Lm 1:1-3, 2:1-5

3 October 2004

World Communion Sunday

“Is There Time for Pain?”

            Sometimes commercials have lines in them that say more than is intended at the time.  A good example is a medicine commercial (I believe it’s for Tylenol) that recently was on the air.  In this one, we see an active-looking woman who tells us why she uses Tylenol:  “I don’t have time for pain!”

The narrator says other words to that effect:  we’re busy people…pain keeps us from our fast-paced schedule…so why feel any pain?  In fact, it’s almost like they’re saying, “If you have a headache, you’re just being lazy!  If you have pain, it’s your own fault!”  (I did say it’s almost like they’re saying that!)

            That line—“I don’t have time for pain”—says something about our determination to keep the party going on, especially in the face of grim stuff like pain and death.  It reminds me of some reflections by Jürgen Moltmann.  (I continue to find that man a source of real wisdom!)  In his book, In the End—The Beginning, he has a chapter called “Mourning and Consoling.”  He wonders, “Where in the public life of our society do we find the rituals for dying, death and mourning?  The answer is plain:  we hardly notice these things at all.”[1]

            Once upon a time, mourning, lamenting, was something publicly acknowledged—not something you were supposed to keep to yourself.  People would wear black for a certain period of time (and not because they were into goth music!).  Cemeteries were located near churches, instead of on the outskirts of town.  That kind of stuff has, more and more, been kept out of sight.  It seems that it really takes a major disaster, like 9-11, for us to publicly acknowledge these realities of life and death.  Even war is changing; it’s been turned into a video game.  The actual bodies of the fallen are removed from view.

            We tend to have real trouble in our ability to mourn.  That’s true whether we ourselves have experienced some great loss or tragedy (of whatever nature), or whether it’s someone else.  Sometimes we tiptoe around them, as though they were a land mine.  Sometimes we quote scripture in a careless and annoying way:  “Well, you know that all things work together for good for those who love God” (Ro 8:28).

Our Old Testament reading takes a different approach to public mourning.  It’s reflective of that culture.  It’s a culture in which there are people with the function of public mourner.  Still, it’s not like the events of Lamentations require anything so structured.  These are poems about the destruction of Jerusalem, the sacking of the temple.  They must have been written soon afterwards.  There’s some really tortured language here; the wounds haven’t yet healed.

            I really haven’t given much thought to the book of Lamentations since the last time I preached on it, which was right after the attacks of 9-11.  I’ll go over a little bit of what I said then regarding the background of the book.

            There’s a great deal of structure, of design, in the poems, each of which occupies a chapter.  They’re written as acrostics.  That means each line begins with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  No one's really sure why the poems have been written this way.  Maybe it's to help in memorizing them.  Maybe it's a way to show the artistic skill of the poet.

No one really knows who the poet or poets were.  Jeremiah's been a popular candidate, based on 2 Ch 35:25, which says that "Jeremiah¼uttered a lament for Josiah," after that king had died.  Still, the only king in Lamentations is Zedekiah, who repeatedly ignored Jeremiah.

Besides that, it's not likely that Jeremiah would have said some of the stuff in Lamentations.  I won’t go into great detail; I’ll mention a couple of examples during the second hour.  One thing I will say is that the book ends on a very bleak note:  "Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored; renew our days as of old—unless you have utterly rejected us, and are angry with us beyond measure" (5:21-22).

Jeremiah wouldn’t say that, unless he wanted to play the game that political opponents enjoy accusing each other of—flip flopping!  By this time, he had already gone from preaching bad news to preaching good news.  He knew that God would restore the nation, that God would make a new covenant with the people.

            The writer of Lamentations isn’t so sure of that.  You can see how bleak the outlook is, right off the bat.  Chapter 2 attributes the actions of the Babylonians to God.  Verses 4 and 5 say that the Lord is “like an enemy.”

            And maybe that’s the only explanation that seems to make sense.  The author is in a state of complete disbelief, of horrified astonishment.  How could this happen?  God must have decided to become the enemy of the people.  Either that, or—and this is an equally abhorrent thought—could it be that the gods of the Babylonians are stronger than Yahweh, the God of Israel?  Whatever the case, I won’t pretend to read the mind of our writer.

            Something that is clear is the open admission of issues that we tend to deny public hearing.  Why do we avoid these matters?  Our friend Jürgen addresses this:  “The modern activist culture finds its end when it comes to [matters like] dying, death and mourning.”  People don’t want to hear that stuff—let’s keep things light, keep things moving!  “The dying and the grieving seem to excuse themselves:  ‘Please don’t let me be in your way.’”[2]  Trust me!  I got your message—you don’t have time for pain!

            The comedian Dennis Miller goes on what he calls “rants.”  He’ll just lay into whatever his topic is—in a humorous way, or so he hopes.  Well, Jürgen Moltmann goes on what I would call a rant.  “The various ways in which we repress death and mourning make modern men and women speechless, apathetic and infantile.  The always somewhat forced ‘fun’ culture, and the pressurizing compulsion to do something, can be viewed as consequences of these public attempts at repression.  We increasingly perceive events merely in the technical sense, and no longer in human terms.”[3]  Are we turning ourselves into machines?

            I realize that I’m probably part of a small minority of people who feel this way, but I believe the decline of the humanities is a serious thing.  The studies of history and philosophy, art and music, have been pushed aside for things like business and computers.  No doubt, there is a place for those things, but by getting rid of the liberal arts, we’re losing more than we know.

            “The unconscious fear of missing out on something, or of being done out of something, is a tremendous accelerator in the way we live.”[4]  We do feel a sense of growing impatience.  Has anyone here, while waiting to turn onto a busy road, wondered if you’d ever be able to pull out—even though only thirty seconds had gone by?  Who gets irritated if it takes your computer sixty seconds to open a website?

            Whether we rush through life, or whether we sleepwalk through life (and they may be the same thing), it comes down to this:  “We flee the grief and seek a painless happiness.”[5]  Of course, in doing so, we deaden ourselves.  We become less human.  A couple of weeks ago, while preaching from Jeremiah 8, I said that by holding on to his compassion, the prophet avoids becoming less human.  (There are major similarities in the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations!)

            It’s a tough thing to do, this business of making time for pain.  I know I don’t like doing it!  Pain hurts!  But here’s a strange thing about pain:  at least, pain in general.  Pain is our friend.  It lets us know that something is wrong.  Whether the pain is physical, emotional, spiritual, whatever…it’s a warning.  I think our country is suffering from political pain.  We need healing so that we can treat each other humanely.

            Is there time for pain?  With the various ways we deaden ourselves, we often don’t recognize the pain we do have.  We bury it somewhere and think we’ve taken care of it.  But it still must be dealt with.  Unresolved pain has a detrimental influence on our health.  That has a direct effect on our relationships with everyone else, even with God.

If we don’t recognize and address our own pain, we can hardly recognize the pain of others.  We don’t exactly become the picture of Christian compassion!

Today is World Communion Sunday, and we, like so many other churches, will receive the Peacemaking Offering.  It is a good thing to give money to these important causes and programs.  But if we do not make the time for pain—mine, yours, and everyone else’s—there is no peace.

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