We are well aware that life is not always filled with joy and hap­pi­ness. We know pain and bro­ken­ness, alien­ation and con­fu­sion, doubt and despair, and at times the seem­ing absence of God. When we feel that God has aban­doned us we can begin to iden­tify with the words Jesus spoke as he was dying “my God, my God, why have you for­saken me?” (Ps 22:2). This is the cry of lament.

One of the places we dis­cover lament is in the Psalms. At times the lament was a cry of agony as the indi­vid­ual strug­gled to fig­ure out why things hap­pened and why God even allowed them to occur in the first place. The psalmist wrote:

O Lord God Almighty,
    how long will your anger smoul­der against the prayers of your peo­ple?
You have fed them with the bread of tears;
    you have made them drink tears by the bowl­ful.
You have made us a source of con­tention to our neigh­bours
    and our ene­mies mock us. (Ps 80:4–6)

Some­times behind the cry of lament there is a great deal of anger. This aspect of lament is often over­looked since many have learned to mask their emo­tions and in some instances any expres­sion of anger is not per­mit­ted. This was not the world of the psalmist. When life was full of pain and strug­gle and things did not seem to be work­ing out, he expressed not only his anger and frus­tra­tion but also that he expected God to give him some answer to his ques­tions because life did not make sense. The psalmist wrote:

You gave us up to be devoured like sheep
    and have scat­tered us among the nations.
You sold your peo­ple for a pit­tance,
    gain­ing noth­ing from their sale.
You have made us a reproach to our neigh­bours,
    the scorn and deri­sion of those around us.…
All this hap­pened to us,
    though we had not for­got­ten you
    or been false to your covenant.
Our hearts had not turned back;
    our feet had not strayed from your path.
But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jack­als
    and cov­ered us with deep dark­ness.
If we had for­got­ten the name of our God
    or spread out our hands to a for­eign god,
    would not God have dis­cov­ered it,
    since he knows the secrets of the heart?
Yet for your sake we faced death all day long;
    we are con­sid­ered as sheep to be slaugh­tered.
Awake O Lord! Why do you sleep?
    Rouse your­self! Do not reject us for­ever.…
Rise up help us;
    redeem us because of your unfail­ing love. (Ps 44:11–13, 17–23, 26)

The cry of lament also reveals con­fu­sion. Some­times the writer is look­ing for answers that are not forthcoming.

I cried out to God for help;
    I cried out to God to hear me.
When I was in dis­tress, I sought the Lord;
    at night I stretched out untir­ing hands
    and my soul refused to be com­forted.
I remem­bered you O God and I groaned;
    I mused and my spirit grew faint.
You kept my eyes from clos­ing;
    I was too trou­bled to speak.
I thought about the for­mer days,
    the years of long ago;
I remem­bered my songs in the night.
    My heart mused and my spirit inquired:
‘Will the lord reject for­ever?
    Will he never show his favour again?
Has his unfail­ing love van­ished for­ever?
    Has his promise failed for all time?
Has God for­got­ten to be mer­ci­ful?
    Has he in anger with­held his com­pas­sion’? (Ps 77:1–9)

Many when they read these and sim­i­lar texts are uncom­fort­able with such raw emo­tion and believe it is wrong to express it in such a man­ner. After all this is God to whom we are address­ing our com­plaints. But deny­ing or sup­press­ing our emo­tions will not make them go away nor are we hid­ing any­thing from God, for he knows our heart. Rather, as we acknowl­edge our sit­u­a­tion and express what we are feel­ing to God, we are able to process our feel­ings in a healthy man­ner. West­er­mann states: “the func­tion of lament is to pro­vide a struc­ture for cri­sis, grief, or despair; to move the wor­ship­per from hurt to joy, from dark­ness to light, from des­per­a­tion to hope.”1

In the church, we have been some­what reluc­tant to use the psalms of lament or at best they have been used min­i­mally, (an exam­ple would be post 911 ser­vices when a nation mourned and lamented the tragedy of ter­ror­ism) because we are not used to embrac­ing the neg­a­tive aspects of life. Wal­ter Brugge­mann sug­gests the psalms of lament are really a bold act of faith because “it insists that the world must be expe­ri­enced  as it really is and not in some pre­tended way … It is bold because it insists that all such expe­ri­ences of dis­or­der are a proper sub­ject of dis­course with God. There is noth­ing out of bounds, noth­ing pre­cluded or inap­pro­pri­ate. Every­thing prop­erly belongs in this con­ver­sa­tion of the heart. To with­hold part of life from that con­ver­sa­tion is in fact to with­hold part of life from the sov­er­eignty of God.”2 Brugge­mann then con­cludes, “These psalms lead us into the dan­ger­ous acknowl­edge­ment of how life really is. They lead us into the pres­ence of God where every­thing is not polite or sim­ple.”3

Some­times our lament is very per­sonal but at other times it is a cor­po­rate expres­sion. Real­iz­ing that almost half of the psalms are psalms of lament, and that the psalter is the hymn­book of the peo­ple of God, there are two impli­ca­tions. First, lament is intended to be expressed in a cor­po­rate set­ting and, sec­ond, it is set to music. If we do not grasp this we lose the thrust of the psalms. But this tends to be trou­ble­some since our wor­ship is per­ceived to be cel­e­bra­tory. Even if we are in the midst of pain and strug­gle we tend to ignore what is going on and try to pre­tend every­thing is fine. In addi­tion the songs of lament are set in a minor key which is hardly joy­ful. But who can sing about pain and suf­fer­ing in a major key?   Since we believe no one wants to wor­ship with some­one who is sad or bit­ter or lonely or angry at God we sel­dom sing the songs of lament because most peo­ple do not want to enter into the pain of oth­ers? But can we be a true com­mu­nity of faith if we don’t enter into the pain or strug­gle of oth­ers? Michael Card states: “Our fail­ure to lament cuts us off from each other. If you and I are to know each other in a deep way, we must not only share our hurts, anger and dis­ap­point­ment with each other, we must also lament them together before the God who hears and is moved by our tears. The degree to which I am will­ing to enter into the suf­fer­ing of another per­son reveals the com­mit­ment and love for them. If I am not inter­ested in your hurts, I am not inter­ested in you.’4

Per­haps we might begin to see the prayers of lament as the first step in a heal­ing process for the bro­ken­ness of our lives and our com­mu­ni­ties. When we do this we begin to incar­nate the words of Jesus as he began his min­istry “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, he has sent me to pro­claim free­dom to the pris­on­ers and the recov­ery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to pro­claim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Lk.4:18–19)

• 1 Claus West­er­mann, The Psalms: Struc­ture, Con­tent and Mes­sage (Min­neapo­lis: Augs­burg Pub­lish­ing House, 1980), pg.4.
• 2 Wal­ter Brugge­mann, The Mes­sage of the Psalms (Min­neapo­lis: Augs­burg Pub­lish­ing House, 1984), pg.52.
• 3 Wal­ter Brugge­mann, The Mes­sage of the Psalms, pg.53.
• 4 Michael Card, A Sacred Sor­row (Col­orado Springs: Nav­Press, 2005), pg.29.