LCS Chapel, 12/12

Kindertotenlieder; Songs of Grief

Good morning! It's good to be with you all this morning, sharing the Christmas excitement and getting ready to wrap things up before break. There are some verses in the Christmas story that rarely receive any attention, right in the middle of Matthew 2. "Then Herod became furious when he saw that he had been tricked by the magi, and he sent and killed all the male children two years and under according to the time he had ascertained from the magi. Then was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah--A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more." Weeping and loud lamentation--this morning I'd like to think about lamentation and lament with you in a fresh way, or maybe even for the first time. We'll read some more of the prophet Jeremiah, from the book of Lamentations--a good place to think about lament--I'll share some of my own story, and even toss in a few thoughts about music.

To the book of Lamentations. First I'm going to paint a very serious, bleak picture here, so settle and steel yourselves. This is an upsetting story from the Old Testament, and I first read it earlier this year. I was doing some grim reading, a pass through Lamentations in Latin. Lamentations was written at the lowest moment in Israel's history. After years of warnings, the great defeat had come. The glorious temple was destroyed, Jerusalem was ransacked, her armies utterly defeated, and whatever survivors were leftover from the rapes and executions were dragged off to Babylon as slaves. Only a very few Israelites were left in Jerusalem. There was a deadly plague afoot and no doctors. Their borders were completely undefensed. They had no food, and no prospect of crops.

The 2nd chapter of Lamentations is set amid this chaos. The prophet Jeremiah describes how the gates of the city are smashed and sunk into the ground and the walls have been torn down. He describes how the noise of the city--the bustle of footsteps and conversations and wheels and motion--are all gone silent. And then Jeremiah talks about something which is so terribly, terribly wrong, that it puts the taste of bile in his mouth--something so evil that most of us shake just thinking of it--the death of the children.

He says that the children and the babies have fallen and are lying in the streets with hunger. He describes their little voices as they beg their mothers for food, and even in speaking the request their voice leaves them forever. This is absolutely horrible stuff. Feeling physically sick, on the verge of starving to death, with his city plundered, his whole world upside down, Jeremiah is helplessly watching children die.

So what does he do? Here's what the text says in Latin: Consurge, which means, rise, in principio vigilarum in nocte, at the start of the night watches, and lauda. (sp) Do you know what lauda means? At first I thought it was a mistake, and you won't find any English translations that have it rendered this way, because it seems so bizarre. Rise in the middle of the night, and praise. Rise at the beginning of the night watches and praise. Pour out your heart like water before the presence of YHWH.

A lament, by definition, is a song or a poem of grief, especially deep grief. There is in the Old Testament, and especially in the Psalms, a tradition of lament which is beautiful almost beyond words. This tradition was an integral part of the daily lives of countless faithful Jews, including Jesus and the early Christians. The practice of lament was passed down in the music of the Christian church for hundreds of years, but I'm afraid it is nearly lost on us in the modern church.

In church we sing some of the psalms, especially the happy ones. We sing the psalms with nice tunes, the songs in major keys. "I could sing of your love forever." "The Lord is my shepherd." "Blessed be your name." Great psalms, great tunes. But they aren't the only psalms. For example, there are also historical psalms. We don't see much of these, and that's a topic for another chapel. And did you know a full 1/3 of the 150 Psalms are psalms of lament?

Do you know one place you'll almost never hear a lament? In a modern Christian church. I'm the choir director at a church up in Gates, and I'm going to tell you something that church musicians know. Even if it wasn't true in my experience, I'll give you some good church musician insider information as the as the son of two church musicians and the husband of a church musician who is also the daughter of two church musicians, and as the brother of five different church musicians--Christians don't want to do lament. But I think we need to.

Laments, the sad songs, are really a drag. They can be very boring, they completely kill any sense of excitement in a service, and they make everybody feel terrible. I haven't done a formal count, but I can tell you that my church choir hasn't sung more than maybe one or two songs in a minor key since before Easter last year. We sang lots of happy songs on Easter morning, and don't misunderstand me, I do LOVE those songs.

But in the Bible, and specifically in the book of Psalms, which is the song book of the Bible, there is so much more. One-third of the psalms (50 of the 150) in the Old Testament are classified as songs of lament. That means that if you sang through all the psalms in the Bible for say, three songs a week (you'd get through the whole Psalter in a year that way) every third song you'd sing would be a song of lament. At your church, is every third song a song of grief? Is every third song a song in a minor key?

Of course not! No one wants to come in on Sunday morning sing two songs about how great and glorious our God is, and then sing some dirge about how they are weeping their hearts out in a pit.

Until they do. People don't want to sing a song of lament...until they lose their job. Or they're in the middle of the divorce. Or their Mom dies. Or their sister gets cancer.

And that's what happened to my wife and me. I'd like to share part of the story of how we learned about lament, a story we've never shared publicly. Last summer, we were visiting her parents in southern Pennsylvania. Visiting her parents is great, because it means that we get a free babysitter. We left our son James with them for the night, and we went out for a fancy dinner at a bed and breakfast. While we were there, my wife, who was eight weeks pregnant with our second child, had a miscarriage.

The world crashed down on us. We had just told her parents the night before that they were going to be grandparents again. We had started saying prayers for "new baby" with James when we put him to bed at night. And then, we were in a cold, sterile hospital stall. And just like that, there was no new baby coming. There was no new grandchild coming. There was no longer a baby brother or sister. There was church the next morning. And when the song leader, who is a friend of ours, started to dance onstage and attempt to rouse the congregation up to a new pitch of excitement, I was silent. I stood, stone-faced, next to my silent, grieving wife. We were towards the front, and after the first upbeat number he said something to the effect "Why aren't you all happy today? Aren't you excited to praise the Lord?"

What do we do to engage in true biblical lament? What do we do when we meet soul-numbing grief, or genuine evil in the world? Some of you may already have known griefs even sharper than a lost pregnancy. If you've known any grief, you know that a cheap fix won't make it better. Too often the Christian reaction to grief is a well-meant but unhelpful cliche. We advise someone how to feel better, whether they want to or not. Or we offer some religious solution for why it happened. Now, let me be very clear here in this dangerous territory. I absolutely support efforts to bring joy to every corner of God's earth--this is part of being Christian people, the people of Easter morning. I also believe in the philosophical task of wrestling with the question of evil. What is it? Why is it? How is it? But--and this is the important part--the Christian tradition of lament is not concerned with either of those tasks. To be clear, bringing good news of joy and dealing with the Question of Evil are both important. However, neither ought to substitute for the biblical tradition of singing and reading lament. If you feel confused about how you're supposed bring the joy of Jesus and weep with those in pain, remember the words of St. Paul in the book of Romans--rejoice with those who rejoice, and mourn with those who mourn. He doesn't say, rejoice with those who rejoice and make those who are mourning feel so awkward that they sense they aren't a part of the community until they've sorted themselves out and gotten over it.

This means that we cannot stigmatize those people who are in the midst of lament. Whether you are a Christian or not, we will all come to grief in this world, and that does not mean that the gospel has failed, or that you somehow haven't believed it with sufficient vigor. To live with pain and grief and insecurity is simply to be alive in this world. If you grieve, are you a bad Christian? Absolutely not! This is why we have the songs of lament. If I can say something rather dangerous, it may be more perilous to your soul if you never experienced grief or pain. If you take seriously the notion that we are to be to the world what Jesus was for us, it is precisely in going to the place of pain and carrying it onto ourselves, as Jesus did on the cross, that we best show the world who Jesus is--this is why Paul rejoiced in his sufferings.

So what, then, is the purpose of lament, if it isn't to make things better or to solve the problem? My favorite writer, the Anglican bishop N.T. Wright calls scriptural lament "the reaffirmation of the one true god in an evil world." True lament builds up Christian community side by side with true Christian joy and still supports the community's grieving members. True lament does not deny that there is evil in the world...and it does not explain or try to understand the evil in the world. With Christians you should be able to laugh at a wedding toast one week and weep at a funeral the next. When the psalmist asks "How long, O YHWH, will you forget me forever?" the answer is not a syllogism, but the affirmation "When YHWH restores the fortunes of his people Zion then..." When the psalmist asks "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me," there is no actual answer why. Even on the cross, there is a thundering silence. Just the next line of the psalm "Yet you are holy...in you our fathers trusted." I began by talking about the Latin word lauda, and I'll return to that in a minute. First another Latin word, Credo. It means I believe, and one of the ways that the church through history has done the process of lament is to say together the Credo, the apostle's creed which begins with the affirmation "I believe." When I was in deepest grief, I took enormous comfort from doing the reaffirmation of the one true god in an evil world through the creed. Credo in one God, the father almighty.

I have three suggestions for you today. They are simple, but difficult. Please hear what I say, pray about it, think about it, talk about it with your parents and your pastors. In ten or twenty years you in this room will be ministering in churches, sitting on committees, and picking out worship music. Consider these. First, let it be said explicitly every week that your community is a place where people are safe to be joyful and safe to grieve. If you believe, as I do, that people should be able to meet Jesus in their grief at your church, make sure that you say so, and make sure that no one tries to "fix" someone who's grieving in some unwise way. Secondly, make sure that a full one-third of your psalm readings (different denominations use reading schedules, or "lectionaries" in different ways, so that number is a little fluid) and one-third of your musical selections deal with lament. It's really tempting to beg off of this. But really, this request for one-third is just a request to stay faithful to scripture. The Holy Spirit in its wisdom gave us spiritual songs that were one-third songs of grief. Our current percentages are not faithful to the scriptures we were given. Thirdly, I encourage you to insist on saying the creeds together. We're going to do this in a moment, and I know that some communities aren't comfortable with unison congregational speaking. That's okay--you can sing settings of the creeds, you can have a single reader read them, or you could even project them on a screen. No matter how you do it, find a way to constantly reaffirm the Shema, the confessions, the Nicene and Apostolic creeds. It's good for your congregation, and it's absolutely vital to anyone who's grieving.

Once more to Lamentations.  As Jeremiah sees God's city beaten and plundered and ravaged, as he himself starves and as he watches the children die, he rises in the early night and says lauda. He praises YHWH, and pours out his heart as water.

In January of last year, my wife and I were once again in Pennsylvania. We were there for Christmas break, and after the heartbreak of the summer, we were determined to guard, to keep as safely as possible, to pray and protect a new baby. She was pregnant again, and again, she had a miscarriage in her second month. We drove back to New York in a snowstorm and saw her doctor. We wept again, and I bought a single candle at Wegmans after I picked up James from my brother's house. We put James to bed, and for the second time I explained to him that something had happened, and we would not pray for new baby, but we would pray for Mommy to feel better that night. And then, in the darkness of a January night in New York, we lit the single candle, set it on our kitchen table and sat before it in silence, watching it flicker and burn down. The minutes and the hours passed, and the snow fell outside, and as it burned lower my wife stood up and went to blow out that one light. She stood over it, and then told me she couldn't do it, and left me alone in the cold kitchen.

Rise, in the beginning of the night-watches.

I whispered "fili mi, eo sinum Dei," and I blew out the candle. I do not understand why we lost two children. I do not understand any reason for the death of a child. But in that night, I understood the meaning of lauda, and I understood true lament, as I said God is One in the midst of deepest grief.

I believe in the one true God, the maker of heaven and earth. I believe in the Messiah Jesus, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Under Pontius Pilate he was crucified, died, and was buried, he descended to the dead, and on the third day he rose again. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, he will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins. I believe in the resurrection of the body, and of life everlasting. Amen.

Not every story has a happy ending. Sometimes your wound will never fully heal. But our God is the God of new life, and for Julie and I, our story has come, after much waiting, to a place of life and hope again. On October 30th, our son Owen was born. Owen is a Welsh name, but it comes from a Greek root, eugenos. It means "well born, or born to gladness." In a bitter and snowy world, our God brings and births new life and new joy. Please pray with me...

"Heavenly Father, we praise you for the words you have entrusted to us through your scriptures and for the wisdom you have passed down through the many faithful who have gone before us. We ask that you would teach us how best to stay faithful to your words, how to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice. Give us wisdom as we go through griefs ourselves and walk beside othesr who are grieving. May we at all times affirm that you are the true and Almighty God, and may the power of your son Jesus be evident in all we say and do, in whose name we pray these things. Amen."