Not everyone likes to hear the Bagpipes played. Yet they can emote lament like no other instrument. For lament is where current world news takes me. To lament is to express deep sorrow, grief, or regret, to give empathetic voice to the human struggle.
Lament is a major theme in the Bible and particularly in the book of Psalms. The psalms of lament are poetic hymns meant to be sung to God. They deal with issues that were and still are central to the life of faith for individual believers and the whole community of faith. The lament psalms express intense emotions, real human struggles, and the anguish of heart experienced by the people of Israel as they lived out their faith individually and corporately.
For the men and women of the Old Testament were as real as we are today. They danced and sang, rejoiced and laughed, argued and confessed, lamented and mourned. They expressed emotions to God in prayer just as we do today. When we encounter difficult struggles and need God’s rescue, salvation, and help, the psalms of lament are a good place to turn.
The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther treasured the psalms of lament. Of them, he said, “What is the greatest thing in the Psalter but this earnest speaking amid the storm winds of every kind? . . . Where do you find deeper, more sorrowful, more pitiful words of sadness than in the psalms of lamentation? There again you look into the hearts of the saints, as into death, yes, as into hell itself. . . . When they speak of fear and hope, they use such words that no painter could so depict for your fear or hope, and no Cicero or other orator has so portrayed them. And that they speak these words to God and with God, this I repeat, is the best thing of all. This gives the words double earnestness and life” (Word and Sacrament, Luther’s Works, vol. 1, ed. E. T. Bachmann. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1960, pp. 255 –56).
The people of Ukraine have chosen Psalm 31 as their Lament. The psalm is moving and evocative of what they are facing. It places God in their struggle, in their cry.
In you, Lord, I have taken refuge; deliver me in your righteousness.
Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. for the sake of your name lead and guide me.
Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God.
Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.
Why do they and we lament today?
The images of lives and buildings destroyed. The image of children in their colourful bobble hats waiting for a bus not to the cinema or ice rink but to safety and separation from family. So many images flooding our minds. Tearing our hearts.
The futility of war. The carnage of war. The human cost of war.
So I lament. I cry for peace. I pray for miracles. I long for reconciliation. I resolve to hope.
It is time for the Bagpipes to be played!
Shalom
Revd Helen
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