Lament is natural, good, and faithful--so says the Psalms

            I think there is this common misconception around lament—that lament is good and all, but the purpose of it is to move from lament to faith; that lament is contrary to faith; that lament is a sign of weak faith. The Psalms point out that this is simply wrong.

            It is not only OK to lament; it is natural, and faithful, and good. When your life is a mess, kick and scream to God. The Psalms do. Over and over again, they yell at God because he has not lived up to the bargain. Far from a lack of faith, lament shows where we are to turn when everything is wrong. We turn to God, because God can take it.

            The 69^th Psalm is a song of disorientation in which the Psalmist cries out about all the things that have gone wrong. We could spend all day parsing whether this is justified—we do this all the time with others! Should they really complain as much as they do? Do they really have it that bad? We wonder this about people all the time, but at the end of the day, what you feel is what you feel, and the feeling of God-forsakenness is real. For some, it is all-too-real and all-too-familiar.

This Psalm gets into the nitty-gritty awfully quickly. Everybody’s turned on them; their enemies, yes, but even their family. The Psalms don’t care much for motivations. Do you feel this way? OK, here’s an example of how to scream at God. It might feel like a strange kind of prayer, but prayer it is. Since the Psalms are prayers and not credos for living, they don’t restrain themselves to a compact, systematic theology. They simply feel what they feel and they don’t apologize for it.

The Psalms of lament are for you in moments of desperation. They don’t suggest that you need to pick yourself up, or feel better, or become a better Christian. Instead, they are honest about actual honest-to-goodness feelings. The Psalms call out the lie that the Christian faith is about blessings, and happiness, and unicorns, and purple silly putty. More often, the life of faith feels like being submerged in rising water. The Christian faith expects us to yell at God as often as it expects us to pray meekly. To that end, we aren’t assured that good things will follow faithfulness. Ask the apostles, martyred for their faith. If the Christian faith rewarded faithfulness, they would have all retired to Sicily. Instead, they were beheaded, or crucified, or died in prison.

The Psalms lament that this is the way of the world. They lament that the righteous are persecuted and the unrepentant sinners grow in wealth and prestige. They lament that politicians create systems that profit themselves, while oppressing the poor and the migrant, pitting outsiders one against another.

Praise the Lord! (For the stoic midwesterner)

Psalm 113

            As we enter into our summer lectionary readings we begin with a topic that might make some of you uncomfortable. It’s all about praise!

            I can hear you thinking: Oh now, pastor, can we have just a little more time with all that judgment stuff, please? Obviously, that makes us uncomfortable, too, but at least when you talk about judgment we aren’t worried that you’re going to force us to do something we don’t want to do!

            Praise is a scary word. It’s scary, because it brings to mind other scary things like dancing and singing. We don’t dance much in public anymore, you might have noticed. It wasn’t that long ago that school dances involved dancing. It also wasn’t that long ago that communal singing was a thing that happened all the time. Nowadays, it’s pretty much reserved for church and the occasional odd sporting event, which is really cool when it happens, by the way. I will always remember the late-September 2008 Twins series sweep of the White Sox when the Metrodome corridors were packed with fans shouting Glory, Glory, Hallelujah. We know how to praise. We mostly just don’t want to.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. In many places in the world today, dancing, and singing, and communal praise are essential to worship. In 2006, I went on a trip to Tanzania with the Augustana Choir. One Sunday after worship in a village outside of Iringa, a half dozen local choirs joined us on the back lawn of the church to sing for one another. But it wasn’t just singing—it was dancing and jumping. It was praising. Every one of those groups came dressed for the occasion and ready to move it, clad in long-flowing robes or traditional Masai black-and-red laden with jewelry. They knew who they were, and they were there to do praise.

Our music was meaningful but different. This Lutheran tradition of stoicism is a heritage of ours that has some real strengths. We tend to be humble; we tend to value meekness; and we tend to do what we do well. But, man, do we struggle with praise! So, we say “Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord; praise the name of the Lord” from Psalm 113, but we say it meekly. We say it uniformly. We don’t want to stick out. And if the pastor (or anybody else) tries to get us to do differently, watch out!

            So much of this comes from a good place—really, it does! We see the people who make a show of their praise—who raise up their hands not out of genuine worship but to demonstrate their faithfulness to others, or to fit in themselves. We see the auditoriums and the stadiums full of worshipers who are mimicking the actions of others, and we find that at best inauthentic and at worst showy or boastful. But just because we see the hypocrisy of others doesn’t mean we have our house in order.

Dying and Rising

Romans 6:1-11

I want to talk today about baptismal dying and rising—a subject we don’t talk about here that often—in part I’m guessing because it sounds like one of those church-y things that we leave to the seminary professors and church theologians. But like most church-y things, Paul’s letters are not really for ivory tower white-bearded dudes to form a systemic theology around. Rather, they are for you—good news! Not just that Jesus came but also why that matters. They bridge the history of our faith with the practices we share. This has the power to change the way you live.

            Dying and rising is not some theology. It’s the way we live our lives as Christians. Each day, we don’t look in the mirror and say, “Man, P. Frank, looking fine today. Better Christian than I was yesterday! Working my way up the spiritual ladder! Sure glad I’m not the dirty, rotten sinner I was before those college degrees. Glad those student loans bought me salvation!”

            No!

            Dying and rising means waking up in the mirror, looking at yourself, and saying ( in the words of a seminary professor of mine), “Male bovine fecal matter! I’m still the same dirty, rotten sinner I was before all those student loans. Dang." And yet… if Jesus died on my behalf—if my trust for meaning is not in these sorry black bags under my eyes, then I can stop playing these stupid games. If Jesus died for me, then I will die in him. And, strangely, I already have. I already died to sin. And I do every day. But Jesus promises something better: You don’t just die, you rise!

            And dying and rising is for all of us!

            Dying and rising is for the alcoholic who understands they cannot fix this problem by their own willpower, but who discovers on the other side of addiction that  grace isn’t for the righteous but for them. Sinners. And it’s not dependent on you fixing the situation, because—like with so many things in life—you can’t fix it. Instead, the only thing that might work is God fixing you, having realized you couldn’t do it yourself.

            And dying and rising is for the parent, whose children never listen, who feels overwhelmed by the burden of teaching them good behavior, and who too often feels like a failure when we can’t make our children into the people we want to be, because baptismal grace commands us to measure ourselves not by our successes but by our failures, and love is the only prerequisite of living a life with God. So, you can’t fail your children if you love them—even if they’re little devils; even if they seem to reject the God who you want them to know by love. Love your children and they will kill you minute by minute, not being able to mold them as you feel you should; not being able to keep them completely safe. Our children are vulnerable—our children make us vulnerable—which is why when we baptize we don’t shy away from it. Children don’t deserve to die, and yet, they do. In baptism, we name it, because we are people of the resurrection.