One of the more disturbing aspects of worship in Christian congregations today is the strong bias toward good cheer and superficial encouragement, no matter the circumstances, no matter the feelings that people bring with them to the service, no matter how much we have to hide or deny to keep up the facade.\u00a0 In some places, we do not confess our sins, do not acknowledge systemic evil in the world, do not lament the suffering of people (unless someone runs a plane into a building), as if we believed that hope can only survive in a pretend world.<\/p>\n
The trouble is not just that such an approach to worship makes us all into liars, which is bad enough, but that it robs us of the real possibilities of hope.\u00a0 The blithe optimism of the “power of positive thinking” is hope’s most implacable enemy because it teaches us that the world is pretty much okay the way it is, if only we just click our heels together and wish to be home.<\/p>\n
Now that may sound sour, a bit like someone who prefers Mondays to Fridays, as I’ve been accused of, but let’s talk it through.\u00a0 Lament.\u00a0 That’s the word for today.<\/p>\n
Almost half the psalms are laments of one sort or another.\u00a0 The first one we come to in the Psalter is Psalm 3, and I’d like to think about it just a bit.<\/p>\n
The Psalmist opens by trying to get God’s attention in order to elicit God’s compassion.\u00a0 Someone surrounded by enemies, human or otherwise, deserves the compassion of everyone, especially of someone who can bring relief.\u00a0 Especially of God.\u00a0 The Psalmist is confident that God protects the vulnerable, and therefore that the vulnerable can confidently ask God for help.\u00a0 The wild confidence of the worshiper in God’s mercy and knowledge of the adverse situation allows the Psalmist to express what he or she may not fully believe: God is a shield, a source of glory (or maybe just praise, as opposed to the scandalmongers who attack the author), one who answers from the Holy Mountain, and so on.\u00a0 Yet as the Psalm progresses (verse 7), it’s clear the whatever God CAN do hasn’t been done yet, hence the call upon God to “arise.”<\/p>\n
There are a lot of things to say about lament, and we’ll discuss some of them in later posts.\u00a0 But for now, it’s worth noticing the honesty of the one crying out to God.<\/p>\n
Now another thought.\u00a0 Who are the enemies?\u00a0 A later interpreter of the Psalms, probably in the 3rd or 2nd century BC, gave us the superscription (“a psalm connected to David, when he fled from his son Absalom”).\u00a0 That person thought that the enemies were Absalom and his crew.\u00a0 But of course, originally all the Psalms were anonymous, and the connection of them to David’s biography is a later development.\u00a0 What’s interesting is that the enemies are unspecified.\u00a0 Anyone can pray this psalm at any time.<\/p>\n
And now my thought.\u00a0 I tend to assume that I get to play the role of the lamenter in these psalms.\u00a0 I have enemies who don’t appreciate me, don’t agree with me, don’t sympathize with me.\u00a0 You do too.\u00a0 But what if I’m the one against whom someone is crying out?\u00a0 What if I’m the one against whom God needs to rise up in order to protect the vulnerable?\u00a0 The thought is almost unbearable, which is why I wish our worship times had space for confession of sin and forgiveness, and why I wish they were a lot more inclusive of all kinds of people and not just those who look and act and even smell like me.\u00a0 Then we could bear the thought and do something about it.\u00a0 We could be different.\u00a0 Maybe the lack of lament is the most lamentable thing of all.<\/p>\n
We’ll pick this back up next week.\u00a0 Blessings to all this coming Sunday as we come to the God who hears lament and does something about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the more disturbing aspects of worship in Christian congregations today is the strong bias toward good cheer and superficial encouragement, no matter the circumstances, no matter the feelings that people bring with them to the service, no matter how much we have to hide or deny to keep up the facade.\u00a0 In some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n