The disciples want an increase in faith. Perhaps they’ve been through what we’ve been through in listening to our first reading today, and singing the psalm – all that agony.
Perhaps they’ve been through what we’ve been through in fears for the future and lament for what is lost.
The disciples want an increase in faith.
Maybe they carry the long memories of their ancestors in their muscles. Do they remember weeping by the rivers of Babylon? Do they still ache with memories of exile, of refugee life? -trauma re-ignited by the present Roman occupation and the increasing dangers that face them?
I’m not even going to pretend I did all the homework looking at the contexts in the story that led to this opening line of our selected Gospel reading today. (It’s a last-minute gig!) Something to me speaks strongly in the simple fact of their asking. They’re expressing their desire.
I wonder if there is anyone who hasn’t at least wondered at times how to increase our faith. We have prayers in our books that express this desire, so it must be universal…
Usually the desire arises in me because I feel a vulnerability to my faith, that something is missing that, if it were here, it would help me to get through what I’m going through. Especially when what I’m going through has me, like Judah in our first reading, “weeping bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks, with no one to comfort her, and friends become enemies.” Or hanging up my musical instruments to sit by a river to week, like the Psalmist.
Lament is the cry of suffering, the frustrated gasp and moan that seeks consolation and explanation for the inexplicable and the inconsolable. It is raw and deeply ‘in’ the experience of pain. In the biblical tradition, it’s more than the experience of sorrow, but is a process of what we might call, today, ‘working through’ pain. It requires expression but defies that very requirement by its messiness and its urgency.
Lament is a gift that arises from our deep encounter with suffering. We feel pains from growth, trauma, and loss in our own lives and in empathy with those close to us. We are surrounded by, and see, the inexplicable suffering in the world and the devastation brought by injustice and greed. And as our walk with Jesus deepens through life, he draws us close and turns us around to see the suffering of the world with him, through God’s eyes. The body of Christ – the church – turns to the world with the eyes of God beholding the beauty of God’s creation and its suffering. Our laments amongst this suffering, our own suffering and our witness to others’ suffering, is a gift we offer to God as much as our praise. In fact, praise is a bit hollow without it.
God doesn’t bring hope as though it were a perfectly wrapped gift that we’re only allowed to unwrap after we dry our tears and ‘get over it.’ No. God, who is the Source of all love and hope and faith, has an embrace that is big enough to enfold us in our pain and in our ranting, raging, despairing, fearful, tearful protest against what is happening to us. More than that, God actually desires our honesty.
Christianity has in some places been shaped in ways that have tamed the wilder elements of our own powerful faith tradition. However it all came about, the fact is that some Christian practice tends to avoid the messier parts of Scripture: the anger of Jesus in the marketplace and his deep grief at the death of his friend Lazarus; the lamentations of the people of Israel after the destruction of Jerusalem. We may know the story, but how much do we pay attention to the visceral nature of the emotions involved? It is likely that we too quickly intellectualize Lamentations, or enclose Jesus’ emotional and spiritual anguish in a box to be opened only when we want assurance that he was, actually, human.
The source of Christian hope can be located within the cry of lament of Jesus on the cross: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?! In the crux of lament and promise can be found a hope that is deeper and more spiritually nutritious than anything a purveyor of shiny polite optimism can peddle.
In times of loss, lament is both necessary and faithful.
What has been missing, for quite a few generations in North American culture, is the sort of depth of lament that we encounter in the Bible. Our society is uncomfortable with suffering and death, generally. We paraphrase into soft metaphors what it is to die, we sanitize funerals, and put up massive distractions to turn eyes away from the suffering of the marginalized and victims of injustice. In our society, the depth and razor-sharp pain expressed by psalmists can seem downright embarrassing.
If we affirm and celebrate that God is loving and trustworthy, and that God’s hope for us is fullness of life, sharing our doubt with God is not only safe, it can be the beginning of a new way of beginning to listen to God – by listening to our deepest fears and doubts.
Sing a New Creation, the hymn book supplement we are introducing over these months, did a few things ‘new’, and the greatest of these I think is the inclusion of a section called Lament & Praise. In the big blue hymn book, Common Praise, you’ll see a section called “Praise” but without the Lament. Songs, hymns of lament are, we are learning more and more, actually part of our tradition, and, in fact, a necessary part of praise: it is us being honest with God, vulnerable before God, real with God.
If we affirm and celebrate that God is compassionate and is mercy itself, and that we are called and equipped too to be compassionate and merciful with others, expressing the feelings that we only can do to the most faithful of companions is not only honest with God, but can help us in our compassion with others.
There may be those times when we feel like crying our “Lord, increase our faith!” when we actually need to be reminded that the presence of doubt and the need to lament are part of the very life of faith itself, and that God has given us that faith in abundance already.
God opens our lips to be honest.
This sort of honesty may feel incompatible with Christian faith: it cannot be true that God has abandoned me, but it feels true, in my experience of utter devastation and loneliness. Lament is awkward and messy. In the biblical tradition, this honesty, and its deep expression, always leads to praise, a praise that comes from a place of deep assurance that we have been heard by God, and more, that God walks close with us in our lament and pain, and for that, thanks and praise be to God.
The Revd Dr Eileen Scully
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.