Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
Lament as Prophecy
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, March 21, 2021, Lent 5, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.
Text: Psalm 10
Why, O Lord, do you stand far off, allowing the proliferation of hate, hate speech, hate crimes, champions of hate spouting hate and violence, spewing bigotry and hatred through airwaves that flow into living rooms, limousines and dive bars, the hateful rhetoric seeping into minds that move bodies to do more violence?
Why, O Lord, do you stand far off, allowing the proliferation of legislation and legislators that do harm, that redline and manipulate, that pander to profit margins and power brokers, that ignore what makes for peace and instead rally around the worship of weapons, that make it possible to buy a gun and use it for murder that same day, but impossible to register and vote on the same day?
Why, O Lord, do you stand far off, allowing your beloved, vulnerable children to be objectified, terrorized, marginalized, demonized, stalked, targeted, assaulted, and killed?
Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—…
Their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under their tongues are mischief and iniquity.
They sit in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places they murder the innocent.
Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
they lurk in secret like a lion in its covert;
they lurk that they may seize the poor;
they seize the poor and drag them off in their net. (Ps 10: 1-2a, 7-9)
Our human capacity for oppression and violence knows no boundaries; it exists in multiple forms and falls upon persons of every kind and color. Each country, culture, or community will have its own flavor or nuance of oppression based on all sorts of factors—from Myanmar to Israel to Zimbabwe to the U.S.—from kitchen table to board room table. But some common threads, clearly identified in our scriptures, appear wherever humans are found: those upon whom violence falls are consistently the vulnerable, those on the margins of mainstream, white-bread, fit-in-a-box society, the poor, the outsider, the person who looks, sounds, or acts outside of any culturally, socially constructed “norm.” Oh—and also women and children. Basic rule of thumb for oppression: if the person can be used, abused, or taken advantage of, they’re fair game.
Our own country and culture continues to be exposed for the tapestry of human cruelty, neglect, and injustice that mark both our history and our present moment. This past week we’ve been reminded, through deadly attack, of the anti-Asian bigotry that is part of that tapestry. The ongoing push in so many states across the country for legislation that suppresses voter access is part of that tapestry. The litany of strands that make up the blanket of injustices covering our land could stretch from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam.
Injustice is not all of who we are, but it is part of who we are. Denial of this doesn’t make anything better. It makes things worse. And so prophets through the ages cry out in lament, naming the pain and injustice in their context in order to wake people up. And we need prophets because from age to age those crying out from the margins or gasping for breath under the boot of the oppressor are ignored, devalued, or dismissed as the noises of ingrates, traitors, whiners, weaklings, slackers, or criminals.
We know how easy it is to ignore or make up excuses to dismiss injustice when we’re not directly taking the blows. And the whole system in which we live is designed to help us do just that. Walter Brueggemann’s scripture-based definition of empire describes our context in the U.S.: “rule by a few, economic exploitation, and religious legitimation.” This reality leads to a “numbed consciousness of denial.” Even if we don’t mean to, everything around us trains us to ignore the cries of the oppressed and focus only on our own, daily rounds. Brueggemann says, “Imperial economics is designed to keep people satiated so that they do not notice. Its politics is intended to block out the cries of the denied ones. Its religion is to be an opiate so that no one discerns misery alive in the heart of God.” In other words, the imperial reality distracts, rationalizes, and drugs the populace so that the awareness of suffering and human pain won’t get in the way of business as usual and a healthy bottom line for those in the top 1%. //
We have explored lament as naming our own pain, suffering, and guilt. Today, Psalm 10 provides an example of a lament that names the pain of injustice against the poor and vulnerable. The complaint and charge is hurled against God, “Why do you stand far off when wickedness, deceit, oppression, and iniquity run roughshod over your children?” In verse 11, the Psalmist says of the wicked, “They think in their heart, “God has forgotten, / he has hidden his face, he will never see it.” Then, as in other lament prayers, there is a turn. In verse 14 we hear:
But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief,
that you may take it into your hands;
the helpless commit themselves to you;
you have been the helper of the orphan.
The prophetic voice cries out in lament not only to name the pain and wake people up, but also to shake loose memory of God’s liberating, new-life giving presence and power. Again, Brueggemann writes, “Newness comes precisely from expressed pain. Suffering made audible and visible produces hope, articulated grief is the gate of newness, and the history of Jesus is the history of entering into the pain and giving it voice.”
Prophet Howard Thurman calls out the perversion of Christianity by the powerful and dominant who make it an “instrument of oppression.” Thurman clarifies “that Christianity as it was born in the mind of the Jewish teacher and thinker [Jesus] appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed…Wherever [Jesus’] spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”
Prophetic lament is a way people of faith follow Jesus, enter into pain, and cry out against the injustice in our lives, communities, church, nation, and world. We lament not because we are seeking attention, or because we enjoy complaining, or because we seek anyone’s destruction—but rather because members of our human family are hurting and, instead of allowing ourselves and others to remain in a “numbed consciousness of denial,” we are determined to wake up and do something about it. Perhaps in our lament we’ll begin to hear God asking us, “Why do you stand so far off?”
We lament not to stay in sorrow or bitterness, but to claim the good news of Jesus, to hold fast to hope, to remember the liberating power of God’s steadfast love, to participate in the new thing that God is always doing, to live our lives committed to a future where no more backs are against the wall.
Let us pray:
Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us, we pray. Free us for joyful obedience, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
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