SOLIDARITY with the SUFFERING

 AUGUST 23, 2022

How did writing your own prayer of lament go?



Psalm 12

For the director of music. 

According to sheminith.

A psalm of David.

1 Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore;
those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
2 Everyone lies to their neighbor;
they flatter with their lips
but harbor deception in their hearts.

3 May the Lord silence all flattering lips
and every boastful tongue—
4 those who say,
“By our tongues we will prevail;
our own lips will defend us—who is lord over us?”

5 “Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord.
“I will protect them from those who malign them.”
6 And the words of the Lord are flawless,
like silver purified in a crucible,
like gold refined seven times.

7 You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
and will protect us forever from the wicked,
8 who freely strut about
when what is vile is honored by the human race.

To lament is to express deep sorrow,
grief, or regret.

There is a danger in the practice of biblical lament that we focus only on ourselves and our desperation to be free from a struggle that causes great sorrow. Now, these Individual personal Prayers of Lament are important for our relationship with God, and our spiritual growth.

Yet, we must not neglect the so-called Community Prayers of Lament. These are prayers that deal with societal issues, injustices, situations that reveal a national crisis for all people whether we are directly impacted or not. Psalm 12 is an example of a community lament, expressing sadness over widespread sin: “Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore; / those who are loyal have vanished from the human race. / Everyone lies to their neighbor; / they flatter with their lips / but harbor deception in their hearts” (Psalm 12:1–2). Ever feel like the Psalmist does in these lines? When God's people are faced with evil, injustice, oppression and turmoil, the Biblical response is often lament.


What I want us to think about today is that to Lament is to participate in the pain of others. Sometimes I read a Psalm for my devotions and often, maybe this happens to you as well, it seems like the Psalm’s theme has nothing to do with my life. Its words do not fit where I am. You see sometimes I am so self focused I look for God’s word to speak to my stuff. That is my confession for today.

I want to add though that the more I have read and studied and reflected on the Psalms, I have been reminded that these Songs were used in the worship settings of God’s people. These became the words, prayers, songs of the community. Why is that important? Well I believe its importance lies in that when I use the Psalms it places me among the historical community of God’s people and that makes my devotional focus larger than just my own space.

Here is what God has shown me. Maybe I was not being pursued by enemies or hemmed in on every side, or attacked, but what about the people in Syria waiting in refugee camps, or people in Ukraine and Russia suffering loss of life and possessions, or oppressive attitudes that are directed at people through racism or sexism, or the many other “isms” in our part of the world? What about the neighbor who is dealing with a cancer diagnosis, or struggling with loneliness or mental health issues, or living in a context of abuse? What about the people struggling with food insecurity in our city and county? The more I learned to pray outside the box of my own stuff, the more I began to realize that praying these Psalms of Lament helped me to develop a world view that placed in my space a global perspective for others.

Lament is not only for the suffering; it is for solidarity with the suffering. Lament allows the pain to connect us to our neighbors. We are called to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn. Our tears are our prayers when we can’t speak, a sign of our vulnerability, and a response to violence. We love our neighbor when we allow their experience of pain to become the substance of our prayer. This, after all, is what Jesus did for us. The strange act of asking why God had forsaken Him has been analyzed by scholars and theologians for what it means. But what we often overlook is that Jesus was praying the words of Psalm 22 precisely because that was the prayer of many Jewish sufferers in the first century. Jesus, dying the horrible and shameful death on the cross prayed in solidarity with the suffering. Indeed, His death was the ultimate prayer of solidarity.

I conclude with some words of Barbara Holmes, “When we are confronted with the horror of our violence-laden society, our mindless killing of innocents, we shift from individual sob and solitary whine to collective moans. . . . In similar fashion, the Holy Spirit groans prayers on our behalf. In the Epistle to the Romans (8:26, NIV) Paul states, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit . . . intercedes for us through wordless groans. . . . Throughout Romans chapter 8, Paul writes of sacred utterances of creation and humankind in crisis. We don’t know what will emerge from this time of tarrying, but we do know that something is being born. Like a woman in labor, there is expectation in the darkness, anticipation amid the suffering, hope permeating the pain. Something new is being born and something old is being transformed.

Let us pray the words of promise from today's Psalm

“You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
and will protect us forever from the wicked”