Holy Lament

We will gather each Wednesday morning in Lent at 10:30 a.m. for brief worship.  The theme will be lamentations.  In the Bible space is given for people to share their pain, their sorrow, their loss, the things which cut deep in their souls.  The ministry of lamentation does not only call for each of us to identify and tell our own stories of lament, but also to show up for others to listen and hear their stories as well.  In the midst of Lamentations is a healing God who listens, loves, and moves us toward healing and new beginnings.  The first Lesson for Ash Wednesday is from the book of Joel and helps us see the connection between our suffering and lamentations and the worship of God’s people.  The blog is an edited excerpt from the book “Grace All Around Us” published by Augsburg Fortress in February 2007. 

The Hopping Locust: Worship, Lamentations and the Ordinary 

On September 11, 2002, the one year anniversary, I was about to cross the George Washington Bridge at the exact moment when the first plane hit the towers.  WQXR radio station played “Lachrymosa” (tears) from Mozart’s “Requiem.”  In that year lamentations were often expressed in the ordinary: a fire hat, a taped phone message, a vial of dust, cruciform jagged steel beams at Ground Zero. 

The book of Joel sets the lamentations of communal tragedy in the context of the ordinary.  The first part of Joel seems to be talking about a natural tragedy, and the second part about the calamity of exile endured by Israel.  It begins with a call to Lamentations: “Hear this, oh elders, give ear all inhabitants of the land.  Has such a thing happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors?  Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children, another generation.” (Joel1:2-3) 

The plague of locusts in its inexorable destruction seemed to capture the overwhelming dimension of tragedy.  It takes up the relentless, inexorable bad news of 9-11, New Orleans and Katrina, of the South Asian Tsunami, of the implacable hell in Darfur, bombs and suffering and loss and hostages and refugees in Ukraine, Gaza, migrants in our own metropolis.  Day after day following the 9-11 horror new dimensions of the tragedy became apparent.  You had a memorial for someone, then his jaw was found.  The bishop for the Gulf Coast said that over 95,000 homes are still destroyed since Katrina.  These stories wash over us wave after wave.  Joel captures it: “What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten.  What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locusts left, the destroying locust has eaten.”  (1:4) 

What made these lamentations such a tragically spiritual event in Joel was that the very means of communion with God and one another through the ordinary were destroyed: the vineyard, the fields, the oil.  Wine: “Wake up you drunkards and weep, and wail all you wine drinkers over the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.  It has laid waste my vines.”  (1:5) 

People who experienced God through manna and ordinary bread, and whose very notion of hospitality with one another and God was as companions (“con” “pan”=those with whom we share our bread) via bread had now lost that means of communion.  Bread: “Lament like a virgin dressed in sack sloth for the husband of her youth.  The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord.” (1:8)  And again, “The fields are devastated, the ground mourns, for the grain is destroyed.” (1:10) 

For people for whom ordinary oil was the sign of anointing and setting apart holy people and holy things-“thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over”-that means of communication has also withered away. Oil: “The wine dries up, the oil fails.  Be dismayed you farmers, wail you vine dressers, over the wee of the barley, for the crops of the field are ruined, the vine withers, the fig tree droops…surely joy withers away among the people.” (1:10-12) “Lachrymosa” indeed! 

And then, when the carnal things of worship have been lost, underlining the spiritual ballast of sorrow, even in the midst of deepest lament in the presence of the divine silence-even there!-we are called to liturgy.  “Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests, wail you ministers of the altar.  Come pass the night in sack cloth, you ministers of God, grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.”  (1:13)  Even in the midst of the devastation of the ordinary, primal things like joy, bread and wine, and oil, Joel tells us that worship will comprehend it all. 

I remember leading worship at New Hope, a storefront church near Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx.  Most of the members are either in recovery, or family members of those living one day at a time.  Most are also materially poor.  The congregation was about to begin a time of extended prayer and laying on of hands for healing before the liturgy of Holy Communion.  I blurted out to the pastor, “I’m standing in the need of prayer.”  The past week I had received a difficult diagnosis.  The prayer deacons went to the front by the altar.  Those asking for prayer and anointing for healing came forward to kneel.   

Wine.  Bread.  Oil.  This was the ordinary at the altar in all its hope and loss.  I knelt with other brothers and sisters.  I felt hands on my head.  They asked me to speak my pain, and I was able to say, “I’m sick and I’m afraid.”  Around me others were telling their stories, giving voice to their lamentations.  There were tears, emotional prayers, Gospel singing.  The room was noisy with the clamor of lamentation and prayer. The hands on my head were strong, anointed me with oil tracing the cross, the voices prayed for ten minutes, some in charismatic language I had never heard.  They were not able to take away my diagnosis or all of my fear, but I rested in the community of Jesus and in the promises of God.  The time of prayer, anointing, and communal lament was brought to the altar with bread and wine and all was transformed by the presence of Jesus at Holy Communion.  The ordinary transformed.   

 By taking up the loss of bread, wine and oil yet calling the people to worship Joel is telling us that healing will come through the ordinary.  Lamentations will enable true worshipfulness.  Hear these words from the Ash Wednesday first lesson: “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning.  Rend your hearts and not your clothing.  Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”  (2:12)  These words are taken up into the Eucharistic liturgy.  Every Eucharist, every Sunday liturgy is placed in the midst of lamentation and hope, of scarcity and abundance, of the holy in the ordinary. 

 This is an inclusive gathering in the liturgical house for sorrow.  “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the aged, gather the children, even infants at the breast.  Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her canopy.” (2:15-16)  We go from the chancel, where the old, old story is told again to the narthex, where the pastor shakes the hands of those who lament and hope, to the street where tragedy and paralysis await invitation into sanctified ordinary life.   

Hear Joel’s promise of the sacred in the ordinary, especially in the midst of  lamentation:  “I am sending you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied.” (2:19)   

Stephen P. Bouman
Ash Wednesday, 2024
St. Luke’s, Park Ridge