Sunday Service | Lament: August 9, 2020
The second week of livestreaming is in the books! Our team here in Nashville making sure everything is running smoothly is nothing short of amazing, and the excitement within our community as we chat and share prayer requests shows that we are all in this together and not giving up on one another though we are far apart.
Today, Katie Rouse shared a testimony about how we can show mercy by expanding our vision for the history & hurts we need to learn, and in some cases, unlearn, much like those listening to Jesus telling the story of the good samaritan to this religious leader in Luke 10. For her, showing mercy can be found in simply not engaging in fights and arguments over social media with strangers or near-strangers. Instead, we can turn from the anger that fuels this and find mercy & freedom in having conversations with those close to us and in showcasing mercy instead of our anger in the comments section.
Brian continued the conversation on how to be a good neighbor this week by defining what it means to lament. Lament is defined as feeling, showing, or expressing sorrow, grief, or to mourn deeply. We lament loss, hurts against us, and can even lament hurts we have inflicted upon others.
Like confession, lamenting is often viewed as weak. Our culture tells us to “man up” or “move on” instead of processing these deep emotions. But God made these powerful emotions as instruments to bring us into healing and restoration. Confession opens the door to the goal of being a good neighbor; lament leads us from confession to healing, so that we do not get stuck in any cycle of shame, anger, bitterness, or even inaction.
Lament allows us to avoid quick fixes or sweeping any feelings under the rug; it allows for transformation instead. We have to be transformed by our confessing & lamenting, so that we can find deep connection again with God and with others.
Kids can teach us a lot about this. They don’t avoid their emotions until we teach them to. And we need to learn this wisdom!
In 2nd Samuel 12, we see King David commit a pretty horrendous sin--having an affair with a woman, Bathsheeba, to then send her husband to the front lines to be killed. The consequence of this sin was the impending death of their child. It is during this time that David laments over his sins and the consequences of them: weeping, refusing food, and praying, begging God to change his mind to take their child.
It is in this scene that he pens Psalm 51, which shows us the purpose of lament.
Lament allowed David to express the gravity of his confession.
First, he remembered who God is. He “seeks God as comforter, healer, and restorer”. He even asked God to change his mind about the consequences of his sin. Lament allowed him to process and grieve the reality of his suffering.
Lament allowed David to process, out loud and even publicly.
Our culture is not very comfortable with this vulnerability to share our lament and our pain publicly, but even now we see this changing in the media and our social feeds.
Lamentation opens the door to freedom, for the Spirit to move, and for connection. Jesus invites us to participate in these emotions with him--not just to be comforted, but to be transformed! Jesus allows us and enables us to feel all the raw & desperate emotions of lamentation; it’s here that we have the most powerful and intimate conversations with him, as this psalm of David shows us.
Lamenting when allowed to run its course needs a response. Yes, we can find a response from God readily, but it's the response of our lives that matters: through lament, we become empowered to respond to the world around us like Jesus does. The justice of God can work through us in lamentation. The transformation he brings us into will work its way out of us, into our relationships and lives.
Lament propels us to act redeemed.
In this story of David, lamentation meant he had to sit in his grief. He connected with God in that desperate place, and asked him to change his mind. God didn’t. The consequence of David’s sin still took place, and he lost this child. But what did David do upon hearing the news?
He rose to worship.
David’s lament prepared him for connection again with God in worship, and with others in rejoining the community around him.
David’s pain redirected the course of his life. It brought restoration and redemption and new depths to his life in God and as king of Israel.
The same is true for us:
Through lament, we can experience true joy.
There is another side of our lamenting when we face it. We will reach that other side, because healing cannot take place without both pain and joy.
It’s never too late to confess and lament. Wherever we are, we are invited into this story of transformation. God will meet you and go through this whole journey with you. It seems overwhelming, looking at all the brokenness around us. But God sees it too, and he sees the greater redemption story that is at play in all the brokenness around us. It’s here that God meets us and continues to lead us on the road back to becoming a good neighbor.
Here are some action points for this week:
Read Lamentations 3.22-33.
Answer this question--How does God come to our rescue through lament?
What do you need to confess and lament?
A prayer: May our lament be a form of worship.