Faithful Pathways: Correction

We are offered Lamentations during this Holy Week, a book we tend to ignore. Laments are cries of grief, cries for justice, cries againt all that is unholy, if you will. Plenty is unholy in Holy Week. So this might be a good place for a Holy Week discipline.

We might start by recognizing the pattern of grief. Eugene Peterson titles his chapter on Lamentations in Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work "The Pastoral Work of Pain Sharing." He continues, "The biblical revelation neither explains nor eliminates suffering. It shows, rather, God entering into the life of suffering humanity, accepting and sharing the suffering." The book of Lamentations is, in his words, "a funeral service for the death of a city."

Perhaps the most significant lesson we can learn from Lamentations is that it is not "making beautiful art out of a horrible experience. The laments are a search for redemption roots in the devastations of judgment."

Our life is not as horrible as the exile, but we experience it as pretty grim right now. We spend much time assigning blame to "them," pointing fingers to those with whom we disagree, digging into our own positions in the sure knowledge that none of this mess is our fault.

While we do not think God is the author of evil, our ancestors saw their destruction and exile as God's judgment, a correction for God's people who were heading down the wrong path. The cries were loud and long, but the blame was recognized as the consequence of their sin. Recognizing our sin, instead of pointing at the other, opens us to the possibility of redemption.

Read deeply and wonder this day, how God is correcting us. See if the "roots of our redemption" might become clear.

Lamentations 1:1-2, 6-12New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Deserted City

1 How lonely sits the city
    that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
    she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
    has become a vassal.

2 She weeps bitterly in the night,
    with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
    she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
    they have become her enemies.

6 From daughter Zion has departed
    all her majesty.
Her princes have become like stags
    that find no pasture;
they fled without strength
    before the pursuer.

7 Jerusalem remembers,
    in the days of her affliction and wandering,
all the precious things
    that were hers in days of old.
When her people fell into the hand of the foe,
    and there was no one to help her,
the foe looked on mocking
    over her downfall.

8 Jerusalem sinned grievously,
    so she has become a mockery;
all who honored her despise her,
    for they have seen her nakedness;
she herself groans,
    and turns her face away.

9 Her uncleanness was in her skirts;
    she took no thought of her future;
her downfall was appalling,
    with none to comfort her.
“O Lord, look at my affliction,
    for the enemy has triumphed!”

10 Enemies have stretched out their hands
    over all her precious things;
she has even seen the nations
    invade her sanctuary,
those whom you forbade
    to enter your congregation.

11 All her people groan
    as they search for bread;
they trade their treasures for food
    to revive their strength.
Look, O Lord, and see
    how worthless I have become.

12 Is it nothing to you,[a] all you who pass by?
    Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
    which was brought upon me,
which the Lord inflicted
    on the day of his fierce anger.