Pent 17C-2019
Be prepared for something that is not stereotypical, modern, Protestant, or dry-eyed. Be prepared to be overcome.
The first time I experienced such a spectacle in Canada, I was a Vicar in Sault Ste. Marie, ON. I was with a family in the city cemetery concluding a burial, when a group of women dressed in black, heads covered, scurried by to a grave not so far away. The women huddled together and began murmuring. As we departed, the women, speaking Italian, grew louder and louder, lamenting, crying, wailing; as one they moved in agitation and angst. Later, I learned that the women were professional mourners, attending to their practice for days or weeks following a funeral. The practice of the community was to wail for the dead, to give voice to the grief of the family, and to articulate the loss for the whole community. Although outside of anything I had witnessed, and strange as I thought it might have been at the time; the dedication of the women and their freedom to openly express deep emotion has stayed with me. I now appreciate and see value in the practice.
A couple of years ago the New York Times interviewed anthropologist James Wilce about his research study on lamentation. He noted that lamentation, wailing, and other corporate dramatic expressions of grief and sadness are disappearing out of people’s practice. Many of us never experience graveside wailers, in fact many of us try really hard not to cry at a funeral. Somehow stereotypical, modern, Protestant funerals are quiet dry-eyed affairs, where we try so hard to be stoic, show a stiff upper lip, be so-called strong for our families. Wilce believes we are losing an important way to express human sadness and grief. Wilce found a group of people, the Karelians – a people of Northern Finland, who to this day, teach workshops on lamenting. The lamenting practice is taken outside just funeral practices and is used to address a diversity of emotional hardship including illness, divorce, relocation, reconciliation.
The workshops teach that short phrases, descending melodies, and the alliteration of words help the human spirit to process sadness and grief. Vocal expressions of unpolished words interrupted by sobs connect one to the rawness of their own emotions and connect them to the larger community. Wilce wrote the phrase I began the sermon with, to describe how he experienced the Karelian workshop, where he worked through the grief of his sister’s death from years before. He wrote: “Be prepared for something that is not stereotypical, modern, Protestant or dry-eyed. Be prepared to be overcome.”
Today is a break from nine weeks of scripture from Jeremiah. It is one of the only times we turn to the book of Lamentations to hear the word of the Lord. Although not likely written by Jeremiah, it is in the time that follows his prophecy where the people are returning to exile. Lamentations and Psalm 137, chanted earlier, go hand in hand. Both are songs written around 586 BCE by the waters of Babylon. This means that the people of Israel are in exile in an alien land, dispersed, taken there by the Edomites and the Babylonians. From the songs, listeners rightly gather that the Temple, Zion, has been destroyed and lays in ruin. The songs are laments, wailings, sung to express the grief and sadness of the people living by unknown waters.
The five poems in Lamentations are in the qina metre, a specific form of poetry that has a rhythm when read. It sounds like a dirge; in fact the Hebrew word qina can be translated lamentation or dirge. The function of a dirge is to express and try to come to terms with grief. And what grief the people are experiencing. In verse 2 and 3 of Psalm 137, the people’s dirge conveys that their captors are taunting them to sing, to sing one of their happy songs of thanksgiving or praise, of celebration in the glory of the Temple that once was; their hearts and spirits are so devoid of such song, they sing unaccompanied as harps have been hung in the trees, not used.
Through the centuries Psalms have continued to be part of our practice, sung in simple chant, to allow the words to filter through us and express emotions we might not even realize we are holding. Psalm 137 is read in synagogues in ordinary liturgy, particularly at times when the Roman destruction of the temple in 70 CE is remembered. Psalms continue to be an active practice – not yet lost – and so important because exile, emotions of sadness and grief are very real and present; despite our denial and attempts at stoicism.
Over the years, some communities have dropped the Psalm from their Sunday morning services, suggesting that they are outdated, use words and thoughts not held by a modern world, and in fact say some passages are plain inappropriate. An example is verse 9, the ending of the Psalm of the day; happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock.
But in our context, the passage is real: in Jedwabne, Poland, in 1941, 1600 Jews were killed – men’s beards were caught on fire, babies were killed in mothers’ arms. Before death people were dashed and beaten, then forced to sing and dance, before being corralled into a barn that was set on fire by non-Jewish townspeople.
And yes, we experience exile in so many ways: bemoaning our situation and thinking or articulating thoughts of revenge. Exile is experienced by the divorced who live away from family or a family home; the unemployed are in exile of being without a job; there are those in exile by leaving home because of deteriorating health or leaving for school or for a job in another place; exile is experienced because of no affordable housing, environmental devastation, or war. And how often in such cases do we demonize and wish harm (in word, not in actuality) on those we deem responsible for casting us into exile – the corporate giant who downsized, the spouse who for whatever reason was intolerable to live with, the government for not providing services.
Psalms like 137, and the poems of Lamentations remind us of the need to articulate sadness and grief.
Without cries of anguish and vengeance human beings are incapable of dealing with the experience of violence. Let me repeat that: without cries of anguish and vengeance human beings are incapable of dealing with the experience of violence. Repressed emotions from perpetrated violence are played out in future generations. We experience this today: anger, depression, pain, mass shootings, bombs in public places, road rage, substance abuse...
In an article in Christianity Today, author David Stowe includes work by Croatian-born theologian Miroslav Volf, where he says that: “Psalm 137 gives voice to violent emotions, so as to diffuse the impulse toward violent actions: by placing unattended rage before God we place both our unjust enemy and our own vengeful self face to face with a God who loves and does justice.” Psalm 137 is a reminder that “everyone is potentially Judean, potentially Babylonian; potentially a victim, potentially a perpetrator.”
Psalm 137 and Lamentations 1 are community dirges. This is part of the Good News for today. Exile is not an alone affair. In Sault Ste. Marie, it was not one wailer who went to the cemetery, it was a group of women. In community there is freedom, support, healing, a movement from grief to a place of hope and new life. Wailing and lamentation is rage directed to God, where we place the enemy and ourselves side by side, and God faces back with love and justice.
Laments also have function as a corporate confession. Note in verse 5 of the Lamentations’ poem, the song includes a phrase the multitude of her transgressions, in other words, the peoples’ sin; verse 6 of the Psalm refers to forgetting God and turning from the ways of the covenant, the joy to be found in the practice of offering and giving in pilgrimage practice. For a brief second an acknowledge of being part of the cause of destruction and exile is spoken. People articulate the pain of being a part of the ‘why’ people are faced with disasters and experiences of exile. As Volf explains, in real time, we are potentially Judean, Babylonian; victim, perpetrator. Such expression allows for the possibility, that bewailing human condition, we might come out of grief and sadness, to turn and rise from the ashes. Corporate lamentation holds that the community has a role and responsibility to turn from disaster and set a new course. Together may we never be stoic, stiff upper lipped, or afraid to express the depths of sadness and grief within. As individuals, as a church, as citizens in a troubled world let us acknowledge that there is a lot to grieve; loss is real and present. As a community let us be free, supportive, healing – professional wailers, raging at a God who looks back at humanity with love and justice- and come away as transformers of grief to a place of hope and new life.
Be prepared -or better yet, unprepared but open- for something that is not stereotypical, modern, Protestant, or dry-eyed. Be prepared to be overcome.
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