Ash Wednesday 2024 - What is Lament?

Ash Wednesday is about mortality, but it is also about recognizing our need for God as limited and flawed human beings. On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season, we often talk about repentance, turning away from our sins and towards God. This year, through Lent, we will focus on ”lament” (expressing our sorrow, pain, and suffering to God in prayer).   Lament invites us to face our humanity. Lament is a natural part of our faithful, loving response to a world marked by sin and brokenness. A lament is also a form of praise. It is not ”just complaining.” When we lament, we are bringing our complaints to God because of who God is. We know we cannot handle our pain on our own. God is the only one capable of changing things.  Scripture illustrates for us what this looks like.  The psalmist laments to God, knowing who God has been (steadfast in love,) and who God has promised to be (one who saves), with a spirit of trust (Psalm 51:6). The praise doesn’t cancel out the grief or vice versa.         

   When we bring our grief, sorrow, anger, and pain all to God in prayer with honesty and trust, it is proof of our relationship with God. It shows that we need God and we trust God to show up when we are in need. Some of us may have been taught that ’complaining’ to God or about God’s perceived absence is a sign of unfaithfulness. However, part of being in a relationship is being able to go to the other party when we are hurting or things aren’t right. So our honesty with God around our grief or despair about any circumstance is proof of our faithfulness. Our God is big enough for our honest perspective on things and cares more than we can imagine about everything that grieves us.

  God is in the resurrection and redemption business, so we can rest assured that our God will have the final say. And that Last word will be “Jesus.”

There can often be a connection between repentance and lament, though this is not always the case as when, for example, we are lamenting the loss of a loved one.  In Psalm 51, David is Lamenting his own sin. 

Psalm 51:1-17 THE MESSAGE

Generous in love—God, give grace!

Huge in mercy—wipe out my bad record.

Scrub away my guilt,

soak out my sins in your laundry.

I know how bad I’ve been;

my sins are staring me down.

You’re the One I’ve violated, and you’ve seen

it all, seen the full extent of my evil.

You have all the facts before you;

whatever you decide about me is fair.

I’ve been out of step with you for a long time,

in the wrong since before I was born.

What you’re after is truth from the inside out.

Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.

Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean,

scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.

Tune me into foot-tapping songs,

set these once-broken bones to dancing.

Don’t look too close for blemishes,

give me a clean bill of health.

God, make a fresh start in me,

shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.

Don’t throw me out with the trash,

or fail to breathe holiness in me.

Bring me back from gray exile,

put a fresh wind in my sails!

Give me a job teaching rebels your ways

so the lost can find their way home.

Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God,

and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.

Unbutton my lips, dear God;

I’ll let loose with your praise.

Going through the motions doesn’t please you,

a flawless performance is nothing to you.

I learned God-worship

when my pride was shattered.

Heart-shattered lives ready for love

don’t for a moment escape God’s notice.

The Psalmist laments his own sin. He is expressing his grief and sorrow to God about the things he has done that have separate him from God (verses 1-9). The way this psalm is written is deeply personal (I, not we). Especially in the beginning of the Lenten season, we must start where we are as individuals with deep self-reflection. However, not all suffering is a result of sin, or a result of our own personal sin. With that said, the psalmist recognizes and laments his suffering but is self aware and truthful in acknowledging that at least parts of it flow from his own actions and transgressions.

In verse 5, the psalmist claims he has ”been out of step” with God and in the wrong since he was born. Though this may seem off-putting to think of a baby with sin, I wonder why David felt this, prayed this, and admitted this? Observing the broken world he/we all are born into and knowing there is something wrong that needs God’s love and forgiveness to fix it? Looking at our human state and recognizing all humanity needs mercy, love, and grace. It is that innate sense in us that there is something separating us from God. And yet, our God pursues us, desiring that we would choose to be loved, that we would choose to experience grace, that we would choose to turn from our sin sickness and that which separates us from God toward God and into relationship.

 

In lamenting his sin, the psalmist moves to repentance. It is one thing to know that something is wrong and to name it. It is another to recognize our own role in it and take the next step of inviting God to work in us and through us. Verse 17 speaks of ”a heart-shattered life” as the sacrifice acceptable to God. This broken spirit comes from being uncomfortable and dissatisfied with what is contrary to God’s way for us.

Throughout the passage, David speaks of God’s presence and what God can do in and through us as a result of repentance. On Ash Wednesday, we are invited to reflect on something that needs to change in our lives, to identify the suffering that has come from it, and to both lament, express the pain and sorrow we’ve experienced because of it to God in prayer, and repent, turn away from the sin and towards God.  Perhaps it is a deeply personal lament you bring to this season, something you are dealing with or going through. A loss or grief that is weighing you down and in that case, there is a need only to allow Jesus to carry the load with you and by the power of the Holy Spirit, take you through the valley of the shadows into the joy that comes in the morning. Maybe you lament the systems that bog down our ability for all people to live with dignity and fullness of life. The things that make food insecurity, homelessness, prisons, scarcity, and fear run rampant in society. As we “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves” perhaps we begin to recognize our role in perpetuating a status quo that does not resemble the Gospel we have learned or proclaim. And so we lament, we repent, and we turn our mourning and our knowledge into a call to action that guided by the Holy, will be about bringing God’s way on earth as it is in heaven. Lament can move us to action in the face of injustice. It is our call for God to break our hearts with what breaks God’s.

As we walk through this series and this season, may we seek to root out evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves and work together toward God’s preferred vision for our congregation and community. We will do so by using the ancient disciplines this season calls us to. Observing a holy Lent by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's Holy Word. Whatever you choose to give up, I would invite you to fill that void with scripture from our daily reading plan, with journaling about your lament and how God is revealing to you day by day how to heal and act for the benefit of the kin-dom.

We begin the journey of this season together, grounding ourselves in the two ancient facts of Christian existence:

1 our own human failings and our mortality, symbolized in ashes

2 our Lord who has conquered sin and death, symbolized in the sign of the cross in which those ashes are applied.

 Yes, from dust we are made, and to dust we will return, AND the promise is sure, Christ died for us while we were yet sinners proving God’s love toward us, and in the moment we profess our faith in his grace and love for us, we receive pardon and the gift of eternal life with him. Mortality is certain, our days on this earth will eventually end, but right now, we are living. So live for Jesus, be guided by his teachings, and grow as his disciple so that you can be a light for others and work toward the transformation of the world into the creation God intended.

May Trinity make it so.