Alban Weekly from The Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States "PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: Reclaiming the Power of Lament" for Monday, 20 February 2017

Alban Weekly from The Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States "PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: Reclaiming the Power of Lament" for Monday, 20 February 2017

Faith & Leaderhip
RECONCILIATION, RACIAL & ETHNIC, THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
Dominique D. Gilliard: Reclaiming the power of lament
Reclaiming the power of lament
A CALIFORNIA PASTOR WRITES HOW LAMENT IS AN ESSENTIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY ACT

A man in Ferguson, Missouri, holds on to a fence on August 15, 2014, at the site of a convenience store destroyed during rioting after the shooting death of Michael Brown by police.
Bigstock/Gino Santa Maria
In an age of nonstop media that exposes us as never before to the world’s pain and brokenness, lamentation is an essential and even revolutionary act, one that the church needs desperately to reclaim, says a young pastor.Somewhere along the way, we modern Christians got lament wrong: we began thinking of it as optional instead of a required practice of the faith. A strange word to modern ears, "lamentation" feels inherently ancient. It brings to mind images of an overwrought demonstration of mourning -- sackcloth and ashes, "wailing and gnashing of teeth" of biblical proportions.
More than the mere expression of sorrow and regret, however, lamentation is a powerful act, one that the church desperately needs to reclaim. In our world of nonstop news and social media, lamentation is an essential and even revolutionary act.
Scripture suggests that lamentation is a liturgical act that reorients and transforms us. Lamentation is uncensored communion with God -- visceral worship where we learn to be honest, intimate and humble before God. Lamentation is both an acknowledgment that things are not as they should be and an anguished wail, beckoning the Lord to intervene with righteousness and justice.
When we lament, we confess our humanity and concede that we are too weak to combat the world's powers, principalities and spiritual wickedness on our own. When we lament, we declare that only God has the power to truly mend the world's pain and brokenness.
Why is that so relevant to our times? Tragedy, after all, has always existed. But today, we are bombarded by an unprecedented, unceasing stream of media that exposes us to the world's pain and brokenness as never before.
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.
Lamentation, however, forces us to slow down. In the midst of daily tragedy, lamentation requires us to stay engaged after the cameras and publicity move on. It summons us to immerse ourselves in the pain and despair of the world, of our communities, of our own sinfulness.
Still, why lament?
Because, paradoxically, often the best way to cure pain is to engage it.
Lamentation prevents us from becoming numb and apathetic to the pain of our world and of those whom we shepherd. Lamentation begets revelation. It opens our eyes to death, injustice and oppression we had not even noticed. It opens our ears to the sounds of torture, anguish and weeping that are the white noise of our world. To live without lament is to live an unexamined life.
Lamentation requires four steps: remembrance, reflection, confession and repentance.
The first step, always, is to remember.
Memory and faith are fundamentally connected. Again and again, more than 100 times, Scripture implores believers to “remember.”
God repeatedly instructed Israel to remember that they were once slaves, foreigners and exiles. As a people liberated by God’s grace, Israel was to use that memory to shape and dictate their purpose, praxis and relationships. Remembrance was the linchpin of Israel’s faithfulness.
When Israel forgot, they turned from God, became self-centered, practiced idolatry and enacted injustice. Forgetting God’s command to “not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice” (Deuteronomy 24:17 NIV), Israel became disobedient, building social systems and structures that privileged some while discriminating against others.
Remembrance, therefore, is vitally important; it anchors our identity and compels us to make connections to the past. History is essential, because it provides context and greater clarity for our present and future.
Without history, lamentation seems unnecessary. Why would you lament what you do not remember?
A faith devoid of lamentation aborts history and forsakes remembrance. This is the predicament we find ourselves in today.
One of the primary failures of Western Christianity is its ahistorical nature. History summons us as Christians to confess, lament and repent of our role in and apathy toward our nation’s record of injustice and exploitation. Lamentation compels us to expose what the powerful seek to conceal and deny. If the church took history seriously, it would have no choice to but to lament the exterminated, demarcated and violated bodies of our nation’s past and present.
From the days of Pharaoh and Caesar right down to today, history and Scripture reveal that oppression is always institutionalized and structural. The sinful manifestations of a hardened heart have never been confined to interpersonal interactions. Too often, the hardened heart of an entire people is expressed collectively through institutions, organizations, governments -- and even the church.
Institutional injustice is part of our nation’s history. As a church, we have failed to confess and lament this reality. Too often, we have conformed to the pattern of this world and have not been transformed by the renewing of our minds. Consequently, we have become as prone as anyone else to engage in segregation, discrimination and oppression. The injustices of racism, sexism, classism, mass incarceration and militarism are all consequences of our failure to live in remembrance and lamentation.
History, however, roots us in humility; remembrance compels us to lament. In lamentation, we acknowledge that sin has distorted our relationship with God, our neighbors and creation. Lament beckons us to discern how we can recalibrate our relating in light of the gospel.
When faithfully engaged and authentically enacted, lamentation keeps us accountable to our baptismal vows. It reminds us of our need for God, one another and the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Lamentation is a form of centering prayer that shapes our discipleship and missiology; it illuminates blind spots in our lives and ministry, helping us to make our evangelism more responsible and contextual.
How well are we as church leaders cultivating space for lamentation? Recent studies suggest that we have room for growth.
In his upcoming book “Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times,” (link is external) Soong-Chan Rah, a professor at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, cites several studies documenting the church’s tendency to avoid lament. Psalms of lament, he notes, are the psalms most commonly omitted from the lectionary and other liturgies. Though they account for almost 40 percent of the psalms, laments represent a very small percentage of the contents in many denominations’ hymnals. And very few of the songs most commonly sung in worship are laments, Rah tells us.
Rah contends that the absence of lament in our liturgy results in the loss of memory.
“We are reluctant to stay in the narrative of suffering, lament and pain,” Rah writes in the book’s introduction.
In a watershed moment like the one we are in today, this is a problem. Without history and lament, how can the church know what healing, unity and reconciliation look like? And how can it model them for the world?
Read more from Dominique Gilliard »

IDEAS THAT IMPACT: LAMENT & THE LIFE OF FAITH
Faith & Leadership
VOCATION, PRACTICES, LENT, LITURGICAL SEASONS
Alaina Kleinbeck: Lamentation is a faithful expression of cross-shaped leadership
Lamentation is a faithful expression of cross-shaped leadership


Bigstock/ScottThe director of Duke Youth Academy wonders: As we approach Lent, does Lent matter to my work? Is there a place for the practices of lament, grief and repentance in my daily tasks?
Church seasons can be slightly disorienting for those of us employed in Christian settings where the workflow does not follow the traditional liturgical pattern. It might seem that our tasks would be infused with the expectation of Advent and the joy of Christmas and find renewal in the repentance of Lent and the promise of Easter. But work just beats on through these changes in seasons, overwhelming us with budgets, meetings, publication dates, programs and crisis management.
As we move into another season of Lent, I wonder: Does Lent matter to my work? Is there a place for the practices of lament, grief and repentance in my daily tasks?
Culturally, these are not popular questions. As an American Christian, I’ve had very few experiences with lament in the church. Our avoidance of pain manifests itself in awkward funeral parlor conversations filled with the non-assuring assurance that “God is in control” and ending with empty non-offers of care: “Call if you need anything.”
What is more, our careful avoidance of pain affects our ability to attend to the suffering in our community and in our country.
In the face of tragedy, particularly tragedy of a national scale, our reactive outrage moves quickly to a sense of overwhelm and exasperation. We mutter around the water cooler how unimaginable the whole thing is and then return to our desks confused about the purpose of our work.
We expect leaders, including Christian leaders, to be strong. To lead from grief, and with grief, is to appear weak. To cry is to admit defeat. To mourn is to be stuck in the past and incapable of leading the way forward.
Given our claim to follow a crucified Jesus, part of the Christian witness during the Lenten season -- and part of the work of Christian leadership -- is to counter this cultural norm and name the tragedy, pain and brokenness in ourselves, our communities and our world.
What would it look like to:

• Gather our colleagues and admit and mourn the things that ail us and our communities? (Imagine a gathering in which every person is safe to speak the aches of his or her soul and receive in response prayers for mercy.)
• Discern the laments of the neighborhoods or communities in which we work, and build relationships as individuals and as a staff with those who already seek to address those problems?
• Create a sacred space in our office that invites prayers of healing, repair and reconciliation?
• Light a candle in our workspace as a prayer for God’s mercy?
• Begin these or other practices of lament during the season of Lent?
• Practices of lament move us from a reactive and avoidant posture to a proactive and open posture. They normalize the experiences of empty desperation, anguish and fear. They call us to speak honestly about the brokenness that exists in us and our institutions. They deepen our reliance on the mystery of the mercy of God. In faithfully attending to the lament of the world, we can take on the cross-shaped life and leadership Jesus calls us to in Matthew 16:24 (link is external).

As we seek out ways to name the pain of the world (and perhaps feel a bit awkward about it), we can turn to the whispering hope at center of Lamentations: “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:25-26 NRSV).
We need not be afraid of lamentation. We can embrace its humility, vulnerability and hope as a faithful expression of cross-shaped Christian leadership. And we know, even in the face of anguished silence, that we wait on the Lord -- and the Lord is good.
Read more from Alaina Kleinbeck »
Faith & Leadership
RECONCILIATION

Recovering reconciliation as the mission of God
Recovering reconciliation as the mission of God
In this excerpt from their book “Reconciling All Things,” authors Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice offer 10 theses on reconciliation.
Hope rests in a deep conviction that "the way things are is not the way things have to be," write Emmanuel Kotongole and Chris Rice, former founding directors of the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School. In their book "Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing," they offer these 10 theses for recovering reconciliation as the mission of God, presented here in an edited form.
Reconciliation is God’s gift to the world. Healing of the world’s deep brokenness does not begin with us and our action, but with God and God’s gift of new creation.
Reconciliation is not a theory, achievement, technique or event. It is a journey.
The end toward which the journey of reconciliation leads is the shalom of God’s new creation -- a future not yet fully realized, but holistic in its transformation of the personal, social and structural dimensions of life.
The journey of reconciliation requires the discipline of lament.
In a broken world God is always planting seeds of hope, though often not in the places we expect or even desire.
There is no reconciliation without memory, because there is no hope for a peaceful tomorrow that does not seriously engage both the pain of the past and the call to forgive.
Reconciliation needs the church, but not as just another social agency or NGO.
The ministry of reconciliation requires and calls forth a specific type of leadership that is able to unite a deep vision with the concrete skills, virtues and habits necessary for the long and often lonesome journey of reconciliation.
There is no reconciliation without conversion, the constant journey with God into a future of new people and new loyalties.
Imagination and conversion are the very heart and soul of reconciliation.
Read more from Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice »

Faith & Leadership
HEALTH & WELL-BEING
Lisa Nichols Hickman: Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Jesus may offer no clear blueprint for health care reform. But he shows extravagant care for the wounded and refugees. Like one Amish family.
“Is there any balm in Gilead?” I thought of this question as I heard the French an Amish friend recently practiced with me, “Comment-allez vous?” I was stunned to see her speaking French, until she explained, “I’m going to Mexico!” It wasn’t so funny when I learned her destination was Juarez. Sarah’s French lessons were necessitated by the question in our title. For Sarah’s family, the answer was “No.”
My eyes wandered to the vivid array of clothes on the drying lines of our Amish neighbors. The blues, blacks and purples there are distinctive marks of the Amish. But they reminded me of a bruise. At best, a bruise can signify a body needs healing. At worst, it shows systematic failure. The systematic failure on a national level to increase accessibility and affordability have touched the outermost edges of our society and left even New Wilmington, Pennsylvania’s Amish bruised.
By choosing not to purchase health insurance, the Amish demonstrate their priorities in caring for their own and not relying on government. But with rising costs, astronomical prices have surpassed their ability to raise money at auctions or bake sales.
Sarah’s grandmother needed surgery. Out-priced locally, her family chose to drive to Juarez. The family hired a driver to take them to El Paso where they would cross the border so her grandmother could have open heart surgery.
I have no idea how the barefoot, French-speaking Amish woman made it in Juarez. I do know that her grandmother did not.
Comment allez vous? How are we doing in health care in America? The numbers are frightening. The U.S. Census Bureau(link is external) says 46.3 million Americans are without insurance. That is 15.4 percent of Americans. 700,000 Americans go bankrupt annually from health care costs.
In America, if Sarah (or Miguel) were asked, “Comment allez vous?” Their response would be, “No muy bueno.” We aren’t well because our society has something seeping under our skin and that bruise runs deep. We need balm.
In biblical days, balm was a coveted item of trade. In Genesis 37:25, “a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt.” Balm, extracted from the Balsam of Mecca, was used as expectorant, anti-microbial fighter, and as a “vulnerary.” That is, it healed wounds.
Jeremiah, knowing balm’s restorative properties, drew upon this language in lament. The deep wounds of national strife, idolatrous worship, imminent exile and royal upheaval called for salve. So he asked, "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?" (Jeremiah 8:22).
In 1854 the hymn-writer Washington Glass developed Jeremiah’s words in, “The Sinner’s Cure”:
Chorus. There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole
There’s power enough in heaven
To cure the sin-sick soul.
This chorus later became the basis for the African-American spiritual. The spiritual reverses Jeremiah’s lament. There IS a balm in Gilead. We know that balm as Jesus Christ.
“Vulnerary” and vulnerable share the same Latin root. Jeremiah saw the vulnerability of people prone to idol-worship and sin-driven desire. Jesus also recognizes our tendency to this kind of vulnerability. He also recognizes the vulnerability of the orphan and oppressed, the widowed and wealth-less, the feeble and friendless. For these oppressed, Jesus brought more than a salve. He is salvation. The healer himself becomes the salve and the balm, by bringing salvation through the touch of his palm.
There is not so much ‘red ink’ demonstrating what Jesus said about a kingdom vision for health care. But there are loads of stories of relationships in which health is restored. The balm is not a testament enshrined in a book but a person active in relationships. That’s where health care begins for Jesus.
If Sarah asked Jesus, “How are we doing?” Jesus might sing along with that old gospel song,
1. Some times I feel discouraged,
And think my work’s in vain,
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again.Read more from Lisa Nichols Hickman »

FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
Tell It Like It Is: Reclaiming the Practice of Testimonyby Lillian Daniel
Lillian Daniel shares how her congregation re-appropriated the practice of testimony one Lenten season, a practice that would eventually revitalize their worship and transform their congregational culture. The experience strengthened lay leadership, fostered more intimate community, and drew the congregation closer to God. The book features the testimonies worshipers heard and reflections from both those who spoke and those who listened to these stories about God at work in the world.
Learn more and order the book »

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