"He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem."
Isaiah 53:3
He cries out at His crucifixion"with a loud voice 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'” Mark 15: 34 ESV. And yes, this was during his Crucifixion, at the height of His pain, but this is Jesus who is fully aware of the plan of the Father, and knows the joy of the resurrection on the other end of the cross. But in the moment He cries out in agony. He screams at the top of His voice, bringing His pain and anguish to His Father. He expresses the pain and grief of the moment, something which I had not quite seen as important until now.
Not only at His Crucifixion do we see Jesus in anguish, we seem Him in John 11 weep over the loss of His friend, and in Matthew 26 we see Him express how He is sorrowful "even unto death" ESV. At many other points in Jesus' life He encounters pain, and it becomes very apparent that Jesus is well acquainted with grief and sorrow.
If I am to be completely honest, I have struggled with the concept of a suffering Jesus because to me it is incompatible with the image of Jesus I have always held. Because if Jesus lived a perfect life then pain and grief, which are such uncomfortable things, could not have been a part of His perfection. Surely Jesus would have found a way to avoid pain, or maybe even create immunity for himself, but He didn't. Like us, He waded through the deep waters, felt the pain of loss, and wept at the prospect of not having that which He so deeply desired.
Grief, which often is the source of our pain, was very present in Jesus' life, in the same way that it is a prominent feature of our imperfect lives. Our lives are pierced by the loss of friends, of parents, of spouses, and even our jobs and livelihoods that have been ravaged by a virus whose effects are so devastating, yet still so difficult to understand.
However, grief cannot be understood, it can only be experienced and expressed. It demands our attention and calls out for us to notice. However, to properly engage with grief and pain we need to follow Jesus' lead and learn to express it the way that He did; through lament. Because to deal with trauma and grief and all the realities surrounding it, we need to first acknowledge that they exist and then bring them to God, in the same way Jesus did.
Betsy Barber, Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation and Psychology at Biola University writes this about the practice of lamenting;"Lamenting to God is a good and holy way to grieve. It has the virtue of honesty: when we lament to God, when we complain to him, we bemoan the events and realities of our lives in his presence. He knows them all already, but when we speak the truth to him, we give up the pretense that the depth of our sorrow is somehow secret, somehow hidden from his sight. Lamenting to God is obedient grief. God invites us to pray to him in this way. Psalm 62:8 instructs us, “Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us” (ESV)."
I sense that a large part of what the remaining months of the year require is that we learn to lament, because what we have all experienced is traumatic. We are emerging from lock-down which for many of us has been a space of great loss and grief, and we need a vehicle to express and mourn that which we have lost.
Because lock-down isn't normal, neither is Corona-virus, but to emerge and live into the new reality of our lives requires both our courage and our willingness to lament, to cry out, to acknowledge our pain and encounter it with the hope that we emerge into the fullness of a life that is open to God and to each other. We need lament to live an honest life that is fully open to God, rather than to continue living our lives led by the pain of the bruises from the blows we have been dealt.
And so, I encourage you to learn the practice of lament, to look at Jesus and learn how He encountered and expressed grief because the freedom of your soul depends on it. To live oblivious to trauma and grief is to discount such a big part of our humanity which will always make it difficult to live in compassion and be meaningful members of our communities.
We need to express our grief and pain because our wellness depends on it.
So lament, cry out, bring your pain to God, because in Him you will find rest for your soul.
"Praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! The Father is a merciful God, who always gives us comfort. 4 He comforts us when we are in trouble, so that we can share this same comfort with others in trouble. 5 We share in the terrible sufferings of Christ, but also in the wonderful comfort he gives."2 Corinthians 1:3-5
_ Takunda
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