Editor’s Note: In the foreword to Prophetic Lament by Soong-Chan Rah, Brenda Salter McNeil writes of how she and Soong-Chan experienced communal lament in Ferguson, Missouri, with thirty to forty evangelical leaders who were there to strategize about how the Christian church should respond from the unrest after the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a white police office.

On the last day of our gathering we received the shockingly disturbing news that police officers who strangled and killed an African American man on video, while he repeatedly cried, “I can’t breathe!” would not be indicted. One young black man in our meeting took this news exceptionally hard and had to be taken out of the room as he wept aloud. One of the elder stateswomen in the group quickly called for us to sing a song of lament. In response, a black female worship leader began to lead us in an upbeat chorus about “taking back what the devil had stolen from us and placing him under our feet!” As I stood near a black male colleague from another theological seminary, we held hands and remained silent. Then he leaned down and whispered in my ear in a concerned voice, “I feel very uncomfortable with this. What does this have to do with lament?!” Of course, he was right. Even though many of us had been nurtured in the rich tradition of the African-American church that taught us to sing songs like “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “I Must Tell Jesus,” “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” somehow we had also lost our historic and spiritual legacy of being able to corporately lament.

What follows is an excerpt from Soong-Chan Rah’s book on the Book of Lamentations and spiritual practice of communal lament. It is a practice that has been lost to many of us but is much needed in contemporary culture.

Lament is the human response to anguish and adversity, and is not bound by the rules of praise. Instead, lament can take the form of complaint, “in the sense of bemoaning the troubles one has undergone . . . [and] complaint in the sense of arguing with and complaining to God about one’s situation and protesting its continuation.”Sally A. Brown and Patrick D. Miller, eds., Lament: Reclaiming Practices in Pulpit, Pew, and Public Square (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), xv. Lament is an act of protest as the lamenter is allowed to express indignation and even outrage about the experience of suffering. The lamenter talks back to God and ultimately petitions him for help in the midst of pain. The one who laments can call out to God for help and in that outcry there is the hope and even the manifestation of praise.

In the book of Lamentations, we encounter the breadth of the various forms of lament. In the first chapter, we find a particular form of lament with many of the above characteristics: the funeral dirge. The funeral dirge deals with the historical reality of a suffering community that raises voices of pain and protest over the death of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 29 addresses the exiles in Babylon, while Lamentations is written to the remnant in Jerusalem. The exiles in Babylon are susceptible to false prophets who promise them what they want to hear: the hope that they will soon return to Jerusalem. To them, the devastation of Jerusalem is a physically distant reality. However, those remaining in Jerusalem are confronted with the painful and visible reality at hand. Lamentations is written to this remnant who witnessed this devastation. A funeral dirge is necessary because the dead body of the city lies before them.

Chapter 1 (as well as chapters 2 and 4) opens with the Hebrew word ‘eka, translated into English as “alas” or “how.” A more dynamic translation could yield “how tragic” or “how devastated.” A confused cry of anguish, “How can this be?” is offered in response to a tragic death. The opening word reflects an emotional reaction. “Tragedy threatens to overcome speech, sobs interfere with words.”Kathleen O’Connor, Lamentations and the Tears of the World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002), 19–20. This opening cry of desolation acknowledges that Lamentations occurs in the context of tragedy. The city has died and the people must respond with lament.

Kathleen O’Connor summarizes the key characteristics of a funeral dirge, which “include a mournful cry for the one who has died, a proclamation of death, contrast with previous circumstances of the dead person, and the reaction of bystanders.”Kathleen O’Connor, “The Book of Lamentations,” The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 2001), 1019–20. Lamentations 1 laments a death “but with national rather than personal application.”S. K. Soderlund, “Lamentations,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (K–P), Geoffrey W. Bromiley, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 67. There is an opening mournful cry of ‘eka (v. 1) over the death of Jerusalem. There is a proclamation of the death as the city sits alone (v. 1), with references to widowhood (v. 1), descriptions of mourning, grief, bitter anguish (v. 4), being crushed/trampled (v. 15), the priests and elders have perished (v. 19), and “there is only death” (v. 20All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™). This reality contrasts to previous circumstances when Jerusalem was “once was great among the nations” and a “queen” (v. 1) with references to a former glory marked by appointed feasts (v. 4), splendor (v. 6) and treasures (vv. 7, 10). Finally, there is the reaction of the bystanders with “no one to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies” (v. 2). The absence of a comforter is restated in verses 9, 16, 17 and 21. Not only does no one comfort her, but the bystanders respond with betrayal (v. 2, 19), derisive laughter (v. 7), they despise her (v. 11) and rejoice at her suffering (v. 21). The major characteristics of the funeral dirge are evident in the Lamentations 1. As the first poem recounts this painful reality of the death of Jerusalem, the appropriate response is to engage in the practice of the funeral dirge.

Lamentations 1 deals with reality; lament is required because of the historic event of the death of the city and the nation. Lamentations serves as “an outpouring of grief for a loss that has already occurred, with no expectation of reversing that loss. . . . [The prophets] saw the demise of the nation as a fait accompli. They personify the nation as a corpse, over whom a dirge is recited.”Adele Berlin, Lamentations (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 24. Lamentations 1 reflects a postmortem grief over death rather than an anxiety over the future possible death of the city. It is not the moment to explain or justify. It is not even a moment to plead for a better future. Lamentations 1 provides the space and time to mourn. The funeral dirge does not allow for the denial of death, nor does it allow for the denial of culpability in that death. The funeral dirge is a reality check for those who witness suffering and allows mourning that is essential for dealing with death.

Rather than denying reality, Lamentations portrays suffering and death in gritty detail. Lamentations 1 uncompromisingly describes the true status of the situation. Even if God’s people wanted to close their eyes and shut out the suffering around them, Lamentations won’t allow it. Slavery (v. 1), abandonment (v. 2), affliction (v. 3, 9), harsh labor (v. 3), distress (v. 3), anguish (v. 4), suffering (v. 5), violation, shame (v. 7), being despised (v. 11), desolation (v. 13, 16), being faint (v. 13), being trodden over and crushed (v. 15), torment (v. 20) and death (v. 20) are not glossed over. Even the cringe-worthy description of being naked (v. 8), filthy in her skirts (v. 9) (with connotations of sexual and possibly menstrual uncleanness) and an allusion to sexual violation (v. 10) is presented in stark terms. The vivid description does not allow for the denial of suffering and death, nor does it allow for the denial of culpability. The funeral dirge recognizes suffering but also recognizes sinful behavior that contributed to that suffering.

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01.  A Proper American Dirge

Lament is honesty before God and each other. If something has truly been declared dead, there is no use in sugarcoating that reality. To hide from suffering and death would be an act of denial. If an individual would deny the reality of death during a funeral, friends would justifiably express concern over the mental health of that individual. In the same way, should we not be concerned over a church that lives in denial over the reality of death in our midst?

Our nation’s tainted racial history reflects a serious inability to deal with reality. Something has died, and we refuse to participate in the funeral. We refuse to acknowledge the lamenters who sing the songs of suffering in our midst. In Forgive Us, my coauthors and I confront the inability of the American church to deal with historical reality. We fail to acknowledge the reality of sins committed by the church and fail to offer a moral witness to the world. Ibrahim

Abdul-Matin addresses this deficiency in our culture, stating that “People of faith have lost their moral authority… because they have lacked humility: they have failed to acknowledge the ways they are part of the problem.”See Mae Elise Cannon, Lisa Sharon Harper, Troy Jackson and Soong-Chan Rah. Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 13. Quoted from Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet, book reading at Hue-Man Bookstore, November 12, 2010. The funeral dirge opening of Lamentations and the first three verses of Lamentations 1 reminds us that grief that emerges from a very real and painful history must be acknowledged.

Self-absorbed Christians who are apathetic toward injustice do not emerge from a vacuum. A deeply segregated church does not appear without history. In the United States, grief and pain related to race is often suppressed, and the stories of suffering are often untold. Our history is incomplete. The painful stories of the suffering of the African American community, in particular, remain hidden. Often, American Christians may even deny the narrative of suffering claiming that things weren’t so bad for the slaves or that at least the African Americans had the chance to convert to Christianity. The story of suffering is often swept under the rug in order not to create discomfort or bad feelings. Lament is denied because the dead body in front of us is being denied. But the funeral dirge genre of Lamentations 1 requires the telling of the full story of death—the cause of that death, the history surrounding that death and the historical effects of that death—because a dead body cannot be ignored.

The slave trade that brought Africans to the Western hemisphere brutally stripped them of all identity, resulting in the complete obliteration of kinship, family, identity and history. The subsequent history of the progeny of the African slaves in the United States has stifled their story. In the church, there is a particular absence of knowledge about the stories of the African American church. Western theological history dominates while the stories of slave religion are left untold. Spirituality in the African American church is assumed to be an essential internal characteristic, negating the need to more fully understand its nuances.

Several years ago, I attended a conference on ancient-future faith that emphasized the importance of engaging ancient spirituality in contemporary expressions of Christian faith. This conference promoted seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hymns as an example of “ancient” faith, but failed to mention even once the spirituality of the early Christian slave community that dates several centuries earlier.See Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978). A theological reading of Lamentations 1 as a funeral dirge calls the church to make room for the stories of suffering. Space is created for racial healing to arise from the power of stories, particularly stories of suffering. So Lamentations begins with a funeral dirge; before any answers are offered, a postmortem must be offered.

Willie Jennings notes that the first European slave ship that arrived in Africa was under the command of Henry, the Christian prince of Portugal. When the slaves were brought to the shore to be taken into the hold of the ship, “Prince Henry, following his deepest Christian instincts, ordered a tithe to be given to God through the church. . . . This act of praise and thanksgiving to God . . . served to justify the royal rhetoric by which Prince Henry claimed his motivation was the salvation of the soul of the heathen.”Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 15. In 1444, that first European slave ship operated under the faulty assumption that their actions were ordained by God. This warped belief continued, allowing slave traders to justify their sinful actions.

The slave ship served to reshape the imagination of all involved. “Everyone who stepped on a slave ship became racialized, white and black.”Jennings, 180. The crew would participate in the dehumanizing of the slaves. “Those who resisted in any way were beaten or whipped without mercy. . . . The rape of black women was woven into the very fabric of the social order of the slave ship . . . as sailors shared fully in the brutal rape and torture of women and children.”Jennings, 178. The slave ship’s arrival into port meant the transfer from one place of torture to a new place of torture. The auction bell that would greet the slave ship would signal the transition to life on the plantation.

On the plantation, some semblance of family life was initiated. However, the slave masters regularly employed rape as a weapon, incurring significant pain and spiritual suffering on slave women. The slave system “used their bodies for breeding and their bloodline for the maintenance of racial order. . . . In the eyes of the slave holders, slave women . . . were simply instruments guaranteeing the growth of the slave labor force.”Marla F. Frederick, Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 187. Slave women were constant victims of rape by white slave masters. The system of slavery was a system deeply rooted in spiritual evil that brought death to its victims. These stories reveal a deep flaw in [the United States’] story. Human bodies were not treated as made in the image of God. These bodies and their stories remain buried in our national narrative.

Lamentations 1 provides a truthful telling of the dead body in the room. The tragedy of our racial history requires the lament of a funeral dirge. What potential healing could occur if we were to take the example of Lamentations 1 in necessary truth telling? The city is deserted, and the queen has become a slave. Affliction and harsh labor are a part of the reality. How could we benefit from a funeral dirge that calls us to an honest depiction of the dead body in the room?

A few years ago I was presenting a workshop on the topic of lament. I raised the importance of telling the whole story of slavery in order to engage in the fullness of lament and how the funeral dirge of Lamentations 1 offers the possibility of healing as we deal with the truth. As part of the presentation I narrated an account of plantation life, in particular, the horrific account of the sexual abuse of slave women. One of my good friends happened to be in the workshop listening to me read the account. When I began to describe the atrocities of rape on the plantation, my friend got up and stood in the back of the room. For the following fifteen minutes, he remained standing for the duration of my workshop. Even after the workshop ended and all of the participants had left the room, he remained.

I approached him as he silently stood in the back of the room. I began to mutter some sort of apology, but he stopped me in the middle of my sentence. “When there were five kids in the slave family, there was the one kid that was lighter than the rest of the kids. That’s my family. That’s my family’s story. You told my family’s story. I have not heard another tell my story in public like that before, and I needed to honor you by standing.” There is power in bringing untold stories to light. The freedom to speak about the reality of suffering and death results in a freedom from denial. Lamentations 1 presents as a funeral dirge to remind us that we cannot ignore what is right in front of us.

In the American Christian narrative, the stories of the dominant culture are placed front and center while stories from the margins are often ignored. As we rush toward a description of an America that is now post-racial, we forget that the road to this phase is littered with dead bodies. There has been a deep and tragic loss in the American story because we have not acknowledged the reality of death. Stories remain untold or ignored in our quest to get over it. But in the end, we have lost an important part of who we are as a nation and as a church. We have yet to engage in a proper funeral dirge for our tainted racial history and continue to deny the deep spiritual stronghold of a nation that sought to justify slavery.

The tragedy of the slave trade and the long-term establishment of a slave society have no biblical rationalization and justification. No amount of intellectual gymnastics can justify this atrocity by claiming that there is a redemptive muscular Christianity inherent in the warped value system of a slave society. No amount of scriptural twisting can justify the brutal treatment of human beings made in the image of God. The history of the transatlantic slave trade points to a deeply problematic and dysfunctional Christian imagination that contributed to its rise. By not acknowledging this very real death, we ignore the implication of the funeral dirge in Lamentations. We do not recognize the stench of a dead body in the room.

The funeral dirge genre employed throughout the book of Lamentations and presented in chapter 1 acknowledges reality. The tragic death that has occurred cannot be easily dismissed. The painful story is expressed and allows the one who suffers to express grief. In the same way, the painful stories in American history must be revealed and learned. Racial reconciliation requires the truth telling of the funeral dirge lament and the expression of grief.

The funeral dirge of Lamentations allowed for a vivid, honest description of reality. A contemporary funeral dirge for the twenty-first-century American church would require the effort to more fully understand and learn another’s history. It could be as simple as watching films that depict the atrocities of the slave trade and the institution of slavery. It may involve visiting museums that teach the history of racism in the United States. It may require a deepening understanding of this history through texts that engage this often hidden history. The knowledge of this history can begin the process toward an authentic lament. The church must engage in a funeral dirge that reflects the truth of our tainted history.