Instead of deliverance, they seek constancy and sustainability. “The well-off do not expect their faith to begin in a cry, but rather, in a song. They do not expect or need intrusion, but they rejoice in stability [and the] durability of a world and social order that have been beneficial to them.” Praise is the language of celebration.7
If tax rates favor the rich, they should be challenged. Redistribution of wealth would not be a catastrophe but instead a blessing in contrast to the existing state of economic inequality.
The answer, I believe, is that a theological monopoly is reinforced, docility and submissiveness are engendered, and
“seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile,” that is, Babylon.
YHWH implores his people to continue to live life, even in the midst of shattered dreams and expectations. They are to conduct life in all its fullness, including building homes, planting gardens, getting married and increasing in number.
The people of God are to seek the peace of Babylon and not to disengage with the ready-made excuse that Babylon is a wicked city. They are not to give in to the temptation to withdraw from the world when things are not going as they had planned.
Marsden recognizes that “fundamentalism was the response of traditionalist evangelicals who declared war on these modernizing trends. In fundamentalist eyes the war had to be all-out and fought on several fronts. At stake was nothing less than the gospel of Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”11 The twentieth century witnessed fearful white Protestants yielding to the temptation to withdraw from the city and engaging in the exact opposite behavior demanded by Jeremiah 29:7 to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.”
If Jeremiah 29 first reveals the temptation to disengage from the city, the second temptation warns against acquiescing to the society in which they now live. The people of God are tempted to listen to false prophets who would tell them what they want to hear, rather than speak the actual heart and words of God.
YHWH worship, on the other hand, held no such promises. YHWH does not operate like a vending machine nor does he follow a simplistic pattern yielding the exact outcome we want. Defeated exiles would be tempted to forsake the complexity of YHWH worship for the simplicity of hearing exactly what they wanted to hear.
The suburban churches embraced the pragmatism and applicability of church growth principles. This movement, popular in white suburban churches in the latter half of the twentieth century, adapted business and marketing principles in order to appeal to the masses and spread the word.15 American evangelicalism has created the unique phenomenon of church shopping—viewing church as yet another commodity and product to be evaluated and purchased. When a Christian family moves to a new city, how much of the standards by which they choose a church is based upon a shopping list of their personal tastes and wants rather than their commitment to a particular community or their desire to serve a particular neighborhood? Churches, in turn, have adapted their ministries to appeal to the consumer mindset of the American public.16 Pastoral leadership in the church relied on business models of strong leadership over biblical values of servant leadership.
Frustrated pastors, weary of waiting for their church to turn around, will have no problem accessing resources with the latest and greatest idea. American churches are not supposed to struggle, and they are not supposed to decline, so we believe American ingenuity and know-how will solve these problems. There are always simple answers if we want to hear them. But Jeremiah 29 challenges these presuppositions and the simple solutions that tickle the ear of the typical American pastor. It is the same message that so many American Christians want to hear: they are still in control, there is no need for judgment, and there is no suffering. But easy answers that offer false hope are not solutions.
We fail to acknowledge the reality of sins committed by the church and fail to offer a moral witness to the world. Ibrahim Abdul-Matin addresses this deficiency in our culture, stating that “People of faith have lost their moral authority … because they have lacked humility: they have failed to acknowledge the ways they are part of the problem.”
Often, American Christians may even deny the narrative of suffering, claiming that things weren’t so bad for the slaves or that at least the African Americans had the chance to convert to Christianity. The story of suffering is often swept under the rug in order not to create discomfort or bad feelings. Lament is denied because the dead body in front of us is being denied.
The slave system “used their bodies for breeding and their bloodline for the maintenance of racial order… . In the eyes of the slave holders, slave women … were simply instruments guaranteeing the growth of the slave labor force.”13 Slave women were constant victims of rape by white slave masters. The system of slavery was a system deeply rooted in spiritual evil that brought death to its victims. These stories reveal a deep flaw in our nation’s story. Human bodies were not treated as made in the image of God. These bodies and their stories remain buried in our national narrative.
room. I began to mutter some sort of apology, but he stopped me in the middle of my sentence. “When there were five kids in the slave family, there was the one kid that was lighter than the rest of the kids. That’s my family. That’s my family’s story. You told my family’s story. I have not heard another tell my story in public like that before, and I needed to honor you by standing.” There is power in bringing untold stories to light. The freedom to speak about the reality of suffering and death results in a freedom from denial.
It may require a deepening understanding by reading texts that engage this oftenhidden history. The knowledge of this history can begin the process toward an authentic lament. The church must engage in a funeral dirge that reflects the truth of our tainted history.
Exposure and nakedness is a precursor to the further shame and suffering to follow. The language in this section evokes the image of Jerusalem as a sexually assaulted woman. The image of the enemy’s hands stretched out all over her precious things (v. 10) appears to be a euphemism for sexual assault. Jerusalem’s suffering can be attributed to her infidelity in taking lovers (v. 2), but the shame culminates in an undeserved mistreatment and sexual assault by her conquerors. The description of Jerusalem’s shame as sexual shame heightens the visceral, bodily shame felt by God’s people.
Park’s distinction between sin and han points to the seeming incongruity of the depiction of Jerusalem as simultaneously the sinful adulterer and the victim of sexual assault.
The language of sin as used by Western Christianity does not provide the necessary nuance to understand how a victim of sin experiences sin. “Traditional theology has emphasized one-sidedly the sin of all people, while ignoring the pain of the victim. Its doctrine of sin must be complemented by dealing with the suffering of the victim.”14 The shame experienced by Jerusalem cannot be addressed with the same methodology used to address individual guilt.
American culture tends to hide the stories of guilt and shame and seeks to elevate stories of success. American culture gravitates toward narratives of exceptionalism and triumphalism, which results in amnesia about a tainted history. The reality of a shameful history undermines the narrative of exceptionalism, so it must remain hidden.
Lament calls for an authentic encounter with the truth and challenges privilege, because privilege would hide the truth that creates discomfort.
We are presented with triumphalistic narratives that minimize stories of struggle. Our historical reflection reveals an obsession with success and celebration while stories of survival and suffering are ignored.
We are likely to tune out the stories of suffering and struggle that undermine our success narratives, in contrast to the women’s voices in Lamentations 1 that rise up to speak truth when experiencing a painful reality. Instead, our ears are tuned to hear what we want to hear, similar to the exiles who listen to the false prophets in Jeremiah 29.
She would wake up at dawn to pray for hours every day. Several years ago, I noticed that her knee caps had split into several pieces from many hours spent kneeling in prayer. When she kneels, her broken kneecaps conform to the flat surface of the floor. My deep disappointment in American evangelicalism is that stories like hers are deemed less worthy than the stories of the latest evangelical superstar with a megachurch. My mother’s story aligns with the tenor of the book of Lamentations. Her life story embodies a theology of lament.
We worship at the altar of the latest and greatest American evangelical icons who regale us with stories of the exploits of their cutting-edge ministry. Our ears have been tuned to hear the call for successful pastors who will go and conquer the world with muscular Christianity, where celebration exists without lament. Meanwhile, we ignore the stories of suffering and oppression (often times the voices of women oppressed by their own communities). We have a deficient theology that trumpets the triumphalistic successes of evangelicalism while failing to hear from the stories of suffering that often tell us more about who we are as a community.
The evangelical machinery that churns out celebrities of successful pastors should be eschewed in light of a deeper spirituality that reflects a greater sensitivity and empathy.
Xuan Huong Thi Pham points out that one of the key expressions of Lamentations is that it “laments the humanly impossible task of comforting in the face of such tragic circumstances.”25 The inability to offer comfort should compel us to acknowledge our total inability and turn to God for the answers.
My late friend Richard Twiss told me a story of his time at an international gathering of evangelicals. He was the only Native American from the United States, so when it came time for delegates to share their experiences, Richard boldly shared how the Native American voice had been left out of the American evangelical story. But before he could finish his comment, the moderator of the meeting stated that in the interest of time they needed to move on quickly to other matters, which turned out to be stories about the great successes that Americans were experiencing in overseas missionary efforts. The crying out to God in lament over a broken history is often set aside in favor of a triumphalistic narrative. We are too busy patting ourselves on the back over the problem-solving abilities of the triumphant American church to cry out to God in lament.
Part of our discomfort with Lamentations is the sense that suffering may be an appropriate reality given our words and our deeds. Have we behaved inappropriately as a church endowed with great affluence? Have we sinned against God in squandering our many blessings? Instead of investing in the kingdom of God on a global scale, have we invested in the fallen systems of Western culture and her political and economic systems? Are we so invested in the Western cultural captivity of the church that we are unable to accept God’s right judgment on the broken system of oppression?
the rise of non-Western Christianity and was diminishing the role of the American church.
Ministry in the city can often focus on symbolic ideals. We may idealize and even romanticize the city beyond its material reality. Instead of lamenting the actual situation of the city as demanded by the city-lament genre as employed in the book of Lamentations, we may long for an idealized future for our city. In urban ministry, there is a strong tendency toward an image of what the city should be. Often, that image may reflect the image of a successful suburban ministry and assumptions about a flourishing life in a gentrified urban neighborhood. A city lament brings the story of the city to its actual material setting and reality. The city is not an object to be fixed or manipulated—it is the concrete reality of lives and souls that live in the city.
In Western society, the city is often portrayed in abstract, philosophical terms.10 Christianity in the West focuses on the concept of the city not as the actual gathering of people within a geographic boundary but as the symbolic locus of human activity.
The city of God is the realm of God’s dominion and authority. The earthly city is the work of human hands.
If the city is merely an abstraction, then the response to that abstraction is another abstraction. Urban theology can deteriorate into an abstract theology confronting an abstract concept. The path to change is further philosophical and theological abstraction and the triumph of ideas and values over any real on-the-ground change. So urban ministry merely becomes the battle of ideas and principles. This approach can reduce our understanding of the city to an oversimplification, categorizing it in all good or all bad terms.
With this high level of abstraction, it is easy to scapegoat individuals and move responsibility to the other rather than admit personal responsibility. When a mass shooting of children at a school occurs, we will claim that this horrible action is the result of just one crazed gunman rather than consider the possibility of a socialstructure problem at work. Some will argue that it does no good to consider social action when clearly this action can be blamed in its totality on just one individual. But we do not consider that doing nothing to prevent future tragedies in the face of a national tragedy demonstrates the sin of omission.
The city in Lamentations is not merely an abstract concept that references politics or culture. Through our reading of Lamentations, we view the city not only for what it represents, but for what the city actually is, even if that is a fallen city requiring lament. By abstracting and spiritualizing the city, we view the city as a problem to be solved with abstract ideas and concepts.
Jerusalem naively believed that their status as the keepers of the temple meant that no judgment would befall them. The temple of YHWH was their protection. Surely God would never judge his chosen people and his very own temple of worship. But verse 9 reveals that Jerusalem has lost what made it unique: “The law is no more.” Jerusalem’s uniqueness was not based upon its own merit but on God’s grace—the grace that gave his Word to his people and the privilege of offering him worship. All of these privileges flowed from God’s presence. Lamentations 2:7 reveals that “the Lord has rejected his altar and abandoned his sanctuary.” Since YHWH’s presence determined Jerusalem’s standing as the center for worship, his departure signals that they are no longer the center of YHWH worship. Their privilege had been revoked. This loss of privilege is not only experienced by Jerusalem, it is also acknowledged by other nations, heightening Jerusalem’s shame. Lamentations 2:15 reveals that “All who pass your way clap their hands at you; / they scoff and shake their heads at Daughter Jerusalem: / ‘Is this the city that was called / the perfection of beauty, / the joy of the whole earth?’” The sarcastic comment by those who pass by reveals how far Jerusalem has fallen. Lament is a response to this fall, and an important ingredient in the ability to lament is the ability to recognize the role of privilege. The people of God made significant assumptions about their privileged position. They assumed a level of protection that arose from their sense of exceptionalism and privilege. Lamentations reminds us that privilege needs to be acknowledged but cannot be assumed.
people. In American Christianity, the same tendency toward privilege also exists. There is an underlying belief that American Christians have been the standard-bearers of Christianity for several centuries. There is a sense of being the exceptional church, resulting in the missionary endeavor and vision. This favored church status has led to a belief in a favored nation status. But this sense of American exceptionalism and even the sense of exceptionalism for the American church cannot be justified through Scripture.
elections, Governor Mitt Romney closed out the debate on foreign policy with the statement: “America is the hope of the world.” Despite the theological problem of replacing Jesus with the United States, I was surprised by the number of evangelical Christians who supported this statement. American Christians are just as susceptible to being caught up in American exceptionalism as the rest of American society. Some who read the sentences above may assume that I am anti-American and even anti-Christian for questioning American exceptionalism, but American exceptionalism finds no support in the Scriptures.
The intent of this material was to challenge the church (specifically the American church) to attempt to end extreme poverty within this generation—an effort I have no problem supporting wholeheartedly. But the more subliminal message (particularly given the target audience of this material) was that the American church is responsible to bring about this change. The American church has the know-how and the resources to fix the problem. Poverty becomes another problem to solve using American ingenuity and gumption. This material furthers the self-perception of privilege for the American church. Our standing as the saviors of the world is assumed and not challenged. The book of Lamentations reminds us that privilege is a standing before God that should not be co-opted for the sake of furthering a self-perceived exceptionalism. The language of lament is the language of humility.
Churches that meet the ideal of a typical American success story are the stories that are circulated throughout evangelicalism. Conferences must bring in big-name speakers, usually young, hip, white pastors, entrepreneurs and “thought leaders.” These trends further perpetuate the triumphalistic narrative of white American evangelicalism.
A narrative of success propels white evangelicalism over and above other forms of American Christianity. Evangelicals often fail to embrace the important examples of the Spanish-speaking store-front church because they are considered too small, even though the faithful spirituality in the midst of suffering would blow away all of our purpose-driven lives. Korean American immigrants that meet faithfully at 5:00 a.m. every day to pray at the church before embarking on a twelve-hour work day are ignored because they speak a foreign language and speak English with an accent.
An elevated view of one’s self leads to the perception of other cultures through the lens of American Christian exceptionalism. Other cultures are viewed as diversions and interruptions to our regularly scheduled programming.
However, Jeremiah shifts from prophetic condemnation and warning of judgment to becoming a fellow mourner over the fallen city of Jerusalem. Jeremiah directly speaks God’s truth, but just as important, Jeremiah’s expression of compassion reflects God’s compassion.
The power of Lamentations is that the voices of those who have actually suffered are not missing. Unfortunately, George Liele’s story is often absent from our understanding of mission history. Liele’s story reveals an example of hidden and untold stories in American Christianity. Despite preceding both William Carey and Adoniram Judson by at least a decade, the story of George Liele remains largely unknown. Why does Liele remain unsung as the first American missionary? Ultimately, I believe that the inability to embrace the story of George Liele reveals the inability of the majority culture to embrace a nontraditional story outside the parameters of the majority-culture Christianity. It is human tendency to bias and privilege our own history and our own point of view.
The type and origin of the songs that are sung in our worship life could also draw from a myriad of voices. What we surround ourselves with, in our everyday and communal Christian life, should reflect a commitment to hear the multitude of voices.
Lamentations recognizes that hope can arise in the midst of suffering because of God’s faithfulness. Celebration can arise out of suffering, but lament is a necessary expression of that suffering. In a triumphalistic world, Lamentations makes no sense. The theology of celebration will always be more attractive than the theology of suffering. But if lament were offered to a suffering world, the hope that is woven into lament offers the possibility of genuine reconciliation.
Spontaneous spirituality through contemporary worship and charismatic expressions of prayer helped to alleviate teenage angst and family tensions.
For example, spontaneous worship in the Pentecostal tradition reflects its early roots, which arose out of a ministry toward the marginalized and disenfranchised. Freedom of expression and spontaneity in worship arises from a desire to oppose the status quo and the structures that sustain the existing systems of injustice.
In the midst of this chaos, some sort of spiritual order is sought. This kind of suffering is too overwhelming. We need to know that there is order beyond our present reality. The acrostic, therefore, points to an order beyond our chaos.
During the most active years of the Boston TenPoint Coalition in the 1990s, the Boston homicide rate dropped a full 80 percent. Youth-related gun violence took a particularly sharp downward turn.8 Many hailed the cooperative work of the police, the community and the church as the “Boston Miracle.” Rather than hiding inside the confines of the four walls of a building, the church became the expression of God’s shalom on the streets. The church became the place where genuine grief and pain and suffering could be safely and fully expressed. The church also became the nonanxious and peaceful presence in the midst of suffering, the living embodiment of Christ. The church became the living acrostic in the sea of chaos.
Jeremiah could legitimately claim innocence, but instead chose to embrace the corporate sin of his community and to express that culpability through the individual lament of Lamentations 3.
Personal freedom and the primacy of the individual rule our understanding of how society functions. But a hyperindividualistic ethos results in a disengagement with the reality of corporate sin. Social injustice is dismissed to focus solely on individual expressions of sin. This process relegates the role of the church exclusively to a hyperindividualistic expression. Sin has been reduced to an individual level.
