Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill call on Christians to embrace the path of lament, which includes confession.
In his book Mirror to the Church, Emmanuel Katongole reflects on the Rwandan genocide…. Before the Rwandan genocide, the majority of Rwandans were Christians. Yet in 1994, beginning on the Easter weekend, [Katongole writes,] “Christians killed other Christians, often in the same churches where they had worshiped together…. The most Christianized country in Africa became the site of its worst genocide.” [1] …
Reflecting on the Rwandan genocide, Katongole says, “The resurrection of the church begins with lament.” [2] This is difficult for many Americans and others living in Western countries to grasp. Our culture teaches us to embrace a triumphalistic and success-oriented posture. Thus we avoid lament. Americans are prone to move quickly to try to fix things, and often we need to lament, mourn, and grieve first to fully experience and understand what has taken place. In cases of injustice and atrocities such as genocide, the only real response we can have at first is to lament. Scripture teaches us that we can’t move toward hope, peace, transformation, and reconciliation without going through sorrow, mourning, regret, and lament….
Lament is a demonstrative, strong, and corporate expression of deep grief, pain, sorrow, and regret. Lament and repentance deal with issues of the heart. They pave the way for outer change. Lament is a personal and corporate response to many things: evil, sin, death, harm, discrimination, inequality, racism, sexism, colonization, oppression, and injustice. It is about mourning the painful, shameful, or sorrowful situation, about confessing sin and complicity and sorrow, about calling God to intervene and to change the situation. Finally, lament is about offering thanksgiving and praise to God, knowing that God will intervene and bring change, hope, and restoration.
These laments by Kim and Hill offer ways for Christians in the United States to acknowledge and grieve injustice:
We lament the exploitation and destruction of black lives and communities; the abuse of basic human rights; and systemic injustice, expressed in policing, judicial, educational, economic, social, and other systems and structures….
We lament corruption among politicians, police forces, and bankers; military interventions and the militarization of society and police forces; uncaring government agencies and big business; and urban poverty and homelessness…. We lament the nature, extent, and effects of white privilege, nationalism, xenophobia, and racism; the unwelcome shown to refugees and asylum seekers; and the fear, anxiety, and suffering experienced by undocumented migrants.
We lament the treatment of women in society and church…. We lament gender inequalities, the discrimination and harassment women suffer, the sexualization of women and girls, and the domestic violence many women suffer daily.… We lament the colonization, devastation, and assimilation of First Nations and indigenous peoples, and the role Christianity has played….
We lament the silence of the people of God about many of these things. We lament the complicity of the church in many of these things.
This practice of lament is necessary if we are to experience healing and hope and transformation.
References:
[1] Emmanuel Katongole with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 12, 19.
[2] Katongole, Mirror to the Church, 163.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill, Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2018), 41–42, 43, 44–45, 46.
Image credit and inspiration: Siim Lukka, untitled (detail), 2017, photo, Estonia. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We make room for our personal and collective grief by letting the sorrow burn through.
Story from Our Community:
I have been part of the Daily Meditations online community for many years, but the meditations on lamenting have had a profound effect on me. My son died at the age of 54, and my daughter who has mental illness is not doing well. I am finding so much wisdom and comfort in the Daily Meditations. I know God walks with us as we lament. I hope all of us who are struggling find some peace in that wisdom.
—Linda L.
