Friday, September 10, 2021

Speechless

Hey, Cobblestone,

 

    Have you written out your lament yet? Yeah, me neither. When it comes to the language of lament, I’m finding myself mostly speechless. I even gathered with a group of brothers last Saturday morning and tried to speak and teach it at the same time, but an honest observer would say we left the gathering more confused than enlightened.

     In last week’s letter, I suggested that the language of lament is in sore need of redemption. Reading through Jeremiah and Lamentations in our Bibles, we’re beginning to see how a thorough lament – looking at What Was, What Happened, and waiting on the Lord for the What Now – helped our forbears through the Babylonian captivity twenty-six centuries ago. Why, then, is the language so foreign to us now? Taking my own advice (for better or worse), I chose to not take on my biggest personal loss as a first attempt. Instead, I’ve been working on what would be called, in Bible terms, a “community lament.” I can’t say it’s been a success yet, but after another week of puzzlement, a theme is beginning to materialize. I’ll leave it to you, Church, through the witness of the Holy Spirit (or lack thereof) to decide whether I’m barking up the right tree.

     There’s a significant anniversary coming up tomorrow. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 changed the way Americans live. In the space of a few hours, if anyone had had a concept labeled “Fortress America,” it was, for the most part, dismantled. Twenty years later, the changes are still taking place. I’ve been picking up news accounts and documentaries and asking others about their recollection of the day, hoping to put together a proper lament. One columnist, though he doesn’t know it, helped quite a bit. He proposes that we in America set apart September Eleventh of each year as a national Day of Unity, on the premise that 9/11/01 was the last time we were unified as a country. It’s not a bad idea altogether, but the premise is flawed: we weren’t. Unified, that is.

     I was there. Not at Ground Zero, of course, but the day – here in Butler County, even the weather on that Tuesday morning was very similar to the weather in New York City and Washington, DC and Somerset County, Pennsylvania: clear and mild, friendly weather, the kind of day you’d expect anything to happen other than what actually did. Once the reports became more cohesive – no, it wasn’t some unfortunate so-and-so who accidently slammed a Cessna into a World Trade Center tower – we were unified in shock… “we” meaning the crew I worked with in those days. With the second strike, and then the Pentagon, and then Shanksville, we were brought together as a community of disbelief – and we reached the boundaries of community rather quickly. Though we were of similar backgrounds and had somewhat similar goals in life, we were nowhere close on What Was or what had caused What Happened to happen. At the blood bank that afternoon, it was much the same: the staff and donors were unified by get-it-done – get this whole blood to the dispensaries, this will help somehow – but any attempt to connect on another level seemed to take us off course.

     The limits of unity were most notable at the last gathering of the day, in the late evening of the Eleventh. I was in a group of… guessing here… probably three hundred people. We were gathered in the same place at the same time, presumably for the same purpose. We were anything but unified. The shock had worn off earlier in the day, leaving no chance of unifying around disbelief; and we couldn’t get anything useful done, standing around the square looking at each other as we were. And as for a response to the attacks, I’d venture to say there were about three hundred different ideas about what should begin happening on the morning of the Twelfth. I’ve wondered for years why we weren’t able to come anywhere near unity in what seemed to be a unifying event. I’ve wondered lately why division is the outcome in other matters that show such potential for unity. Call it wisdom from above (at best), or simply an accumulation of things that make you go “Huh?” (at least), here’s what I would consider a reasonable hypothesis:

     Not everyone in the group was waiting on the Lord for the What Now.

     Outside its proper context lament means nothing – not even a community lament. The larger the group got, the less likely unity would be attained. With unity implied in community, we were not on track. As a group of three hundred, we couldn’t pull it off; what chance do we stand as a group of three hundred and thirty million? The columnist whose Op-Ed I read earlier this week might have to go looking for a different date for the national Day of Unity. And good luck with that, by the way.

 Lately, and much too late, I’m promoting a different concept of “nation” – a concept pulled from Scripture, specifically Psalm 33:

 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage! (verse 12)

 With a better concept of nation, the community lament – and its proper context – becomes a little clearer. And in the Gospels, Jesus gives a better concept of family and community:

     And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:32-35).

     I’m sorry I didn’t have better words and deeds for the crew I was with on 9/11/01. I’m sorry I had nothing more than blood to give that afternoon. I’m sorry my community of faith didn’t have a cohesive and helpful message for our three hundred neighbors in the town square that night. I’m sorry my nation didn’t have someone close enough to be instrumental in the redemption of those nineteen sons of Ishmael who carried out the wicked deeds of the original 9/11. I’m trusting God to have used these intervening twenty years to form a more redemptive response in me, my community, and my nation.

     Whether this is proper lament or not is beyond my ability to tell – someone else would have to say. If not, I hope it doesn’t take another twenty years to come up with one. At this point, I’ll only ask you to join me, Church, in praying…

     “Jesus, help us with the language of lament! As you wept over Jerusalem, so let us weep over every person and every matter you’ve assigned to us, your brothers and sisters. And then, as you moved across the valley and into the work of redemption, so let us move, in your name and in the power of your Holy Spirit, amen.”

 

Grace and Peace (yes, the very peace Jesus gives),

 

John


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