The Power of Lament

We are in crisis. Can we own that? Can we own the fact that at this writing the world passed 2.4 million people infected with COVID-19 (1.68 million of those still active cases, more than 57,000 still in serious or critical condition), resulting in over 175,000 deaths, with over 44,000 of those deaths in the U.S? Can we own the fact that businesses have closed their doors, employees sent home with no paychecks and many with no (or none to begin with) access to healthcare in the middle of a viral pandemic? Can we own the fact that people are suffering?

People are grieving lost loved ones and lost days. People are suffering from a lack of purpose. People are struggling with the onset of acute mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish. Though it may seem trivial to some, it is important to note that an entire class of graduating high school and college seniors will always be marked by this pandemic and the lack of celebration of their accomplishments.

In our “can do” society, we don’t talk much about lament. In churches lament is only mentioned on occasion during the oft sparsely attended services like Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, or God Friday. Pastors are all too aware that people just want to be told everything is okay—they just want to feel good when they leave worship. I’ve heard too many people say they don’t attend these services because they’re such downers. These folks want to just focus on Easter. During Advent, people want to just get to Christmas. A good friend and mentor many years ago cautioned me, saying, “If you really want to experience the wonder and magnitude of Easter, you have to experience fully Maundy Thursday, God Friday, and Holy Saturday.” I was not sure about it then, but I am sure about it now. He spoke a truth much deeper than I could have imagined.

Our Judeo-Christian tradition has a long history of honoring the transformational power of lament. The psalms are full of it:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
     How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
          and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
     How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Psalm 13.1-2

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
     Why are you so far from helping me,
          from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
   &nbs-2p; and by night, but find no rest.
Psalm 22.1

They are powerful expressions of some of the deepest anguish I can only barely imagine. They speak of fear, frustration, anger, and even revenge. Yet, often, in the midst of the lament there is a glimmer of faithfulness and hope as the psalmist remembers that God’s “steadfast love endures forever”:

But I trusted in your steadfast love;
     my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
     because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Psalm 13.5-6

Yet you are holy,
     enthroned in the praises of Israel.
In you our ancestors trusted;
     they trusted, and you delivered them.
Psalm 22.3-4

Many of the psalms flip back and forth between anguish and praising God, accepting God’s grace and love, seeking to trust God’s goodness, only to fall back into anguish, and ending, more often than not, transformed into a deeper kind of love and faithfulness. It’s almost as though these psalms were written to expel the anguish and remind the psalmist that God’s love is more powerful than our pain.

Walter Brueggemann writes about psalms of lament as “psalms of disorientation” in his 1984 book, The Message of the Psalms. There are psalms of orientation (we know or think we know where we’re going and what we’re doing), psalms of disorientation (crisis hits, where is God?), and psalms of re-orientation (God never abandoned us in our anguish, and we are now forever changed because of this crisis and are learning a new way of being). The novel Coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is definitely a crisis. So far, it has killed over 5 times the number of people the flu does in an average season. We will not be the same after this, just as we in the U.S. were forever changed by 9-11.

I have to admit, when the novel Coronavirus first hit the news I was looking at the numbers and couldn’t figure out why everyone was making such a big deal. I was definitely wrong in my assumptions. This is a big deal! And a lot of people are suffering. I can easily point fingers at others who had an inside track to information and who should have known better and should have responded differently. But that won’t help us right now. We can look back later and assess what happened from a better vantage point. Right now, we are in crisis. We need to focus on how to move forward in the midst of the crisis.

Part of that moving forward includes lament, which usually comes after the shock of the crisis wears off. Sometimes it doesn’t happen until after the crisis is over. This crisis, however, is lingering and many of us are getting news-fatigue, quarantine-fatigue, virus-fatigue, everything-fatigue. We’re tired of being stuck at home. We’re tired of re-runs and Netflix movies we’ve watched a thousand times. We’re so tired we can’t even read a book. Many with whom I talk want to go back to work (funny how we always want what we can’t have, but often don’t want what we have—who hasn’t played hooky from work now and then?). The more people I speak with over video chat or on the phone who collapse into weeping, are already entering into lament over the deaths, the suffering, and the loss of what was.

Lament is hard, but it’s also good for the soul. Not only does it cleanse us of the tension of “trying to keep it together,” (and honestly, no one can keep it all together, though many of us try to “fake ’til we make it”) it gives us permission to name the pain, name the hurt, name the anguish, name the loss, so that we can begin to deal with it and work through it. The psalms remind us that we do not do this hard work alone—God is with us always, walking with us and even seeking to help guide us through the maze of emotions (think Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ 5 stages of grief in On Grief and Grieving).

So, lament! Watch a sad movie to help get the tear ducts primed. It’s okay. It’s normal. It’s healthy. And it may open doors for growth (re-orientation). How can we not be changed through this? The challenge is not getting stuck in that space. Mind you, lament can take hours, days, weeks, and even months. But the Easter story tells there is redemption and healing on the other side of it, though we need to enter into knowing that we will be and must be changed by it. Resurrection awaits, my friends. But first, this Ash Wednesday/God Friday/Holy Saturday moment. And, then, we must acknowledge that we can never go back to the way we were.

And as Ed, my good friend and mentor, used to say…