Celebration and Its Discontents: Why churches must provide space for lament
As a child I grew up singing much about joy while with my church, which has continued on today. One of the chorus books we use each week has an overabundance of happy songs. Such songs are good because being God’s people calls rightly calls for celebration. But being a Christian in a fallen world marred by sin and its ugly consequences sometimes calls for God’s people to live as exiles who groan for the world to change, even in our worship. During those times I find it difficult to sing only happy, go-lucky songs. Where is the lament?
The church I was a member of while growing up allowed little space for lament. We detached ourselves from the rhythms of fasting and feasting in the traditional church calendar. We rarely used the songbook handed down to us in the Psalter, which is full of celebration and lament. We never spoke a liturgy of confession in public worship or practiced the discipline of confession among each other. Even some funerals would be called celebrations of life. The greater culture of my former tradition not only shut out lament, but along with it any hint of addiction, depression, or illness. Leaders were not to air any problems they may have had, no matter what pressures they were under, and such an unstated posture extended to the members themselves. The message I would hear growing up shifted slightly from Jesus asking for our burdens to Jesus removing them altogether. The Christian life was to be burden-free, or you just were not doing it correctly.
Becoming an adult I learned that Jesus never promises his people trouble-free living, and when this fallen world collides with my faith there is much cause for lament. Churches must provide space and permission not only for celebration, but also for lament.
The Old Testament includes much lament. Out of the several psalms that were written by poets with heavy hearts, Martin Lloyd-Jones focuses his book Spiritual Depression on Psalm 42-43 (they were originally composed as a single psalm) in which the psalmist laments at his soul being downcast and disturbed. Jeremiah wrote a short book called “funeral songs,” which is entitled Lamentations in our Bibles. In that book Jeremiah voices for all of God’s people distraught weeping and the lack of comfort in the wake of Jerusalem’s destruction. A wise preacher, likely Solomon, wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. Throughout the book he reflects on how meaningless life in our fallen world can be: pleasure, money, wisdom, and even youth cannot straighten out what has been made crooked.
In all of these examples the authors express not only profound sorrow and grief for today, but also hope in God’s future deliverance. A day will come when the psalmist will enjoy praising God again. God’s people will one day be restored; Jerusalem too. God’s future judgment will finally give meaning to what appears meaningless in the present.
As Christians we need not despair without hope, but we also do not have to pretend that our faith in Christ must magically solve all of life’s problems this side of God’s kingdom. For faith, at least as one New Testament author defines it, “is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for” (Heb 11:1-2). These are the same ancients who lamented much in this life, while placing their faith and their hope in the next one.
Celebrate your hearts out while in worship, but do give space for lament. The two go hand in hand.
The church I was a member of while growing up allowed little space for lament. We detached ourselves from the rhythms of fasting and feasting in the traditional church calendar. We rarely used the songbook handed down to us in the Psalter, which is full of celebration and lament. We never spoke a liturgy of confession in public worship or practiced the discipline of confession among each other. Even some funerals would be called celebrations of life. The greater culture of my former tradition not only shut out lament, but along with it any hint of addiction, depression, or illness. Leaders were not to air any problems they may have had, no matter what pressures they were under, and such an unstated posture extended to the members themselves. The message I would hear growing up shifted slightly from Jesus asking for our burdens to Jesus removing them altogether. The Christian life was to be burden-free, or you just were not doing it correctly.
Becoming an adult I learned that Jesus never promises his people trouble-free living, and when this fallen world collides with my faith there is much cause for lament. Churches must provide space and permission not only for celebration, but also for lament.
The Old Testament includes much lament. Out of the several psalms that were written by poets with heavy hearts, Martin Lloyd-Jones focuses his book Spiritual Depression on Psalm 42-43 (they were originally composed as a single psalm) in which the psalmist laments at his soul being downcast and disturbed. Jeremiah wrote a short book called “funeral songs,” which is entitled Lamentations in our Bibles. In that book Jeremiah voices for all of God’s people distraught weeping and the lack of comfort in the wake of Jerusalem’s destruction. A wise preacher, likely Solomon, wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. Throughout the book he reflects on how meaningless life in our fallen world can be: pleasure, money, wisdom, and even youth cannot straighten out what has been made crooked.
In all of these examples the authors express not only profound sorrow and grief for today, but also hope in God’s future deliverance. A day will come when the psalmist will enjoy praising God again. God’s people will one day be restored; Jerusalem too. God’s future judgment will finally give meaning to what appears meaningless in the present.
As Christians we need not despair without hope, but we also do not have to pretend that our faith in Christ must magically solve all of life’s problems this side of God’s kingdom. For faith, at least as one New Testament author defines it, “is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for” (Heb 11:1-2). These are the same ancients who lamented much in this life, while placing their faith and their hope in the next one.
Celebrate your hearts out while in worship, but do give space for lament. The two go hand in hand.
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