“The Call to Lament: from Shame and Segregation to Humble and Collective Ministry with God”

Master of Divinity Degree Project

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Divinity

by

Rachel Lewis Cooley Shawler

Vanderbilt Divinity School

February 2021

What constitutes a relationship with God? If every human is sure to meet with both joy and sorrow across the span of their lifetime, they are also sure to express, at different points, gratitude and praise, sadness and desperate anger. Our cries may respond to seemingly random tragedy, death, illness, or betrayal. They may be in response to intentional cruelty from another or attempts to limit one’s ability to survive and thrive. I distinguish here between different causes of pain because people with social privileges can often escape life situations that would compel them to lament injustice in God’s creation. I am a white, upper-middle class, cis-gendered, heterosexual woman with various social privileges who—like others with various social privileges like my own—has been and is still complicit in systems the oppress others. I seek in this paper to explore how I might address my complacency and complicity through the intentional practice of lamentation. How might those of us with privilege be transformed by lamenting—as God does—the many moments of random personal suffering and the impacts of oppression on all of us: oppressed and oppressor? What might we be fueled to do if we acted out) God’s boundless compassion for us through practices of lamentation?

To faithfully respond to God and Jesus the Christ who love us when we offer praises and when we offer lamentations, we are necessarily required to acknowledge both gratitude and pain, both of which may cause us to feel vulnerable. To see and deeply empathize with the anguish of others, we must both allow ourselves to feel our feelings and let go of our egos enough to identify with another. To allow compassion for suffering we do not know, but recognize, to spring up from the deep well of the divine dwelling within and among us, we must refuse numbing and “ignorance is bliss” mindsets.[i] The truth is, we are all vulnerable to joy, hurt, love, and loss at every moment. And some folks are more vulnerable to painful spiraling effects because of their social location. We cannot fully control events and outcomes for ourselves, our loved ones, or our world. But we do have agency to lament suffering and injustice impacting both ourselves and others, as God laments with us, and to act to alleviate the suffering we lament, as Jesus did in his ministry. We do have ability—together—to fight oppressive systems that compound misery for some while privileging others. Yet we struggle—each in our different ways—to acknowledge the reality of our (individual and communal) vulnerability. When profound moments of anguish occur, we turn to God. Our pain gives us little choice. Our relationships with ourselves and with God grow during these “hard and holy” seasons. Acknowledging our vulnerability not just when we’re forced to, but as a practice, could form us in relationship with a God who is present and loves us, others, and all creation, in all its joy and sorrow.

In the mainline Protestant, majority white, middle-to-upper class churches of which I’ve been part, the dominant definition of faithfulness has been to attend services on Sunday mornings and sometimes participate in ministries. Encountering the humanity of those “less fortunate,” who many of the members “other” through a sense of superiority rather than serving in a sense of siblinghood would require they acknowledge human limitation and vulnerability to circumstance. If we were to follow this train of thought, we would find ourselves questioning our own role in the systems creating unequal circumstances. Unfortunately, we often respond with shame rather than sustained repentance to “turn from” our complicity in the status quo. Sometimes we with relative privilege avoid some of the real-lived[ii] pains systems of inequality inflict on the oppressed may subconsciously tell ourselves we are not emotionally strong enough to handle the truth. We may even talk about the emotional weight of facing these truths, and use our talk to avoid the emotional work of lamenting, or congratulate ourselves for dipping our toes into it. We are thus failing to follow Christ’s compassionate and challenging call to our humanity, and people around us continue to suffer under the weight of injustice, as do we in a continually unjust world.

The intentional and repeated, individual and communal practice of lament could serve as vital medicine for Americans avoiding the presence and impacts of suffering and injustice. This paper will discuss the shame and numbing necessitating lament among this group. It will imagine some methods and possibilities arising from the intentional practice of lament, and seek to motivate folks with privilege to it. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called out the white moderates who thought others with less privilege could wait for their freedom and trust that it would come in time[iii], we white, middle-to-upper class people today must examine the ways we become stumbling blocks along the path toward collective liberation. I come from, serve in, will likely serve in the future in Christian communities populated by primarily folks from this social location. I have lived in several states and been a part of numerous faith communities, primarily in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I will draw on my experiences in congregations throughout this paper, particularly engaging with the church at which I currently serve for my Supervised Ministry coursework: Eastwood Christian Church in Nashville, TN.

Through my learning to continually turn away from numbing, perfectionism, and shame, I’m seeking now, through continual learning and reminders, to do justice not by striving—making a sacred call to do justice like a list of boxes to be checked and values to be clarified without taking action for them. I’m seeking instead to do justice by loving kindness and walking humbly, softening to what is, strengthening my ability to show compassion to myself and others by doing it repeatedly, and allowing hope to rise as I acknowledge the depth of challenge to dismantle structures of oppression and God’s presence with us regardless.

Lament can be prophetic. It compels us to acknowledge issues and identify contributing factors and parties, and emotionally fuels and equips us to take them on. It is a spiritual practice which has the power to transform. In my definition, it also demands acknowledgment of accountability. Sometimes, we first rail against God, holding God accountable. Often, in deeply considering the problem, the agents at play come to our minds. In American blame and shame culture, we want someone to blame,[iv] and some way to externalize our shame, giving it to another instead. But if we redirect those instincts back toward simply emotionally experiencing the depth of the problem for a time, we consider more deeply what real accountability should look like. Our contemplation thus becomes the source of our action—not separate from it[v]—when we follow God’s call to lament the injustice itself more and more deeply. Some Americans with privilege might thus find we can no longer numb ourselves with blame and shame. Lament is a practice in courage to face our human vulnerability. The courage we find to co-create with the God of justice can continue to transform us, and our world, if we allow it.

Description and Analysis

Though increasingly diverse as a whole, much of the US is still segregated by race, and while “money, preferences, and discrimination” are the most commonly cited factors in why segregation persists, our social networks and lived habits are major factors. In an article considering census data to map races and create a diversity index for locales in the US, The Washington Post reports that segregation has not decreased as researches anticipated even as overall diversity in areas has increased. “We don’t have the integrated social networks. We don’t have integrated experiences through the city. It’s baked-in segregation,” Maria Krysan, professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and co-author of Cycle of Segregation said. When someone moves, she said, they’re “not making a move that breaks out of that cycle,” they’re making a move that regenerates it.”[vi] The communities, churches, neighborhoods, and friends we choose (for whether conscious or not, we are making choices) have tended to keep us within our race groups. In addition to the “money, preferences, and discrimination” factors, part of the reason white folks stay in their white in-groups may be that we allow shame to keep us from creating new relationships with people of color or fostering those we do have into deeper bonds. To explore this factor, I’ll turn now to Brené Brown’s research on shame and some of the factors that support it, particularly among the majority white, middle-to-upper class groups who seem to deeply identify with her work.

Many cultures construct systems of meaning assigning value to certain behaviors and attitudes as strong while demeaning others as weak and to be avoided. I’m interested here in what is said to connote strength, poise, and success among white, middle-to-upper class Americans, and what in this group is considered “vulnerable.” I use Brené Brown’s research to illuminate trends in this culture because she comes from that social location personally and her writing and speeches have caught on particularly among those who share her social identities.[vii] Brown doesn't fully acknowledge this context and audience, but her findings are still helpful in particularly exploring white middle to upper class shame. Based in her research in the US over 12 years, Brené Brown characterizes the US as a scarcity-bound culture which is shame-prone, obsessed with comparison, and fractured by disengagement.[viii] In the US, many regularly weaponize shame, joking and bullying one another in schools, homes, political discourse, and through social media. This commentary reifies social norms for gender, class, race, sexuality, and more, and the insults offered by a particular group reveal the behavior and image which is idealized within that group. Among White, middle-to-upper class people in the US, strength and success are thought antithetical to admitting one’s mistakes or learnings, emotional landscape, doubts, or insecurities. These elements of the human experience are mostly categorized as “vulnerable,” and shunned. Brown cites four myths about these “vulnerabilities:” that they represent weakness; that one can opt out of experiencing or admitting them; that one can “engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability;” that one is supposed to be able to “go it alone;” and that trust is possible in relationships without revealing or admitting these struggles; and that vulnerability is just about disclosing about oneself.[ix] Emotions, mistakes, and doubts are integral parts of the human experience, yet they come to be seen as weak, shameful, not to be admitted or, in some cases, even permitted within one’s life. And as one suppresses their experience of shame, their shame metastasizes and thrives within them. Brown reiterates that the first thing to know about shame from her research is that when we don’t talk about feeling shame and the “vulnerabilities” that make us human, shame grows and becomes a dominant barrier to a sense of love, belonging, and worthiness.[x] And yet many spaces privileged white Americares move in, including workplaces, neighborhoods, and churches, people may often shun others who admit struggles, perhaps because it makes them feel vulnerable themselves, or they are well-socialized into knee-jerk reactions that condemn sharing “weaknesses.”

If we are among this group, we feel shame about these human experiences because our social constructs teach us to shun them as vulnerabilities and “imperfections.” Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”[xi] One can only be “flawed” through comparison to some “ideal” image; only “imperfect” in opposition to what is accepted to be “perfect.” In Brown’s terminology, | would describe myself as she does herself: as a recovering perfectionist. My dad began calling me a perfectionist about particular tasks I’d take on when I was about 11 or 12 years old. He meant no harm, of course. He was reflecting what he saw and what he saw was based in his understanding of the world and people, which could not be separated from the cultural norms he was taught. He and I probably thought he was trying to help me understand myself. I began to embrace “perfectionist” as an all-encompassing label for myself, however, and felt shame at this identity. Brown names perfectionism as one of the tools in our “vulnerability armory,” saying we use it to stave off shame, as if in our addiction to perfect processes we do everything perfectly and feel we are enough.[xii] For me, the label “perfectionist” in itself became shaming, rather than a tool to consider my definition of what is “perfect” and ask who or what has influenced my ideas about what is good, right, valuable, and perfect. In my feeling that to be a good white liberal, I needed—in my sense of my call from God—to go to a seminary where social justice, diversity, and critical engagement are key focuses. I initially felt that many at Vanderbilt Divinity School were in a “wokeness contest,” whereby anything and everything would be critiqued, and I sometimes wondered to what avail? I see now that much of my read of VDS then was based in my own shame response when I learned some new way of critically thinking about social constructs. At moments I felt I was in the wrong, or was complicit with structures that reinforced inequality, I responded with shame that I am bad, or not worthy, because I am “imperfect.”

I am not alone among white folks with racial and other social privileges who tend to respond with shame rather than guilt to others holding them accountable or offering thoughts on how to do justice Guilt is a feeling of having done something wrong and it can often motivate us to apologize, make amends, and choose changes in our behavior. Shame makes us feel that we are bad and wrong, and actually “corrodes the part of us that believes we can change and do better.”[xiii] Among white folks with privileges, moments which could invite growth become reasons for more shame about oneself, and the status quo remains unchallenged. Instead of accepting an umbrella for the rain of white supremacy in the US, saying “thank you, I didn’t realize I was wet,”[xiv] folks who “mean well” may become defensive against their shame triggers. They blame the person seeking to hold them accountable or open their eyes, flinging whatever accusations they can at them as though they are the ones weaponizing shame. If we are to redefine accountability—which has come to be synonymous in this group with “blame and shame” rather than clear expectations, follow through, and consequences[xv]—and respond with action toward justice and away from the status quo, we must recognize and talk about our shame to stop letting it overpower our lives.

Perfectionism, which impacts the white, middle-to-upper class folks to whom Brown speaks to varying degrees,[xvi] is just one major shield in her description of the “vulnerability armory.”[xvii] Numbing through eating, watching tv, scrolling social media, online shopping, gaming, self-medicating, working to exhaustion, gossiping, partying hard, painting oneself as a martyr, and the many other ways that are socially-sanctioned and common among folks with access in this social location is also a key issue.[xviii] I can tell I’m numbing when I look up from Instagram or tv and ask myself whether or not I’m present or enjoying what I’m doing. Folks are addicted to something they numb with compulsively and chronically, and they may be addicted to a smattering of things which help them avoid their emotions and vulnerabilities at different moments.[xix] The “happy, easy only” and “don’t feel” attitude magnified in this kind of numbing causes us to refuse deep engagement with the pain injustice causes around us. In his article “Reclaiming the Power of Lament,” Dominique D. Gilliard describes numbing in response to awareness of tragedy and violent images we see on social media and 24-hour news:

We not only hear about the tragedies in Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston and Waller County, Texas; we now also routinely see traumatizing video of unarmed civilians being killed—Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Walter Scott, Sam Dubose.

Nevertheless, before we truly grieve one tragedy, another occurs. So in our rush to keep up with our newsfeeds, with the latest scandal, the newest tragedy, we move on before processing the trauma we have just witnessed. We move on to stay up to date — and in part, because we believe that our minds and our hearts, like our smartphones, can hold only so much.[xx]

Greater access to some knowing about the lives of others and the real-lived tragedies of injustice could, and indeed has in many places, increased calls for justice and awareness of issues. If white folks were more often neighbors, friends, and church members with black folks personally experiencing or witnessing and lamenting anti-black police brutality, the white people would be more apt to join in lament with them. But with segregation as it is, and news coming much through our phones or television screens, white people particularly can numb to the reality of anti-black violence that black people cannot forget else their lives may be threatened.

Unlike those who may for periods ignore the news because of personal trauma or compassion fatigue, I have heard and experienced white folks with a sense of privilege retreat from news and resources engaging racism out of supposed self-care, or an underlying sense that they are not connected to the others they read about. A white coworker of mine in a corporate environment in San Ani, derail by white folks with relative class and education privilege, used to scroll Yahoo News. Often in the late afternoon when energy and focus for work was waning, she would read the headlines aloud to those of us in neighboring cubicles. “Child dies in car while mother gets high inside” and “Man killed picking up a dresser from ebay sale” arc two I remember. “I hate people” and “This is what I get for trying to know the news,” she would say. I’d sit in silence as an intern reporting to her and sensing that my thoughts—that this was not “the news” she needed to read to be informed about the world around her and its needs, nor was it giving us the real-lived, and true, stories of this woman, child, and man, or their families or anyone else—would be unwelcome. The click-bait, let’s-find-the-most-awful-tragedies website caused her to numb to real life and pain and vulnerability in the world, and she further used it as an excuse to numb and retreat even more. Yahoo News proves the world is dangerous, after all. When speaking about the doctor’s office she and our department admin both went to, I heard xenophobia against the families of different faiths, from different countries who also went there, and more excuses to want to keep staying separate from the world, numbing in more segregated communities, sometimes literally gated and sometimes gated by high price tags and “cultural norms” of the majority-white, North San Antonio area. The reality of racial segregation in the US and its current impacts was not in the news she read, however, only emotional numbing and an excuse to feel you can’t emotionally handle the reality of the world—which is really just so horrible and dangerous, you should retreat. Take a gander at the internet “news” and your numbing goals are achieved.

Because the “armor” against vulnerability and shame white folks with privilege put on takes much effort and time to take off, we simply often leave it on, Brown says.[xxi] At work, at home, with friends, at church. We may feel even more defensive at church, in some cases, because we sense it is a place we are “supposed” to feel, share, and grapple with the reality of our human limitations. Shame-based theologies have also been prevalent in many Christian churches, from teachings condemning homosexuality, non-conformity to gender roles, sexual expression overall, and general human sinfulness. The chance of folks getting stuck in shame in churches and Christian communities is simply higher. Folks may thus want to stay in feel-good, surface level engagement, and would not respond well to prophetic speech and deep wrestling with white supremacy culture, for instance. This is a challenge for churches. While people may certainly need support deconstructing shame-based theologies and one cannot be forced into self-critique, how can churches still look to follow God’s call to the prophetic?

Part of this process in churches would need to both allow and call for pastors and community members to discuss their wrestling with difficult topics more openly. In a reflection on the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) written in 1991, Newell Williams concluded that Disciples pastors do not feel free to publicly discuss “controversial” issues upon which they sense they'd be divided from their congregation. In the DOC, democratic polity empowering congregations to hire and fire their pastors with no supervision may exacerbate this pressure. But one can imagine similar issues in other contexts given that people—mostly—like to be liked by congregations they serve and by “bosses” and others in surrounding denominational structures. Citing a study by Guth and Turner, Williams points to issues avoided by Disciples clergy with their congregations including topics which have no simple answer, and also have real impacts on real people: "pornography, abortion, gambling, prayer in schools, or homosexuality.”[xxii] Today, perhaps these avoided topics would be some the same, but also include white supremacy, public healthcare, climate change, and other politicized topics. Some of these issues are so talked about in the political realm that ministers and church members may be hesitant to bring them up at all.

In my sermon at Eastwood Christian Church following the November 2020 election, I briefly celebrated folks who'd organized to get out the vote and get folks taking action in GA (which admittedly was crucial to the presidential election outcome) and focused on the importance of rooting white supremacy in its many subtle forms out from our midst. A church member remarked to my field education supervisor shortly thereafter: “Well, Rachel must think we’re all democrats, huh?” After reassuring him I had been careful to consider my framing and the congregation in the fraught political climate—even wondering if I shouldn’t have worn a blue shirt as folks might think I was implying I was a democrat with it—he seemed to release his worry quite fully. Yet his initial response at my even naming justice issues seemed to be one ready to “cry wolf” that I was advocating a political party from the pulpit. I did mean to condemn white supremacy and any candidate who would not outright refute it. The thought that we could not talk about white supremacy because of political party affiliation is quite frankly a bit terrifying to me. In my mind, that is part of our call to create God’s justice, regardless of the parties of candidates. Could partisanship in some way be part of our continual refusal of anything but simple, surface level answers? How often might hesitance at perceived political or issue-based difference between Christians prevent us from engaging the difficult, human questions we are called to answer in faith for justice, kindness, and humility? Some folks might think discussing these questions in churches is not “user friendly” or “seeker sensitive”[xxiii] as seems necessary for neoliberal visions of success in numbers. Yet these discussions can be the moments when the “vulnerability armor” cracks or falls a bit. There are flashes when we know we are complicit with injustice, though we put on self-righteousness as an armor too. What might we find when we open to God in these spaces?

Interpretation and Construction

From ancient times, the people of God have seen crying out as integral to their relationship with God and responding with compassion as integral to God’s relationship with them. Claus Westermann traces instances of lament across the Old Testament:[xxiv] the people cry out individually and as a collective people of God, lamenting injustice happening to them and to others. They cry out when they doubt God and when they trust. Sometimes they are aware of particular guilts they own, and often they are not. Sometimes their repentance is required for God to act, and sometimes it is not. They are compelled to remember the history of their relationship with the God who saves and liberates.[xxv] Prophets called by God rise up to lament unfaithfulness to the covenant on the part of the people and the wrath of God born out of love and giving of Godself.[xxvi] Jesus follows the tradition of his Jewish people, responding to pleas from the suffering for his compassion. He laments the death of his friend Lazarus, the practice of money lending in the temple, and suffering of others at numerous points. He laments his own suffering on the cross. Only in the Pauline epistles do we begin to see the ideal of suffering silently—and perhaps this was influenced by Greek stoicism.[xxvii] Insulation from some of the pain injustice causes as well as numbing, perfectionism, and shame among white, middle-to-upper class folks hinder this crying out. If we with white privilege are to be God’s covenant people and followers of Jesus, though, we are not only invited by compelled to lament suffering and injustice, and that which causes it, for ourselves and others. This Interpretation and Construction section will suggest theological grounding for reclaiming lament. We will trace some of the history of lament from Old Testament to New, understanding how people of God have expressed themselves throughout the centuries to then imagine our Strategic Responses to embrace lament in relationship with God and each other.

Even prior to the establishing of the covenant between God and God’s people, Genesis 4 imagines human interaction with God to include crying out and God’s interaction with humans to include responding with compassion. In his argument to “Reclaim Lament” as part of “Prophetic Soul Care” in the neoliberal age, Cedric Johnson describes Abel as the first human to lament. He does so after he is “already murdered and dead.” “Where is your brother Abel?” God asks Cain. “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”[xxviii] Lamentations ring out across time, and we must be historically-minded, Johnson argues:

This warns us against assuming that past cries of suffering do no matter, that once the suffering has annihilated the individual or group it is too late, that nothing can be done, God cannot and will not help. Just as God heard the ‘voice’ of Abel crying out from the grave, God hears the cries of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Freddic Gray.[xxix]

We are called to join in lament those who have been victim to the invention and perpetration of white supremacy across American history and their children today, stepping consciously into the great cloud of witnesses, for God hears and responds. We live more isolated from one another than many throughout human history have. Johnson argues that if we were more often communally connected, we would instinctively know to “weep with those who weep,” giving sanction and augmentation to each other’s laments. “Human beings need the strength that comes through shared sorrow.”[xxx] We are called to see and join the depth of sorrow felt and expressed across generations.

We encounter God through relationship whereby we cry out and God responds. It is only through this exchange of our lament and God’s action that we co-create with God and each other possibilities for reduced suffering and halting or dismantled injustices. Juergen Moltmann picks up and describes Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s conception of the “pathos of God” by which “God is affected by events and human actions and suffering in history.”[xxxi] This divine pathos is enacted through chosen covenant relationship—it does not necessarily indicate anything about an unchanging nature of God. We do not have to have a full picture of the nature of God (if one was possible to be had) to know that God chose to enter the history of creation, and is willing to give up Godself to the point of suffering with humans.[xxxii] We have seen God do this again and again—a the cloud of witnesses inside and outside the biblical text attest to it. Claus Westermann picks this up another way, pointing to how theology has been done in the history of the West: turning God into the object to be studied, with the goal being “objective thinking about God.” The theology of the Jewish writers contained in what Christians call the Old Testament, on the other hand, makes “event[s] between God and [hu]man[s]” the object, and does not look to determine one “soteriology” characteristic of God. In other words, when taken as a whole, the Old Testament “can only speak of God’s saving acts within a whole series of events, and that necessarily involves some kind of verbal exchange between God and [hu]man[s]. This latter includes both the cry of [hu]man[s] in distress and the response of praise which the saved make to God.”[xxxiii] The saving acts of God in the Old Testament always trace the following format, Westermann argues: “distress, a cry of distress, a hearkening (promise of deliverance), deliverance, response of those saved (the praise of God).”[xxxiv] If the opposite of love is indifference, it is clear that God loves humanity.[xxxv]

In this love, God is not apathetic and we as humans are therefore not to be either, in our devotion to God or our treatment of others. Moltmann’s imagining of the pathos of God turns to prophetic texts to understand God’s “wrath” which is fueled by love:

Prophecy, therefore, is in essence not a looking forward into the future to see what is appointed in unalterable destiny or a predestined divine plan of salvation, but insight into the present pathos of God, [God’s] suffering cause by Israel’s disobedience and [God’s] passion, for [God’s] right and [God’s] honour in the-[God] suffers under the actions of [hu]man[s] and can be injured by them.[xxxvi]

When the prophets through God’s call lament our human neglect of one another, God’s wrath appears as “injured love” at our disobedience to the covenant. We are not to be indifferent to the suffering of others just as God is not. But we are invited to sympathetic relationship, whereby we reflect the divine pathos and become “friend of God, feel[ing] sympathy with God and for God.”[xxxvii] Our human sympatheia is thus integrally part of our relationship with God, and impacts our behavior both to uphold the covenant and feel and mirror the pathos of God for others with whom God is in relationship.

Jesus too responds to those who cry their desire for his compassion and seek out healing. Repeatedly, Jesus tells people who come to him “your faith has made you well.” In the case of Bartimaeus, described as a blind beggar, Jesus responds to his persistent call “Son of David, show me mercy!” Though “Many scolded him, telling him to be quiet... he shouted even louder,” and Jesus hears through the crowd. “Call him here,” he says. Jesus does not assume to know what the man wants or needs, and for us to assume the man wants Jesus to help him see would equate a physical ability with desirable, and perhaps spiritual, well-being. Jesus asks: “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus voices his desire to see and Jesus says immediately: “Go, your faith has healed you.” Bartimaeus can now see. Perhaps desiring a continued relationship of faith and mercy, Bartimaeus chooses to follow Jesus in his ministry.”[xxxviii]

Likewise taking agency seek Jesus’s compassion, the woman who has been bleeding for 12 years—for whom it seemed impossible for her condition to improve—“heard about Jesus” and in her desperation pushes toward him through a crowd. As soon as she touches his clothes, “she sensed in her body that her illness had been healed” and “at that very moment, Jesus recognized that power had gone out from him.”[xxxix] The woman accesses healing seemingly through her own lamenting need for it, without Jesus’s direct attention and action. The people of God continue in this way to receive mercy through their expression of their need.

We also see Jesus’s ability 1o create merciful miracles only following emotional engagement with suffering and expression of lament. When he encounters Mary’s grief at the death of her brother and his friend Lazarus, and sees the other people with her crying also, “he was deeply disturbed and troubled.” He asks to go to the tomb, where the people would go to mourn, and he “began to cry.” Only after his expression of grief, feeling “deeply disturbed” again upon arrival at the tomb, and speaking “Father, thank you for hearing me. I know you always hear me” does he shout “Lazarus, come out!”[xl] Here, Jesus listens and emotionally enters the plights of the people. The New Interpreter’s Bible commentary notes that "Jesus' tears come in direct response to the invitation to ‘Come and see! where Lazarus is buried; these tears are thus positioned in the story as Jesus' public acknowledgement of the pain that death causes in human life.”[xli] We can thus read Jesus in this moment as embodying on earth the lament of God for human grief.

We cannot overlook the importance of lament as a distinct part of repentance when it is needed, and as a required step before resurrections are to occur. In a Lenten devotional written entitled From Ashes to Easter by church members and pastors from Eastwood, I noticed the need to name lament specifically. The writers do not name lament as a Lenten practice as they do repentance, wilderness, forgiveness and healing, renewal, and hope, with the latter two coming—oddly, in my mind, but perhaps indicative of reticence toward lamenting—before Holy Week and Easter. Folks gesture toward crying out in lamentation, with one woman saying she prayed “one of those prayers where you just put all the bad stuff out there and ask God for any light...any something” and another woman being present for a child in her question if God cared about her “through the flood of tears she had needed to cry for so long, for so many things.”

Scriptural accounts of lament also make their presence known, in one man’s reflection on the Israclites “complaining” as they wander the dessert in Exodus, for instance. Though he initially wants to condemn them, he concludes they cry “because they know God has been faithful in the past, and they know they need water.” And sure enough, “God responds, not by criticizing the actions of the people, but by supplying them with what they need: water.”[xlii] If Eastwood were to reclaim the practice of lamentation—even if it sounds a “inherently ancient” word, bringing to mind “sackcloth and ashes, ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth’ which may or may not be required[xliii]--we might sense more legitimacy in the practice for both ourselves and others, as expression of humanity. We might see it as something we can be present to, as God is compassionately present for us. For though Jesus specifically names repentance but not lament, he demonstrates the need for lament and invites it in others. In the devotional, one woman misses the call to lament, though she seems to have emotions to process as she feels defensive at the idea she and Eastwood folks might need to repent:

In Matthew’s gospel, the first words Jesus says as he begins his ministry are about repentance. We then might assume that repentance has some importance. But repentance is really no fun. Who wants to think about needing to repent? Our egos get in the way and besides, we are not so bad—not bad at all, we good church-going people. We do good all the time—well, often anyway. Look at the ministries at Eastwood. I don’t know about you, but I feel some pride in what this congregation is able to do in the community.

But Jesus did say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Like John the Baptist, the essence of Jesus’s preaching is repentance. Whether we like or not, are comfortable or not, perhaps we need to examine what it means to truly repent.

Repentance properly understood is an “I can’t” experience rather than an “I can” experience. If repentance is promising God, “I can do better,” then we are trying to keep ourselves in control of our lives. If we can do better, we don’t need a gracious God, only a patient One who will wait long enough for us to do better. When we come before God confessing, “I can’t do better,” then we are dying to self. We are giving up control of our lives. We are throwing our sinful lives on the mercy of God. We are inviting God to do what we can’t do ourselves—namely to raise the dead—to change and recreate us.[xliv]

Lament could convey the sense of “I can’t” she gestures toward, by crying out to God that we need God’s compassion and movement for justice. It would not give away the agency we do each have to repent by “turning around” as the original Greek word connotes, however. We cannot end suffering entirely: thus, crying out to God is natural and needed. While we cannot alleviate suffering and bring justice without God, we also cannot do it without others, nor without our “turning around” repentance. And if shame cripples us from movement, we cannot be in right relationship with God, others, and ourselves to do justice.

Here and elsewhere in the devotional, I wonder about the impact of original sin and atonement theologies on our sense of our permission to lament and agency to repent: If Jesus’s crucifixion becomes in our thinking the ultimate place where our sins are “washed away,” we may accidentally give away our sense of agency in repenting. I do not mean to argue that we do not receive grace from God, or that God initiates docs not initiate grace. But overemphasizing sin (original or not) seems historically and presently to distract many from lamenting—with God, Jesus, and disciples across the ages in the cloud of witnesses—Jesus’s death at the hands of empire. Jesus himself laments from the garden of Gethsemane in the hours leading up to his execution, and from the cross, quoting Psalm 22 to express what may otherwise be inexpressible: “My God, my God, why have you left me?”[xlv] Westermann argues for reemphasizing lament in considering Jesus’s role among the suffering, and ministry for life:

If the gospel story of the passion is presented in the words of the Twenty-second Psalm, the authors quite obviously wanted to say that Christ had taken up the lament of those of his people who suffer, that he too had entered into suffering. Hence, his suffering is a part of the history of those who have suffered, who have found their language in the psalms of lament. With his suffering and dying therefore Jesus could not have had only the sinner in mind; he must also have been thinking of those who suffer. If, as in the New Testament, the work of Christ is described as salvation from sin and death, then (following the Old Testament understanding) by ‘death’ we mean not only the-Cessation of life but the power of death at work within life which [hu]man[s] experiences in all types of suffering.”[xlvi]

Also notable to Westermann is that Jesus does sometimes forgive sins alongside healing or somehow helping another to alleviate suffering, but he never only forgives sins as though that is his ultimate goal and focus.

In many churches today, atonement theology is the norm. In my observation of churches I’ve been part of, it seems some folks tend to fall back on atonement theology without thinking through the implications. We hear it so often in popular Christian songs or media sources we easily access to support our ministries, it is also possible it often slips in without intentional thought. We hear about “Jesus’s blood poured out for our sins” in the common DOC practice of lay leaders praying at the communion table. Simply put, this framework idealizes and idolizes death and suffering, rather than lamenting it. As a Jewish man following the tradition of the Hebrew scriptures in their wealth of accounts of lament and sense of a God who laments with us, it seems to me we are simply not being faithful to the legacy of people of God gone before us, nor to Jesus’s ministry, nor, perhaps, to his suffering, we do not lament it.

My argument regarding overemphasis on atonement theology is in part inspired by Howard Thurman’s argument in Jesus and the Disinherited that Christianity tends to overemphasize helping the “needy” or “less fortunate.”[xlvii] With this and the pervasiveness of atonement theologies, Christians with relative social privilege are caught between shame that we can do nothing right and self-righteousness covering our shame because God “sacrificed” God’s son for us, the chosen and thus, our egoist over-emphasis on “helping the needy and less informed about Jesus’s love” is born. In Thurman’s incisive prose:

Again and again our missionary appeal is on the basis of the Christian responsibility to the needy, the ignorant, the so-called backward peoples of the earth. There is a certain grandeur and nobility in administering to another’s need out of one’s fullness and plenty. One could be selfish, using his possessions—material or spiritual—for strictly private or personal ends. It is certainly to the glory of Christianity that it has been most insistent on the point of responsibility to others whose only claim upon one is the height and depth of their need. This impulse at the heart of Christianity is the human will to share with others what one has found meaningful to oneself elevated to the height of a moral imperative.[xlviii]

Perhaps we should follow Thurman to ask what—specifically and compellingly—the religion of Jesus has to say to folks “with their back against the wall.”[xlix] Perhaps in hospitality we should lament with them their suffering and the suffering of Jesus, who was one “with his back against the wall.” We consider their laments in the present and past, as the lamentable suffering and injustices ripples through history. We meet together with the cloud of witnesses, lamenting as God does. How might such lament transform?

Strategic Response

As we have seen in our theological exploration, lament can be experienced in many different ways. In this section, I will explore some implications of the different forms and possibilities of reclaiming lament particularly for whites, middle-to-upper class Christians in the US. My descriptions and imaginings are by no means comprehensive, as lament may be embodied in many different ways: music, word, spiritual practice, communal expressions; vigils, physical re-membering, and more. Individual Christians and faith communities will have to explore what feels most faithful to them and to particular moments. It is important to note that while there are laments for the dead which are backward-looking contained in the Old Testament, we are interested here in laments of affliction which is present and future-looking.”[l]

Lament of affliction sometimes includes doubts or repentance, indicating awareness of a particular offense rather than general sinfulness causing shame, but not always.”[li] It is thus not necessarily a confession, like the ones some churches like the Presbyterian Church USA I attended in San Antonio include in a weekly prayer during worship. When one laments a particular instance or injustice, crying out to God with “why” questions, anger, tears, deep and chaotic sadness, or some combination, they may well identify agents and actions creating or exacerbating the suffering, but this is not required in the lament itself. Coming to lament does not require a prostrate posture of shame in sinfulness. It can include protest at the “absurdity” of suffering which it “does not endure... submissively or patiently,” for instance.[lii] Numbing to deny emotional engagement is not a part of these impassioned pleas to God. There is no “perfect” way to lament, whereby one can move through a process in just the right way to be free from judgment.[liii] One is not concerned with appearances when they deeply emotionally engage to lament. A model for religious practice offered by Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso to consider entering the practice of lament from one of the four, mutually-informing parts: an experience of God, of emotional, spiritual, day-to-day, and/or transcendent nature; a story, to put language and a container around and experience; a ritual to habitualize and make a practice of the story; and theology in which God-talk is formed.[liv] One could enter a spirit of lament through a story offered by another or in scripture. Or, one could begin with a personal experience of a particular situation which gives them the ability to empathize with others.[lv] Perhaps the experience could also be one of compassion, which Therese Taylor-Stinson—founder of the Spiritual Directors of Color Network and editor of Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around Stories of Contemplation and Justice—contrasts with empathy as arising without necessitating knowledge about another’s experience.[lvi] One could sit with the mystery arising from God-talk which says ‘God laments with us. Or one could engage in a structured ritual of intercessory prayer, or embodied lament. Lament can and should be engaged with from a variety of these positions, without getting trapped habitually in one, and sometimes looking to bring them all into a particular movement toward lament at once.

As the experience of shame “cripples us to feeling we can take action,” creating a sense of “I am bad,” that will not ultimately move white lamenters with privilege to instrumental action, we must identify where and why shame has arisen for us, and we must speak about it with trusted others. Helpful questions for one to ask oneself during and especially after an experience of lament include: did I feel shame? For what? Out of that sense of shame, are there identifiable factors I--perhaps among others—am guilty of? What could I do to repent (or “turn away” from) that guilt? How can I begin walking in a new direction? We can also speak about these questions with trusted others, leaning especially on other white people so as not to put our experience of shame of our whiteness onto people of color. The final “what” and “how” questions emphasize that only through taking action does our reflection become integrated in our lives and our call in the world. The Eastwood Lenten devotional discussed repentance, and while many of the devotions included the idea of looking within with courage, I did not see action and taking steps in repentance described anywhere. And yet if repentance is truly to be a “turning around,” action to walk away is required. Eastwood may have been part of communal action for justice at the time of the devotional’s writing and use, and certainly individuals may have been taking steps to repent of whatever they saw within. It seems key to include these pieces as a step in the described contemplation-action process, however, so one does not walk away in action-halting shame and because contemplation and action are like two sides of the same coin in following God’s call. Taylor-Stinson writes in her epilogue for Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around that we must not allow our seeking after contemplation or spiritual practice (lament included) to become “a way to justify [our] own procrastination... remaining silent when there is a need to speak... So that contemplation can be whole, it must consist of both inward solitude and reflection, and an outward response to the situations in which we find ourselves present and awake.”[lvii] A Lenten devotional and practice of contemplation is faithful, but not in and of itself. Taylor-Stinson cites Elémire Zolla in the book Contemplation and Action in World Religions:

Modern [hu]man|[s] [are] constantly tempted to seek spiritual life in sheer method... Method in itself leads only to disputation and quarrels... Action is linked to the Greek agonia, which led to “agony”: action in itself is always a sacrifice. When we leave the paradise of contemplation and descend to the earth of action, everything, including mystical action, becomes sacrificial. But agonia signifies “struggle,” “contest,” as well as “anguish,” and esoterically speaking, an unseen warfare. It may well be that the point of failure in contemporary civilization was precisely the failure to realized the necessity of constantly fighting against evil.[lviii]

May our lamentation ground us in awareness of the evil within our world and sometimes within ourselves, and may it fuel us to repenting and proactive action.

Shame as well as other structural factors keep white folks from lamenting with people of color the evils of white supremacy, neoliberalism, wealth inequality, nationalistic xenophobia and more. Shame may cause a white person to feel they could not possibly lament with a person of color because they could never enter their experience in their social location. Because of pervasive and persistent segregation in housing and social networks,[lix] white folks are thus less likely to interact with people of color, and through inexperience, to become more and more hesitant to do so. As we are more likely to lament for and with someone we know either intimately or by acquaintance, this segregation and reticence both create barriers to the communal lament we must embrace. The Old Testament prophets often become voices lamenting for ills in their society as a whole, and particularly those that impact the poor and oppressed.[lx] The reluctant prophet Jeremiah announces the people’s wrongs in breaking relationship with God and then laments with God the coming suffering and disaster in anguish that is indistinguishable from God’s in 4:19-22. Multiple chapters of God’s lament follow until God declares to the people that they too must take up lament, calling first “the women who mourn... those best trained” to “let them weep for [the people]” and “teach your daughters to mourn.”[lxi] The people must lament together the destruction coming as a result of their neglecting relationship with God. Individuals in our society today could become voices lamenting alone and then perhaps teaching others to lament together the societal evils of neoliberalism, white supremacy, labor exploitation, climate change, and others which impact all, though they size, pervasiveness, and power of these forces, as well as the oppressors who support them through propaganda, economic power, and suppression of challenges forces us to see that we need God and each other to dismantle them.

The call to communal lament requires white people consider their interconnection with people of color and others in shared fate and communal relationship with God. This is thereby not a moment to tokenize or “other” the experience of those we perceive as “other.” This is a call to invested relationship with our co-creators of justice with God. Individuals may consider how they can intentionally get onside le segregated spaces they inhabit. Getting involved in local organizing groups and organizations doing both charity and justice could be a great way to begin. Commitment is and will be required. Involvement is not to become a check-list or self-righteous exercise. You won’t know all you’re getting yourself involved with, but you can look to get some sense before you commit to something you’re not equipped for. This is collaborative work, and thus it is vitally important you leave leadership to those with experience and you ask for help along the way. You don’t know how you may be transformed by steps along the journey, and you walk in faith and challenge in hope. Each of us must follow nudges from the Spirit calling us to particular work from where we are. Glennon Doyle echoes God’s call to listen to what breaks your heart and allow yourself to “feel it all,” as her mantra goes, in order to fuel creative, collective, dedicated action.[lxii] If we were all to follow our emotions deeper into commitment to address them, surely we would be more alive and less numb. We might be more practiced and committed to leaving behind those habits making us “too numb, overworked, wounded, asleep, and full of information” as we can so that we can “find empathy” and even “allow ourselves to be involuntarily moved by the suffering of another.[lxiii]

If you belong to a majority white, and possibly middle-to-upper class congregation you may also along with your co-conspirators ask what the community could be doing to be in relationship with those it considers implicitly “other.” Are there denominational or local connections where you could begin to build bridges and relationships with those “others?” As part of the anti-racist, pro-reconciling commitment of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Eastwood could for instance begin asking Disciples leaders and communities what they are doing in this vein and how it could collaborate. Eastwood would need to do its own anti-racism work as well, consulting resources already available in everything from the academic study of how and why race was and is constructed to the real-lived accounts of people of color. We as white people cannot approach a person of color expecting them to share their stories of identity and sometimes pain for our learning. We can educate ourselves in the many reflections willingly created and shared by so many artists of color. Lamenting with also requires we do not “other” the humanity and experience of those whom we read. In engaging with womanist literature telling the real-lived experiences of black women in a course taught by Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, I found myself telling myself] did not have the bandwidth to emotional encounter some of the pain contained within the novels. In doing so, I also emotionally numbed myself from the deep wisdom, love, and joy in the novels, because “we cannot numb selectively”[lxiv] and “othering” does not open me to the full humanity of the authors or characters they write.

As God’s people, it is our natural role in relationship with God to both lament and praise as appropriate. As people with relative privilege, white, middle-to-upper class Americans have neglected lament in favor of numbing and perfectionism which cause shame to metastasize and cripple our ability to co-create justice and alleviation of suffering with God and others. We are in relationship with a God who calls us ever onward, toward lament and repentance for breaking covenant and toward particular practices and ministries that form us. May we seek to follow faithfully, calling out the powerful who make injustice though we’re in the comfortable habit of acting as though conversations of “church and state” must be “separate.” May we come to protest the “absurdity” of indifference to injustice when our God laments and loves through calls to challenge, and thus to hope. May we lament that which we together see as hampering, hemming in, or halting God’s present and coming kin-dom. May it be so.

Works Cited

Brown, Brené. The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection, and Courage. Louisville, CO: Sounds True, Audible, 2013.

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden Publishing, 2010.

Interview with Ibram X. Kendi. Unlocking Us. Podcast audio. June 3, 2020. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-ibram-x-kendi-on-how-to-be-an-antiracist.

Cooley, Rachel. “Embracing the Uncertain with Mary, Martha and Jesus.” Sermon, Eastwood Christian Church, March 22. 2020.

Cooley, Rachel. “Implied Reader as Meaning-Maker: Truc Faith, Hope, and Knowledge in Mark 5:21-43.” DIV 6600 New Testament Studies Essay, Vanderbilt Divinity School, February 19, 2019.

Doyle, Glennon. Untamed. New York: The Dial Press, 2020.

Eastwood Christian Church. From Ashes to Easter: A Lenten Devotional. Nashville, TN, 2011.

Gilliard, Dominique. “Reclaiming the Power of Lament.” Faith & Leadership: Leadership, Education at Duke Divinity, August 25, 2015.

https://faithandleadership.com/dominique-

d-gilliard-reclaiming-power-lament.

Johnson, Cedric. “Prophetic Soul Care.” In Race, Religion, and Resilience in the Neoliberal Age,127-53. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

The New Interpreter's Bible:A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, vol. 10. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.

Rah, Soong-Chan. “Introduction: A Call to Lament.” In Prophetic Lament, 19-26. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2015.

Sasso, Sandy Eisenberg, Discussion. Nurturing the Spiritual Lives of Children and Families via Zoom for Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, TN, October 6, 2020.

Taylor-Stinson, Therese. “Compassion.” In Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Stories of Contemplation and Justice, edited by Therese Taylor-Stinson, 11-14. New York: Church Publishing, 2017.

“Epilogue: Contemplation in Action.” In Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Stories of Contemplation and Justice, edited by Therese Taylor-Stinson, 159-63. New York: Church Publishing, 2017.

Thurman, Howard. “Jesus—An Interpretation.” In Jesus and the Disinherited, 1-25. Boston: Beacon Press, 1976.

Westermann, Claus. “The Role of Lament in the Theology of the Old Testament.” Interpretation 28 (1974): 20-38.

Williams, D. Newell. "How and Why the Disciples Have Changed in Relation to American Culture." In.4 Case Study of Mainstream Protestantism: The Disciples’ Relation to American Culture, 1880-1989, edited by D. Newell Williams, 3-25. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1991.

Williams, Aaron and Armand Emamdjomeh. “America is more diverse than ever— but still segregated.” The Washington Post, May 10, 2018.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/segregation-us-cities.

Zolla, Elémire. “Traditional Modes of Contemplation and Action.” In Contemplation and Action in World Religions: Selected Papers from the Rothko Chapel Colloquium, edited by Yusuf Ibish and Ileana Marculescu. Seattle: University of Washing Press, 197

Endnotes

1. Drawing on Therese Taylor-Stinson’s differentiation between compassion and empathy, and argument regarding numbing in, “Compassion” in Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Stories of Contemplation and Justice, ed. Therese Taylor-Stinson (New York: Church Publishing, 2017), 11-14. ↩
2. Term from womanist approaches/ethics I first encountered in “Womanist Literature as a Resource for Ethics,” Fall 2020 with Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas. ↩
3. In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” ↩
4. Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection (Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing, 2010), 17-19 ↩
5. Therese Taylor-Stinson, “Epilogue: Contemplation in Action” in Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Stories of Contemplation and Justice, ed. Therese Taylor-Stinson (New York: Church Publishing, 2017), 159-63. ↩
6. Aaron Williams and Armand Emamdjomeh, “America is more diverse than ever but still segregated,” The Washington Post, May 10, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/segregation-us-cities. ↩
7. While Brown has certainly presented her work in various forums across her career, she has often been paid to speak at corporate events or special speaking events like TED or The UP Experience, especially when her name started being more known. Both of these arenas are dominated by majority white, middle-to-upper class, educated Americans and their cultural norms. Brown herself describes The UP Experience audience as “mostly CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and CIOs who were paying $1,000 for the day-long event” in The Gifts of Imperfection, 31. She often cites from her life’s learnings from her research, speaking about the school, neighborhood, and workplace cultures that are typical of her social location in the US, and have their particular “shame gremlins” with which an audience of a similar social location would connect. My argument is not that Brown’s research methods or selection of participants is flawed, nor that her conclusions could not apply to people from diverse social locations. But I would wish to hold her accountable for centering white experience and often failing to acknowledge her bias and the impacts of social location in her presentations. ↩
8. Brené Brown, “The Power of Vulnerability” (Louisville, CO: Sounds True Audible, 2013), Session 1, 16:55—18:20. ↩
9. Brené Brown, Dare to Lead (New York: Random House, 2018): 23-39. ↩
10. Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, 38-41. ↩
11. Ibid 38-39. ↩
12. Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, Session 4, 26:40 30:48. ↩
13. Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, 41-42. ↩
14. This metaphor is from Dr. Ibram Kendi’s in his conversation with Brené Brown on her podcast Unlocking Us, June 3, 2020. ADD TO BIB? Darcy Steinke, interview with Sam Tanenhaus and Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review, podcast audio, April 22, 2007, http://podcasts.nytimes.com/podcasts/2007/04/20/2 1 bookupdate.mp3.' ↩
15. Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, 16-19 ↩
16. Ibid 58. ↩
17. Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, Session 1, 1:00:00-1:01:00. ↩
18. Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, 69-72. ↩
19. Ibid 72. ↩
20. Dominique Gilliard, “Reclaiming the Power of Lament,” Faith & Leadership: Leadership Education at Duke Divinity, August 25, 2015, https://faithandleadership.com/dominique-d-gilliard-reclaiming-power-lament. ↩
21. Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, Session 1, 1:00:00-1:01:00. ↩
22. D. Newell Williams, "How and Why the Disciples Have Changed in Relation to American Culture," in A Case Study of Mainstream Protestantism: The Disciples’ Relation to American Culture, 1880-1989, ed. D. Newell Williams (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 15. ↩
23. Soong-Chan Rah references this terminology used for church plants when discussing his call to focus on the book of Lamentations toward the start of his church plant, despite typical advice. “Introduction: A Call to Lament,” in Prophetic Lament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2015), 20. ↩
24. Because I am engaging with reflections on the Hebrew scriptures from primarily Christian thinkers—with the exception of indirect engagement with Rabbi Abraham Heschel through Jurgen Moltmann—I use the term “Old Testament” rather than Hebrew bible or Torah. ↩
25. Claus Westermann, “The Role of Lament in the Theology of the Old Testament,” Interpretation 28 (1974). ↩
26. Jorgen Moltmann, “The Experience of Human Life in the Pathos of God,” in The Crucified God : the Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). ↩
27. Westermann, “The Role of Lament,” 25. See also 33-34. ↩
28. Genesis 4: 9-10 (Common English Bible) ↩
29. Cedric Johnson, “Prophetic Soul Care,” in Race, Religion, and Resilience in the Neoliberal Age (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015): 147. ↩
30. Ibid 148. ↩
31. Moltmann, The Crucified God, 270. ↩
32. Ibid 270-71. ↩
33. Westermann, “The Role of Lament,” 22 ↩
34. Ibid 21. ↩
35. Moltmann, The Crucified God, 272. ↩
36. Ibid 271. ↩
37. Moltmann 272. ↩
38. Mark 10: 46-52 (CEB) ↩
39. Mark 5: 24b-34 (CEB) I draw here from my own reflection done for a paper. Rachel Cooley, “Implied Reader as Meaning-Maker: True Faith, Hope, and Knowledge in Mark 5:21-43” (DIV 6600 New Testament Studies Essay, Vanderbilt Divinity School, February 19, 2019). ↩
40. John 11: 1-46 (CEB). I draw here from my own reflection done for a sermon. Rachel Cooley, “Embracing the Uncertain with Mary, Martha and Jesus” (sermon, Eastwood Christian Church, March 22. 2020). ↩
41. The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, vol. 10 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994). ↩
42. Eastwood Christian Church, From Ashes to Easter: A Lenten Devotional, Nashville, TN, 2011. This devotional was also used by the congregation together in 2015. Its pages are unnumbered. Westermann also names this Exodus account as a notable instance of lament in “The Role of Lament,” 30-31. ↩
43. Gilliard believes the word “lamentation” may bring up these biblical associations, which seem incredibly “other” and “overwrought” to the modern experience. In “Reclaiming the Power of Lament.” ↩
44. Eastwood Christian Church, From Ashes to Easter. ↩
45. Matthew 27:46 (CEB). Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1. ↩
46. Westermann, “The Role of Lament,” 34. ↩
47. Howard Thurman, “Jesus—an Interpretation,” in Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976) 1-25. ↩
48. Ibid 2. ↩
49. Ibid 1. ↩
50. Westermann, “The Role of Lament,” 22 ↩
51. Westermann, “The Role of Lament,” 33. ↩
52. Ibid 30. ↩
53. As perfectionsm is concerned with according to Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, Session 4, 26:40— 30:48. ↩
54. Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, Discussion, Nurturing the Spiritual Lives of Children and Families via Zoom for Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, TN, October 6, 2020. Sasso also mentions this model in her Chapter “Tell Me a Story: Narrative and the Religious Imagination of Children,” in Faith Forward, Volume 2: Re-Imagining Children’s and Youth Ministry, ed. David M. Csinos and Melvin Bray (Kelowna, BC, Canada: CopperHouse, 2015),99-109. ↩
55. Brown discusses pulling from one’s vulnerable emotions to empathize with others in The Power of Vulnerability, Session 3. ↩
56. Taylor-Stinson, “Compassion, 12. ↩
57. Therese Taylor-Stinson, “Epilogue: Contemplation in Action,” 159. ↩
58. Elémire Zolla, “Traditional Modes of Contemplation and Action,” in Contemplation and Action in World Religions: Selected Papers from the Rothko Chapel Colloquium, ed. Yusuf tbish and Ileana Marculescu (1977; Seattle: University of Washing Press, 1978), 105. ↩
59. See again Williams and Emamdjomeh for The Washington Post. ↩
60. Westermann, “The Role of Lament,” 30. ↩
61. Jeremiah 9:17-20 (CEB) ↩
62. Glennon Doyle, Untamed, New York: The Dial Press, 2020. See especially “bases,” 181-87. ↩
63. Taylor-Stinson, “Compassion,” 13. ↩
64. Brown, on numbing emotions causing us to feel vulnerable in The Gifts of Imperfection, 70. ↩