October 27, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.

The Necessity of Lament

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Lamentations 1:1–12

“How lonely sits the city that was once full of people!”

What does that remind you of? It reminds me of Detroit. The abandoned homes and warehouses, block after block of vacant neighborhoods with no residents, no utilities, no hope.

“How lonely sits the city that was once full of people!”

There is a question I feel like Christian people should be able to answer: “What is it that’s so special about the Bible?” Today I’m going to offer you one of my answers. The brilliance of the Bible is not that it tells good stories about things that happened a long time ago, but that it tells stories about things that are still happening. I’m willing to call the Bible divinely inspired not because it is flawless or because it provides a list of questions and answers for every situation we face.

I believe it is divinely inspired because of the wisdom within it that is timeless.

In the face of the most desperate challenges in the human situation, the Bible continues to offer a word that means something. It helps us to face the human predicaments that trouble not just one generation but every one that comes along. In doing that, it reminds us that we are not alone, that in every time and place, our deepest needs and concerns are not ours alone, but they have been felt and endured by people who have gone before us.

That’s what I’m going to talk about today. Especially when times are tough, we tend to feel alone. We look at the world around us and assume that our troubles are unique. Whether the problem is a political or social issue or a personal one, a natural inclination most of us carry around is to assume that no one understands. No one understands the suffering I’m going through, the despair of a loss I have faced. The Bible challenges that idea and always has. We are not alone, says God. The challenges we face are deep, but they are endurable. And we know that is so because of the stories of the people who have gone before us: they have endured, and so can we.

Detroit is an illustration of this tendency to feel as if we are alone. We’re all somewhat familiar with the situation there. We’ve read the editorials, seen the pictures, maybe you’ve visited and experienced it firsthand. Maybe you’ve debated with your friends whether Detroit is worth trying to save. And we’ve heard Detroit’s challenges described as unique: it is the first city of its size and scope to file for bankruptcy. But maybe there are parts of Detroit’s story that are not so unique, and that’s why I began today with a quotation from an ancient text: “How lonely sits the city that was once full of people!”

In 587 BC, the city of Jerusalem was sacked by the Babylonians. This was the culmination of a lengthy siege of the city, in a manner of warfare that is difficult for modern folks like us to imagine. The Babylonians would have surrounded the walled city and cut off supplies of food and water. When Jerusalem was sacked, it wasn’t just something that happened all of a sudden; it was the culmination of a siege that went on for years and of all the hunger and poverty and desperation that accompanied it.

The Babylonians didn’t just want to destroy the city; they wanted to destroy its culture and religious identity. So they destroyed the Temple and desecrated the elements of worship belonging to the people. And when they had truly made the city appear unrecoverable, they did one more thing: they took the people away into exile. Not everyone, but most of the people who would have had any hope of contributing to the rebuilding of the city. They took the people with money and with education; the religious authorities, who, absent the relics and holy books that had been destroyed, were the only repositories of human tradition. They took the governing authorities who knew how to run the city. And all of these people were marched out of the city and back to Babylon, where they were forced to abandon their traditions and live as Babylonians for two generations.

This is what is being referenced when the author of Lamentations writes, “How lonely sits the city that was once full of people!” When we read about Detroit, when we see abandoned architecture and wholesale flight to the suburbs; when we see churches that have long since closed, great theaters that have become parking lots, and the sale of great artwork as an attempt to finance basic city services, it is hard not to agree that there must be some strong comparisons to be drawn between Jerusalem and Detroit.

My intention in speaking to you about this today is not to make an argument about what should be done about Detroit. There are plenty of people already engaged in that exercise, and I’m sure most of them are more qualified to make a judgment than I am. I’d like to talk about something else. You’ll notice that the reaction to the fall of Jerusalem, the quote I read, is spoken of in a book called “Lamentations.” It’s not called the book of “Hope for the Future” or the book of “Better Luck Next Time” or the book of “Hey, Things Could Be Worse.” It’s called Lamentations. And that’s just what it is: words of lament and sorrow over something great that was loved and lost. The message that comes from this text, which was essential for Jerusalem, and means something for Detroit and for all other kinds of situations, is that grief is an essential part of healthy human experience.

Because many of us have little direct experience or expertise on the downfall of cities, the author of Lamentations makes a smart linguistic decision. He describes the people of Jerusalem like an individual person:

How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal.
She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has no one to comfort her.

A widow. In the ancient world, she would have been the most vulnerable person imaginable, but the image still has power. Grief and loss are felt with such power and presence by people who have lost a loved one. A widow or a widower. And many of us may not know what it is like to live in a devastated city, but we’ve all met people who are heartbroken.

What other situations can you think of where someone might feel this sense of loss?

A person who was deeply invested in a profession and has retired or been laid off
A parent whose children have gone off to school and left an empty nest
A homeless person who was once successful and wealthy but who lost it all
A person who was involved in a terrible accident and lost the ability to walk

In any one of these situations, you can imagine the palpable sense of grief and loss we hear in the book of Lamentations. These times of loss are part of life; they always have been. But we do a poor job, in the world and culture in which we live, of being willing to hear the voices of lament, of allowing people to grieve the way they need to. We don’t spend much time reading Lamentations in worship because we’re afraid you won’t have any fun and won’t come back next week.

Psychologists will tell you that grief happens in all kinds of ways, on a variety of different timetables and schedules, but that there are two elements that are consistently a part of healthy grieving, and those things are remembering and then reinvesting in life (see Paul Giblin and Andrea Hug, 2006). We have to take the time to lament, to remember, to appreciate what is missed about the person or thing who has left us, to experience those authentic feelings of sadness, to talk about them with people who will listen. And we have to do that so that, in remembering how blessed and good life can be, we gradually move into a desire to reinvest in life, to again find ways to construct new ways of embracing the life we have been given for as long as we can have it.

I don’t know if Detroit will be saved or reinvented, but I have a feeling that if it can, that will happen because people remember enough about the glory days of Detroit, not to want it to be just like it was, but to want to do the difficult work of imagining and realizing something new in the place of what has been lost.

I believe that because of something we know about the Bible. The Bible started out as an oral tradition—people told the stories from one person or group to another; it was a living tradition. There is strong evidence that the first time these stories appear in written form happened during the time after Jerusalem was sacked. It was only in the face of real loss and devastation that the people of Israel started asking questions about who they were and what they believed and started to write down their story. And they stared with loss. The visceral sadness they felt helped them to dig deep enough to find out who they really were and to begin to tell their story.

My word to you this night, if you are grieving a loss or if you know someone who is, is remember and recognize the value of lamentation. Whether your loss has to do with a child, a loved one, an ability, a job—allow the feelings associated with that loss to be heard. We worship a God who includes the precious words of loss in the collection of words we call our Holy Scriptures. God walks with us through times of grief, so that one day, when we are ready, we can reinvest in life. Amen.