Companions of thieves

I started this post last week as I was reading the first chapters of Isaiah, a prophetic book with plenty to say about wealth, poverty, injustice and oppression. 

On Tuesday, I read Isaiah 1:23:

"Your rulers are rebels,
companions of thieves.
They all love bribes 
and chase after gifts. 
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless;
the widow's case does not come before them." 

Just a day later, the US Supreme Court confirmed the current relevance of that and other passages in Isaiah. By a 6-3 decision, the US high court concluded that an after-the-fact gift in exchange for favors, contracts or other benefits is totally legal. In effect, as a Guardian headline announced, "The US supreme court just basically legalized bribery."

Justice Clarence Thomas, who once attended the same church as our family, passing the peace with us on Sunday mornings, has captured international attention for the magnitude of gifts he's accepted from billionaire benefactors across the past three decades: vacations at luxury resorts, flights on personal jets and private helicopters, VIP passes to sporting events, tuition for his grandnephew, raised as his son, at expensive private boarding schools. 

Justice Thomas is not alone in accepting generous gifts or in failing to report those gifts. In May, ProPublica won a Pulitzer Prize for a series called Friends of the Court, detailed reports on gifts. Judiciary watchdog Fix the Court followed early this month with a detailed report, dating back decades, listing "freebies worth millions of dollars" including memberships to clubs, extravagant vacations, flights and balances on loans. 

While accepting gifts, the court has also been undermining anticorruption laws, with the decision this week just the latest in a series. Two lawyers with CREW: Citizens for Responsibilty and Ethics in Washington, wrote earlier this year:

In a series of cases decided over the past 37 years, the Supreme Court has systematically gutted the country’s public corruption laws.

The Court’s rulings have helped promote a radical vision of a government filled with powerful people, who are seemingly unaccountable despite taking unlimited gifts, loans, and other benefits from individuals who seek access and influence. It has helped foster a culture of corruption and impunity in the halls of power.

On Thursday I read Isaiah 3:

People will oppress each other—
    man against man, neighbor against neighbor.
The young will rise up against the old,
    the nobody against the honored. (v 5)

This verse really caught my attention: 

"What do you mean by crushing my people
    and grinding the faces of the poor?”
declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty. (v 15)

A Supreme Court decision announced the next day made that text literal. The case involved an ordinance passed in Grants Pass, a small Oregon city, prohibiting sleeping or camping in public areas: “any place where bedding, sleeping bag, or other material used for bedding purposes, or any stove or fire is placed, established, or maintained for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live, whether or not such place incorporates the use of any tent, lean-to, shack, or any other structure, or any vehicle or part thereof.” 

The high court decision in support of the Grants Pass ordinance reversed a 2018 case, Martin v. Boise, that found that involuntarily homeless people can't be punished for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go.

Homelessness is at a record high. So is income inequality. Causes of both are complicated, but just leadership, as defined throughout scripture, involves policies and practices that provide for the hungry, the homeless, those on the edge, no matter how they got there. 

I made it this far on Sunday morning, but could imagine voices of friends saying "Carol, why does this matter? We can't vote out Supreme Court justices. We can't change their opinions. There's nothing we can do to limit their cozy relationships with the rich and powerful. What in the world is your point here?"

Then yesterday, Monday, July 1, the court shared another decision that's echoing across the globe. 

Isaiah shares words from the Lord, prophetic pronouncements against the leaders of Judah: 

Woe to those who call evil good

    and good evil,

who put darkness for light

    and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet

    and sweet for bitter.

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes

    and clever in their own sight...

who acquit the guilty for a bribe,

    but deny justice to the innocent. (5:20-21)

There are times when it's okay to turn off the news, tune out politics, pretend it doesn't matter. 

There are times when it's fine to nod and go along with what others say without doing the work of weighing the costs and praying for insight and understanding. 

Isaiah was speaking to the people of Israel, not America, in the 8th century BC, not 2024. 

But it's interesting to note who he was speaking to. While some of his messages were directed to kings and rulers, more often he addressed "a sinful nation, a people whose guilt is great."

Israel was not a democracy. Its people didn't choose their rulers. 

We don't choose our Supreme Court justices. 

But we do choose who we listen to, who we honor, who we ignore.

When the wealthy and powerful demand access and influence, the poor suffer. That has been true since the days of Isaiah. The causes of widows and orphans (the most powerless and marginalized) have no chance to be heard when justice is sold to the highest bidder. 

And now, as then, there is grave danger when rulers are rebels, companions to wealthy thieves.

Now, as then, the proper response is lament, grief, prayer. And willingness to speak out on behalf of those in distress a corrupt culture leaves behind. 

We the People

On Election Day I woke early, drove through the dark to the Senior Center in a town not far from mine and arrived at 6:05 to help prepare a polling place.

I taped signs and poster on walls and doors, moved tables and chairs, sat down for a brief review of how to use the printed poll book.

My book for the day was A to L. Somehow A to D had been printed facing one way, with E to L facing the other.

My primary task was to look up names as people gave them, ask for ID if this was their first time voting in that precinct, show people where to sign, then write a ballot number in the poll book while someone next to me recorded the same information in a little paper ledger.  

The doors opened at seven with a line spilling out to the street and for several hours, each time I looked up the line seemed exactly the same. 

Sometime mid-morning it slowed enough for distribution of coffee and pastries delivered by a local coffee shop.

Later, someone from the gourmet chocolate shop around the corner came in to vote,, then came back minutes later with a bag of chocolates to share.

Mid-afternoon, the line dissolved long enough for me to step out into the brilliant  afternoon and exchange greetings with the two party reps sitting opposite each other, talking amiably.

At some point a poll watcher arrived, pulled up a chair not far from me and sat down to watch. In a brief break between voters he offered an explanation for his appearance: “someone called to say they were asked for ID.”

“Half the people who come through the door are new to this precinct,” I told him. “So they need to show some kind of ID.”

“Photo ID?”

“No – just something with their address.”

He sat and watched a while longer, then shrugged. “Nothing here to report,” he said as he headed toward the door.

A woman my age or a little older came in during another lull, hurrying to the table.

“My mother’s in the car,” she said, “and we’ve been driving around trying to find her polling place. She can’t remember where she’s supposed to vote and she’s adamant she has to vote in this election.”’

I looked up the name in my book and there it was.

“You’ve come to the right place.”

“Wonderful.”

Eventually they came in together, the mother moving slowly with a walker, insistent on standing in line. She stared at me with a glint in her eye while I found the right page, then signed her name with a wavering script and moved off slowly to cast her vote.

There were other mothers and daughters who came in together. One threesome, almost jubilant, pointed to the youngest in the group and announced, “This is her first election.”

They all signed their names, gleeful and proud, and moved off to collect their ballots.

At 4:30 two pizzas were delivered. They were stone cold by the time anyone had time to eat them.

At eight, the last voters finished casting their ballots, the Judge of Elections locked the front door and our little team began the complicated task of closing out the process.

We sorted out write-ins on the paper ballots, recording names (six for Bernie, three for Romney, one for John Kasich, one for Mickey Moose.)

We put tables and chairs back in their proper places so the seniors arriving in the morning would find their center undisturbed.

We pulled signs and posters off the walls, inside and out.

We posted the tally of votes in a prominent place outside the polling place and placed duplicate tallies in different envelopes to be stored in their proper places.

Sometime after ten we all signed our names attesting that we had witnessed the election carried out in a lawful manner, watched the Judge of Elections and Minority Official drive off together with the sealed bags of ballots to deliver to the county offices, then called goodnight across the darkened parking lot.

It was a long, tiring day, but it struck me as I drove through the quiet town toward home, everyone involved had been working toward the same goal: a fair election where everyone who showed up was able to vote.

I don’t know who my fellow workers voted for. 

It wouldn’t matter. 

There are inefficiencies in our election administration.

And in a polling place where many voters were new to the precinct, it was easy to see why lines are long in some places and not so long in others.

But at its core, the day reminded me of the strength of we the people, the soundness of the vision that all voices should be heard.

That vision is hard to hold.

I stayed up too late on Tuesday night, watching returns with my husband as the tide seemed to shift.

At a little after one, as the outcome became clear, we called it a night and headed off to bed.

The next morning, we carved out time to watch Hillary Clinton’s concession.

We’ve all heard of the stages of grief: denial and disbelief; anger, even rage; bargaining; sadness and depression; acceptance.

Fear is somewhere on the list.

Fear that all protection is gone.

Fear that the future will be more painful than the past.

Much has been written in the past few days.

Jubilant explanations about how Trump’s miraculous success is clearly God’s will.

Fearful narratives about mistreatment of targeted individuals.

Yvonne Heath, My Experience

Exhortations to get over it and respect the will of the people. 


Anguished introspection about who we’ve become and where we go from here.

And more than once I've seen the "my experience" grief graphic as many try to work their way through a complicated swirl of emotions 

For anyone paying attention, this election has made clear that our institutions are broken and “we the people” are in danger.

Our electoral system is in need of real reform. Gerrymandered districts, laws deliberately obstructing or suppressing the vote for certain populations, closed primaries where candidates are determined by just a  handful of our most partisan voters: all need to change.

While our media was busy treating the election like a reality TV show, they missed a deeper story: this was the first election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Did that affect the outcome?

Voting rights advocate Ari Berman asks:  

How many people were turned away from the polls? How many others didn’t bother to show up in the first place? These are questions we need to take far more seriously. 

The party now in control is the party most responsible for undermining the principles that safeguard democracy. Should we rejoice? Or weep?

Historically, the media has served as an alternate check and balance when government has swung out of control.

That requires a media willing to look at underlying issues and causes and a public able to discern truth from propaganda.

As journalist Pete Mecca recently lamented: 

The checks and balances that once protected our great country from a totalitarian government are no longer methods of citizen control over Washington, D.C.

Our first line of civilized defense from tyranny was a “Free Press” along with an informed citizenry. Both have disappeared, one into political favoritism, the other into low-information dummy-downed “victimized” voters.

In America, our churches have been essential, even primary guardians of democracy. The idea of “we the people” was born from the Biblical insistence that all are of value in God’s eyes, that all deserve equal treatment under the law, that all are called to work together for the common good.

Churches played a part in the forming of the nation and historically spoke out as agents of justice. Abolitionists, advocates for women’s rights, leaders in the civil rights movement: all were nurtured, encouraged, protected and resourced by local churches and networks of churches.

For me, that’s the deepest grief in this election cycle.

Instead of providing space for real dialogue about how to care for unwanted children, how to nurture families in poverty, how to wisely embrace suffering refugees, how to use resources wisely while caring for creation, too many churches and Christian institutions have become echo chambers for misinformation and breeding grounds for bigotry.

References to "religious freedom" are really rallying calls for pastors to promote Republican candidates without jeopardizing tax free status. 

As DC Pastor Thabite Anyabwile wrote on Wednesday, 

Some evangelicals offered “biblical” justification for voting Trump and minimized his character flaws. Others endorsed and vigorously campaigned for him. With last night’s election result, the GOP stranglehold on evangelical conscience and voting may have tightened to unbreakable strength.

A good number of people outside the faith look at the exit polls aghast and angry. Aghast because they themselves cannot imagine supporting a candidate with the personal moral flaws of Mr. Trump. Angry because they’ve watched evangelicals moralize in public for a long time, often shaming people for their sins and moral weaknesses. . . . For many, Christ and the gospel are now bound up—rightly or wrongly—with evangelicals choosing a man with little resemblance to either. 

We all have work to do.

If you believe I’m wrong and you're celebrating your candidate's win, your work is this: seek to understand. 

You’ve had your chance to make your point. Now give others space to grieve while you do what you can to care for those who feel defeated and unsafe. Here are two places to start: "I want to help you understand my lament"  and "Postelection Reflection: Ears to hear and the courage to respond." 

If you believe I’m right, join me in prayer about how to heal these broken institutions. Change will not come from existing leadership – not in government, media, churches.

We are in a time when it is not enough to show up every four years to vote, not enough to tune into one channel and believe whatever is said, not enough to show up to church and sit in a pew for an hour.

We need to reengage, rethink, re-envision, rebuild.

But beyond institutions, we need to ask again, more deeply, more courageously: what does it mean to love our neighbors as ourselves?

How will we declare God’s compassion and justice in a world where even the term “Christian” has become linked to endorsement by the KKK? How will we ensure that all have room to thrive when religious patriarchy is now so explicitly bound to assault and defamation of women?

I have no answers, but I know the starting place.

Now, more than ever,  we need to memorize and pray and live words like these from Zechariah: 

This is what the Lord Almighty says: Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other. 

Lord let that be so.

This is the conclusion of a series about faith and politics: What's Your Platform? 

I invite your comment, but even more, if there are things you've been reading that suggest a way forward or offer analysis of the brokenness I describe, please share them. This conversation is not over.  

Beyond the Party Platform July 24, 2016

A Different Way July 31, 2016 

Election Fraud and Rigged Elections, August 10, 2016 

How Long Will the Land Lie Parched? August 21, 2016 

Walls, Welcome, Mercy, Law August 28, 2016

Workers and Their Wages, Sep 3, 2016 

Educating Ourselves On Education, Sep 10, 2016 

Let's Talk, Sep 17, 2016

The Language of the Unheard, Sep 24, 2016

Maintain Justice, October 9, 2016

Defending the Indefensible, October 16, 2016 

Plan Your Vote: Platforms, Parties, People, October 23, 2016

The Politics of Hate - or Love, October 30, 2016 

Lenten Song: Remembering Ranan

Dancing Clapping Trees, Gwen Meharg, 1990s, US

  You will go out in joy 
   and be led forth in peace; 
the mountains and hills 
   will burst into song
   before you, 
and all the trees of the field 
   will clap their hands.
         (Isaiah 55)

My yard is full of birdsong: song sparrows, tufted titmice, wrens setting aside their normal complaints to celebrate spring from a perch along the picket fence. Even the blue jays’ metallic squawks sound more melodic than usual. Spring is here, the daffodils are blooming, and the tree tops are exploding with exuberant calls.

At this point in Lent, I often feel an inner disconnect. The world is brightening, days are lengthening, yet I’m still in a place of prayerful grief.  My experiments with fasting remind me of how many hungry children hold life by a thread. My next meal is just steps away, while millions of mothers have no next meal to offer their starving children.

This world is a broken place, and feels more broken by the day. Our food supply is held captive by a narrowing handful of global agri-monopolies. Our water supply is threatened by ever-more-reckless strategies for maintaining dependence on fossil fuel. Our health is jeopardized by genetic modification in everything from popcorn to sugar to canola oil. Our fragmented society hides its wounds behind closed doors, but the pain spills out in addictions, homelessness, spiraling anger, epidemic depression. Think and pray too long in any one direction and I find myself deep in lingering lament.

One of our Lenten readings this past week was the servant song of Isaiah 52:13 through 53, a Messianic prophecy written seven hundred years before Christ's birth and painful death:

Christ is Nailed to the Cross, Anna Kocher,
 2006,  US

Surely he took up our pain 
   and bore our suffering, 
yet we considered him 
   punished by God, 
   stricken by him, and afflicted. 
But he was pierced 
    for our transgressions, 
   he was crushed for our iniquities; 
the punishment that brought us peace 
   was on him, 
   and by his wounds we are healed. 
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, 
   each of us has turned to our own way; 
and the Lord has laid on him 
   the iniquity of us all.

Reading a few verses before, to catch the context, I was struck at this command:

Listen! 
Your watchmen lift up their voices; 
   together they shout for joy. 
When the Lord returns to Zion, 
   they will see it with their own eyes. 
Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, 
for the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.

It would make sense to burst into songs of joy when the restoration is accomplished, when the promised redemption is accomplished. But this instruction is given to “you ruins of Jerusalem.” The restoration promised is nowhere in sight. The book of Isaiah was written during a time of deepening disobedience, on the unavoidable eve of invasion, captivity, destruction. Burst into songs of joy in the middle of that? How?

Digging back through the early Hebrew words, I find eight words for “singing,” thirteen more for “sing.” Some of the words have interesting double meanings: one, “massa'”, can mean singing, lifting a load, carrying a burden. Another, “`anah,” can mean affliction, humility, songs of lament.

The word used in Isaiah is anr, transliterated “ranah”, which can mean to overcome, to cry out, shout for joy, give a ringing cry, rejoice.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite Old Testament stories, from 2 Chronicles 20. The people of Judah were confronted with a “vast army” and came to King Jehoshaphat in fear. Jehoshaphat, in front of his people, cried out to God: “Are you not the God who is heaven?” He recounted the times God intervened for his people, described the danger confronting them, and confessed: “We have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.”

from Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, Frans Boels,
16th century, Flanders

God spoke through a man in the crowd, Jehaziel, an apparent nobody, who promised that if they went out to a nearby pass to watch, God would defeat their enemy for them.

“After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.’”

As thy began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes agains the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”

The story ends:

“The fear of God came upon all the kingdoms of the countries when they heard how the Lord had fought against the enemies of Israel. And the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was in peace, for his God had given him rest on every side.”

There’s much in that story that captures my interest, but the idea of singing in the face of fear and danger has always challenged me. How do we sing, or shout for joy, when the evidence around us points to disaster?

Back to Isaiah:

 Burst into songs of joy together, 
   you ruins of Jerusalem, 
for the Lord has comforted his people, 
   he has redeemed Jerusalem.

I don’t know much about Hebrew tenses, but there’s something odd happening here: right now, in ruins, burst into song. Because you’ve been comforted. Because you’ve been redeemed.

Really? What if I don’t see it?

Reading on through the servant song, I come out the other side to a similar instruction:

“Sing, barren woman, 
   you who never bore a child; 
burst into song, shout for joy, 
   you who were never in labor; 
because more are the children of the desolate woman 
   than of her who has a husband,” 
            says the Lord.

In a patriarchal culture where status depended on producing sons, where the future was guaranteed by multiple descendents, the barren woman was an object of scorn or pity, marginalized, deprived of future joy.

Yet she’s instructed to shout for joy anyway, to burst into song. Because she has more children (already?) than those less desolate. It doesn't seem to make sense.

Yet Isaiah insists that we live in the knowledge of God’s faithfulness in the past, and in celebration of his goodness in the future. Even in the pain of the present.

Rejoice, Monica Stewart, ca 2005, US

I find that hard. Praying this past week with a friend whose present is painful in the extreme, we wondered together: How do we live joyfully, right now, when every day hurts? How do we stay completely present to those around us, to the needs of the day, not shut it out, not medicate it away, not close ourselves off while we wait for that far-ff “someday” when things will be better?

Isaiah’s answer is strange, yet powerful. Ranan. Sing for joy. Sing in the promise of redemption, in the brokenness of today.

If you need logic, don’t even bother. It defies logic. Yet, the reality holds true. As Jehoshaphat and his people learned, as David and the other psalmists demonstrated, as Paul and Silas found, singing in prison while an earthquake opened the doors, joyful praise leads to freedom, sometimes opening doors in the physical world around us, more often allowing us to stand in a reality invisible to others, but no less real: the kingdom of God unfolding, here yet not here, now, not yet.

This joyful song is personal, but also political, as the stories in New and Old Testament suggest, as Freedom Riders of the sixties found, as the Singing Revolutions of 1987 to 1991 made clear: the internal freedom that comes with joyful song can bring the courage to trust God’s work in the broken halls of power, the disrupted dialogue of politics. Germans in Liepzig, fueled by the words of the Sermon on the Mount, filled the streets with singing in defiance of the Soviet police.  Lithuanians in Vilnius sang hymns and folk songs in public squares, then joined with Estonians and Latvians in a human chain of more than a million people stretching four hundred miles, a chain of freedom that helped lead to the dissolution of the USSR.

Where does that courage come from? It starts in honest lament, grows in times of prayer and study, finds power in the knowledge that God has been faithful to his people, across time, across all human borders. Alive in the present, we stand in the knowledge of the past, and celebrate the invisible, promised future. Waiting for Easter, for change, for healing, we sing. Awake, my heart. Burst into song. Rejoice. Ranan, ruined cities, for you have been redeemed.

Mu süda, ärka üles
Ja kiida Loojat lauldes,
Kes kõik head meile annab
Ja muret ikka kannab.  


Awake, my heart
And praise the Creator in song
Who provides us with all that is good
And bears our burdens too. 
  (Estonian folk song 
  sung during the singing revolution)


This is the sixth in a Lenten series:
     Looking toward Lent
     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham
     Lenten Silence: Charash, Be Still
     Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb    
     Lenten Submission: Rethinking Hupotassō

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the  _comments link below to open the comment box.

Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham

Grief, Tile Painting, Arthur Rothenberg,
1959, used with permission from the
estate of Arthur S. Rothenberg

Lent starts with the ashes of Ash Wednesday –a symbol of grief and lament. In our modern liturgical traditions, we dot the ashes on the forehead and wash them off at the end of the day. In ancient Hebrew tradition, the practice of lament went far deeper and lasted longer: mourners sat in ashes, or poured them on their heads, ripped clothes, wore sackcloth. This practice of shiva, of extended grief, was expected in most cases to last a week, sometimes longer.

We hurry through lament, often to our loss: Suck it up, walk it off, let it go, move on.

We hurry toward “closure” without doing the hard work of grieving.

In his article ‘The Hidden Hope in Lament’, Dan Allender writes, "Christians seldom sing in the minor key. We fear the somber; we seem to hold sorrow in low esteem. We seem predisposed to fear lament as a quick slide into doubt and despair; failing to see that doubt and despair are the dark soil that is necessary to grow confidence and joy."

As a young teen, learning to play the guitar, I was drawn to songs in minor keys. I was given my first guitar just months after I left the home I’d lived in most of my life. I was sharing a narrow attic room with my grandmother in a small house with people I didn’t know, struggling to find my way in a large new school where I didn’t feel welcome, not sure how long I’d be there, or what would come next. I remember an elder in our church, a family friend, stopping me in the middle of a song I was practicing: “Christians don’t sing in minor key.” I’ve remembered his words – although I’ve never agreed.

A third of the Psalms are written in minor key – songs of grief, of anger, of confusion:

Scream III,
Eduardo Guyasamin,
1983, Ecuador

I am worn out from groaning,

all night long I flood my bed with weeping

and drench my couch with tears.

My eyes grow weak with sorrow. (Psalm 6)

I am poured out like water, 

and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax; 

it has melted away within me.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd,

my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;

you lay me in the dust of death. 
(Psalm 22)

Will the Lord reject forever?

Will he never show his favor again?

Has his unfailing love vanished forever?

Has his promise failed for all time? (Psalm 77)

I am like a desert owl, 
like an owl among the ruins.

I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof. (Psalm 102)

Some of the lament psalms are very personal. Others are corporate – an acknowledgement that things aren’t right, not just for the individual writing the psalm, but for his people, sometimes for the earth itself. 

Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge uprightly among men?

No, in your heart you devise injustice,

and your hands mete out violence on the earth.  (Psalm 58)

How long will the wicked, O Lord, how long will the wicked be jubilant?

They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting.

They crush your people, O Lord; they oppress your inheritance.

They slay the widow and the alien; they murder the fatherless.

They say, The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed.  (Psalm 94)

The prophetic books continue and expand the theme of corporate lament, describing a world where justice is forgotten, where the earth is degraded, where the poor are misused, where parents no longer care for their children, where political and religious leaders abuse power for their own ends and disregard those entrusted to their care. 

Wail, O pine tree, for the cedar has fallen; the stately trees are ruined!
Wail, oaks of Bashan; the dense forest has been cut down!
Listen to the wail of the shepherds: their rich pastures are destroyed!
Listen to the roar of the lions; the lush thicket of the Jordan is ruined! (Zechariah 11) 

Wailing Wall Jerusalem, Flickr Creative Commons, 1988

There’s an ancient Hebrew word נָחַם, nacham, in some places translated “grieve.” It’s one of those words that opens out in multiple directions – grieve, be sorry, regret, think again, repent, console, be comforted, have compassion. 

We would like the comfort without the grief, the consolation without the repentance. 

But is it possible they’re facets of the same unwanted treasure?

In The Prophetic Imagination, a book I find myself returning to again and again, Walter Brueggemann talks about lament as the first step in envisioning a new reality, a kingdom distinct from the current “empire” marked by oppression, exploitation and denial: 

“[R]eal criticism begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right. Only in the empire are we pressed and urged and invited to pretend that things are all right – either in the dean’s office or in our marriage or in the hospital room. And as long as the the empire can keep the pretense alive that things are all right, there will be no real grieving and no serious criticism” (p. 11). 

Grief is the first step in admitting that things are not right. “Bringing hurt to public expression is an important first step in the dismantling criticism that permits a new reality, theological and social, to emerge” (p.12).

Both Allender and Brueggemann talk about numbness: when we refuse to grieve, when we avoid acknowledgement of pain and the brokenness around us, we shut ourselves off from the possibility of real emotional, real spiritual health, real wholeness in our communities.

I go back to that word, “nacham”. I wrote several months ago about the ways that we meet God in our places of pain, experience his comfort, and become agents of that comfort. It’s also in our places of pain that we begin to see the world as God sees it: to see how far we are from the beauty, fellowship, health and freedom he calls us toward. As we grieve, we turn, repent our part in all that’s wrong, come alongside the broken, begin to participate in God’s own grief, and in doing so, find his mysterious comfort.

So I grieve:

Young lives lost – to hunger, war, selfishness, corruption.
The breakdown in community around me – marriages unraveling, alienation of parents and children, loss of trust between citizens and leaders.
Our reckless waste of resources - forests gone, water ruined, mountains destroyed, whole stretches of ocean full of floating plastic.

Prophetic Skies, Kay Jackson
Washington DC

I  grieve a national conversation in which people claiming to follow Christ insist God is more concerned about not raising taxes on the rich than about making sure the poor are fed.

I grieve the ways we shout past each other, rather than learning to listen.

I grieve schools without libraries; refrigerators without food; kids without listening, caring adults.

I grieve slave labor, baby girls tossed on trash heaps.

I grieve money spent on more and more weapons, while more and more children go hungry. 

And as I grieve, I acknowledge my complicity:

Remaining silent when I know I should speak.
Seeking my own comfort when I could offer help or hospitality.
Thinking more about good features and low prices than ethical sourcing and fair treatment of workers.
Wasting time, energy, resources.
Looking for an easy path, instead of doing the hard work of listening, grieving, caring.

And as I grieve, I turn, wonder how to do things differently, wonder how to be different. And move deeper into God's mysterious, consoling, transforming presence.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Nacham, O nacham. 

Grieve, 

      be sorry,

            repent, 

                 think again,

                      have compassion,

                           be comforted
                                be changed.