Monday in Holy Week

Lamentations 1:1-2,6-12

  Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,  which was brought upon me,
 
I'll have to admit that it took a little digging to find the Lamentations of Jeremiah in my Bible this morning.  In my favorites parts of the Bible the pages are worn and stained, covered in red underlines.  In Lamentations, however, the pages were crisp and clean without a single mark.  I'm guessing that that was true of many Bibles this morning.  Lamentations is simply not a place we turn to often, except perhaps in Holy Week, because its just such a downer.  You see the message of Lamentations is not one which we like to hear in American Christianity, and that message is that sometimes life is really pretty terrible.  We might be okay with talk of bearing our crosses and loosing ourselves, but only as long as it is all done with a stiff upper lip.  We know, of course, that bad things happen, that failure and loss and sickness and death come to us all, but for some reason we find it our Christian duty to mask the hurt, to anesthetize ourselves against the pain. 

We have for some reason, come to believe that to truly hurt is unChristian, that somehow to mourn is to deny the hope of Christ.  We certainly believe that it is anathema to be weak, especially emotionally.  The thing is, these things are not unChristian at all.  (They may very well be unAmerican, but our confusion and conflation of those two things is a different, albeit serious, issue.)  Look to Our Lord who wept at Lazarus' grave knowing full well what he was about to do.  It is quite possible to righteously feel the pain and hurt of a loss and still stand confidently in the hope that Our Lord is in the business of working all things together for our good.

When we refuse, falsely in the name of hope or faith (but truly out of fear of weakness), to suffer then we are denying ourselves such an important part of both the human and Christian experience.  It is simply not healthy in any way, not physically, emotionally or spiritually, to stifle our pain.  In doing so we deny ourselves the redemptive power of feeling our pain for all it's worth.  We cheat ourselves when we try to ignore or cure our suffering before it has run its course. 

Yet, we must also remember that as Christians we do not grieve as those who have no hope.  It is not a sin to suffer, it is not a sin to be sad or hurt or in pain, but it is a sin to despair.   Despair is when our pain causes us to turn in on ourselves, to shut out the outside.  Despair is when our pain, rather than God, becomes the source of our life and energies, and that is a most dangerous place in which to be.  Our mourning, like all our life, must be rooted in Christ.  We must feel our pain sheltered in his arms.   "For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too."

So, let us lament with Jeremiah, there is no sin in it. Let us cry out with him in his pain, and in our own, we will be better for it.   Let us, this week especially, steep a bit in the Passion, let us not get to quickly to Easter.  Let us learn to suffer at Our Lord's side, who did not enter into his glory before he suffered pain.  Let us sit awhile in sackcloth and ashes, let there be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  May the full force of what this week is come over us, may we truly realize what Jesus went through and that he did so for us.  Let us not pass by his suffering, or indeed our own whatever it may be, as if it were nothing to us.

O come and mourn with me awhile;
And tarry here the cross beside;
O come, together let us mourn;
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

Have we no tears to shed for Him,
While soldiers scoff and foes deride?
Ah! look how patiently He hangs;
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

How fast His hands and feet are nailed;
His blessed tongue with thirst is tied,
His failing eyes are blind with blood:
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

His mother cannot reach His face;
She stands in helplessness beside;
Her heart is martyred with her Son’s:
Jesus, our Lord, is Crucified.

Seven times He spoke, seven words of love;
And all three hours His silence cried
For mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

Come, let us stand beneath the cross;
So may the blood from out His side
Fall gently on us drop by drop;
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

O break, O break, hard heart of mine!
Thy weak self-love and guilty pride
His Pilate and His Judas were:
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

A broken heart, a fount of tears,
Ask, and they will not be denied;
A broken heart love’s cradle is:
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

O love of God! O sin of man!
In this dread act Your strength is tried;
And victory remains with love;
For Thou our Lord, art crucified!
               -Frederick Faber