Whatever happened to lamentations?

“Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonizing tension-packed content and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering” – MLK Bearing The Cross

These words spoken by Dr. King have the ring of unmistakable truth and perspective to them that could only be born out of an understanding of personal and communal suffering. As our group explored the sheer scandal of The Cross we saw how The Cross was not only a scandal but it scandalizes. It seems vibrantly clear that God intentionally organized scandal into His family line because of their serious intentions concerning the incarnation (Jesus coming down to earth).

* Jesus was Asian-born, identifying with more than 1/3 of the world’s population, He also came from a mixed racial heritage.
* His birth was shameful bringing Him into direct connection with the 79% of teenage unwed mothers in the U.S. and the 1,000,000 teenage girls who become pregnant annually.
* After He was born He instantly became a political refugee, easily connecting Him with the 50 million people worldwide who have had to flee their homes over the last 10 years due to political unrest.
* His immigrant status links Him with the 8.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.
* His living in poverty connects Him with the 1,745,663 children in the U.S. that live on less than $6,645 a year
* By 2020 over 60% of the worlds population will be urban, young, and poor-Jesus grew up in the same surrounding conditions
* Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” 3 million men, women, and children were homeless in the U.S. over the last year alone
* He was an outlaw – 25% of young African American males are incarcerated or on parole
* He was despised and rejected – Bias against race, religion, and sexual identities are the leading motivations for hate crimes in the U.S.
* He was an innocent victim – Every 11 minutes a child is reported abused or neglected in the U.S., that amounts to nearly 3 million
* Forsaken by His Father – Of the 72 million young people in the U.S., almost 25% live without their father and 50% of the 11.4 million young black people live without their father
* He was murdered – Black males 14-24 make up 1% of the U.S. population but 30% of all homicides
* He had to endure The Cross, which is the greatest scandal of all

“The first condition of healing is to bring the pain and suffering into view” – Kathleen M. O’Conner-Lamentations and Tears of the World

What do we do with a church systems that seems to have the complete hiding of pain and suffering as its number one agenda item? As a New Yorker there are certain sufferings I have become blind to seeing because of the lack of representation in my every day view of sight. An example of that type of silent suffering is the homeless, when Giuliani was in office he did such a “good” job with the homeless that you actually forgot about them because you hardly ever saw them. Since I did not see them I was extremely under aware of their pain and suffering, the same-out-of-sight-out-of-mind experience seems to be taking place within the church. We preach a Gospel of “upward mobility” with very little focus on the process and the actions that would help families and communities move toward a fullness of life with dignity, justice, peace, and hope.

What are we afraid of? Does the fear of actually being stripped of the 12-step approach to Christian vitality motivate this hiding of pain and suffering? It seems that we see Christ as the Holy conjurer and our actions and behaviors are the keys, which activate His acts of benevolence. If one of our fellow sojourners is lacking in the blessing department we can quickly subscribe a modification to their behavioral practices in hopes to appease the great giver of stuff. Somehow Christians interact with their loving creator as if He were god of mythological inclinations. I wonder what happened to our theology of suffering? That is a particularly messy branch of thought because we are continually at a lost to explain the sufferings of life; this is compounded by our utter lack of availability in the area of presence. Could our blind reliance on Divine healing be attributed to debilitating fear we have when forced to gaze upon pain and suffering?


Our desire to reduce the gospel in order to control it is alarmingly manifested as serpent theology when superimposed in the lives of those who suffer. Serpent Theology is a perversion, it happens when those who are powerless have already adopted and internalized the mindset of those in power. So those who suffer have internalized the belief that they are most certainly not more than conquers because their life circumstances dictate that they remain nameless, faceless, and doomed to suffer outside the gate. According to Hebrews 13 this puts them right next to the suffering savior but our rush to resurrect Him robs Him of the dignity accorded to His pain. It is our blind allegiance to the Easter experience which devalues the Garden experience, the beatings He suffered, the Via de la Rosa, and the cross itself. Why do we rob The Cross of its subversive power?

“Art does not answer the impossible theological questions. When thought and reason come to an end in the face of unthinkable evil or unbearable personal loss, art provides us with the means to invent or organize, to create a place of being where we are helped to endure the question: Where is God?
Amy Bryan – Contemporary Artist

When pain is fully exposed that is when it has the best opportunity to be healed, we believe that for our counseling sessions but not as a major component of our daily walk. Do we view pain and suffering as a distracting selling point to those we are trying to lure into a fulfilling tithing experience? I know prosperity seems like a logical selling point for those lost in what we perceive to be despair but maybe all they are really looking for is authenticity and presence. These two things were in abundance within the first century church because of the power of the Holy Spirit. This power was manifested in the fully when they attended to the Greek widows in Acts 6, their suffering was not overlooked, they were not further marginalized by the community which was suppose to simply see them.

How many suffering people have we done violence to by simply overlooking them and thereby stripping them of their dignity? Have we disallowed the gift of lamentations? All laments have in common the direct address to God, a list of complaints, words from the speaker that are reassuring to them, words of motivation for God to act, and a petition for Justice. Have we done violence to the poets as they lament their tragedy because of the uncomfortably their pain brings us?