Reading: Lamentations 3, Psalm 29
What is your lowest moment? My lowest moment came in the parking lot of a hospital. I won’t go into the details, but the previous year had been extremely painful for me emotionally for a variety of reasons, and I had just walked out of the hospital with a cancer diagnosis. It was Friday. I was to have surgery on Monday. It was the lowest I ever felt, and I did not deal with it well. As I’m writing this I find I hope this is always the story I reference as my lowest moment- I can’t imagine feeling worse.
But. Fast forward five years. I am as happy as I have ever been. Everything I felt I had lost has been restored. Well, not everything. That isn’t how surgery works. There are some things, cancerous things, that need to be gone and to stay gone.
The third poem in the book of Lamentations begins in a very, very dark place. The first couple of stanzas are highly reminiscent of the worst parts of the book of Job. The writer has both seen terrible things happen, and been the subject of them himself. I am the man who has seen affliction… against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. This guy is in a bad place. My flesh and my skin waste away. Sounds like a pretty unpleasant condition. He has broken my bones. He has made my chains heavy. He shuts out my prayer. The prophet in Lamentations spends the first half of his work describing his pain. Now, it is important to remember that this is poetry- when he complains he has shut out my prayer, it is not a theological statement about how God hears humans. It is an emotional statement. As we will see in a moment, the prophet can cry in agony in his suffering without losing sight of who God is and how he acts to make all things new.
When I was leaving that hospital, my thoughts were along the lines of, “Fine. What’s next, God?” Not in an accepting way. I was tired, sad, and in pain. I was also angry. After everything else that had happened to me, did I deserve this? I have never doubted God’s power. Right then, I doubted his goodness. He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is. Ever been there? I have. The prophet has. As we will eventually see, far into the future, even the Servant of the Lord has. But jumping that far ahead would be cheating.
The turn for the prophet comes in verses 21-23. This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. This is the same voice that just complained that God ground his teeth into gravel! The same voice saying that God broke his bones and burned his skin away. The prophet described his agony in all it’s detail. Now he lets it go and throws himself on the power, mercy, and faithfulness of the God of Israel, because there is no other hope. While he understands pain and suffering, he recognizes that God is good, and he will not try to usurp God’s authority to do as he sees fit. The prophet gets it: it’s not about him. It this moment he surrenders his personal sovereignty to that of God. I hurt, but I am not who I think I am. God will make all things new.
When we humans get hurt or sick, we look for a cause. Someone or something to blame. I was no exception. I recovered following surgery, and immediately wanted to know why I had cancer. I knew in my mind that there was really no good answer to that- a combination of genetics and negative variance, really. But my heart wanted to blame someone. I wanted to do something against the cause of my distress.
The prophet calls for a divine courtroom. He has suffered, and now he calls for the judgment of God on all the Earth. He wants justice. And not the paltry retributive or even restorative justice that comes in life. He wants Ultimate justice. For all people to be judged by what is in their heart. The prophet knows that God is judge. But he also sees God as advocate. Again, we hear the echoes of the book of Job. You have taken up my cause, O Lord; you have redeemed my life. The prophet is so willing to turn his cause over to the God of Israel that he will have him as judge and defender. He knows seeking justice is beyond his own abilities, and again throws himself on the favor of the only one capable of carrying out true judgment.
It is tempting for me to stop with verse 23 and ignore the call for judgment and ultimate justice from this broken prophet. In our times of pain and suffering it is hard to turn to God and say Great is your faithfulness. It is even harder to turn and say You will repay them, O Lord. The prophet declares both.