Lament

Rachel's Lament

“In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” ~Mt. 2:18

The sound of anguish, of mourning and of weeping was heard. The sound of Rachel crying for her children because they were no more; she would not be comforted.

Rachel weeping for her children.

Rachel who would not be consoled.

Lament.

I do not know why Rachel “would not be comforted”. Was it because of some stubborn refusal? Was it because she proved, at the critical moment, to be faithless or at least not as faithful as she and others had thought? Was it because those who came alongside her were ill prepared for her anguish?  Was the fault in Rachel or in the company of fellow mourners or in the God who can seem so completely absent when most fully needed?

I do not know but will hazard a guess. Perhaps Rachel would not be comforted because there is a moment when anguish is far more fitting than comfort.  Anguish, this hallowed, hollowed space where unconstrained grief is precisely what is needed.

Just as there are times when the Hopkinsian vision of the grandeur of God breaks through to remind us of God’s glory and of the joy for which we are created, so there are moments when the veil is lifted and rank brutality is forced upon us and we are reminded once again that we are not home yet, that the birth of joy is yet many labor pains away.

We need lament.

We must allow ourselves and one another the grace to look with naked eyes into the vast abyss and to weep and not be comforted. Otherwise, we deprive ourselves and one another the opportunity to see how vast, how deep and how cruel is evil. Otherwise, we block awareness that sin -often trivialized - is the power that delivers the innocent to cruelty.

A caution common to those of us who speak on Good Friday is the one that reminds the gahtered not to rush past the dark, cruel cross of Christ. It is the one that warns the congregated against hastening to the dew-filled garden of the empty tomb and joy resurrected.  Good Friday is lament. It is that painful, discomforted time when we stand - or more appropriately Fall - before the bleeding Christ and remember that it is our sin and the sin of the world that impaled him there.

The Jesus who would hang on the cross is the same Jesus who said: “Blessed are they who mourn...” The blessed mourners, the weepers, the ones who will not be comforted are those with courage to see the awful, awe-fulness and who demonstrate the courage to lament.

To be sure, “they will be comforted.” At some point, in the future - whether in 5 minutes or 5 years or in eternity - they will be comforted. Until then they endure the sadness and sit in anguish in the company of questions.

Lament.

Lament is an almost unbearable burden to endure and to witness. Lament overwhelms. We cannot but feel what we feel. Lament shames. We feel exposed and castigate ourselves that we 'must not feel what we feel'. Lament embarrasses. Our flood of tears brings the tears of others and perhaps sometimes washes out their foundations.

One testimony to the truth that we are created in the image and likeness of God, who is the God of all compassion and encouragement, is that we are drawn to comfort. We are drawn to Easter on Good Friday. We are drawn to order in the midst of chaos. We are drawn to one another in the deeply human hope and even willingness that we, like Jesus, can take upon ourselves the tears of another.

Yet we must take care that we not resolve the dirge too early, that we not sing the final Amen until we have allowed ourselves to wring every blue note of its tear.

We must be careful not to turn away too quickly from anguish. We must not pursue the pious palliative, the all-too-ready reason that rescues us from agony.   

Rather, we must endure anguish until joy, finally born, shows up in the morning. We must sit by the cross, view the tightly sealed tomb, contemplate our options in the absence of God, hear the groans of the woman in travail and wait... not for the easy answer but for the surprising God of all comfort who stuns us with resurrection.

Lament is that time between the last gasp of the old order and the birth of the new one.

So, lament.

Refuse to be comforted.

Resist managing through the unimaginably unmanageable.

Look into the face of the world’s pain.

Look into the face of your own.

Rant and rage.

Sit in the city street and shower yourself in the dust from which we come and the dust into which we all return.

Lament.

But with hope...

Our surprising Joy, clothed in the swaddling radiance of the Beloved, will come in the morning.

-Dr. Jim Street