The “celebrations of life” people hold now pretend that what has happened isn’t real. The funeral homes with flowers everywhere—flowers that themselves will be dead in mere days—cover with their sickening sweetness the stench of death in a corpse we’ve filled with formaldehyde to pretend none of this is really happening….
Read MoreThroughout the Scriptures we see the righteous suffering. St. Paul had his thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to harass him. Job experienced the death of his children, the scorn of his wife, the rebuke of his friends, and the wasting away of his flesh. His days were spent on the dunghill, and his nights filled with bitter weeping. Abraham and Sarah spent years in barren sorrow. Isaac and Rebekah grieved over their wayward children. Jesus said that His followers should expect tribulation in this world. And St. Paul told Timothy that everyone who desires to live godly will suffer persecution….
Read MoreThe first Psalm of Lament we looked at, Psalm 6, came from fear of God’s permanent rejection after the psalmist had sinned grievously. Then last week’s Psalm was a national lament after a military defeat. Despite their fidelity to YHWH, He had still allowed them to suffer a great loss.
Tonight’s Psalm of Lament is of a still different type: it is a lament after the destruction of the Temple….
Read MoreLamentation doesn’t fit the American religion. We are inculcated to seek success. Prosperity comes from work.
In the Psalter, however, we have genres that do not fit the American mindset. The Psalms address not only thanksgiving and praise, but desolation and grief, guilt and loss.
The Psalms of Lament teach us to see ourselves, in the words of Jürgen Moltmann, “Limping, but blessed”…
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