Lament With Those Who Suffer

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

By Derek Lee

For a long time I struggled with how to start this article. I struggled with how to engage well with everything that is happening. My temptation was to disengage emotionally, to preserve myself. At the time, I was dealing with a lot of stressors. I graduated from my Master’s program in the midst of the pandemic, jobless in this changed economy. I found myself watching my friends’ online weddings, weeks after I was originally supposed to be married, scrounging as many non-refundable deposits as I could. I found myself with my fiancée counting every asset we had, wondering if we could afford her student housing for the next few months.

At the same time I saw myself stuck awkwardly in the middle of the tensions and protests happening now, as I am sure many of you are. As an Asian American, I knew the struggles of being a person of color (POC) in the United States, and how the system bends against you. At the same time, as an Asian American, I was privy to many benefits that other POC are not. As a follower of Christ, the call to speak out against injustice and oppression is core and essential to my mission, yet the scenes of violence that the media highlights is staunchly against Christ’s call to nonviolence. I did not know how to support my friends on the front lines, protesting and speaking truth, while not demonizing those who are yet to be allies. I remembered how long it took me to become an ally for the oppressed, and I avoided going on social media so that I would not fall into the temptation of judging those who were calling for order and denouncing the protests. I wanted to self-preserve, and to return to normal life more than anything.

Return to Normality?

As I faced that desire to return to normal life, other images popped into my mind. I remember, as I worked in a high school with all Black students in Chicago, when a police officer assigned to protect our students tackled a 14-year-old female student, knocking her down a flight of stairs, while other police officers saw nothing out of the ordinary. I remember when, on a field trip I excitedly planned to show my students Chinatown, store owners called the police on my students who were there to do voluntary community service and had them followed. I remember, as I lived in a predominately Hispanic and Black neighborhood in Chicago, being advised by my landlord to mention that I was not Black if I was ever to call 911, as police were disproportionately deployed to white communities whereas Black communities in Chicago would often be told that no one was available to respond to their 911 calls.

As I desperately wanted to go back in time to normal life, I think of George Floyd, crying for his late mother with his final breaths as a police officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes. George could have been any of my students, living their normal life before being randomly confronted by a system that did not value his life. I thought of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman just slightly younger than me, serving her community as an emergency medical technician, wrongfully killed in her sleep by police officers who burst into her home without knocking or being in uniform, thinking she had drugs. I thought of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was on a morning jog, cut off while trying to escape armed white men, one a former police officer, only then to be killed while one of his killers said “F-ing n-er” over him as he died.

Thinking of all these things, I realize there can be no return to normal life. For my Black students, for my Black friends, for the families of George, Breonna, and Ahmaud, a return to normalcy means a return to a system that does not value their lives. They do not have the option to choose a life free from the issues of race or ethnicity—life forces these issues upon them. For me to wish for a return to normalcy means that I wish for a life where my Black students will continue to be followed, forever untrusted. A life where police continue to see the Black members of the communities they are sworn to protect as threats. A life where you can be killed while jogging, the process recorded and posted online, and no efforts are made to arrest the murderers until people start protesting. A life where you can be considered lawfully killed as you sleep in your bed at night, because your skin color makes you a suspect. A life where you can be attacked at protests and the president threatens to call in the military, even when he called armed white militias who take over government buildings with assault rifles “very good people”. I know that when I seek a return to normal life, it is a privilege not everyone has.

Prophetic Lament

At the crux of all these events, it is sometimes debilitating to know what to do. How do we respond to the unjust killings of Black persons by those in power? How do we respond to the widespread looting happening concurrently with the first few days of protests? As Christians, we are often inundated with teachings to stay positive, keep fighting the good fight, to keep the faith. But when we face injustice, we don’t have the spiritual language to respond. Instead, political parties and affiliations dominate the voices surrounding the killings and protests. We pray and we hope, but our spiritual language fails beyond that. During these times, I have found comfort in the practice of Prophetic Lament, uttered by Jesus and the Old Testament prophets.

To speak of Prophetic Lament, we need to isolate the two terms that compose the phrase. Lament, the practice of the expression of grief and sorrow and suffering, is inherently Christian. Christ’s love is made known in lament. Yet the Church has largely forgotten this language. Around seventy percent of the book of Psalms is lament, whereas a very small percentage of the most popular songs sung in churches in the United States are laments. We memorize the psalms that end with happy notes, and we skip through the laments, seeing them as weak moments of the author, something less than holy. Just as Christ became incarnate to enter our suffering, so too should we plumb into the depth of suffering – for in that suffering Christ is made known. We are not called to rote prayer and a pat on the back, but to enter into solidarity and accompany and be one with those who suffer. Lament makes love known.

Perhaps the most famous lament is seen in Jesus’ healing of Lazarus. As he approaches the town, Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters, run out to meet him in tears. “If you had only come earlier, he would have still been living,” they cried. Jesus, seeing their tears, was “greatly troubled” and “deeply moved in his spirit.” Perhaps Jesus knew that healing was coming, a display of his power and life. And yet Jesus chose first and foremost to lament. Jesus wept. And following Jesus’ lament, the Jews surrounding him exclaimed, “See how he loved him!” It was following Jesus’ lament, not his display of healing, that allowed the world to recognize the act of love (see John 11).

As such, I have lately been thinking that the refusal of many (or perhaps most) Christians to enter into the space of lament is one of the most critical failures of the church in the United States. Lament is an act of incarnation. Lament is a willingness to not just offer simple words of comfort or meaning, but a willingness to embrace solidarity and to enter into the shared grief of the world, as Christ embraced solidarity and took on the shared grief of the world. Christians who do not lament and instead give simple platitudes are salespeople of a product they themselves have not tested. Life without lament is a life where we refuse to truly become salt of the earth. We cannot dive into incarnational living without it. Additionally, the practice of lament eliminates the distance between us. Lament is inherently an intimate act of solidarity. As we are invited into lament for our neighbors, the distance and boundaries between us break down.

And as the boundaries break down, we discover the language of lament that brings us closer to the prophetic. In the book of Psalms, laments make four assertions. First, things are currently not right. Second, things don’t need to stay this way but can in fact change. Third, the person who laments cannot stand for the situation to continue this way, it is intolerable. Fourth, God needs to change these things. The main point is the first one: life is not right. It was not before, and it certainly is not now. If anything, the current times have made the deep injustices known. As Christians, we hold fast to the vision of shalom, of true peace, and as such we know things are not right. Who should lament more than Christians? As followers of Christ we are called to show solidarity with the oppressed in the world, just as Christ suffered mightily both physically and otherwise for the world. Who more than Christ, who himself was a minority in the Roman Empire, killed by an unjust legal system who did not value his life, would understand and stand alongside George, Breonna, and Ahmaud? We have now found ourselves in a church that believes that lament does not belong before the throne of God; it is only fit for praise. If questions of justice and power and abuse do not belong before the throne of God, it will soon follow that these questions are not fi t anywhere. Lament makes an assertion that the God who is capable of transforming the world is available in all things and in every dimension of life. When we lose the ability to lament we lose God’s availability, vulnerability, and passion.

True Fasting

And as we start to incorporate the prophetic into lament, perhaps there is no more apt passage than found in Isaiah 58, as many Israelites were scattered in exile, seeking the voice of the Lord their God. Isaiah 58:1-3a (NIV) reads:

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.

Raise your voice like a trumpet.

Declare to my people their rebellion

and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.

For day after day they seek me out;

they seem eager to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that does what is right

and has not forsaken the commands of its God.

They ask me for just decisions

and seem eager for God to come near them.

‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,

‘and you have not seen it?

Why have we humbled ourselves,

and you have not noticed?’

The title of this chapter is often called True Fasting. This passage starts by setting the context – the people of God have not recognized their sin, and they act as a nation that knows God. Even though they engage in spiritual practices, God does not look upon them in favor. Instead, God instructs Isaiah to “shout it aloud” and to “declare to my people their rebellion and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.”

What we see here gets to the heart of the message of the prophets. Prophecy is not simply the utterance of the word of something that is to come. No, prophecy is much bigger than this. The purpose of the prophets was to share the heart of God, and to speak that heart and truth to the world – to be a compass in a directionless world. This was the mission of the prophets: to bring the chosen people back to God. Isaiah 58:3b-5 reads:

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please

and exploit all your workers.

Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,

and in striking each other with wicked fists.

You cannot fast as you do today

and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,

only a day for people to humble themselves?

Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed

and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?

Is that what you call a fast,

a day acceptable to the Lord?

The Israelites thought they knew God; they fasted, they wore sackcloth and ashes, they bowed in prayer – and yet the Lord their God did not listen. They were taken into captivity, their home and house of worship destroyed. Why was this? What was their great sin? What is the fast that God has chosen? We see in Isaiah 58:6-7:

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

This was their sin. God’s chosen people were set apart from the world and were to live counter-culturally. While the world lives for competition, wealth, and power, God’s people were to break that culture. They were part of God’s plan to reconcile all things, all people. Any imperfect relationship is utterly sinful. And even when the Israelites were themselves a persecuted people, they still operated a hierarchical system that valued some lives over others. They were concerned for themselves, rather than fighting injustice everywhere. They were not sharing their food, sheltering the poor, or clothing the naked. But then again, why would they? They lived in a world rife with injustice, struggling for survival as the Assyrians were taking over their lands. Samaria had been taken over and Judah was on the brink of collapse. So what are the people of God supposed to do when the world is so harsh? Isaiah 58:8-12 answers:

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,

and your healing will quickly appear;

then your righteousness will go before you,

and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;

you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,

with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,

then your light will rise in the darkness,

and your night will become like the noonday.

The Lord will guide you always;

he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land

and will strengthen your frame.

You will be like a well-watered garden,

like a spring whose waters never fail.

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins

and will raise up the age-old foundations;

you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,

Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

To live in this world, God commands us to “do away with the yoke of oppression…spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the oppressed.” This is not an occasional, optional task. This is a command. We are to spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry, satisfying the needs of the oppressed. Do we know people among us who are hungry? Are we working for justice for all those we know? No? Then how can we expect God to listen to our fasting and prayers if we fail to listen to our neighbor?

The fast that God has chosen is not merely spiritual. Fasting, the humbling of oneself, also includes the work of doing justice. As we can see in the first verse of this chapter, Isaiah is instructed to speak truth to the dominant culture of his people – to speak against the powers that be, and to speak against the oppression of the poor and minority. For many, including many Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) Christians, and even for Isaiah, protest is very much a spiritual practice. Protest can be prophetic if we hold fast to the vision of the Kingdom of God made possible through shalom. As we see throughout the Scriptures, God is firmly on the side of the oppressed. He takes the side of the suffering, so much so that he came as the suffering servant Christ Jesus. This is prophetic lament. To live the life of the Kingdom in a world that is dictated by sin. The Church is to prophesy to the world, showing the world what it can be with Christ – with none oppressed or hungry or alone. And we need to lament. We need to enter into the pain that is felt. Become the oppressed, hungry, and alone.

If we do so, the Lord will answer, and the Lord will say, “Here I am.” Our light will rise in the darkness, and our night will become like the noonday.

Derek Lee is a recent graduate of the Masterʼs program at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. He is dedicated to living life alongside the most vulnerable and oppressed, leading him to live or work in the lowlands of Nepal, the rural Philippines, or the South Side of Chicago.