Psalms of Lament - Being Honest with God - Christ City Church Dublin

We’re all emerging from a very challenging 18 months. Whilst our experiences and emotions will vary, each of us has had to come to terms with loss, frustration, heart-ache, set-backs and loneliness. Our relational worlds shrank, our plans changed and our normal physical contact almost disappeared. It’s been tough!

Additionally, as we emerge from the other side of many restrictions, life can still feel strange and confusing. A word that has been used to describe the state of many people after the last 18 months is ‘languishing’ – it’s that state between depression and flourishing, between despair and thriving. There is an emptiness, a stagnation. We’re languishing.

Processing our suffering and emotions

Where should we turn to process all that has happened? How can we emerge out of this ‘desert’ experience? How can we move from languishing to thriving? In his wisdom and grace, God has given us a rich resource for times such as these: the psalms of lament. The Psalms are unique in the scriptures in that they are not so much God’s words to us but God’s word’s for us; they are songs and prayers God has given us, which we can use to speak back to him honestly in all seasons of life.

The majority of the Psalms (around 65 of them) are Psalms of lament. Psalms of sorrow. Psalms of protestation. Psalms of anger. Psalms which help people process all that is confusing, painful and hard about the world and about our understanding of how God deals with us in this world. The psalms of lament are brutally, often disturbingly, honest.

In his superb book Stumbling Toward Zion – Recovering the Biblical Tradition of Lament in the Era of World Christianity, David Smith recounts a moment towards the end of his wife’s struggle with brain cancer. He sat with her through the night in hospital and they sang the words of an old hymn together – “we’re marching to Zion…we’re marching upward to Zion, the beautiful city of God”. He remembers the moment fondly, but on reflection he said this:

That terminology simply did not reflect the reality of my experience. In fact, even during Joyce’s illness I had struggled with God and what seemed to be his silence.

Elsewhere he says,

My theology appeared to be incapable of coping with the issues which so disturbed me

Smith’s research led him to re-discover the importance of lament in the scriptures. This was not just to help him face the personal loss of his wife, but to help himself and others face life in a world where we are aware of the sufferings of so many around the globe – chronic illness, unemployment, poverty, violence and war. Smith rediscovered the importance of

Being honest with God
Voicing doubts concerning the reliability of the divine promises
Being bold in questioning the relationship between the Almighty and the tragedies of human history.

He says,

Lament moves the practice of prayer beyond a passive acceptance of whatever life brings upon us and raises questions which require answers

This is a helpful way to understand lament, because well expressed lament does not lead us into a place of spiralling negativity; it rather leads us to a place of expectancy and hope, looking for what is next. We are neither to ignore our feelings (which leads to emotional numbness), nor are we forever to be ruled by them (which leads to an emotional chaos); instead, we are to channel them towards God with words that he has given us. When we get really honest with God and with ourselves, it may not be an easy place to be, but it is the only way to find healing and hope. Vocalising our thoughts and expressing our emotions, allows God in and allow him to move us forward rather than remain stuck. Smith says,

The dawn breaks at the point at which the night is darkest, and the renewal of hope comes only after the lament for all that has been lost has done its necessary work, and through the shedding of tears, has opened a channel for life to be renewed in ways transcending the sufferers’ imagining

Smith comments how music/song is a great and mysterious gift to touch broken hearts in ways that are often beyond rational explanation.

Depth or superficiality?

One of the challenges facing the Western church is that we can so often imbibe the worldview of our culture and the grand narrative of ‘progress, advance and success’. That problem is that this worldview doesn’t fit with many of our lives, and it certainly doesn’t fit with much of the church across the globe. We’re not all happy, prosperous and beautiful people that we’re told we can become. If we are not careful, our language and worship can easily communicate only praise and never lament, only progress and never faltering, only advance and never stagnation, only success and never failure. This has a devastating affect on both those inside and outside the church. Commenting on the superficiality of much of our corporate worship and prayer, Smith states,

The one-sided emphasis on celebration not only ignores the suffering, struggles and doubts of people within congregations, so increasing their distress by making them feel guilty that the are unable to join the party, but…it undermines the credibility of faith in the eyes of suffering people who are searching for genuine hope

The witness of the entire scriptures is that God uses times in the wilderness to form us and to draw us to himself in a deeper way. The wilderness is supposed to be a place of formation, to become all that God wants us to be, like gold being refined in a fire. However if we do not learn to lament, the wilderness can be a place of deformation, where we become distant from God. We become bitter inside and drift from God’s people. In other words, instead of God taking us deep, we remain superficial – superficial with ourselves, with God and with others.

Lament vs Complaint

It’s important to note the difference between lament and complaint. In the book of Numbers, the people of Israel infamously fell into grumbling and complaint. This was a sign on unbelief. Lament is a sign of faith. So what’s the difference?

Lament is directed towards God; complaint is directed towards others in rebellion against God
Lament submits to God (even whilst being honest), complaint makes demands of God
Lament circles back to faith, even if it takes a long time to get there (Psalm 88 and 39 are the only two Psalms which don’t – see below).

Since the Psalms are God’s words for us to use, they help us avoid the stagnating pitfalls of complaint and learn the grooves of lament that lead us out of the stagnation and forward with God.

Psalm 88 – The darkest psalm is profoundly comforting

Psalm 88 is alarming in its honesty. As Alec Motyer comments, it portrays (a) life without light (vs1-9), (b) death without hope (vs9-12) and (c) questions without answers (vs13-18), and it ends with the harrowing line

You have taken my companions and loved ones from me, the darkness is my closest friend (Psalm 88:18)

For many Psalm 88 may seem very depressing and offer no hope or comfort. There is no ‘circling back in faith’. And yet for any who are facing the lost of loved ones and very dark thoughts and emotions this Psalm is comfort for a few reasons

It gives them words to process how they feel inside
It allows them to be that honest with God in terrible suffering
It reassures them that they are not ‘in the wrong’ for feeling or speaking like this, and should not be made to feel guilty or inferior in the their faith (in fact, their faith is deeper and purer than most of ours!)

Alongside Psalm 22:1, Psalm 88:18 is an appropriate expression for Jesus on the cross.

Carleen Mandolfo, in an article with the title “Psalm 88 and the Holocaust” observes that the very qualities which make this poem so difficult for may readers, namely, the absence of a response to the writer’s anguished complaint, make it

one of the most meaningful prayers that can be uttered…perhaps the silence [of God] is a good sign…perhaps even God recognises the enormity of what has happened and chooses not to answer so as not to belittle the suffering of the victims

A safe place to be honest

The Psalms teach us that we can be honest with God, but they also teach us that we need to create space within God’s people to share honestly. The psalms were Israel’s prayer book; they would have been used in private devotion, I am sure, but primarily they existed for corporate worship and prayer.

So as we emerge from a challenging 18 months and experience the strangeness of our current moment, we need to listen to one another well and allow one another time to process. It’s important that there be space within CCC for the honesty of the Psalms of lament, and as we take time to process, we need not feel a need to correct people, nor rush the lamenting process.

The gospel of free grace reminds us that God loves not because we cleaned our act up, but he loved us when we didn’t. His love comes to us not because we ‘have it all together’, but as we accept that we don’t. This enables us to be authentic and real with him, and with one another. We don’t need to hide or cover up. Let’s use the Psalms of lament to create a space space to be honest – with God and with one another.

Praying through our emotions

To help us learn how to lament, here are five psalms we will use for the five weeks of August:

Psalm 13 – Praying our sadness
Psalm 137 – Praying our anger
Psalm 22 – Praying when suffering
Psalm 42 – Praying in exile
Psalm 88 – Praying in despair

All services will be in-person at Synge Street, 4.30-5.30pm; do sign up beforehand, or attend online.