselves beyond groaning from inner pain.

When we feel such violations of trust or commitment, we might no longer have the language to define ourselves.

I won’t pretend to equate the suffering of the real survivors of the destruction of Jerusalem. It does not fully translate to the modern North American context.

Yet, the experience of unspeakable violence, loss of loved ones, and loss of trust visits human us nonetheless. They seem to find us whether we are living our most comfortable times or times of deep distress.

Pushed to extremes and desperate for hope, our hearts are ripped open, pouring out tears and groans, and if we find faith again, we cry out to God.

The daughter was pushed into an overwhelming desperation that must cry out.

The Daughter of Zion cried out to God, “Look, Lord, and consider, for I am despised.”

Yet, God does not reply.

She appeals to others that they might see her suffering.

She appeals that God must see her suffering, distress, and torment.

She says that others have heard her groaning, and they rejoiced.

The poet acknowledges her lack of comfort, that God decreed her neighbors to be foes, and still points out that she has become unclean.

The poet points to God’s righteous judgment.

The Daughter of Zion acknowledges that she rebelled, but still appeals to God’s to hear/see her suffering.

The Daughter voices both Lament and Confession.

She calls on God to see the enemy’s wickedness, and still trusts that God will deal with them.

The text finishes with the Daughter calling attention on God to hear her groaning.

Sometimes groaning is all we have, but God still knows our hearts.

God may have not responded to the Daughter of Zion in the text, but consider that she wasn’t done telling God how she felt.

To help others we have to stop talking so that we can listen to those that are hurting more clearly.

God is not so insecure that he cannot listen as we question his goodness in moments of our suffering.

God gives us time and space to express our deep soul wounds.

Others have expressed their wounds in various ways, through poetry as the writer of Lamentations, music that resonates with the rhythm of our hearts, or visual arts that contain the deep dark to radiant light.

Unlike the widow or daughter of Lamentations 1, Richardsons had friends in the Body of Christ that drew close when they could not yet speak. Having met regularly with friends to share in their collective loss, they eventually were able to open up, slowly and tentatively trying on the language not just of grief but also of the possibility of life alongside it.

Like the people of God who survived the destruction of Jerusalem and rose out of exile, the Richardsons learned a new language that helped them to thrive alongside their grief.

Shared language given by the Holy Spirit is what brought together the church after Christ’s death and Resurrection and Ascension.

Let’s do all we can to allow time and space for lament and confession so that we might find new life that resonates in the Spirit.