I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew this week. I hope
not, but I fear I may have. I want to look at the whole of the book of
lamentations. Not necessarily in details so don’t worry we’re not going to be
here all day. But rather because I think the way this book is woven together
helps us as we wrestle with the question of evil and suffering, it helps us
deal with the question “where is God when it hurts?” Lamentations is helpful because it does not
try and tie it all together and give us a solution, beautifully packaged with
all the “I” dotted and the “T” crossed.
It does not provide a definitive answer. It actually honours the fact
that like Philip Yancy says this is the question that will not go away. It honours the fact that just maybe our well
thought out theological arguments defending God’s Goodness and sovereignty
shake and quake and fall short, and can even seem obscene, when we are
confronted with the ongoing reality of suffering.
Lamentations is a series of five acrostic poems; that’s
poems based on the Jewish alphabet, gathered together into one. It’s as if this
very structure is an expression of the limits of our language, of the struggle
language has to express and make sense of tragedy and suffering. These
poems are laments and funeral dirges expressing the sorrow and pain at the
destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. Old Testament scholar
Miriam Bier and I remember Miriam as a teenager who attended St John’s in
Rotorua, calls the book Polyphonic. That it hold together different voices, some
offering a defence for what has happened and ultimately of God’s actions and
others that because of their suffering see no justification for the tragedy
that has befallen them, and can see no defence for both God’s sovereignty and
goodness. These voices are involved in a dialogue and you can see as you read
through the book how they modify as they listen to each other. It’s not often
that the voice of those that suffer is given that power. But ultimately we are left without one
position holding sway. It’s left open. That’s really summed up in the last two
verses which was part of our reading this morning: A plea for God to restore
Jerusalem, tempered by the possibility that God just may have abandoned his
people all together, full stop.
Such a dialogue is helpful for us.
It’s helpful that it gives voice to how we deal with sorrow
and tragedy and faith.
One of the ways that Lamentations has been seen is that it
is very much written to express the grief process. A process where we can swing from despair to
hope, anger to resignation, denial to acceptance, darkness to the dawn of new possibilities,
swing from wanting answers to the big questions and knowing that none of the
answers are that satisfying. Feeling God’s presence and feeling abandoned. I
had another visit from my Pilipino friend this week that perhaps summed this up
well. She is an amazing woman who cares deeply for others and has a vibrant
faith. She was telling me of the good
things that God had done, and at the same time would stop and remember what had
transpired this week in her home country with the super typhoon. The hands that
had been praising God would move heavenward in supplication, why God did you
let this happen? Why are my people suffering? It’s helpful and healthy to have this process
we work through in scripture. Not with any ‘there, there’ everything’s going to
be alright, but left simply as a seemingly unanswered cry to God. It gives it voice, validity, and value.
Lamentations was believed to be read out to mark the anniversary of the fall of
Jerusalem, and we know today that it is read out and prayed weekly at the Wailing
Wall in Jerusalem, what remains of the temple, giving voice to the grief at the
loss of the temple and hope that God may someday restore his people.
Another way that Lamentations has been described is as a storm.
These different voices wrestling with suffering, struggling to make some sense
of it, despair and hope swirling round and round, and in the middle of it is a
calm point the eye of the storm, the passage we read out from lamentations 3
where a person who is talking of their experience of suffering and also of God,
comes to a point of stillness, this I remember and hope, that the steadfast
love of the LORD never ceases his mercy never comes to an end. This quite trust
and waiting founded on what we know of God’s character revealed to us, is where
many laments finish. Remember from the other week it’s what Brueggemann calls a
position of reorientation, it what gives people hope. But here and in real life it is the eye of
the storm and it does not stop lamentations or us from having to wrestles with
and experience the questions the
consequences, emotions and anguish. It is a refuge where we can find strength
to continue in the face of the storm. One of the things that sometimes happens
when I pray for people is that we experience this amazing sense of God’s
presence and peace. Boom, it’s like God actually turns up in a palpable, no
doubting who’s here kind of way. It may
not stop the problem, or provide the instant answer that we just hope for, it’s
not the cure all, it doesn’t even let God off the hook, but it lets us know
that God is there with us, and that allows hope to seep into the situation.
Maybe beyond the storm there is order and sunshine and calm.
Lamentations also helps us in that it opens up dialogue
between our theology and suffering. Some of the voices that have been
identified in this book are the lamenter, who speaks in the third person and
who voices some of the prevailing wisdom of their day. The other voice that is
heard is Zion, herself, who protests that there is no justification for the
suffering that she is enduring. One of
the big questions for God’s people in light of the exile, is why did God allow
it? One of the threads that people have identified in the Old Testament is what
is called the Deuteronomic history. That is that Israel’s history is presented
in terms of her keeping and not keeping her covenant relationship with God. In
the book of Kings, for example, there is the epitaph of each king that they did
wrong in the sight of the LORD, even with those who were seem to be reformers
and call Israel back to fidelity with God there is usually an epitaph that they
did not totally do away with idolatry. God had warned Israel again and again,
God had been patient, and that God was right to punish first the northern
kingdom and the Judah, for breaking their covenant relationship. This is some
of the background to Lamentations; the lamenter hints that this is why
Jerusalem has fallen. Its part of the answer to the question of evil that we
live in a broken and fallen world. We even see this with the typhoon
Haiyan as being seen as a result of the
effect of humans on the planets climate. But this does not stand up when confronted
with the voice of Zion herself. The one who is suffering.
Can I say before I go on that this is rather hard stuff to
talk about, because Lamentations deals with imagery of rape. That is how Zion
is represented a women who has been abused and raped and thrown out for all to
see. The argument that the lamenter seems to point to, is that ’The bitch had
it coming’. Jerusalem had been promiscuous; flirting with other God’s, now had
reaped what had been sown. Zion’s response is well yes they had done wrong but
she didn’t deserve what happened to her. No women deserves that… it adds to her
victimization to even say it. To the lamenters credit he agrees with her and
his theology no longer fits. In fact she looks beyond her own suffering and
says that even worse… it is the children that suffer, the lamenter has to agree
with her that this is indefendable. Later, She points to the fact that she has
been let down by her leaders and prophets who did not warn her enough, or who
falsely said everything was alright. The question why have the Babylonians not
been brought to justice for what they did is raised as an accusations and hope.
It is what makes evil so…evil… and unjust… that the innocent and weak suffer
the most for what others have done.
In New Zealand over the last few weeks we’ve had to confront
many of the same questions with the vile
‘roast busters’ episode. A group of sexual predators who gang raped drunk
under-aged girls, and then boasted about it on social media. Yes what were these children doing out
drinking, but, they are the victims. They did nothing to deserve this. What we
are wrestling with now is that they have been let down by society, that should
be there to protect them. There is a cry that in speaking up the rape victim is
victimized again. There is a cry for
justice, can I say as a man my gut reaction is its nothing that two bricks
wouldn’t fix. But I know that’s not the case there is also the cry that goes
beyond that to ask how our society could see boys grow up to think such
behaviour was alright.
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