Last week we started our series on the book of Lamentations. Thank you very much for your feedback, those who left a comment on the Facebook page, or that send me a message with your comments. I truly appreciate your inputs, reflections and perspectives. Reclaiming the art of lamenting is a need for this time and a gift for any season in life. As I look through the pages of the news today I am not surprised to see many actions that are the result of not having a place in society to safely and freely lament with the certainty that we will be heart and not judged. At the same time I have find in my own heart many situations that are still unlamented for, situations that I have had to revisit in prayer and reflection in order to process the teachings, lessons, failures and victories of those seasons.
Lamentations Chapter 2 is a difficult reading… this time we don’t have an interaction between the 2 characters of chapter 1, but just a long monologue from the Narrator. He continues, metaphor after metaphor, showing how hard the situation was. Some of the pictures he paints with his words are hard to digest! He talks about God being filled with anger and having no mercy… he says that God has withdrew his protection over Jerusalem, and it’s God that consumed Israel like a wild fire. If that wasn’t enough, he says that God has also rejected their religion: allowed the Temple to be destroyed, rejected his own altar, despised his own sanctuary… he concludes that God planned everything that has happened and that now the royal family is gone, exiled in a distant land, the prophets have lost their visions, the leaders are defeated and the young women left in shame… Harrowing? Discouraging? How do you feel reading his description? Have you ever felt so defeated in a situation that you can only conclude that this is God being on your case, taking away his protection or even taking revenge himself? Have you ever been in a situation that you look around and find absolutely no hope?
And then in verse 11, something happens; until here he is away, but now he comes close, he personifies himself as part of the drama, he is part of the people. He cries, he breaks down. Have you ever seen a reporter exploiting someone’s pain? What would happen if the pain was his? Because it’s one thing to describe the pain or the hurt or the struggle as being something that is outside of you, outside of your life, of your experiences, and it’s something completely different to identify yourself with the pain, the hurt, the struggle, as if they were yours. It’s probably what goes through your mind when you are struggling and someone, in an attempt to comfort you, says something like “I know what you are going through right now”, and you ask yourself “Do you, really?” Do you understand the pain of losing your best friend? Your lover? Your partner? Do you understand the pain of losing a child? Do you understand the fear of receiving the diagnostic that you feared the most? Do you understand the pressure of not knowing where you will sleep tonight, or where your children will sleep tonight? Have you ever felt the fear of not knowing where your next meal will come from? Because, as Jerusalem was asking in the last chapter, when we are going through the struggle we feel like no one can understand what we are going through. And what we need is for someone to hear!
The change in verse 11 is that now he can’t keep himself away. He comes closer. The pain he is describing now is the one coming from his own heart! I remember in May 1st 1994 when a Brazilian car racer called Ayrton Senna died in a tragic accident while competing in Italy. The accident happened and while he was being helped by the rescue crew the race continued. A while later the scene cut and we saw the Brazilian reporter that cover the races completely pale, speaking from a hospital, telling us that Ayrton had died. His expression was blank… his voice was soft… his eyes were somewhere else. The reporter was going his job to the best of his ability in a very difficult setting… but the man was suffering because his friend was dead. For the rest of the world and the hundreds of reporters sharing the news this is about a famous sportsperson dying in tragic circumstances. But for the Brazilian crew this was their hero, their friend, a special person. For the rest of the week we saw the whole country going through grief- I remember looking around that day at church and seeing many people with tears in their faces, from children to elders. The news went from far to close, from fact to feeling, from “what happened to someone else somewhere else” to “is happening in my heart right here, right now”. And in a time of distancing, in a time of separation, that is our challenge as well: to look at what is happening in our world, in our country, in our state, in our town, in our community, in our congregation, in our family… not as something far but as something near, not as facts and numbers but as people, as a person, as someone that matters.
The most significant change can be seen if you compare the verses of Lamentations 1.8-9 and 2.13. In the first, the narrator is calling Jerusalem “a filthy rag”, “despised”, “naked and humiliated”, “defiled”, now she “lies in the gutter with no one to lift her up”. Judgement is clear, it’s cutting, it’s direct and justified. But on the second passage, after he comes close, after he allows his heart to feel her pain, after he allows the situation to touch his heart, the words are very different… now he calls her “daughter”… “Virgin daughter of Zion”… From despised to daughter. From defiled to virgin. From judgement to mercy… Her sin remains the same, the judgement is still valid, but the heart of the narrator is touched in a way that calls for mercy, because he dares to feel her pain.
I can confess that many times I have seated comfortably in a place of judgement, looking at what was happening in another country, with other people, with other churches, with another person… I looked at what they did and found justifications for their consequences. I quoted Bible verses to show that there were reasons behind what was happening. But when I have allowed myself to come closer, to engage in conversations with people involved, to take time to see their perspective… even when I understood and justified and theologically explained the situation, still my heart cried for mercy. First, because I remember that I am in the same situation: my sin deserved punishment, my mistakes were unjustifiable, I had rebelled and done wrong, and none of my good actions or deeds cloud pay for the weight of my sin- according to the Bible, I was dead in my sin and I was condemned. And then someone came close… close enough to feel what life was like from my perspective, the perspective of a human. He felt my pain, he saw my confusion, he understood my heart, and more importantly, he paid the price for my sin and now I get to live his life, walking in his love, sustained by his grace.
The narrator asks a very important question at the end of verse 13: Who can heal you? It seems like a self-defeating question, one without an answer… or we can see it as a seed. A seed of hope. A question thrown in the air with the hope that someone will hear it and answer it. Have you asked yourself this question lately? Who can heal this world? Who can heal our society? Is there a solution to all the struggle and pain and confusion and division of this world? Yes. There is. The one who defeated death and sin is still the same today and will be the same forever. So we dare to come closer, we dare to ask the question, we dare to call for mercy, we dare to declare salvation even in the midst of what we see today- because we are living testimonies of what love, grace and mercy can do… even in someone like me! Grace and peace and tons of hope be with each one of you, now and forever!