Good morning. It is good to be with you all today. I have had the joy of meeting many of you, but there are others whom I have not yet gotten to know personally. I hope we have a chance to do so soon. And I am grateful for this time and space, to come together, to reflect, to worship, to be.
Would you pray with me?
Gracious God,
We take this moment to recall, and rest in the truth that you are here with us.
You are always with us, closer even than the breath we are taking now into our lungs.
Loving God, open our hearts and minds to this truth, and to the reality of your presence, that we may commune with you.
In this time, we pray:
May each word that is spoken,
each word that is heard,
And the reflections of each of our hearts
Bring you joy, and bring us closer to you.
Amen.
In my work as the chaplain for the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s, I meet our new patients and families in the first days after they come to us. I introduce myself and my role, and I hope to get to know them a little—perhaps to hear some of their story and what they are walking through.
The NICU is a very particular and sacred place. Last month I gave a tour of the NICU to our new chaplain residents, and one of them remarked, “It feels different than the rest of the hospital. It feels particularly….vulnerable.” I know what she means. In a place where we care for the youngest, smallest children, emotions always seem to be very close to the surface. It’s a place where we are sitting with and trying, somehow, to hold deep suffering and fear alongside profound beauty and hope. There is awe and celebration as we behold new life, as we see babies grow, and do new things, and overcome huge obstacles. And there is pain and fear in watching those same babies go through the ups and downs of their hospital journey.
Each day, I enter into rooms and moments that are both so simple and so significant. Rooms with routine diaper changes and advanced medical procedures. Rooms where families share what they were feeling when they first found out they were expecting—excitement, shock, fear. Or where they share the story of a hard moment that changed everything—an unexpected diagnosis during pregnancy, premature labor, a sudden sickness after birth.
Some families live hours from the hospital. Others face challenges with finances, insurance, getting time off work. Many mothers are trying to recover themselves, after a hard pregnancy or a rushed C-section. Families have stressors that have nothing to do with the hospital—another relative is sick, their car was recently totaled in a terrifying accident. In each case, they are trying to figure out how to be with their baby while tending to all the details of life that somehow don’t stop when we face a crisis.
Often, parents have other children, and they express the guilt and helplessness they feel in such an impossible situation—what do you do when you can never be with your newborn baby and your toddler at the same time? I have sat with deeply wonderful and loving people as they express a sense of regret and self-blame in a situation where nothing was in their control— parents who ask, How could this happen? What could I have done differently? A mother that says, “I feel as if my body failed me, and I failed my child because I was unable to carry them in my pregnancy for longer.”
There is grief—such grief in seeing your child go through procedures and daily sticks with a needle to draw blood or place IVs…there is grief each evening when you say goodnight to your child and go home without them in your arms to sleep by a still empty bassinet. There is the grief of all the things that you looked forward to without even realizing it—moments like when your child is born and placed on your chest for the first cuddle, or getting to cut the umbilical cord, or hearing your child’s cry after delivery. Moments many take for granted, and yet, in so many NICU journeys, moments that are lost.
Each person’s story is different—their experiences, their grief, their emotions in this space are unique to them. In one room, a parent may be sharing sadness that they still can’t hold their child after many long months, while in the room next door, a parent timidly shares their fear to do so, saying, “She’s so little, and so fragile. All this time that we couldn’t hold her, now they say we can...and I’m too scared.” Each room, each story, is different.
Nevertheless, I have noticed a recurring theme. While no two people in the NICU have the same experience, in the telling of stories in those first visits, there is something that many, if not most people, say. After sharing heavy feelings and naming the challenges facing them in their current moment…there is almost always a point where a person pauses and says, “But, it’s okay.”
But it’s okay.
It’s not okay.
None of this is okay.
Can we say that together? Can we proclaim that today?
Yes, we know that the world we live in is broken and that suffering is real. We know it all too well. We know that unthinkable, unimaginable things happen in this life—to us, to others around us, to creation.
And, we can say…this is not okay. This is not what we would choose. This is not the life we want for ourselves, for others, for our world
It is not okay that a newborn baby would spend the first 3 or even 12 months of their lives in a small hospital room. It is not okay that parents cannot pick up their baby to comfort them. It’s not okay that a baby would have to undergo half a dozen surgeries before they ever go home from the hospital.
It is not okay.
And yet, honestly, I relate to this. To saying, “But, it is okay” after sharing a story of hardship and grief. I can see clearly how I do it in my life. With my smaller, everyday struggles and when faced with larger griefs.
Our family has firsthand experience with the NICU journey. Four years ago, I joyfully became an aunt when my brother and sister-in-law welcomed their twin girls. My beloved nieces, Paige and Avery, were born very early, and they stayed in a NICU over 100 days.
The years since have been, in many so many ways, so incredibly beautiful. I don’t think any of us could have imagined the joy that Avery and Paige would bring to our family. We are in awe as we see them grow, as we watch them support and comfort each other, as they become more and more the unique people they are.
And…these years have also been heavy and hard. We celebrated when they left the NICU, not fully realizing, I think, that the journey was only beginning. Our dear Paige has cerebral palsy and several chronic challenges as a result of her prematurity, and she has regular stays herself as a patient at Children’s. It’s a difficult journey—most certainly for Paige, her twin sister, and for my brother and sister-in-law who are in the trenches each day, trying to get to the bottom of the latest medical challenge, taking her to countless appointments and specialists, and seeking to support her and Avery on this unpredictable road.
This past year when Paige has been hospitalized and thoughtful friends or colleagues check in, I try to give a brief but honest summary, speaking about the challenges she and our family are going through…and yet, somehow, I find myself still ending with a version of, “But, it’s okay.”
Why? Why do we say this? Why, when walking through heavy moments do we say to others, and to ourselves, “But, it’s okay.” Why do we minimize our experience and the very real pain we have?
I think it is scary to be vulnerable. When we say, “But, it’s okay,” we show that we are afraid to make too much of something, to name that we are hurt, we are suffering.
Perhaps in part, we are concerned what others will think—that they will judge us for our display of emotions, or think we are overreacting. Along with, “but, it’s okay,” I often hear people say, “I know there are people who have it so much worse.” As if it is a ranking. As if there is only so much empathy to go around. As if you can’t be in pain when there is potentially something even harder.
Perhaps we also fear that we will make other people uncomfortable with our pain. When we share something raw or difficult and then say, “But it is okay,” we tell the person not to worry about us, they don’t have to try to fix it or make us feel better. There is nothing to fix—we are okay. It is okay.
I think we are afraid to name our pain to ourselves. We are afraid of how vulnerable we truly are. We are afraid to say that it matters, that we feel…and that we hope, we long, for more. It is uncomfortable, after all, to sit in pain. It’s easier to avoid, to distract ourselves, to numb, to pretend.
And not least of all, we might be hesitant to voice our pain to God. It feels risky, and perhaps out of bounds, or maybe even pointless to say, “God, this is not right. I am hurting, I am angry. I hoped for, I expected, more.”
But in many ways, these fears, these inclinations we have stand in stark contrast to our scripture passage.
Today, we read the lectionary text from the Old Testament rather than the Gospel. You might have recognized the verses from the end. But the first eight verses are not ones we hear often.
These verses from Lamentations contain evocative imagery. The writer describes the terrible state of their beloved home. What was once a place of great celebration and safety is now the opposite. The city, and its people, are defined by loneliness, exile, hard servitude, desolation, captivity, bitter weeping that lasts all night, and having no place to rest.
Not long after, the verses chosen for the lectionary move away from this imagery and grief. We shift gears quickly to those verses you might have heard before. Verses that speak so beautifully and eloquently about God’s presence, faithfulness, and love. We jump to a very hopeful, optimistic note.
But to be honest, I think the lectionary does so a little too quickly. It does not sit for long with pain and suffering.
You’ll notice our reading is excerpts from two different places in Lamentations. It is not a consecutive reading. Instead, we read the first verses from chapter one, and then we jump well into chapter three.
What did we miss in the middle? What did the creators of the lectionary take out?
Well, to put it simply, they cut out lament. Many words of lament. Verses and verses in which the author expounds upon the pain of the city and the people within.
And in which the writer expresses their own suffering. She or he says things like, “I am the one who has seen afflictions,” and “My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within, my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets.”
In contrast to our culture, lament was a common practice for the ancient Jewish people, so much so that they had a fully developed genre of lament, and this entire book of Lamentations in Scripture, not to mention all of the poems, prayers, and other expressions of lament spread throughout Scripture. In fact, it is estimated that over two thirds of the Psalms are laments.
A common way to write a lament was as an acrostic poem with 22 stanzas—one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Each stanza would begin with the next letter until all 22 had been used. Chapter 1, 2, 4, and 5 in Lamentations are all poems like this. Many scholars believe that the ancient Hebrew people viewed this type of poetry as a form of thoroughness or completeness, as if to say, “Everything has been covered, from A to Z!”
Imagine that. Imagine not saying, “But, it is okay,” or “I don’t want to give too much attention to my suffering,” but saying instead, “I want to fully express, and completely name what is within me, the pain I am feeling. I want to name it to myself. I want to name it to those around me. I want to name it to God, in prayer, and in public, formal worship,” for that it what happened—the Psalms and the book of Lamentations were liturgical readings of people in the Old Testament, who would pray them or hear them together when they gathered for worship.
Furthermore, imagine what it would be like to read the entirety of Lamentations 1, 2, and 3 and all those verses of lament before we got to the verses of hope. What if we had read that today and sat together hearing 66 stanzas of someone laying bare their soul, pouring out their raw grief and pain?
I’m not suggesting that we should have done that. It would have been an awful lot for Harper to read! But I am struck by the fact that our spiritual ancestors did just this. They were schooled in this practice of communal and individual lament. They were not uncomfortable with grief like we are. And they did not see expressing it as contradictory to a life of faith, a life walking with God—in fact, it was the opposite. Lament was seen as a spiritual practice, as an essential activity in the life of faith.
When we lament, we are honest. We embrace the hard reality of our vulnerability. We proclaim that this world is broken, that things are not as they should be, and that suffering matters. And this, I believe is exactly what God longs for from us. Our loving, infinite, beautiful God is not uncomfortable with lament…we are. We are the ones who move away from our own experience and discount suffering.
God on the other hand says, “This matters deeply. You matter deeply.” God said this matters in a decisive way, when God chose to take on humanity and walk among us—when Jesus came and experienced firsthand all we go through.
I am so struck by the way that Jesus walked among us. Think about the stories in the Gospels. Jesus spent a lot of time with sick people…and those who we were marginalized, impoverished, somehow struggling. He seemed to seek them out. He drew close to people in the depths of pain, and, I imagine, the depths of lament.
Jesus seemed deeply interested in…honesty. In realness. In our authentic, messy, unpolished selves. In people who asked hard questions, who shared their raw pain, who called out against suffering and injustice.
And Jesus himself lamented. His heart broke for his people—In Matthew, he weeps over Jerusalem and the way that the people were going their own self-destructive ways…he cries out, “how often have I desired to gather your children together as her hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.”
Jesus lamented with some of his dearest friends after the death of their loved one, Lazarus. The Gospel of John tells us that, Lazarus’ sister, Mary, fell at Jesus’ feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It continues, “ When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep.”
Friends, this is the God we worship. The God who came to see, who came up close, who entered into suffering with his people, and wept. Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend with others who loved Lazarus.
This is especially profound to me because moments later, Jesus will raise Lazarus from the dead. He will literally undo this suffering, bringing Lazarus back to life, and yet, first, he stops to lament. And in that act, he shows us much about what it is to be human, about our pain, and the necessity of expressing lament. And he reveals the heart of God. It is as if in that moment as he weeps, Jesus laments with, in, and for all of us. Jesus sees clearly the suffering we each walk through in this world, and his heart breaks. He says, “It matters. I see you. I feel it with you. And, I am here in it.”
Our passage for today does take an abrupt shift. After entering deeply into the depths of lament, then, and only then, does the writer voice anything else. Verse twenty-one reads: But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
Note that the verse begins BUT. But, that word I talked about before, that we so often use to dismiss and discount. The funny thing is this word actually doesn’t appear in the Hebrew text. I went and checked. It’s in a lot of English translations, including ours, perhaps representing a bias our culture, our inclination to dismiss and gloss over, to move to the positive, or put on a happy façade. But, the Hebrew word for but is not present in the Hebrew text. Instead, it simply reads, “This I call to my mind.” The author does not go on for over sixty verses of lament to say, “But, it’s okay.” Instead, she or he says, in the depth of my pain and suffering, I call this to mind. I make this costly effort. I dare to hope.
This calling to mind, this hope, is almost an act of defiance. To hope is a risky and courageous thing. It is not a trite platitude; it is something hard-earned, from someone who has felt and lamented and called out to God, saying, “God, where are you? I am hurting. This is not what is supposed to be. I need you. I need you to show up here, to meet me here.”
I’ve only known this congregation for a few years, but even in the time I have been here, we have walked through a lot. A tornado ripped through our street, causing destruction to our neighbors and to our building. We endured the long season of COVID when we could not gather face to face, embrace one another, or pass the communion bread. We have buried friends and loved ones. We have said goodbye to multiple ministers and staff members. We are in transition.
And each of us today brings our own experience, our own individual losses, our own grief. In the same way that the NICU is a place of both the most profound suffering and profound beauty…in the same way that my family’s journey with Paige is the source of some of our greatest pain and our greatest joy…we, each of us, holds within ourselves suffering and beauty, grief and hope. The things that matter most, the things that are most valuable, love itself, includes both.
And I hear for us, as a congregation, and as individuals, an invitation, a calling, to lament. To name where there is pain and grief, to feel it completely, and to be honest with ourselves, with one another, with God. We lament knowing that God desires our authentic selves, and that God meets us in a powerful way in our vulnerability and honesty. We lament knowing that healing and genuine, costly hope are possible only in this honesty. Because lament is not wallowing in hard feelings. It is not sulking or self-pity. Real lament is honest. It is truth. And ironically, it is an act of faith. It is holding together our pain and the reality of our experiences with hope, with trust that God hears, God cares, God is here.
And we bring it to the God who longs for us, even and especially when we are feeling most broken. We choose to call this to mind: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end. Somehow, mysteriously, wondrously, they are new every morning.” We choose to look expectantly for these new mercies. We choose to talk to God, saying, “Great is your faithfulness.” The Lord is my portion, therefore I will hope in God. God is your portion, and God is waiting for you to come with all you have and all you are. Amen.