As part of the regular meeting of North Waters Presbytery, nine members of the Flesherton Pastoral Charge attended the Rural Revitalization workshop lead by Dr. Marvin Anderson. The nine returned home ready to roll up their sleeves and do what needs to be done to be part of an ongoing revitalization in our community ...
I introduced our Scripture Readings with the following:
This week ten of us went to the Alive and Kicking workshop held by Presbytery in Owen Sound ... over and over we heard Marvin Anderson talk about the need to share and listen to our stories ... I need to hear the stories of others, and I need to share my story with them ...
The funny thing about sharing stories is the realization that my experience is not all that dissimilar to that of someone else ... we’ve all been through ups and downs and twists and turns – we’ve learned some great lessons from our bruises, and we’ve all had similar experiences and feelings.
When we approach prayers of Lament such as those found this morning in our Old Testament reading, and in our Psalm reading, we realize that we too have had these feelings – we’ve ALL had those deep dark moments when we want to cry out at God and rage at God and unload on God ... we’ve ALL be there ...
The power of the Lament, and the power of the story intersect in that moment ... when I can admit to being in a place where I’ve wondered if God exists at all, and you can admit to having similar experiences, we lift the veil from the church and begin to celebrate our commonality ... we begin to be ourselves – warts and all, as the saying goes – and we begin to shed the view too many have of the Church ...
When we share our stories, the Church becomes YOU and I together ... and others see the Church as US, not as some institution removed from the world and from life ...
All because of a simple and honest prayer ...
Then by way of reflection, I offered the following sermon on the power of lament:
By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept ...
In the early morning hours of February 13th 2006, I stood in the midst of the smouldering debris field that was until 24 hours earlier, the 104 year old sanctuary building of Minnedosa United Church ... as I surveyed the blacked and shattered wood and bricks and the mix of soggy, charred paper, twisted metal, and other assorted items that had until the arsonists’ fire consumed it, been part of the life and ministry of the Congregation and community, I offered the mantra of this morning’s Psalm reading – “by the waters of Babylon, we sat and wept as we remembered ... ” The Psalmist remembered Zion – Jerusalem, while I remembered a majestic building that had been destroyed by a act of innane stupidity ...
The frozen ice that shrouded much of the debris added to the sense of standing by a pool of water and lamenting our circumstance ... Lament – the ability to cry out and even curse God and KNOW in the core of our being that we are truly NOT alone, and that God is still with us ...
That morning, as I stood in what was only hours before the basement of the Church, I looked up and my Anglican Colleague who stood by the temporary fence erected along the main street sidewalk ,.. I offered the words of the Psalmist: “By the waters of Babylon ...” and she answered, “WE sat and we wept ...” as tears rolled down our cheeks ...
WE sat and we wept ... WE!! Not I ... NOT ME ... NOT just myself, the lonely little creature standing before God and feeling utterly alone – WE - the collective ... WE – all of us together ... WE – you and I together ...
That’s the power of the Lament. You never lament alone. Lament is not about offering up a “woe is me” pity party, but rather it is about having the strength and courage to gather in faith and name that which is pulling us and our lives apart and making us feel that God is anywhere by here ...
The most powerful story of Lament that I have encountered is one that I share frequently, and originated with the reflections of Jewish writer Eli Wiesel and his experience in the Holocaust of the Second World War. Wiesel tells the story of the trial held in one of the death camps where Jewish prisoners were starved, beaten, and worked almost to death before being killed by the Nazis ... in this particular camp a group of men decided to hold a trial to determine if God had abandoned them, and if God even existed ... the court was convened and one of the learned men in the barracks acted as judge.
Evidence for and against the case was present. Witnesses were called, and eventually the judge was asked to offer a ruling on the outcome of the trial ... The judge handed down his verdict saying that not only had God abandoned the people, but that there was ample evidence to suggest that God no longer existed at all ... He hammered his gavel to the table top at the exact moment a young boy opened the door and announced: “it is sunset ... it is Shabbot – the Sabbath ... it is time to pray !”
The court was dismissed and all of those who a breath earlier had listened as God was ruled to no longer exist, fell to their knees in prayer ...
In a heartbeat, the court moved from ruling that God no longer existed to worshipping God through prayer!
Such is the power of the lament.
The lament in Jewish tradition is the prayer that sees one standing before God and inventorying all that is wrong in the our lives, our world, our realtionship with God ... the lament is about the guttarl emotions of anger, frustration, even out and out rage ... The lament is the prayer where you can RAGE at God and offer up ALL that you feel inside knowing that God will not only listen, but God will not adandon us ...
The ultimate Lament is the prayer that sees us raging at God to such a degree that we question whether God even exists at all ... cursing God to such a degress that We reach a place where God is absent from our understanding of the world ...
In that moment we reach the place where the power of the Lament comes into play ... for the Lament doesn’t leave us in THAT place where there is no God. The Lament says – “there’s can not possibly be a God in this moment ...” then in the next breath gives THANKS to God for giving us the ability to pray so frankly and honestly and openly ...
In a Lament, we move from cursing God to praising God in a single breath ... and that’s the power of the lament. The transformation that comes from moving through ALL of our feelings of anger, abandonment, aloneness and frustration and suddenly standing in a place where we can actually THANK God for those self same feelings ...
The Lament is one of our most powerful prayers because of that transformative moment that allows us to give up to God the fullness of our feelings ... The Lament is the power of remembering unleashed in faith ...
And so the Psalmist sitting by the rivers of Babylon – modern day Iraq, far from everything that is familiar, far from everything that is comfortable, far from home, has the courage to cry out to God and own the hurt, the pain, the sorrow, the anger – the fullness of the emotions that are roiling in his heart – and he KNOWS that even in the feelings of anger and abandonment God hears him and God listens ... but not only does God hear and listen, God doesn’t leave us in that place ... God pulls us spiritually, emotionally, physically and in everyway to the place of hope and promise that is part of our faith journey ...
It may not happen at once ... it may take years ... it may take longer than we realize, but there is a point when we suddenly realize how far we’ve come from that deep dark moment ...
A rabbinic prayer puts it well when it says:
Life is like a journey, birth is the beginning of this journey and death is not the end, but rather the destination ...
It is a journey that takes us
from youth to age,
From innocence to awareness,
From ignorance to knowledge,
From foolishness to wisdom,
From weakness to strength and often back again,
From offense to forgiveness,
From loneliness to friendship,
From pain to compassion,
From fear to faith,
From defeat to victory, and from victory to defeat,
Until looking backwards or forwards, we see that victory does not lie at some highpoint along the way, but in having made this journey of life stage by stage ...
We are all in it together ... we need community and connection to survive ... and most importantly, we need to know that we are loved and cared for to grow and prosper ... Breaking bread and pouring out the cup is not just about celebrating the abundance of God’s love and grace and care – it is about joining together to remember and to affirm the simple, and the often over looked reality that WE ARE NEVER ALONE ... we are children of God, and even in those deep dark moments when we feel abandoned and alone and we can ONLY rage at God and express how unfair it all seems ... in those moments, God’s spirit and live not only stirs within us – it breaks through with redemptive and transformative healing for ALL ...
The Lament is about unleashing the power of remembering in faith!!
In that deep dark moment when we fall to our knees exhausted and only able to utter the words – “there is No God !!” God breaks through with love and grace and we rise renewed, refreshed and resurrected !!
It is the parable of the Mustard seed in action ... it starts small, with the stirring of memory ... the whisper of the Spirit ... the remembrance of God’s love and presence ... and then with time come growth ... powerful transformative growth ... growth that can change what is, into what God wants it to be for us and for all of creation ...
Moving from a place where we feel utterly and totally abandoned, to a place where God’s love pours over us in abundance ... that’s the power of a Lament.
Accepting the full breath of emotions and feelings and KNOWING that even in the deepest darkest moments when we feel completely and utterly alone – God is still with us.
May it be so, thanks be to God, let us pray ...
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