Lamentations

Lamentations.

Not a word we really use in the Western world today.

Lamentations:

noun
1.
acts of lamenting or expressing grief.

2.
Lamentations, (used with a singular verb) a book of the Bible, traditionally ascribed to Jeremiah.

Lamenting. Expressing grief.

Having read the Book of Jeremiah throughout the last month, we can easily imagine what Jeremiah and his people have to lament about. The worst has happened. Jerusalem is in ruins. Homes burnt to the ground. Families torn apart. Lives lost. The city wall demolished. Land lost. Most of the people dragged off to exile in Babylon, leaving only a remnant in Jerusalem to keep things ticking over. A whole way of life lost. A group of survivors, including the prophet Jeremiah, gone south to Egypt in search of protection. God’s people scattered.

These Lamentations are poems written to give words to their corporate and individual grief. Because grief has to be expressed. These poems gives words to this grief. They provide a language for pain. The Jewish teachers call these poems ‘Wailings’.

Five short gut-wrenching poems written by the survivors of the destruction of Jerusalem stumbling among the rubble. Different voices – a Narrator, a Man, a Woman. Bewildered. Grieving. Fearful for what may be. Desperate. Defeated.

It’s not just those that have gone away who are in exile. Yes, the people of God in Babylon are in geographical exile. But the people who remain find themselves in exile too. Emotional exile. Spiritual exile. Everything they believed about their God has been challenged. They don’t know Him any more. They don’t recognise their surroundings. Everything has changed. Everything about their lives has changed. They themselves have changed. They don’t know where they belong anymore. They’ve lost people. Lost land. Lost homes. Lost jobs. Lost national identity.

Grief is all about loss. Not just death but all kinds of loss. There’s a shift. Something changes. and we mourn that change.

We have all experienced loss of one kind or another. Loss that we carry around with us as grief and pain and heartache. Maybe from a long, long time ago, maybe from this morning – these feelings stay fresh and raw for a lifetime. We think that by burying them deep inside and not acknowledging their existence that they will go away. But they don’t. They creep up on us and catch us unawares at the most unlikely of times.

Maybe what we need to express this loss. To find a language for our pain. To write our own lamentations. Or to find another language – dance, movement, singing, playing an instrument, kickboxing, drawing or painting…whatever works for us.

This is what we are going to explore this month.

We’re going to learn how to lament.