Lament
March 7, 2010
It is a sobering thing for leaders in worship to realize that they stand Sunday after Sunday before people who are broken by life and choices they or others have made. It is a sobering thing that in the face of this brokenness expectations are high and slanted toward joyful and celebrative worship. The other side of life, the one played in a minor key, does not get much play.
The lack of public lament when the church gathers for worship is unfortunate and leaves worshipers miring in their own dust and ashes. Doing life in the happy major keys of life always is unreal. Without the minor keys of lament, our worship is not complete.
Having reflected a bit on this subject, and coming from a culture that laments publicly without hesitation, I have discovered that lament is a natural response of the broken hearted in search of answers to life’s dilemmas. Often our response to personal tragedies takes the form of questions. Questioning is heaven’s gift to us. God has given a redeeming means of handling our brokenness with the sacred duty of questioning. Many of our brothers and sisters in the faith questioned as a form of lamenting their lot and the lot of the people of God: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” “Bless God and die!” etc…
David Dark wrote in the Sacredness of Questioning Everything that “deliverance begins with questions. It begins with people who love questions, people who live with questions and by questions, people who feel a deep joy when good questions are asked.” Allowing spoken and unspoken questions of lament encourages the community of faith to experience sacredness in the possibility of redeeming answers (I am with you always, not here’s why you suffer). Our worship experiences do not ordinarily allow for times of reflection, which in turn allow questions to surface to the top of our consciousness and thus for lament to be expressed.
Lamenting as a corporate response of worship allows us to question and by doing so discover where God is at work, and where he is leading us as his people. In personal lament I have discovered redemption and healing. Often the biblical writers tied the act of fasting to lamenting (a la Job). Fasting is a response to a sacred moment, a sorrow, an encounter with God, that demands our submission and releases us from self-pity and confusion in lament.
Looking forward to your thoughts on how worship leaders and worshipers can do lament tastefully occasionally when they gather to worship. Any thoughts?
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