I wanted this series to be one that I wrote during March, during the latter half of Lent, and maybe finished off during April. But three things happened that slowed down that process.
One was good news – I got a new job, and so lots of energy has gone into working out learning of new processes and people.
The second was that I had minor surgery – and recovering from that took longer than I anticipated, in particular recovering mobility and physical energy took longer than I would have liked – maybe not really any longer than average, but it would have been nice to be quicker 🙂
The third thing that happened was the awareness of the weight of abuse stories in the church. In particular observations about a culture of fear in the evangelical world, and observations about the tendency of the evangelical world to operate on the basis of inner rings resonated with me. I understand something of that. I know what is to have played my part in being afraid, and in participating in ways of doing things that would have created/sustained a climate of fear.
As I have pondered that I have wanted to come back to Lamentations. I have recently participated in a conference in person (much of it was via zoom, but I was part of an in person section) – which happened to take place at one of the venues I associate with that culture of fear, mostly because of the time of my life that I had most to do with it. Driving to that venue down a familiar road made me think of some of those times in my life that I have both been afraid and helped to maintain ways of doing things that help to create fear.
As I’ve done that I’ve been at a conference centred around hope for the world in the Old Testament – and as such it has been massively encouraging to hear more of reasons to hope from God’s word. Indeed one paper pointed out how much in the latter half of the Psalms the place of hope is God’s word.
That encourages me to come back to Lamentations – to see in this book of disorientation the way to live with that disorientation, and to help others in the midst of that disorientation. And I think a major part of it is listening. And so I want to try and listen to the next 10 verses or so from Lamentations. First in Lamentations 3:34-36:
“When all the prisoners of the land are crushed under foot
When human rights are perverted in the presence of the Most High
When one’s case is subverted – does not the LORD see it”
Yahweh sees. It is not easy to see if these words are a cry of anguish from someone who sees their rights being violated right now, or if they are actually the words of the suffer realising why Yahweh is acting in this way. If Jerusalem is being punished for their sin, then maybe the exile is actually part of Yahweh’s demonstration of his goodness in bringing about justice for his chosen ones. Israel’s sins of oppressing the poor and needy in their land have gone on for so long – but no more. Because Yahweh sees. God sees our sin. God sees the way we cheat. God sees the way we oppress the poor – and God will judge. Sin will come to light.
I think this is a more likely way of reading this text because of the next verses. These are strong words, hard to take at the best of times, but even harder when we see people who should know better destroying the faith of the weak and vulnerable:
Who can command and have it done?
If Yahweh has not ordained it?Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?
Why should any who draw breath complain about the punishment of their sin?
As I read Lamentations and consider what has gone before, and what comes after I wonder about how far we should push this voice. I am not completely comfortable with that – but I suspect that is beside the point. My comfort or otherwise with a God who is sovereign is not the point here. The point is that God is in charge and we need to know that.
We need to hear that God is in charge, and that when disasters strike it is not because he has stepped off the throne to avoid responsibility, still less that he has been taken unawares. The bible will not let us get away with that sort of a God. No, the voice of the poet here is backed up by many others – Amos and Isaiah spring to mind – it is from God that both “bad” and good come. We cannot complain about our sins being punished – if we have, like Judah’s leaders, been complicit in treating others as less than human we stand to be punished by Yahweh one way or another.
The only response is self examination and returning to Yahweh. The poet appeals to the people he is with:
Let us test and examine our ways and return to Yahweh
Let us lift up our hearts as well as our hands to God in heaven
This is the response we need to have to trouble. That trouble may or may not be the direct consequence of our sin or folly – but it is trouble that God has in some sense brought on us, or allowed to come into our lives, it is trouble that should cause us to look back to Yahweh. To test. To examine. To return. To lift up our whole lives, not just outward piety, but all we have is to be God’s.
And yet, while the poet knows this is true at a deep level, it is also something that isn’t the whole story for him in his present lived reality. He lives in a world where he sees this:
We have transgressed and rebelled – and you have not forgiven
You have wrapped yourself with anger – and you have pursued us – killing without pity
You have wrapped yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through
You have made us filth and rubbish among the peoples
Their state seems to be disproportionate to their sins. The God who is defined by grace and compassion is killing without pity. The God who promises to forgive sins, is the God who holds back his forgiveness. The God who listens to prayer has blocked prayer from getting through. The God who creates people in his image has made his people like rubbish on the streets.
This is dark and gloomy and sounds like there is no hope, and furthermore sounds different to the poet of a few verses before. V34-41 seem to express a degree of confidence in understanding God’s ways that comes crashing to the ground in v42-45. Affirmations of God’s sovereignty collide with an angry God who shows no mercy and refuses to listen to prayer.
What can be said when we find such dissonance in the text. How do we listen to the different voices. Perhaps we need to remember that this is one man struggling to come to terms with the overthrow of his city and his home. The darkness has closed in on him. He has suffered in ways we cannot imagine – at least how I, in a comfortable western home, cannot imagine. And he pours out his heart. As he does that he expresses his deepest fears, the hopes he longs for, the truth he knows and the darkness he feels. All of that is shaped and formed into a creative and intensely structured work of poetry.
We need to listen to each part of his speech. To hear the truths he affirms, and to hear the reality of the feelings he expresses – which for him are felt and experienced as deeply as the truth he knows. There is an objective reality to truth – and yet there is also a personal dimension in which we all in a very real sense have our own truth that we need to speak, and that we need to listen to in others.
Before experience can be weighed and judged by an individual, and before others can speak into that experience the experience must be heard. We who listen to others must not jump in before they have finished. And that means that we who think we know what the truth is in a given situation need to learn to be patient and be ready to persist with the voices of others for much longer than we might feel is necessary. Even if we think we know what they are saying and agree, we still need to listen and hear their voice spoken.
I think this does apply in situations where Christians have been hurt by others. We can hear their stories, we can sympathise with their cries, but most of all we need to be ready to listen, and to listen again. We need to be ready to hear the whole picture, and not jump into correcting the details we might feel are lacking, or provide the justification for the actions of others that they are not considering.
Fundamentally we need to listen well, and let our desires to be right, our desires to heal, and our desires to comfort be subsumed to utter attention to the presence of the other, and to hearing their story. And as we do that we can invite them to join us in listening to the bigger story that puts the pieces back together – but we need to first acknowledge those pieces.
(Footnote: As I reread that I know that I’m hearing echoes of Larry Crabb’s final chapter in “Finding God” – but I don’t have the time now to go and type up the entire quote – but I definitely recommend the book to you.)
Joshua's Tree Rooted 