Lamentations 3:31-36, 41-42, 58-66
Let’s keep this music train going.
Jeremiah, the traditional writer of the Laments, mourns Jerusalem. (Wikimedia Commons)
Julien Baker’s record, Sprained Ankles, is indeed filled with sad songs. The record, her first, has garnered significant acclaim from critics, but it happened as an accident. One of her friends, an intern at a studio, had been given a few days of studio time. These songs weren’t written as an album. Instead, they were journal entries sung at the ends of the days. They are more than sad songs; they are laments.
And in the record’s second to last song, “Rejoice,” Baker offers up this lyric that I hear incorrectly every time. Every place I’ve read it, it says:
“I think there’s a God and he hears either way when I rejoice and complain.”
I don’t hear the when. Now I even listen for it and I promise you it’s not there. Instead I hear two different lines—the same words, different punctuation.
1) “I think there’s a God and he hears either way I rejoice and complain.”
2) “I think there’s a God and he hears. Either way, I rejoice and complain.”
The first one is like what she wrote in the liner notes. God hears us no matter what we say—in our rejoicing and complaining.
But that space between these two phrases suggests something else, too. Either way—whether there is a God who hears, whether there’s a God who doesn’t hear, or whether there’s no God at all—either way, I rejoice and complain.
In Julien Baker’s laments, doubt and belief are wrapped up together to create a dynamic faith, one where extinguishing either would leave faith burned out. Jeremiah, or whoever wrote Lamentations, invites us into this complex and challenging faith as we remember the destruction of Jerusalem’s temple.
If we listen, we hear as an unknown poet wrestles with grief. Admitting that Judah has sinned, broken its covenant, and brought God’s wrath, the poet calls his people to “lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven” (v. 41). Maybe this call to the nation reveals an authentic desire to return Judah to righteousness. But it also feels a little blasphemous. Wrapped up in the poet’s call is an element that cannot be rightfully separated from any authentic concern—righteousness leads to blessing. So it may be that our poet’s calls for national righteousness serves as a way of forcing God’s hand in covenant keeping and blessing Judah’s remnants.
But it doesn’t really matter whether I understand their motivations. Ultimately, when we hear these laments that insist God has rejected the people of God, hold God responsible directly accountable for suffering, and demands that God work on their behalf, we have two choices: chide or listen.
When a family member says, “I think God’s real but I just don’t know.” We can outline arguments for God’s existence or we can listen. When a friend curses God as evil or powerless or both, we can be silent and present or correct those we love. Those are our choices.
If we learn to lament again, as Darrell asked us to last week, then we must also learn how to listen to laments. We must learn to give up our answers to the questions, the doubts, and the complaints of those who suffer around us. Because when we ask them together, we can see them for what they are, an engagement into the complex reality that God has created and given us.
When we lament together, we may hear the powerful, stoic God we believed to be removed from our situation. And in hearing, we know God present with us. Or we may discover our beliefs that God will fix everything don’t pan out, and we may hear God calling us to work towards, not only wait for, redemption. We don’t know what we will hear, but we can be assured that our laments, whatever they are, are a way of saying “God, whoever you are, we are yours.”
Rachel Syme, “Julien Baker Believes in God,” The New Yorker, April 29, 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/julien-baker-believes-in-god.
Discussion
• How has lamentation brought me discomfort? What has God taught me in this discomfort?
• Whose laments have I silenced through correction? What did I say?
• Who do I hear who laments around me? How can I be silent and present as I learn to lament with those who suffer?
Reference Shelf
Lamenting With
This section marks the poet’s transformation into a member of the suffering community. It is a weaving of first person plural (vv. 40-47) with first person singular (vv. 48-51). It is also the first time that the first person plural pronoun is used in the Book of Lamentations. As a result of identifying himself as the one who has been afflicted (3:1-24), the poet now is able to stand in solidarity with the suffering community. The author knows from personal experience within the community the absence of God’s gaze and comfort (vv. 43-44). Now it is no longer daughter Zion who laments her shame and loss of honor; the poet, along with the entire community, laments, You have made us filth and rubbish among the peoples (v. 45).
In the midst of solidarity with the suffering community the poet speaks in the first person singular to proclaim a seeing that is on a level different from the one found in the first two poems. The poet’s eyes flow with rivers of tears because of the destruction of the people. These eyes will flow without ceasing until God looks and sees (vv. 48-50). The poet is able to see that the suffering of daughter Zion is not only one person’s suffering but the suffering of many, and because of this level of seeing the poet can grieve (v. 51).
The poet had called on daughter Zion to cry aloud to God in 2:18-19 and now, as a member of the suffering community, offers an individual, personal lament. It is a remembrance of a previous time when the poet called upon the LORD and the LORD responded. Within the structure of the Book of Lamentations, the poet’s individual lament parallels the personal laments of daughter Zion found at the end of poems one and two. This lament also functions as a literary inclusion within the transformational third poem by paralleling the soliloquy of vv. 1-24 with its elements of hope stated in the first person singular.
Mona West, “The Book of Lamentations, Mercer Commentary on the Bible, Watson E. Mills et al. (Macon GA: MU Press, 1995), 671.
William Scruggs is a graduate of Mercer University. His favorite pastimes are adding music to his listening list, TV shows to his viewing list, and books to his reading list. When he isn’t pretending to check items off these lists, he spends time with friends and plays music. He is excited for the opportunity to continue exploring the rivers of Middle Georgia and to stay in Macon as an associate editor at Smyth & Helwys.
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For further resources, subscribe to the Formations Teaching Guide and Commentary.
Additionally, the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary series is a scholarly but accessible means for enhancing your study of each lesson.
William Scruggs is a graduate of Mercer University. His favorite pastimes are adding music to his listening list, TV shows to his viewing list, and books to his reading list. When he isn’t pretending to check items off these lists, he spends time with friends and plays music. He is excited for the opportunity to continue exploring the rivers of Middle Georgia and to stay in Macon as an associate editor at Smyth & Helwys.
*****
For further resources, subscribe to the Formations Teaching Guide and Commentary.
Additionally, the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary series is a scholarly but accessible means for enhancing your study of each lesson.
