20/20 Vision Series -- Cross-Cultural Discipleship Learning to Lament

We're going to turn our attention to God's word. We're in Lamentations chapter three verses one through nine and nineteen through 33. You can find that in your bulletin or on the screens behind me. If you will join me as our practice, we're going to read this aloud together.

I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath. He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light. Surely against me, he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away. He has broken my bones. He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation. He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. He has walled me about so that I cannot escape. He has made my chains heavy. Though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. He has blocked my ways with blocks of stones. He has made my paths crooked. Remember. The wormwood and the gall. My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind and therefore have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I will hope in him. The lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the lord. It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him. Let him put his mouth in the dust. There may yet be hope. Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes but his mouth be filled with insults. For the lord will not cast off forever. But though he cause grief, he will have compassion. According to the abundance of his steadfast love. For he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men. — Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-33

Let's pray together. Father, we pray and give thanks for your word. There's nothing like your word and we pray that the word you tell us is what gives us life and renews our hearts and brings forth fruit as it goes out. Lord, we pray that would be true in us this morning. Soften our hearts, Lord, that we might not just be listeners of your word but hearers and doers. Father, we pray that we would see Jesus this morning, love him, adore him, and be changed. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Learning to Lament

April 24 is a day that they can never forget and yet their government wants them to never remember. On April 24, 1915, the Turkish government began one of the worst mass killings in history. The day was known as Red Sunday and it started with 250 Armenian intellectuals and professors in Constantinople being rounded up and arrested. Then from 1915 to 1923, other Armenians, mostly Christians by the way, were forced from their homes. Tens of thousands of them died from disease and hunger. Others were raped and killed. In all, about 1,500,000 Armenians died in this genocide.

And yet, you're not going to find this in any of Turkey's history books or their museums or public memorials because the Turkish government would rather act like this never happened. It's downplayed and denied and suppresses any voices that try to memorialize or remember the deaths of all these countrymen, all these Armenians. Turkey has been very aggressive too with other nations who have tried to raise this issue or make this a matter of public atrocity. And why is that? I mean, you can imagine Turkey would have to repay all those families. They would have to restore land to people whose land was forcibly taken from them. And today, about twice as many Armenians live outside of Turkey than live in Turkey. And so the largest celebrations on April 24, memorials, commemorations actually take place in the United States and Canada remembering what happened on April 24, 1915. But Turkey itself is stuck in a past that it won't confront and therefore can't heal from.

Now, you know other nations who have responded to their atrocities of their past in different ways. If you go to Germany, you can see all over the country public memorials retelling the story of the Holocaust because Germany doesn't want to forget. They want to heal. In Rwanda, there's a celebration, there's a commemoration on April 7. It's known as Tutsi Genocide Memorial Day because it remembers on April 7 in 1994, the genocide that began as the Hutus killed 800,000 of their neighbors, the Tutsis.

But what about America? That's a question I really want us to think about this morning. What about our country? What about our racial past? What do we do with the pain of our racial past? America takes pride in being the land of the free and the home of the brave. And there's certainly things to be very proud of as an American citizen. But we also know that there are other parts of our past that are super shameful.

Lynchings, Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears, slavery, the Indian Removal Act, the internment camps, the war on drugs, redlining, eugenics, mass incarceration. History tells us things that we'd rather not remember. Things like this: there were slaves in Virginia before there were pilgrims in Massachusetts. Though our founding fathers wrote a document that says, "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal," it was penned by someone who owned slaves and signed by many people who meant those words not to refer to their property. Article One, Section Two of the US Constitution in 1787 considered that African Americans were three-fifths of a person. This is part of our history. I could go on and on.

We have a shameful legacy like Turkey, Rwanda, Germany, and lots of other nations. We're not alone in this. But the question is: what do we do with our past? What do we do with the pain of our past?

And this isn't just a national problem. This is also a personal, individual issue—your family history. Can I tell you something about my family history? On my mom's side, there's one name I've remembered ever since being a little boy—one name we were really proud of: William Lloyd Garrison. He was an abolitionist newspaper writer in Boston. We love to talk about him. We're proud to talk about how we're related to William Lloyd Garrison. He led the abolitionist movement in pre-Civil War times. A great name, a firebrand.

Well, there's another name that I learned several years ago that we've not talked about as much: Charles Humphrey Major. I didn't even know there was somebody named Major in my family until a few years ago. Charles Humphrey Major married my great-great maternal grandmother Adeline Lackey. What we found out through family history research on my mom's side is that they owned a plantation in Canton, Kentucky. There's a document that I now have from family history research about the plantation—and it names the people that my family owned. The slaves that my family owned. We don't want to talk about Charles Humphrey Major. We'd much rather talk about William Lloyd Garrison. But that's a shameful thing for me to own in front of you. I'm ashamed of that family history. It's hard to remember, but that's not ancient history. That's not pharaoh and Egypt and hieroglyphics. That's just a few generations back.

The Church's Complicity

It's also true in the church. The church has a tragic history of complicity in racial violence and racial oppression in our country. This is the whitewashing of Christian history. This is pastors preaching slave codes instead of the Bible. This is the starting of schools for Native Americans so they might be civilized. This is the distortion of Genesis—the curse of Ham. We'll talk about that when we study Genesis this summer. This is heroes of the faith, Puritans who we love to talk about, who were also for the subjugation of people and twisted their theology around that. This is segregating churches. This is excluding fellowship based on race. This is not discipling or disciplining leaders who were openly racist. And this is not ancient history. This is recent history.

Eric Mason is a friend—we were in a fellowship group in Philadelphia. He's the pastor of Epiphany Church in Philadelphia. I heard him talk recently about the history of the Black Church in the United States. He said the Black Church is the only church in America that was founded not for mission but because of failure. The beginning of the AME Zion Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church—he gave all these examples. All of these were started because of a failure of the white church to be the church. "No, you're not welcome here. You're separate. You can't be part of our fellowship." That's what launched the Black Church in the United States—separate denominations, separate entities, not for mission, not to reach African American people in most cases, but because of a failure to love, a failure of unity.

The Problem of Forgetting

Again, what do we do with the pain of our racial past? And here's the problem: forgetting. We'd rather forget—in particular, white Christians would rather forget. We like historical amnesia. It's convenient. It's neat and tidy. And forgetting may even sound biblical. If ever you heard someone say, "Hey, forgive and forget. After all, that's what God does."

But forgive and forget is actually a misunderstanding of several scriptures. Let me give you an example from Isaiah 43:25.

God declares:

I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins. — Isaiah 43:25

Now, think with me. Y'all are good theologians. You can do this with me. God is omniscient. He knows all things. He is not like you when you get out of the grocery store and you can't remember where your car is parked. Things don't slip his mind. God doesn't just forgive and forget. Rather, as we said, read here, he chooses not to remember something—that is, he chooses to look at us not with our sins in view but with the cross of Jesus Christ in view. That's what salvation is. He's looking at us in Christ in Jesus. If you're a follower of Jesus, he holds—he chooses to hold the cross in view when he considers us.

So, when we say forgive and forget, that's actually not biblical. It's not biblical. Forgetting and denying and downplaying our past is like taking sugar pills to try to cure cancer, right? It tastes good for a second. It doesn't do anything. It might even make you feel okay for a moment, but it may make you feel worse. In America, denial, historical amnesia, and downplaying—these tendencies, particularly in the white church—have made the wounds of our racial past much worse. Instead, God offers us a different way, and this is what we find in Lamentations 3 this morning. A different way to approach our racial history, our heritage.

I know Lamentations is not a book you probably did your devotions in this week. It's probably not one that you read regularly, but this is such an important book in the Bible. This is a book of tears. There's a book of tears in your Bible. It's not the only place that speaks of tears—there are lots of places—but this is a book of tears. And I know, if I talk about a book about grieving, I've already lost some of you. You're already thinking, "I'm done. What am I having for lunch today?" Because we don't like negative emotions. We don't like things that are sad. We don't like to grieve.

But let me point this out. Even Pixar, that fountain of all things happy and good—that eternal fountain of movies that make us feel great—in 2015, they did a movie about negative emotions called Inside Out. Maybe anybody saw that, right? You get a look inside this little girl, and all these emotions are personified: joy and sadness and disgust and anger. There's one more—fear. That's right. You see them working through her emotions. And the irony for us is that who's the hero of Inside Out? Sadness. Right? Yes, very good. You're tracking with me. Sadness is the hero of that movie.

And yet, I heard a Christian psychologist talk about this recently. The movie sort of undercuts itself because sadness—is she an attractive person in this movie? Is she somebody that you want to be around? No, she's mopey. She's the personified emotion that nobody wants to be around. I mean, they should have made sadness bald and really muscular, like somebody really powerful, like the Rock, you know—because sadness is powerful. Grieving is powerful. It takes strength to grieve.

Now, this prophet is certainly not trying to avoid the pain of his past. Did you hear the words throughout this passage? Look at verse 20:

My soul continually remembers and is bowed down within me. — Lamentations 3:20

He's not trying to downplay or deny. He believes the only way to deal with the past is to face it and to grieve it. Look at verses 25 through 27. What is his posture?

It is good to bear the yoke, to sit in silence. He's bowed down to the dust. — Lamentations 3:25-27

Here's what I want us to think about today. Here's my big idea: Lament is a type of remembering that leads to healing. It's a type of remembering that leads to healing.

Lament is one of those tools in our gospel toolbox. Now, here's where we've been so far, talking about cross-cultural discipleship. We've talked about cross-cultural worship. We've talked about empathy and humility. And today, we're talking about lament. There are five of these that we're looking at. Lament is one of the tools in the gospel toolbox, and it gives us a way to collectively deal before God with our past in a way that brings healing. We desperately need healing in this area.

I think one of the reasons that we are afraid of remembering sad things of our past is we're confused about the purpose of that. To remember is for the purpose of naming, not blaming. I've just learned that in this past year. I know a counselor that I happen to be married to. He talks about these things, right? Remembering is for the purpose of naming, not blaming—to name what has happened.

This is true even in family histories. Oftentimes, we don't want to talk about the things in our past, our family history because we think it's mean. As if the point is to blame your parents for everything. But to name is different. To name what is in the past, the sins, the wrongs, tragedies—just like we read here in Lamentations—it's not for the purpose of blaming someone. It's for the purpose of naming the hurt and the effects of the hurt. If something is named, we can acknowledge it's real and it had a real impact. Hurts that are denied or downplayed or swept under the rug, pretended away—those things don't go away. You know that phrase, "time heals all wounds"? Not so much.

So here's the provision for us. God gives us Lamentations. And I know this word lament is not a word that you and I use very much. It's a major category though of writing in the Bible. A major category. And when we think of Lamentations as a book, we might kind of skip past it, but the people of Israel saw this book as a really useful tool. Think Swiss army knife. Anybody have a Swiss army knife at home? It's got all the little gadgets and gizmos on it that are useful for all kinds of things. The people of God looked at this book and said, "This book is incredibly useful for us."

In fact, if you study the book of Lamentations—and don't worry, we'll do that one of these days—it has five chapters. Chapters one, two, four, and five each have 22 verses, and there's a reason for that. Every verse in those chapters starts with a different letter in alphabetical order of the Hebrew alphabet. Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Daleth—they go all the way down the line. So chapters one, two, four, and five are each 22 verses. Chapter three, which we're looking at, has 66 verses, and it repeats the letters three times. So it'd be like AAA BBB CCC DDD, and the beginning of every verse is done that way.

Why? Why would they do that? It's not just something clever. It was an aid for memory. This was a book to be memorized and used. God gives them this book, and it's written in such a way to help them be people who practice lament. They memorize this and say, "This is how we do this. This is what this is for." Because there's a kind of remembering that heals. There's a kind of remembering that heals.

Four Things About Lament

Four things I want you to see about lament. First, lament is a form of praise. Lament is a form of praise. You know, if you look at the Psalms, if you read the Psalms, there are 42 individual Psalms of lament and 16 Psalms of corporate lament—the people together. And in fact, that's a big chunk of your Psalms. Now, the Psalms take up a portion of your Bible that's called the Tehillim, which means "praises." So the book of praises is filled with lament. How can that be? We think of lament like complaint. How could a book of complaints be something that honors God? Listen to verses one through nine. We read this just a minute ago. Do these things sound like praise to you? No, they sound like complaint.

Surely, he turns against me, turns his hand against me again and again the whole day long. He's made my flesh and my skin waste away. He's broken my bones. He's besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation. He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead all day long. — Lamentations 3:1-9

I mean, all these verses—don't they sound to our ears like complaint? How can this be praise?

Well, in scripture it's different from English. In English, the words lament and complaint are kind of used interchangeably, but not in the Bible. In the Bible, complaint and lament are used in very different ways and in very different contexts. Let me show you this.

In the book of Exodus, the people of God are being led by Moses out of slavery in Egypt, through the desert to the promised land. We read there that they begin to complain against God. Complaint—assuming the worst about God. "God just wants to kill us. He brought us out here in the desert just to destroy us." The people who had been dramatically rescued from Egypt, who are being taken by a pillar of fire and cloud to the promised land, are complaining against God. They think God is a villain. Their complaints are a way of testing God.

But in Lamentations, it's very different. In Lamentations, the writer asks God to answer according to his own unfailing love. According to him being the God of justice and compassion. "God, this is what I know you're like, and it doesn't match my circumstances."

See, a complaint is an accusation against God that maligns his character. A lament is an appeal to God based on his character. You can see this in Lamentations three. The writer is putting God on the hook. He's looking around.

He's seeing all this anguish. He's saying that verses one through nine start with "he"—God has done these things. He's riding around saying, "God, you allow this to happen. How can that be? I'm in anguish over what I see. Yet, I know you're real and you're good. What gives?"

You know, we can hear this in our wrestling with our racial history in America. In fact, we need to hear this. How can a good God let these atrocities happen? How could these atrocities be done to my people? Or done by my people? How come these horrible things being perpetuated by people who love this book and love my Savior? Those are questions we need to ask.

See, lament allows us to sit in the tension but to never sit alone. To sit with the Lord. This is who I know you are, Lord. This is what I see and I'm in pain over it. That's such a different way of dealing with pain or sadness or our racial history than what the world offers. We're not just remembering just to remember. We're not remembering to blame or even rehearse pain. We're remembering with God in view.

Remembering with God in view means to enter into a place of tension with the Lord—with God in the picture—and it actually honors Him to do so. That's why I'd say this is part of praise: saying, "I see you, I'm wrestling with you."

Lament as Prayer for God to Act

Second, lament is a prayer for God to act. Lament in the Bible is not ever simply just an outlet for frustration. It may prove to be beneficial in and of itself, but lament is a form of prayer. Prayer is never passive. It is bold. It is active.

Many of the laments in the Psalms and in this book are prayers for God to act and to intervene. God, please show up. That's why the words "petition" and "hear" are repeated over and over in the Psalms of Lament and in the book of Lamentations. Lord, hear us. It's a cry.

The New Testament takes us further. Doesn't Jesus tell us to pray, to cry out to God? And that's never just for our own rehearsing of our sadnesses. Jesus tells us when we do so, we are participating in the coming of the kingdom of God.

What do we want God to do? This is the question we should be asking in light of the racial wounds that we see in our nation. What is it that we really want God to do? We sang it this morning: What are we seeing? Heal us. Heal us, Lord. Come by your power.

You know, if there's anything that should be absolutely undeniable about the last five years, it's that our racial wounds as a country are not healed. You know the names: Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ferguson, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd—so many more. How many more? How many more deaths do we need to convince us that there is a gaping wound, racially defined, in our country? It's not going to go away.

Can we lament? Can we remember? Can we cry out for God to work? We need to be like your little kids who burst into your bedroom at 3 AM and they want mom or dad. God invites us to that very kind of prayer: to burst into His bedroom and say, "God, why? Why is it still like this? We beg for you to heal us."

Lament as Pathway to Intimacy with God

It's important to distinguish between lament and despair. See, the posture of Christians is one of hope. It's one of saying, "We're on the way but we're not there. God is taking us somewhere. It's a pilgrim journey. We're on the road and we're not there yet, but we know we're going somewhere."

I'm not there yet, but I will be. See, despair says, "No use keeping going. This path is leading to nowhere." Despair is a rejection of the pilgrim life of wayfaring. Despair is giving up. It's sitting down on the road and saying, "It didn't lead anywhere. There's no New Jerusalem in the end."

But lament is different. Lament is hopeful. Lament says, "Man, my face is covered in tears. I'm crying out for God to come and to work."

Verses 21 to 24 of the Psalm—I've sung these a bunch of times before, and probably some of you have too:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

Those are nice words, but in the context of this lament, they take on a whole other meaning, don't they? It's like, "This is hard, and yet God—yet God, the Lord is my portion. I hope in Him."

A lament is a prayer of hope that is wide-eyed about the reality even as it looks ahead for what God is going to do. It's groaning. You know, this is why lament has actually been the property in song, mostly of minority churches in this country.

All the spirituals that came out of the pre-Civil War era, all of the spirituals and songs that are crying out "God deliver us. Take us to the promised land." There's something deeply connected and hopeful even as it's honest about the present. See, lament is actually a place for intimacy with God. Meeting God even as you're longing.

You know, it's funny about the white church. The white church has not been a church that has been really marked by a lot of lament and this is because the white church has often had a this-world focus—comfort in this life, making life good here—while minority churches in this country have not had that luxury. They've said, "God, bring the new Jerusalem. Bring it now." You know, white people, we've been shy about lament about our racial past because it makes us feel bad. It makes us feel guilty, implicated. But in doing so, we're missing out. We've missed out. We're denying the history we're connected with that we commonly own in our country, in our families, in our church. We're denying ourselves a place to experience God in a place of pain. We're denying the goodness of what God promises to bring His people. We're missing out and poorer for it. We're missing out on a place of intimacy that God would give us and meet us in because we want to pretend. We prefer historical amnesia to meeting God in a place of tension and hard truth. We both want this world too much to be our home and we deny the power and the beauty of what's to come.

See, the end of Lamentations has this cry, longing for the future. He says this:

But You, O Lord, reign forever. Your throne endures to all generations. Why do you forget us forever? Why do you forsake us for so many days? Restore us. Restore us, Lord.

Lament finally is participation in the pain of others. It's not only for those who are suffering but it is solidarity with the suffering. We love our neighbor when we allow their stories to impact our lives. When we allow their experience of pain to become the substance of our prayers. Solidarity is one of our biggest goals in cross-cultural discipleship as a church.

See, the book of Lamentations, what we read today in chapter three is all personal. But in chapter four, the pronouns change from "me" and "my" and "mine" and "I" to "us" and "we." It goes from personal to corporate. The Bible word for fellowship in Greek is Koinonia. Maybe you've heard that before. Koinonia. A lot of times in the modern church that means punching cookies in the fellowship hall, right? That's what it means. But authentic fellowship, authentic Koinonia is the sharing of the life in Christ between His family members. See, it's when we change the pronouns from "me" and "my" and "mine" to "us" and "we."

A Challenge Before Us

This is what is before us, CTK. I think this is really what's before us. Will we enter into the pain of our neighbors? Will we be willing to remember our history? Just a few generations back we'd be able to remember our history and lament before the Lord together for the sake of others. Will we learn to lament?

See, the racial amnesia of the church, particularly the white church, continues to do so much damage. It's damage to our neighbors. We pretend something wasn't really real, didn't really impact our lives. It's done damage to ourselves. It robs us of dealing with our past and being able to move forward in healing. It has done damage to our witness. Look at the church in America. We're in the caboose of the train talking about racial justice. We're the very last to this conversation. We're the tail light where we should be the headlight.

But there's a type of remembering which is a pathway to healing. This is why I'm going to give you a couple action points. This is why we've created pathways for our congregation coming up this week to learn our history. We're going to have two seminars Tuesday night, Wednesday night on Zoom. We really encourage you to join in. They're free. We're going to hear from two experts. One about the whitewashing of Christianity and church history in general, and then the next night about our denomination and our racial history. We need to know those things. You can't deal with what you don't know.

This is why we do racial equity institute in our church. That's why we do the workshops—you know, they're not perfect. They're not coming from a Christian perspective. We don't say everything that they have to say about the solutions they offer are right. But you know what they tell? They tell another side of American history that most of us never learned in school and we need to know our history.

I also want to encourage you to know your family history. Maybe your family walked the Trail of Tears. Maybe some of your family down the line was in an internment camp or owned slaves or was enslaved. Here's my challenge to you.

Do some family history. Ask some questions. Don't be okay with just not knowing. To remember and to lament.

And finally, here's my challenge to you. I want to invite you to write a lament. You probably never done this before and it's going to feel really awkward, but you have the book of Lamentations. It's your Swiss army knife. You can look at that and say, what do I need to say here?

We're going to have a night coming up a week and a half from today on a Wednesday night. I think it's March 3. We're going to come together on a Zoom call for corporate lament. I want to invite you to spend some time writing a lament. Lament over our history. Lament over our racial wounds. We need to do this together.

Jesus as Our Model of Solidarity

And finally, let me remind you of the one who chose solidarity with us. Jesus chose the pathway of solidarity with us. One of the most famous words of Jesus is on the cross where he says:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? — Matthew 27:46

He didn't just make up those words in that moment. That's from a lament Psalm in the Old Testament:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? — Psalm 22

A lot of scholars and theologians study that. They're like, okay, what does this tell us about what happens in Jesus's relationship with the Father? This is all they look at the trinity, but it tells us something else. Jesus in that moment is saying the words where he's identifying the cries of his own people. He's identifying in solidarity with his people. Those are the cries of his people, the Israelites. His death was in many ways the ultimate act and prayer of solidarity.

I wonder though, what if Jesus had chosen to take the American way instead? Forget, let's just move on. What if Jesus had just chosen to move on? So grateful he didn't. Instead, what does scripture tell us about Jesus?

He is a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. — Isaiah 53

He chose to identify with us. He chose to become like us, to grieve with us, to lay down his life for us so we might know solidarity with him in the fellowship of his glory. It's part of his family.

So I wonder what this means for us this morning. I wonder what this means for you. Will you follow in the pathway of your Savior? Will you be willing to lament? Will you be willing to identify? Will you be willing to do this work for the sake of Jesus, for the love of your neighbors, for our healing?

Would you pray with me? Father, we're broken people and we live in a broken land and it's painful for us to talk about these things. I know it's painful for my brothers and sisters to hear about these things, but Lord, we want healing. Come heal our land. Start with your church. Teach us to face our past, to weep tears, to walk in solidarity, and to follow our Savior. In Jesus name, amen.