One of the reasons to use lament in worship is that the Bible shows us that it’s part of the believer’s vocabulary. The other reason is to prepare us for days of doubt, the deaths of those we love, and the inevitable times in which evil has a temporary triumph, as it did on September 11, 2001.
Many of you will remember in great detail the ways in which worship services on the Sunday after the attacks either providing a place for grief and belief simultaneously, or created a dissonance between faith and reality. Ten years later, we have another chance to understand national tragedy within the framework of our faith.
Providentially, our series on the Psalms of Ascents began that day with Psalm 120, a lament spoken by an immigrant living in a land of war. We not only heard a sermon on that scripture, but also sang the Psalm in the form of Bruce Benedict’s wistful “O God of Love” and the rigorous “In My Distress,” found in the Psalter Hymnal.
During communion, we turned again to the Psalms of lament, singing “By the Babylonian Rivers,” a setting of Psalm 137, which segued right into the quintessential global song of lament, “For the Troubles and the Suffering of the World,” from Brazil. We ended communion with “How Can I Keep from Singing?” This spritely song may not see like an obvious choice for such a service, but the setting we used cast the verses in a minor key, bringing out the text’s true theme: secure faith in a world of uncertainty.