Alleluia In A Minor Key
Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalm 51, Hebrews 5:4-10, John 12:20-33
April 2, 2006
Rev. Marcia J. Hauer


I have a lot to lament in my life and I suspect you do in yours, as well. For instance, my daughter has thyroid cancer. The tests say that she is going in the right direction and things are looking good, but that’s a far cry from cured. In the world, I see war, famine, disease, crime and all sorts of injustice. All these things weigh on my mind a good deal of the time. Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t much to be grateful for and to rejoice about, but to acknowledge that some aspects of life are hard and seem unfair. Other than in our time of Joys and Concerns, we hardly ever talk about the things that are on our minds where we are hurt or angry, especially when those feelings are directed at God. So, when I saw that the Psalm that the Lectionary called for was a lament, it seemed like a good time to talk about laments in general and what they have to say to us.

We believe that the good guys are the winners and the bad guys are punished—what goes around, comes around. Yeah, we have our faults, but like the psalmist who wrote Psalm 51, we confess our sin and get right with God. We are the righteous believers. OK, so that’s a little overstated, but we do expect to see the bad guys punished and the good guys rewarded. So how are we to make sense of a world where that doesn’t always happen? If we’re honest with ourselves and each other, we know that “what goes around, comes around� doesn’t always work. Bad things do happen to good people—to individuals and within communities.

I think that the lament Psalms, which are about 1/3 of the 150 in the psalter, can give us come clues. We don’t like these Psalms, with the exception of the seven, like Psalm 51, that are personal requests for absolution from personal sin. They use strong, angry language and ask for retribution from God against enemies. They make us uncomfortable. Psalm 22 begins “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?� Psalm 137 invokes blessing on the one who seizes the Bablyonian babies and dashes tgheir heads against the rocks. Strong, ugly language—language that makes us uncomfortable, to say the least. After all, aren’t we supposed to love our enemies? Aren’t we supposed to forgive and forget, let bygones be bygones? Of course, that’s exactly the point. We can’t love our enemies if we aren’t allowed to be angry with them. People and systems that do harm deserve our anger. When God is the one who seems absent and who seems to behave unfairly, God deserves our anger. We can’t change the structure in the world that lead to poverty and despair unless we allow ourselves to feel anger and hatred and to wrestle with those emotions and then channel them to good purposes.

I learned as a child that being angry was not OK—that anger meant the end of relationships. This familial teaching was reinforced in Sunday School where Jesus was presented as the one without sin, who never was angry, who always did what God wanted, who loved everyone unconditionally, who was always nice. I was about 40 when I learned that anger is normal and that it can be a catalyst for change. It wasn’t until I was in seminary that I learned that it’s OK to be angry with God.

The lament Psalms teach that life isn’t always wonderful or fair and that it’s perfectly normal to complain in faith to God about whatever it is. In fact, taking our anger and complaints to God is an act of faith. These Psalms teach that the wish for retribution—breaking the enemy’s teeth, smashing babies’ heads against the rocks—is normal and that such retribution is up to God to carry out, and not ours to do. The laments teach that we cannot be faithful people if we don’t bring all of ourselves, our good qualities as well as our warts, into our faith and into our faith community.

The Hebrew title of the psalter is T’hillim which means “Praises.� The root of the word is the same as that of “alleluia,� which means “praise God.� Our praises aren’t always joyful. Sometimes they’re sorrowful, penitential or angry. Even so, they are praises—celebrations even if they are in a minor key.

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