Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

by Soong-Chan Rah

An elevated view of one’s self leads to the perception of other cultures through the lens of American Christian exceptionalism. Other cultures are viewed as diversions and interruptions to our regularly scheduled programming. Exotic cultural expressions will be accepted as long as we return to the normat...

As discussed in the introduction, many American churches steeped in the theology of celebration lack lament as an expression of worship. This absence of lament is attributable in part to the denial of suffering, the fear of what an unfettered suffering may mean to the community and the lack of the practice of lament causing one to forget its importance.

The possibility of ministry in the context of urban ministry is the possibility of the Christian community offering shalom within the full expression of suffering and grief. Lament presents the possibility of an order ordained by God in the midst of a broken reality.

The corrective of lament must be intentionally built into the structures of liturgy and worship life. What songs can be sung that would reflect the reality of suffering in the world? What prayers of lament can be offered that respond to the pain found in our communities?

Our society struggles not only with the actions of individuals but the larger social impact of their actions. In the same way personal prejudice can lead to structural racism, personal actions have corporate implications. But this corporate understanding of injustice will require an understanding of the impact of corporate injustice on the realm of the individual. When an individual receives privileges and benefits from an unjust system, or contributes (even if it is unwittingly) to perpetuate an unjust system, then there is individual responsibility for corporate injustice.

The advocate must never replace the voice of the suffering, especially when the suffering people seek to speak for themselves. Part of the role of the advocate in American society is to help the voiceless gain their own voice. The prophet’s voice is not to be asserted over and above that of the suffering community.

At this moment in history, the American church is often ridiculed or portrayed as unforgiving and ungracious. Could the church offer a counter-narrative, not of defensiveness or derision, but of an authentic confession and genuine reconciliation? . . . It is antithetical to the gospel when we do not confess all forms of sin—both individual and corporate. The reason evangelicals can claim to be followers of Jesus is because there has been an acknowledgement of sin and the seeking of God’s grace through Jesus Christ that leads to the forgiveness of sin.

Authentic witness that arises from lament requires a level of confession that has often been neglected. Confession must operate on all levels to bring healing and hope for forgiveness.

Lament allows for the fullness of emotions to be expressed. Worship should not operate with divergent goals, moving the community toward either celebration or suffering. They are not part of a zero-sum equation. Suffering and celebration must continue to intersect in our communities. Diverse worship expressions arising out of a range of experiences provide the opportunity to intersect the wide range of expressions that reflect the fullness of God’s shalom.

Consumer culture is able to draw from religious traditions and co-opt what would otherwise be altruistic values to further its own aims. It has the capacity to absorb challenges, even direct challenges to its values. For example, the RED campaign attempted to combat the AIDS pandemic in Africa by asking individuals to purchase as many RED products as possible. $100 million was spent on a marketing campaign to promote increased consumerism in support of combating HIV/AIDS. In the first year, only about $18 million had been raised.15 The campaign ultimately yielded the most benefit to the companies that garnered positive publicity for their products (as well as increased sales revenue) and to the pharmaceutical companies that increased sales of a product that could have been distributed at a much lower cost. The RED campaign raises the question of whether one can fight injustice while continuing to swim in its waters. How we seek justice in a materialistic culture may actually result in a deeper commitment to the consumerism of the times. The documentary Pink Ribbons reveals that the important cause of breast cancer research has been commodified so that a significant percentage of the funds raised end up in corporate coffers. “Justice” becomes yet another expression of the injustices of consumer culture. Consumer culture is able to devour even the most noble efforts of justice.

Because the American church is increasingly captive to the materialistic culture of American society, it is increasingly difficult to speak prophetically against that culture. While there may exist the rhetoric of the church against an unjust culture, the lifestyle of injustice in the church continues unabated in the context of consumerism.

In America, our materialistic endeavors have become acceptable norms. We can validate our excessive materialism by claiming that it is a blessing from God—that we are “blessed to be a blessing”—so our justice endeavors, no matter how materialistic, reflect acceptable norms because they jibe with the end goal of blessing others with our own experiences. We have come to believe that the exceptional American church has the responsibility to bless the world with our success, which may even be a commodified justice that fits the Western world. Could this inability to move out of the waters of injustice and the quicksand of commodification arise from our lamentable history? Often, texts that critique materialism fail to mention that rampant consumerism may be a product of an American history that viewed life as a consumable. Has sufficient confession been offered in response to the reality that there was a period of American history where there was actual commodification of human life, i.e., slavery? How has the act of reducing life to the level of chattel shaped the imagination of modern America? The commodification of human life created the oppressive system of slavery. That system (along with the genocide of Native Americans and the usurping of their land) resulted in great economic growth for the United States over several centuries. The economic engine that arose from these injustices helped to fuel the consumer culture of our current age.

Both consumer culture and American evangelicalism diminish lamentable racial history because the practice of lament over a tainted history would ultimately undermine the existing power structures of both systems.

The blind spots caused by swimming too deeply in society’s cultural values may be remedied by offering a radically different set of practices that gesture toward a new reality. Combating injustice may require not only the setting aside of materialistic practices, but the participation in a new set of practices. These new practices must include the practice of lament.

The holy and pious are not respected by God, but neither are the kings, prophets and elders. Not even they are exempt from God’s judgment. American culture tends to elevate the status of the powerful, whether they are famous athletes, musicians, entertainers or the politically and economically powerful.

If we feel that we have been specially anointed because of our success, then our task becomes a dysfunctional dumping of our exceptional cultural values into other communities. There is no sense of mutual learning. An arrogant assumption of unquestioned rightness creeps in to those who see themselves as powerful.

The arrogance of the West is the assumption that our forms of piety and power are worth sharing or even imposing. We are obligated to do good works. The challenge to do good works often emerges as: “Do these good works because you have been blessed.” Very little consideration is given to the blessings of God already at work. “Go help those pagans with your American capitalistic successes,” even if, according to demographics, they are probably already Christians. Our warped sense of what it means to be blessed by God and how we perceive human wealth and power as an earned favor from God results in a dysfunctional view of our worth in God’s economy.

American Christians operate under the delusion that success and power provide the answer to the world’s problems. In Scripture, we see that powers and principalities are not necessarily a positive expression. Moses stands against the powers and principalities of his time. The prophets boldly speak against the powers, including their own king. Jesus rejects the temptation of secular power.

Rather than acquiesce to the world’s value system, we should recognize that God dismantles the world’s value system.

The worship life of Israel took seriously the role of lament. In contrast, the worship life of American evangelical Christianity is often devoid of lament. We ignore a key expression of worship and prayer and the opportunity to speak to God out of the midst of suffering.

For Brueggemann, the power of the lament is that the oppressed are given the right to speak and, by speaking, offered the possibility of redressing injustice. “The lament form thus concerns a redistribution of power.”8 The power of lament is that the covenant relationship operates in both directions: from the powerful to the powerless as well as from the powerless to the powerful.

Lamentations, therefore, offers the example of the lesser party in the covenant talking back to the greater party in the covenant through lament. God is silent, but not absent. Lament is the opportunity for the suffering to speak. “In the West, God-talk is characterized by objective thinking about God. In theology God becomes an object. But in the Old Testament, talk of God is characterized by dialogical thinking.”10 Lament creates space for this dialogue and moves the theology of suffering into interaction with the theology of celebration. A theology of celebration has the luxury of being able to objectify God, and because suffering is kept at a distance it is not necessary for the presence of God to be immanent. God can be a distant abstraction whose praise is expected.

Lament as dialogue challenges the notion of an abstract relationship with God. A theology of suffering must acknowledge the cry of distress and suffering in lament before moving to the psalms of praise. Lamentations presents an example of staying in the dialogue of lament as those who suffer offer the relentless truth about suffering. Dialogical lament becomes a form of prayer.

In many of our justice endeavors, we often believe that our task is to speak for the voiceless. But maybe we need to follow the book of Lamentations and move the ones who suffer to front and center.

The movement from an advocate speaking on behalf of others to the sufferers speaking up for themselves offers hope to all who suffer.

Determining the role of the church requires an understanding of the connection between the incarnation of the body of Jesus in the world and the incarnation of the body of Christ in the city.

Lamentations, therefore, serves to correct a triumphalistic worldview that seeks to fix the problems of the world through human effort. A warped theology of celebration elevates human effort and ultimately undermines a robust Christology. If Jesus is not properly understood in the fullness of lament and praise, then a dysfunctional Christology only exacerbates the problems encountered in Lamentations.

Incarnational ministry has frequently come to mean the relocation of the educated, affluent, white suburbanite to help the poor, black urbanite. White Christians empty themselves of the blessings of their suburban existence and humble themselves to save poor folks in the city.

Forget the handout or the hand up. Just reach a hand across. Let’s be equals and partners. I don’t need you to rescue me, just like you don’t think you need rescuing by me. My rescuer is a Jewish carpenter. I want to be a colaborer in Christ with you, not your reclamation project.

Can we change how we approach the problem of injustice in the world? Instead of seeing the problems of the world as laboratories where we apply our know-how and problem-solving skills, we first seek to understand the fullness of the story of suffering. We listen before we diagnose and seek to fix. Can we begin to more intentionally embody a connection to suffering in the world? We should begin to embrace those who lament. We may find that our flourishing may depend on the lives of those whom we have seen as problems to be fixed rather than as humanity to be embraced.

We must seek to be the church that integrates the theology of suffering with the theology of celebration. We must seek to be the church that engages in both praise and lament. We must seek to be the church that embodies the full narrative of Christ in his suffering and in his triumph.

Funerals are required when we do not deal with the dead bodies of history.

We cannot “solve” the problem of race in America while ignoring our deep and painful history. Our tendency to ignore our tainted history may arise from a warped self-perception. We do not need to deal with our tainted past because we have risen above that problematic history and moved to a postracial, color-blind America. An assumed exceptionalism belies the belief that we do not have to deal with our history because through our exceptional status we have overcome the past. The destruction of black bodies and black minds can be justified because their sacrifice helped to build our exceptional nation. Privilege and exceptionalism exempt us from engaging in the necessary work of dealing with our lamentable history.

Lament will not allow us to revert to the easy answers. There is no triumphalistic and exceptionalistic narrative of the American church that can cover up injustice. There are no easy answers to unabated suffering. Lament continues.