A Time for Lamentation

I always find occurrences of synchronicity – a term made popular by Carl Jung for significant coincidences – to be especially interesting.  As I was considering what to write about this week, I was thinking about lamentation in this time when so much of normal life has been disrupted by COVID -19.  When I sat down at my computer, I received a notification that Lorna had posted on Facebook an essay by N.T. Wright on the very subject, Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To.  Wright is the former Bishop of Durham and is a prominent theologian.  Now, the coincident is not that surprizing as this is truly a time for lamenting and I could also say that great minds think alike - but I can’t make a claim like that even in my wildest flight of fantasy.

That being said, it truly is a time for lamentation which is one of the things that Christians do not embrace easily despite a whole book of the bible being devoted to it.  As Wright notes, people want to find an explanation for why trouble besets us:

No doubt the usual silly suspects will tell us why God is doing this to us. A punishment? A warning? A sign? These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation.

It is natural for we mere mortals to want to make sense of what is happening – to cry out, “why me” in a loud demand for an explanation.  This was Job’s cry to God for an explanation for his troubles.  It seems to me that God gave him an answer that wasn’t truthful.  How would Job have felt if God had acknowledged that he was a mere pawn in a bet between God and Satan?  However, the answer that God gave him was true, if not the whole truth.  We cannot know the reason for everything and Job finally understood that, “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” 

Sometimes, the best and perhaps only response is to sit down and weep as it says in psalm 137 which was put to lyrics by Don McLane: 

By the waters, the waters of Babylon
We lay down and wept, and wept, for thee Zion
We remember thee, remember thee, remember thee Zion

Wright closes his essay which the possibility that lies beyond the lamenting:

It is no part of the Christian vocation, then, to be able to explain what’s happening and why. In fact, it is part of the Christian vocation not to be able to explain—and to lament instead. As the Spirit laments within us, so we become, even in our self-isolation, small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell. And out of that there can emerge new possibilities, new acts of kindness, new scientific understanding, new hope. New wisdom for our leaders? Now there’s a thought.

That new hope is best expressed for me in that wonderful hymn, ‘How can I Keep form Singing’ by Robert Lowry;

My life flows on in endless song;

Above earth's lamentation,

I hear the sweet, tho' far-off hymn

That hails a new creation;

Thro' all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing;

It finds an echo in my soul—

How can I keep from singing?

Blessings on your journey and keep on singing