My First Bible #10: Lamentations 3:25-30

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
  to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
  for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear the yoke
  while he is young.

Let him sit alone in silence,
   for the Lord has laid it on him.
Let him bury his face in the dust—
   there may yet be hope.
Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him,
and let him be filled with disgrace.

Just like my life since, my teenage life was characterised by times of doubt and feeling far from God, times when I'd mess up terribly in my attempts to follow him, and still learning that he is faithful.  Lamentations 3:25-30 sound like verses characteristic of dramatic teenager (very 'emo' - which is a word no one's used in a while!), but I don't think self-pity was my motivation for writing them down.  It is challenging to unpack these words, however, to seek to handle them in the best way possible.  So here goes...

Lamentations can make for depressing reading.  It is literally a 'lament' - written by the prophet Jeremiah after the fall of Jerusalem to the hands of Babylon - a course of action God allowed to happen in judgement for their persistent rebellion.  Divine judgement itself is not a popular or comfortable subject, but my opinion has long been that it is often those of us who come from a comfortable position, where the deepest and darkest injustices that stem from humanity's rebellion - deep suffering at the hands of others - are only at arms length on our TV screens, or even hidden from sight completely.  A God who judges is not some short-fused, self-righteous tyrant, but one who cares about justice.  In its vivid descriptions of the ravaged city, Lamentations gives a sobering reflection on what is left when all the wealth and security are stripped away - the hearts of people, no longer tempered by civilisation, who eat their own children.   It is place where we must face up to suffering and to sin - to acknowledge it, to let it have its say.

And yet, in the very middle of the book, we see hope.   The verses I copied out nearly 20 years ago follow the only inspirational-note-card-worthy, hymn-inspiring, and far more famous verses in Lamentations:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”

Despite everything, the writer of Lamentations knows that God is what he says he is: the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin (Exodus 34:6-7).  He knows the character of God - that is not only just, but also compassionate and merciful.  He knows he has made promises to never leave his people completely.

And so verses 25-30 are his humbled response.  He has said in verse 24 that he will 'wait for [the Lord]', - the next verses tell us how.  Now these are verses that can be wielded irresponsibly.  Simply telling people to literally 'sit alone in silence' (v28) when they are suffering is definitely not always the right advice, and probably never pastorally appropriate!  There are also many times when it is not a right response to suggest that people should stay in a situation and just accept violence and abuse.  There are also times when anger is a right response.   The Bible gives us the words of a multitude of witnesses to God's interaction with human beings, and each should be set in the context of, and in tension with, the others.  In the light of this, here are a few thoughts about these verses:

1) This is a response arrived at through the prayer of the rest of Lamentations

The writer of Lamentations has just spent 2 and a half chapters mourning the destruction of Jerusalem and complaining to God.  The whole book affirms that this is a reaction that we can have!  It is once the writer has prayed his heart out that he comes face-to-face with what is there when there is nothing left.  He has not been silent!  But he has come through his turmoil to a place of quiet - a place where he has no words left.  Sometimes, in the face of suffering, there is nothing more we can say.  Paul writes in Romans:  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans (Romans 8:26).  This is the 'silent' prayer - the one where we don't have the words, but where the Spirit intercedes with us.

And even when action is taken against injustice, there is a point where there is nothing more we can do.  We can seek justice, but we cannot restore it completely.  There comes a point where we have to leave judgement to God, and I offer this as a tentative interpretation for verse 30: Let him offer his cheek to the one who would strike him.  Let us realise that there is a place where we need to release ourselves from seeking justice - even if that is just in the depths of our hearts, whatever external actions need to take place.  

2) This is a response on realising our total helplessness

And that includes realising the brokenness of our hearts and our sin.  There is not always a direct causal link between individual sin and individual suffering, but when all is stripped away the true nature of our hearts are revealed.  We see this in the cannibalism people are forced into that the lament mentions elsewhere - this is all of us, but for the grace of circumstances, which put a veneer on our hearts.  It can often only be in these times that we realise the extent of our idolatry - when all our idols fail.  The burying on the face in the dust (verse 29) is probably an allusion to bowing down low on the ground in repentance.  The yoke (v27) is that of discipline and submission.  The writer knows there is nothing more he and his people can bring, but to come humbly to God.

3) this is the route that Jesus has taken, and where he goes before us 

This side of Easter, we can draw many parallels with Lamentations and Jesus - the true temple who represents the people whose plight is recorded here: mocked, rejected, beaten, despised and abandoned.  And what is more, he took it all on as judgement for our sin.  The book of Lamentations is traditionally used during the time of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.  As we read it, we are taken to the cross.  To say 'it's just about Jesus' is to ignore the pain of the historical event, and the pain of all other people who feel represented in these words, and the richness of what we can learn from this text.  It is a story of human pain - but it is a path that Jesus has trodden before us and with us.

4) this is not the end of the story

In Lamentations there is 'no comfort' (1:9), and yet in the later chapters of Isaiah (which come later in history than this), we hear this: 

Comfort, comfort my people,

   says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
   and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
   that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
   double for all her sins.

Lamentations cannot be taken in isolation, and it is not the end of the story.  What it does show, however, is that human existence is not one static state, and that there are seasons of lament, but that even in these, hope is promised.

I don't know how much of this I could have articulated when I first scribbled these verses down, but this glimmer of hope in hard times when words fail us is something with which we can all resonate.  A stillness and a waiting - clinging to that light at the end of the tunnel.

The summer I was 17 years old I read my Bible cover to cover for the first time.  I was captivated and completed the whole thing in 4 months.  Although I clearly read it at quite a pace, I still jotted down passages that sprang out to me in my still relatively new faith.  I still have that Bible, and the scraps of paper are still there, bookmarking each verse.  So I decided to go through, 18 years later, and visit each of them.  They are from the Good News Bible.