God Never Speaks

God never speaks.  Not once.  In the Bible's Book of Lamentations. 

I believe that Lamentations is inspired by God as part of His multi-faceted and infallible Word to humanity, and to each human being, contained in the Old and New Testaments.  The Hebrew poet (likely Jeremiah) who wrote the five poems which make up this book has a primary purpose of articulating the anguish his fellow Jews are experiencing, because of the violent destruction of their country and their family lives in 587 BC. 

The poems are written to express the blues, the lament, the complaint of people who view themselves as the people of God, under the most horrific of circumstances.  For example, the two year siege prior to Babylon's victory over Jerusalem included such extreme hunger in the city that some resorted to cannibalism of the dead.  Now their entire way of life is gone.  Imagine Pearl Harbor or 9/11, except extended to the entire nation, with the result of no more functioning government, economy, worship, communication, nothing.  Devastation for an entire generation.

The poems are written to express these blues communally to one another (the poems were designed to be read aloud, together, in place of temple worship in the destroyed city by those who survived and live among the ruins).  They are also written to express their blues to God, skillfully through acrostic Hebrew poetry.  In the first four poems, each new stanza begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, thus communicating artfully that 'our blues will be spoken from A-Z, not leaving anything out, so don't try to stop us at the letter M or cut us off, it will all be covered!' and also 'our blues are not limitless, never-ending, symbolized by the finite nature of the aphabet.'  The poetic devices go much deeper, but you get the poet's main artistic idea by understanding the use of the alphabetic acrostic.

So after you read these five poems, you realize that the poet has powerfully, crassly, nakedly spoken of the nation's pain.  And though this book was inspired by God (through the person, experience, vantage point and personality of the prophet), and is found in what we refer to as the larger Word of God (the Bible):  God has not spoken a single word into these blues. 

When Job laments, God answers at the end of the book.  When the Psalmists sing their blues, usually the song writer includes a line or two of God's comfort, compassion, wisdom, or sovereignty to comfort the hearers.  Think of the restraint it took, therefore, for our Poet to refrain from including a similar word from God to comfort the mourners, if not a word to defend Himself from the bitter God-accusations found throughout the 5 poems!  Why is there no direct word from God in Lamentations? 

I think this intentional void is to tutor people of faith to honor and pay attention to human suffering and pain deeply enough that the sufferer can speak it all, every bit of it, over a long period of time. Without the fear of being dehumanized or shut up by a too-quick word of hope, or an abusive word of denial.  The Poet shows us that people need to lament their pain, from A-Z.  We must each give one another the gift of fully listening, not stopping at the letter M with an injection of 'but God can...' or anything else.  As image-bearers of God, and Holy Spirit-bearers as Christians, we may give the sufferer the gift of the sense of Divine attention when we live out the spirit of this poetry. 

As sufferers, we are granted dignity in our suffering through this extreme silent attention from God and wise friends.  We are shown through Lamentations that the path toward any future that's from God (which we can't even talk about yet, much less envision in our pain) will best travel unhurriedly through full and troubling recitation of our pain.  At first, our expression of our suffering may be guttural, ugly, teetering toward the profane toward God.  If we allow ourselves to be mentored by Lamentations, our expression of the blues over time will find more disciplined channels and media (Jeremiah used poetry to do this), which begins to communicate to my own soul there is both definition and end to my pain.  This leads to a glimmer of hope in the soul, that perhaps my life will again resume a pattern travelling in a defined direction. 

That's what I think.  In my next post, I'll quote my so-far favorite commentator on this point, who says "Even one word from God would take up too much space in the book of Lamentations."  Stay tuned, and I hope you'll read Lamentations on your own once before Sunday.

Comments

[Lynn Holloway]

Loved your words, "... without the fear of being dehumanized or shut up by a too-quick word of hope, or an abusive word of denial. The Poet shows us that people need to lament their pain, from A-Z. We must each give one another the gift of fully listening, not stopping at the letter M with an injection of 'but God can...' or anything else." Their is something profoundly good in being able to sit with someone in their sorrow without feeling compelled to utter something intended to fix them or make them feel better. I hope to come away from the House of Blues being transformed in some way…. perhaps in the way I lament.