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A Multitude of Tears
In June 2020, we held a week of lament and prayer in solidarity with and in response to the killing of our black brothers and sisters. We believe in the need to hold spaces for people to be able to grieve and express their laments personally and as community.
We invite you to also join in this prayer of lament.
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Why Lamenting?
Aren’t laments similar to sadness, anger and desire for revenge? Yes and no. Laments are biblical psalm prayers that are filled with despair, description of oppression and violation, sometimes in very graphic ways and some of them even plea with God to revenge them against the ones who are persecuting them. For us Christians this kind of prayer is often not intuitive because we have the impression we are betraying our faith in Jesus who is our Christ, when we are whining and complaining. However, the most important aspect is that Jesus prayed laments in the New Testament and he taught us that none of our despair or complaints are too small or too big not to be heard by God. Laments are born out of the founding experience of the Jewish-Christian religion in Exodus 3:8: “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry against their taskmasters, so I know well what they are suffering.” Laments are much more than complaints: they are born of the deep faith that if I hurl injustices into the heart of God and storm the heavens with my outburst, God is listening and I can demand of God to act, to inspire people for change, to revenge in divine ways not in my human ways and even more importantly if we do this communally we recognize that our shared faith in God is much bigger than our despair and we don’t close ourselves in with our anger and fury, our sadness and impotence, but we voice it, we name it, we kneel and stand for it and believe that God will act in this world and through each one of us creating change.
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Why Psalm 42-43?
This Lament-psalm in the Psalter is so special in our opinion because it can teach us how to lament. It is unique in this way as it teaches a process of someone praying in grief. Psalms 42 and 43 are often considered a single psalm, because of a common theme (to come to the temple despite enemy persecution) and a shared refrain (42:5, 11; 43:5). Furthermore, some Greek and Latin manuscripts join them together, and Psalm 43 has no superscription (which would be customary for a new psalm).
The lament is written in a crescendo: The water images grow from tears to waters roaring over me. The suffering the person is enduring is getting more and more shrill. The little we know about what is actually going on at the beginning of the Psalm is getting more and more specific.
The lament holds repetitions especially in the refrain, trying to calm the inner turmoil with a certain assertiveness of faith,. However it doesn’t end happily ever after, but rather with a question. Importantly, it is the expression of the trust towards God in the refrain that makes the Psalmist even more soaring in her language afterwards.
The first refrain: Why are you in despair, O my soul?… Hope in God.
Followed by the verse: O my God, yes my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember You!!!
The second refrain: Why are you in despair, O my soul?… Hope in God .
Followed by the verse: Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case against an ungodly nation
Both of these aspects, the calming trust and the crescendo, are very important in learning a prayer format that is known to the Jewish- Christian traditions for thousands of years. Very often we will not know in the first moment when we sit down, stand up, or kneel in prayer of lament the whole scope of what we are lamenting about. We begin with our feelings in this very moment and start to name them to God. Our naming in this relationship with God is going to deepen our awareness and our courage to continue to voice them to God in more detail, interrupted with spurs of trust and hope, growing deeper into the reality, memory and hope, until we finally are free of the violence of our emotions, but free for standing continuously in naming, announcing and denouncing prophetically for change.
In the first part of the lament the praying person doesn’t even recognize God as “my God” it is only the others mocking her. She learns while praying that, that God is actually “her God.” The first refrain ends with a more known liturgical phrase: – I shall again praise God for the salvation of God’s countenance! In the second refrain it becomes much more personal: – I shall again praise God for the salvation of MY countenance. Indeed the psalmist changes in her prayer and begins to dare to demand from God to save her face – her countenance, to free it from hateful gaze, from oppression and discrimination!!
She begins her lament with the sadness in her soul:
“My tears have been my food day and night.”
She develops in naming what is happening to her personally, reflected in the first part of the lament, to what is truly at the heart of the matter systemically:
“Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case against an ungodly nation;
O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!”
Each day this week we will walk with the Psalmist from her personal tears by day and by night to the naming and denouncing of the systemic injustices. We will kneel and sit and stand, repeating a prayer that has been prayed before us for thousands of years and will continue to be prayed after us, with the holy unrest and consolation these biblical words hold for us.
(©Part of this introduction is taken from”Psalm” by John Endres, SJ and Julia D.E. Prinz, VDMF in the Paulist Biblical Commentary)
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Guidance for this week of Lament and Prayer
You probably have a daily prayer routine, but this week, we invite you to incorporate this prayer into your routine however feels right for you. Each day we invite you to contemplatively pray psalm 42-43 over six days. The psalm is divided into three sections. There are reflection questions at the end of each psalm.
We invite you to hold silence (kneeling if you wish) for 8min 46 seconds, the time the officer was kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, as part of your prayer practice.
These questions may help you go deeper as you pray the psalm.
What words, phrases, or images do you hear as though for the first time?
As you listen, repeat the word, phrase or image that stays with you over to yourself and wait in silence.
For what reasons do you feel drawn to this phrase or image?
What may this remind you of?
What meaning does it hold for you?
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Psalm 42-43
Day 1 and 2
As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why are you moaning within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the salvation of His countenance.
Questions for reflection
Day 1
- During this time, how do you experience your tears being your food by day and by night?
- How have you experienced someone else crying tears as their food by day and by night during this time?
Day 2
- What might that dream of heavenly justice look like?
- What specifically are you praying to bud forth?
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Day 3 and 4
O my God, my soul is in despair within me;
Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan
And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls;
All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.
The Lord will command His loving kindness in the daytime;
And His song will be with me in the night,
A prayer to the God of my life.
I will say to God my rock, “Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why are you moaning within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
Questions for reflection
Day 3
- The shattering of bones is a shattering of the utmost inner structure of the human being.
How have you physically, mentally or in your soul experienced the shattering of bones during these weeks? How have you experienced in others?
Day 4
- Sometimes we have been so ill treated that vengeance is indeed close to our heart. One of the mysteries of the sacred text of our religion is that it accepts those feeling of vengeances and hurls them at GOD.
- What kind of vengeance do you feel bubbling up in you that you want to hurl at God and would like to make God responsible for? So you can breathe free of the hate that is accompanying such thoughts. It is not morally wrong to have them, but to act upon them. To write them to God is a good way to work with them and important for this world.
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Day 5 and 6
Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case against an ungodly nation;
O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!
For You are the God of my strength; why have You rejected me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
O send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your dwelling places.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And upon the lyre I shall praise You, O God, my God.
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why are you moaning within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
Questions for reflection:
Day 5
- Contemplate the idea of “an ungodly nation.”
- How does the Psalmist believe God can defend those oppressed by such a nation?
Day 6
- How would you like your prayers and actions to participate in this stream of justice?
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