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When I answered the call to ministry, one of the things I said to the Lord was,
“Please do not let me go before your people with words. I want every time I stand before your people to
speak, the words will be your words, not mine”
Many times, I have proven that just before it’s my time to speak, I would hear aspects of what I have been led to say, being said by others, sometimes it’s in a song. This time is no different; yesterday, Dr. James Hospedales, Rev. Dr. Brenda Harewood, and Mrs. Janet McConell all had pockets of my presentation in
theirs. I usually see it as a confirmation of what the Lord is saying to His people. And I pray that today I will be able to carry God’s message with clarity. (Play Senzani na Song)
Our foundation text for reflection over these days is Romans 5: 1-5. In this first Bible study on Lament,
rethink our Sunday School theology as we reimagine God’s creation that groans in the face of broken relationships and environmental degradation.
In Romans 8: 18-22, we read:
I consider that the present sufferings are not worth comparing
with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits
in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For
the creation was subjected to frustration…. We know that the
whole creation has been groaning in the pains of childbirth
right up to the present time.”
In this text, by highlighting sufferings, frustration, groaning and expectation, Paul offers us a way to interpret lament on this journey to hope. There is suffering, frustration and groaning, on the one hand, and expectation, on the other. But it is to note that it is the capacity to expect renewal and transformation, even in the face of sufferings and frustration, that keeps us groaning. Because groaning or lament is a sign of life, a reminder that we are not dead and that where there is life, there is hope. Hope is the fuel that keeps us going on our journey to experience God’s peace. Because God’s peace is the ultimate.
I therefore posit that the call to lament is a call to Prayer, Protest and Prophetic proclamation.
Someone recently asked the question: “How do you not feel overwhelmingly hopeless in the face of life’s pain?” This question comes from a practising Community Development Specialist, who, in the face of mounting social problems, finds the task a daunting one. She speaks of the circumstances of a vastly populated homeless community, the despicable conditions under which they live, the exposure to sun, rain, and snow, and the sense of despair that seems to permeate their lived realities. She wonders whether, in the face of such blatant social brokenness, one can speak of hope.
This may very well be the situation with which we are confronted every day of our ministry. Certainly, in
Jamaica, the social landscape looks dim. It doesn’t matter how hard we try to sanitise it; we are daily bombarded with another brutal murder, another kidnapping, another case of fraud, another scamming episode, another disruption in our schools, all reminding us that these social challenges are not easily dismissed. And the question is, how do we proclaim peace in such a context, in the face of such life-denying, heartbroken situations? To compound this problem, we each find ourselves struggling to make sense of our circumstances in an economically volatile context. Sending our children to school, meeting all the medical expenses, securing or maintaining a home, preparing for retirement or just simply managing the monthly unavoidable expenses, such as grocery and utility bills. How do we rise from our struggle to be the voice that inspires hope and affirms peace?
Is. 52: 1-12, reminds us that Isaiah, like so many others -Moses, Elijah, Esther or Jeremiah, to name a few – all proclaimed God’s message of peace or participated in God’s acts of shalom in the midst of their own pain. They were part of the oppressed community.
Proclaiming the gospel of peace for them did not happen without the pressure of oppressive forces, opposing influences, overzealous detractors, and personal obstacles. You and I will learn from them that it is not an easy road, but we are given the message of hope and peace.
It must be proclaimed that the broken-hearted, the dispirited, and those at breaking point of a difficult life will claim their freedom and live to tell the story.
Isaiah’s proclamation of peace is in the midst of one of the most severe moments of trial for Israel. Isaiah himself is part of the exiled community. He is equally under the spell of the Babylonian captivity. It is from the pit of oppression that he speaks. His speech is a lament. His message is a call for all Jerusalem to awake and arise to the possibility of a new day. It is an eschatological moment the what is to come, is already being declared as a present reality. Perk yourself up. “Dress up, put on a beautiful garment, shake yourself from the dust”. The enemy of God’s peace shall no longer have dominion over you (1-2).
This is good news in challenging times. Let the dancing begin! It is a dance of lament. Thus saith the Lord:-
The call to lament is a call to stay connected to life, to resist the temptation to surrender to the devastation and degradation of life as we know it and to revisit and reclaim the beauty and bliss of God’s creation. To do so we must join Professor Cynthia Moe-Lobeda in her call for a “responsible moral consciousness” – Resisting Structural Evil (119).
In her reflection on “neighbour love”, Moe-Lobeda clearly and carefully articulates the potency of love in relationships with the neighbour, positing that the “mystery it bespeaks” is much stronger and far more powerful than the word itself (185). In a recent bible study on “Sin and Forgiveness”, organised by the Webster Memorial United Church, the presenter shared what I describe as a horrendous account of his visit to the Elmina Castle (slave dungeon) in Accra, Ghana. As he recounted his tour of the horrors of the holding cell for the ‘obstinate’, the women’s dungeon, that led to the Governor’s quarters, where mothers and daughters awaited their fate, as sex slaves, and the room of no return, where free Africans awaited the next ship to hurdle them away to the Caribbean, as slaves, I felt the anger welling up inside of me (Series on Fundamentals of the Faith, Webster Memorial United Church, Sin and Forgiveness, 1 November, 2022). I found it difficult to reconcile with this barbaric and inhumane treatment of one set of human beings by another. This led me to wonder whether any love relationship could emerge and be sustained between the dominant enslavers and the enslaved. To speak of neighbour in such a context is to speak of the powerful and the privileged, on the one hand, and what Moe-Lobeda refers to as those on the “underside” of society, or the other (119). Loving one’s neighbour in such a context is challenging. Herein lies the lament. “To be guided by the call to love is to accept the tempestuous waves of moral ambiguity at the heart and soul of life itself” (Moe-Lobeda, 185). She is right, but this is no easy pill to swallow, as the saying goes. This calls for the theological high road, the theology that helps us see that unless we can rise above our pain and embrace the possibility of restored and healed relationships, all of life will be marked and marred by hostility. The call to lament is a call to imagine a more hospitable society in which love can be expressed to one another.
In Jesus’ teaching of his first disciples, he made it clear that the “eye for eye” principle, enunciated in the law of Moses, will not suffice in his community (Mt 5: 38, NRSV). Nelson Mandela, on leaving his cell, where he was held by the prejudice and hatred of racism, knew that leaving his “bitterness and hatred behind” was the only path to freedom. Otherwise, as he said, “I’d still be in prison” (https://borgenproject.org). I agree, and because I believe that peace is the end game, I am prepared to be part of the lament towards this life-transforming love, which moves us beyond the history of hostility to the journey of hospitality, where justice and peace constitute the standard by which we live in community. But there is another dimension to this community experience about which Lament is a fundamental requirement. Moe-Lobeda contends that the Christian ethic to love one’s neighbour “extends beyond the human”, to incorporate the “other-than-human parts of creation”. Drawing insights from H. Richard Niebuhr, who postulates that “My neighbour is animal and inorganic beings… all that participates in being”, Moe-Lobeda invites her readers to “learn to learn from other-than-human parts of creation” (198-199). In other words, the state of beauty and bliss, which the creation narrative highlights, shows the integration and interconnectedness of humans with the “other-than-humans” elements of God’s creation (Gen. 1: 27-31, NRSV). Such intersections demonstrate that humans are unable to exist by ourselves and that we are as in need of the “other-than-humans” as they need us, that essentially, we equally “participate (s) in being”. (See Psalm 104: 10-18)
In 2015, Rev Tafue Lusama, from the United Church in Tuvalu, visited Jamaica and shared his experience of the impact of climate change on his country. He spoke of the rising sea level and the threat it posed to the security of the people of that Pacific Island. That was an eye-opening moment for me. Ever since, I have paid keen attention to the sea, with its strong currents and its closeness to the land where I find home and security. I have come to appreciate how vulnerable we all are in the face of the sea’s ferocity and the land’s susceptibility. We have been given a home on planet Earth, but it can house, shelter and feed us only in as much as we care for it. The sea and land are our neighbours, providing food, beauty and refreshment for us. However, if the land and sea are not cared for and protected from toxic waste and carbon emissions, then neither sea nor land can serve us. Moe-Lobeda is right – “Earth’s well-being is a requirement for human well-being” (199). Herein is the reframing of my theology. We can speak about human salvation only to the extent that we can also speak of and play our part in ensuring Earth’s salvation. We are inextricably intertwined. Therefore, I fully embrace Moe-Lobeda’s perspective on the love relationship between humans and the other-than-human community and my responsibility to love my neighbours. You will see that I have framed my contribution to our collective journey towards peace around Lament, which I have described as prayer, protest and prophetic proclamation. My understanding of the call to lament is informed by my reading of the creation narrative described by God as good, very good. This narrative is despoiled and destroyed, leaving a trail of brokenness, resulting in suffering and frustration, according to St Paul. But thanks be to God, sufferings and frustrations are not the whole story. There is an expectation of renewal and transformation. For this reason, we groan/lament as we wait for God’s new day – New Heaven and New Earth, where everyone and everything flourish.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. But we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5: 1, 3-5, NIV)
So the questions I want us to ponder in our hearts are:
Group Work:
Describe a situation in God’s creation that brings pain and breeds frustration? Develop a ministry of lament – prayer, protest and prophetic proclamation in response.
#Bible Study #CANACOM’s Assembly #Devotion
The Presbyterian Church of Trinidad and Tobago 
