By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion (Psalm 137:1)
In the Book of Psalms, there are psalms of lament. Psalm 137, quoted above, is one of them.
Psalm 137 is a psalm of national lament. This week, the words of this psalm echo in my heart.
This week, Jacob Blake, a 29 year-old black man, was shot 7 times in the back by police as he attempted to get into his SUV where his young children were waiting for him.
I hold Jacob Blake and his family in my prayers, as he fights for his life in a Wisconsin hospital. I pray for the officers who did this terrible thing. I pray for the community of Kenosha, recoiling in pain and crying out. My cry of lament rises with theirs and like the psalmist, my tears flow.
Our nation is once again forced to confront its original sin of racial injustice. The sin that continues to exact its grim toll on all lives. No one is exempt. How long will it take for our eyes to be opened? To listen to the Holy Spirit and imagine a better way of being together?
This week, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17 year-old white boy with a troubled history, took an assault rifle and travelled to Wisconsin where he shot and killed three protestors. They are all victims of the distortions and lies our culture tells about black people and white people.
Kyle believed those lies. It cost him his future.
His victims were demonstrating against those lies and calling for long-delayed justice. It cost them their lives.
We all pay the price as those lies continue to rend and tear the fabric of our nation, and they will until we find the collective wisdom, courage, and humility to confront them.
Meanwhile, my cry of lament goes up for us all and I hold Kyle and his victims in my prayers.
This week, Hurricane Laura, a CAT 4 storm with winds in excess of 150mph, slammed into Cameron, Louisiana and the Texas / Louisiana Gulf Coast. Millions of people are displaced, their immediate housing needs complicated by the pandemic that continues to rage.
This week, COVID-19 deaths have topped 181,000. Members of our own congregation have felt the impact of this grim reality, losing parents and loved ones to COVID and some of us have loved ones still battling the virus.
I hold them in my prayers and my cry goes up to God, how long?
Parents of school aged children are caught in a vacuum of political leadership and are forced to make sense of conflicting information on their own. Today, they face the looming and agonizing decision about whether to send their children, whom they love more than life itself, back to school. Wondering what the cost will be, whatever they decide.
I hold them in my prayers. My lamentation rises with theirs.
And I pray for grandparents who have been unable to hug or kiss their grandchildren for months now.
A few weeks ago, I watched our grandchildren climb back into their car after a brief stop-over visit in our back yard. We hadn’t seen them since Christmas.
The joy and the curse of being a grandparent is that you’re finally aware of how sweet and fleeting life is. You understand what’s being lost in these months because you look at your own grown children with love and pride and wonder where it all went, as they drive away in their minivan with your grandchildren waving out the back window.
Sometimes, all you can do is lament, and though I hate having to write a Pastor’s letter like this, I do it because I know our faith speaks to our lives every day, whatever we face.
God is God in our joys and sorrows; in both the victories and the defeats we live every day. In this world, our hope lives side by side with our anxieties and fears.
The psalmists had the courage to lament because at the bottom of their lament was a bedrock foundation of hope.
In God, lamenting is one of the ways we reach that hope. Trusting God even in the midst of things we don’t understand.
And so, I lift up my voice and another psalm of lament is my fervent prayer:
Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love. (Psalm 44:26)
Charles Oberkehr 