Collective Lament and Confession
Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill call on Christians to embrace the path of lament, which includes confession.
In his book Mirror to the Church, Emmanuel Katongole reflects on the Rwandan genocide…. Before the Rwandan genocide, the majority of Rwandans were Christians. Yet in 1994, beginning on the Easter weekend, [Katongole writes,] “Christians killed other Christians, often in the same churches where they had worshiped together…. The most Christianized country in Africa became the site of its worst genocide.” [1] ….
Reflecting on the Rwandan genocide, Katongole says, “The resurrection of the church begins with lament.” [2] This is difficult for many Americans and others living in Western countries to grasp. Our culture teaches us to embrace a triumphalistic and success-oriented posture. Thus we avoid lament. Americans are prone to move quickly to try to fix things, and often we need to lament, mourn, and grieve first to fully experience and understand what has taken place. In cases of injustice and atrocities such as genocide, the only real response we can have at first is to lament. Scripture teaches us that we can’t move toward hope, peace, transformation, and reconciliation without going through sorrow, mourning, regret, and lament….
Lament is a demonstrative, strong, and corporate expression of deep grief, pain, sorrow, and regret. Lament and repentance deal with issues of the heart. They pave the way for outer change. Lament is a personal and corporate response to many things: evil, sin, death, harm, discrimination, inequality, racism, sexism, colonization, oppression, and injustice. It is about mourning the painful, shameful, or sorrowful situation, about confessing sin and complicity and sorrow, about calling God to intervene and to change the situation. Finally, lament is about offering thanksgiving and praise to God, knowing that God will intervene and bring change, hope, and restoration.
These laments by Kim and Hill offer ways for Christians in the United States to acknowledge and grieve injustice:
We lament the exploitation and destruction of black lives and communities; the abuse of basic human rights; and systemic injustice, expressed in policing, judicial, educational, economic, social, and other systems and structures….
We lament corruption among politicians, police forces, and bankers; military interventions and the militarization of society and police forces; uncaring government agencies and big business; and urban poverty and homelessness….
We lament the nature, extent, and effects of white privilege, nationalism, xenophobia, and racism; the unwelcome shown to refugees and asylum seekers; and the fear, anxiety, and suffering experienced by undocumented migrants.
We lament the treatment of women in society and church…. We lament gender inequalities, the discrimination and harassment women suffer, the sexualization of women and girls, and the domestic violence many women suffer daily.…
We lament the colonization, devastation, and assimilation of First Nations and indigenous peoples, and the role Christianity has played….
We lament the silence of the people of God about many of these things. We lament the complicity of the church in many of these things.
This practice of lament is necessary if we are to experience healing and hope and transformation.
| The Unexpected Hero |
 Jesus’ parables were usually marked by a surprise; a twist that forced his audience to rethink a basic assumption they held about God, the world, or themselves. In his story about a man beaten and robbed on the road, the first character to pass by is the most respected in Jewish culture—a priest. The second character, a Levite, is also admired but slightly below the priest on the social hierarchy. With these two characters, Jesus had primed his audience to expect the hero of the story to be someone below the Levite. Perhaps an ordinary Jew without much religious training. That would have been surprising enough, but Jesus’ introduction of a Samaritan as the hero was downright offensive.Jews hated Samaritans. They were viewed as apostates who had abandoned the true faith of Israel for heretical teachings. This made them even worse than gentiles whom the Jews commonly regarded as “dogs.” The hatred between Jews and Samaritans, which had smoldered for nearly 1,000 years, was still burning in Jesus’ time. Jews had destroyed the Samaritan temple, and around 6 A.D. the Samaritans retaliated by scattering human bones in the Jewish temple during Passover, defiling it so that worship was prevented.Remember, Jesus told this story because of a question asked by an expert in Jewish religious law. He wanted to know what it meant to obey the command to “love your neighbor” (Lev. 19:18). In the minds of most Jews, a Samaritan was automatically disqualified from being considered law-abiding because they did not share the Jew’s theology and view of the Old Testament law. For Jesus, therefore, to make a Samaritan the hero of his story was simply unthinkable. It’s difficult for us to understand how offensive and shocking Jesus’ story would have been to his audience. Imagine asking your pastor what it means to be a good Christian and having him respond with a story about a merciful Muslim. Or, imagine the repercussions if a politician was asked what it means to be a true patriot and she pointed to an undocumented immigrant. In a way, that’s what Jesus was doing. He wasn’t just affirming a Samaritan, as scandalous as that would have been. He was also attacking the pride and self-righteousness of his fellow Jews.The parable of the Good Samaritan isn’t just about religious law. It’s not simply about answering the question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ story was also about deconstructing assumptions and the cultural categories we use to elevate ourselves and devalue others. Likewise, we must ask how we have allowed our culture’s categories and labels to influence how we see ourselves and others. A follower of Christ is not identified by a label, social rank, or religious position, but by the love she shows others. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:29-37 1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-3 ROMANS 2:25-29 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971) Lord, we pray this day mindful of the sorry confusion of our world. Look with mercy upon this generation of your children so steeped in misery of their own contriving, so far strayed from your ways and so blinded by passions. We pray for the victims of tyranny, that they may resist oppression with courage. We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit.We pray for ourselves who live in peace and quietness, that we may not regard our good fortune as proof of our virtue, or rest content to have our ease at the price of other men’s sorrow and tribulation.We pray for all who have some vision of your will, despite the confusions and betrayals of human sin, that they may humbly and resolutely plan for and fashion the foundations of a just peace between men, even while they seek to preserve what is fair and just among us against the threat of malignant powers.Amen. |
