Lent, Lament and Coronavirus

Lent is an intensely penitential time as we examine our sinful natures and return to the God we have, through our own rebelliousness, hurt time and again. Lent is also an opportunity to contemplate what our Lord really did for us on the Cross…

I am a stranger to any formal observance of Lent. My spiritual heritage was non-liturgical and ignored the Christian calendar. If I had read the above description of Lent, my response would have been, “Yeah, that’s what we do every Sunday.”. In the intervening years, my spiritual journey has drawn me to a deeper understanding of the meaning and purpose of lent. I’ve still got a long way to go to catch up with my liturgical sisters and brothers.

Although, I’m not a stranger to lament, awareness of lament as an important part of one’s spiritual journey has come in relatively recent times. I have written several posts on lament which you can read HERE.
In my words from one of those posts: …lament is the natural, intuitive response of all humans to the reality of the brokenness in our world as seen and/or experienced in their lives. I would describe brokenness as anything that is wrong, perceived or otherwise….if you meet someone who has no capacity to lament, they would be labeled a sociopath. … my conclusion is that lament is a universal human emotional response to real or perceived wrong.

The irony of a pandemic emerging in this Lenten season has been the subject of much writing and commentary. Lent and lament go hand in hand. This Lent is unique, the Coronavirus pandemic has exposed our vulnerabilities and dashed illusions of independence and self-sufficiency in ways beyond our collective memory. If it weren’t so sad, it would be hilarious that the first responders were hoarders of toilet paper.
I expect those who embrace Lent seriously have found their observance deepened and more focused than usual. For those of us who are casual Lenten observers, (i.e. gave up Twinkies) it is an opportunity to embrace Lent/lament seriously. Even in the midst of increasing anxiety and peril, I am finding that I resist lament and opt for feel-good cliches:

• God will never give us more than we can bear.
• When the Lord closes a door he opens a window.
• As long as we’re in God’s will, we will be safe.
• If God brings you to it, God will bring you through it.
• God will put a hedge of protection around his people.
• This is just our cross to bear.
• God allows bad things into our lives so that he can turn it into good.
• God has given you this trouble to test your faith.
• God is trying to teach us something through this trouble.
• With God, everything happens for a reason.
• God is in control

I know, those cliches are sacred and they satisfy be-happy impulses and allow me to conceal my real fears. I think they are what Job’s friends would say. After all, won’t unvarnished lament diminish our witness to our neighbors? Doesn’t our piety and ministry depend upon stiff upper lips and courageous defiance.
Lee Camp’s latest post gives some helpful perspective. An excerpt follows, you can read the complete post HERE.

…something like a third of the book of Psalms is comprised of Lament Psalms:  bold and indignant; complaining and pleading; asking God where God is, sometimes profanely. There is no emotional avoidance here. No false sense of machismo. And sometimes they are shockingly impertinent: “why don’t you wake up up there, and come down here and show us a little mercy?”

This posture of complaining is not a sign of unbelief, but precisely a manifestation of faith. The lamentations arise precisely because the complainer does believe that the Master of the universe can, and has, in dramatic times past, worked wonders. So why now the absence? Why now the cursedness, the loss, the death?

The laments are one reason I find I can believe. They are true to human experience. They evoke a sort of sadness and weary grief which we know to be real. Yet they refuse stubbornly to despair, refuse stubbornly not to see some awe, some transcendent beauty in it all. And they refuse to believe, even in the midst of all that weary grief, that we have been left alone.

I suspect, many are like me. The pain and discomfort of stay-at-home and quarantine has mostly produced compliant and whines. If predictions are accurate, we will soon find our complaints, whines and soothing cliches to be wanting. Facing the reality of utter helplessness we will voice our grief in deep lament to our only HOPE.

If God expects us to trust Him completely, how must he feel when we are reluctant or refuse to lament over real pain and suffering but freely complain about inconveniences? I would not presume to be God, but I might feel like a vending machine. It seems to me lament may be the purest expression of faith. Trusting when there are no answers. Where do we take those questions if not to God?