this easter season we’ve been taking a look at the 3 days of holy week: friday, with the death of jesus. saturday, a day of lament, and sunday, the resurrection. we talked last sunday about how hard it is for us to just sit with death as we meditated on the story of lazarus in john 11. we want to move quickly to life, to lazarus’ resurrection, and to not allow ourselves to feel the sting of death that mary and martha and lazarus’ other friends felt in the moment that they realized he really truly was dead, gone, cold and jesus wasn’t yet on the scene. we talked about how death isn’t always a physical death. sometimes we have to reckon with the death of a marriage, of a dream, of our health, of a close friend or family member, of a relationship, our past. for christians, focusing on death can somehow feel “wrong”, yet if we’re really honest, it is an integral part of our spiritual journey—learning to live with loss and pain and embrace the reality of death in our lives.
the saturday of holy week is a day of lament. jesus is dead. and the disciples were left with “how could this be?” i believe they practiced the fine art of lament, a practice that i think has been lost in the modern church. lament means to: bawl, bemoan, cry, deplore, grieve, howl, hurt, mourn, moan, regret, sob, sorrow, wail, weep.
culturally, i can picture the followers of Jesus weeping, mourning, tearing their clothes, allowing themselves to go the distance on their grief. their friend, unjustly murdered right before their very eyes, and being left with nothing but doubt, confusion, overwhelming sadness.
in our white american culture, lamenting feels foreign. most of us keep our grief in check. why are we so afraid of lamenting? i think it’s because some of us have been trained that “spiritual maturity means getting over our pain as quickly as possible…” at least that is what i was taught. i have this weird thing inside of me that comes from a crazy combination of family history and theological wackiness that tells me to just move on and not allow myself to feel too much. that good christians don’t focus on the negative, the past, our losses. that it’s not okay to say that sometimes i am really pissed off at God and don’t feel his presence at all, whatsoever. i know it’s silly but it is real for me; part of my spiritual healing has been learning how to mourn, feel, be more honest about my anger, my doubts, but it still doesn’t come naturally. i’m a bit afraid of it. i think the idea of an abbreviated grieving process in christian circles is extremely prevalent: Jesus is bigger than death and he uses all things for his glory so move on! this has been a year of sudden deaths of several people i know. the pain has been horrible and in several of these instances i have been so disturbed by an unwillingness to sit with the pain and loss and allow others to just lament. here’s what i heard, these are actual quotes: (after the loss of her father) “well there’s no need to be sad, he wouldn’t want us to be because he’s in heaven with jesus ”…(two days after the suicide of her husband) “she seems really stuck, worse than she was yesterday, i am really worried about her.” it makes me crazy!
the bible is full of examples of lament. david didn’t have any trouble crying out to God, allowing himself to feel the full measure of his pain, shake his fist at God, let it rip:
my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? o my God i cry out by day, but you do not answer….i am poured out like water, all of my bones are out of joint. my heart has turned to wax, it has melted away within me….my soul is in anguish, how long, O Lord, how long?…the troubles of my heart have multipled, free me from my anguish…death had its hands around my throat; the terrors of the grave overtook me. i saw only trouble and sorrow…i am dying from grieef; my years are shortened by sadness. misery has drained my strength; i am wasting away from within….
i love david’s honesty and i believe it is what helped him stay connected to God. he wasn’t afraid to say “i don’t feel you, where the hell are you? i am sick of waiting for you.” i think if we don’t allow ourselves to learn to lament over our losses, others losses, we will remain lonely, disconnected, empty. we can’t enter into another person’s pain if we can’t enter into our own. this was my experience. until i allowed myself to feel, grieve, experience the magnitude of my pain over my own shame and a myriad of other losses, i could not be a real comfort to my friends in pain. i just had no ability to go there.
plus, if we’re honest, the pain is there whether we learn how to express it or not. if we stuff it, numb it, escape it, cover it up, it’s just going to pop up later in some weird unhealthy ways. why not learn how to just let it rip, cry out, go the distance on the feeling? i think some of us are just afraid. i know i am afraid. i cork up all kinds of feelings out of fear.
so this easter i am somehow reminded of how important it is to let myself “go there”, to feel my pain, my friend’s pain, at the deep losses in their life. to lament with them, not knowing really when relief will come but knowing it is being honest and raw and vulnerable. none of us like pain. human beings are natural pain-avoiders, but i believe that God gives us many examples of how brutally important it is to allow ourselves to feel and live in the tension of not having easy answers, not feeling God’s presence, questioning and doubting our faith, His goodness. i think God can handle it. the question is whether we can.