A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament

This new and very timely book is a real treasure. I highly recommend this book to everyone, especially to those who are presently undergoing that wilderness experience of deep hurt and trials. This is a book for our times, an important companion to our daily walk with God.

—P

HIL

K

EAGGY

guitarist

Michael is a humbled troubadour—an itinerant, a singing preacher— whose ballads are biblically rich, whose personal ministry is Christ-centered, and whose writings have but one intent: to bring glory to God by leading and feeding His children.

—H

AROLD

M. B

EST

dean emeritus, Wheaton College Conservatory of Music; author of Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts, and Music Through the Eyes of Faith.

In an age characterized by triumphalism, it is hard to find biblically faithful meditations and songs on weakness, sin, lament, and suffering. Michael Card helps us understand the tears, while pointing us to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the comfort only he can give us, both in this life and in the life to come.

—D

R.

D. A. C

ARSON

research professor, New Testament Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

A Sacred Sorrow is a refreshingly honest book about our dialogue with God and our life within the community of faith. The truths in it are absolutely liberating. It will not only change your prayer life, it will change every area of your life. I couldn’t recommend a book more highly than I do this one.

—K

EN

G

IRE

author of Windows of the Soul, Moments with the Savior, and The Divine Embrace

Michael Card has lowered a bridge of lament across the moat of self-contentment and called us to weep in our fallen world, where only weeping can heal.

—C

ALVIN

M

ILLER

professor of preaching and ministry studies, Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, Alabama

This book is written with a redemptive empathy for all who are hurting and helps us reconceive what it means to praise the Lord.

—C

ALVIN

S

EERVELD

senior member of philosophical aesthetics, emeritus, at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, and author of Voicing God’s Psalms

A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament

Copyright © 2005 by Michael Card. All rights reserved.

A NavPress resource published in alliance with Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

NAVPRESS is a registered trademark of NavPress, The Navigators, Colorado Springs, CO. The NAVPRESS logo is a trademark of NavPress, The Navigators. TYNDALE is a registered trademark of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Absence of ® in connection with marks of NavPress or other parties does not indicate an absence of registration of those marks.

Cover design by studiogearbox.com

Cover image: Getty/Adalberto Rios Lans/Sexto Sol

Creative Team: Rachelle Gardner, Darla Hightower, Arvid Wallen, Glynese Northam

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Jewish Publication Society Bible, JPSB.® Copyright © 1985 by The Jewish Publication Society. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version,® NIV.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version,® copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

Some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permission of the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, and any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Tyndale House Publishers at csresponse@tyndale.com, or call 1-800-323-9400.

Card, Michael, date

  A sacred sorrow : reaching out to God in the lost language of lament / Michael Card.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 1-57683-667-3

1. Consolation. 2. Suffering—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Laments. I. Title.

  BV4909.C365 2005

  248.8´6—dc22

2004030268

ISBN 978-1-57683-667-5

Build: 2021-04-21 22:35:18 EPUB 3.0

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Foreword by Eugene Peterson

Part One: AN ANCIENT LAMENT

Chapter 1: THE PATH OF SOVEREIGN SORROW

Chapter 2: A DIFFICULT HOPE

Chapter 3: WILDERNESS WORTH-SHIP

Chapter 4: LOST IN A GREEN DESERT

Part Two: JOB

Chapter 5: THE DANGER OF DEFIANCE

Chapter 6: NEW LIGHT ON AN INCOMPLETE EQUATION

Chapter 7: A NEW AND TRUER WORSHIP

Chapter 8: THE FRUSTRATED LAMENTER

Chapter 9: THE EXHAUSTED MYSTIC

Part Three: DAVID

Chapter 10: HUNGER-BORN SONGS OF INTIMACY

Chapter 11: A LIFE FASHIONED FOR LAMENT

Chapter 12: ENEMIES AND THE POISON WE DRINK

Chapter 13: DISEASE AND DEATH

Chapter 14: NO HOPE BUT THIS: CONTRITION

Part Four: JEREMIAH

Chapter 15: A DIFFICULT HOPE

Chapter 16: DARK, FAMILIAR ECHOES

Chapter 17: TORN BETWEEN TWO LOVES

Chapter 18: LAMENTATIONS: THE DESTRUCTION OF JEREMIAH

Part Five: JESUS

Chapter 19: TRUTH HELD TOGETHER

Chapter 20: HESED IN-FLESHED

Chapter 21: GOD’S PRESENCE WITH US

Chapter 22: THE GOD-FORSAKEN GOD

Part Six: CONCLUSIONS

Chapter 23: THE LOST LANGUAGE OF LAMENT

Appendices

Appendix A: A BIBLICAL CHORUS OF LAMENTERS

Appendix B: A SELECTED LIST OF LAMENT PSALMS

Appendix C: JOURNALING/WRITING YOUR OWN LAMENT

Appendix D: SELECTED EXTRA-BIBLICAL LAMENTS

Appendix E: SELECTED DAVIDIC LAMENTS

Appendix F: BIBLIOGRAPHY

Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many scholars have helped me along this difficult path. Calvin Seerveld was the impetus for the start of the journey. Shortly after 9/11, I received a note from him in which he observed that we, in the American church, had no songs to sing in response to the horrific attack. The truth of what he wrote was self evident. You need to write laments, to equip ‘lament teams’, he said. I owe a tremendous debt to Calvin for that timely note.

Shortly afterward, on a visit to Trinity International University, Dr. Sun Myung Lyu, in a remarkable gesture of generosity, picked a book off the shelf in his office and handed it to me saying, Receive this as my gift to you. I want to invest in your project. The book was Walter Brueggemann’s The Psalms, the Life of Faith. That marvelous volume provided the foundation for my understanding of lament. Dr. Lyu, if anyone is encouraged by this present work, much of the thanks should go to you.

During that same visit, my friend Dr. Willem Van Gemeren also generously gave blocks of time to help get me started in the right direction. Later, Dr. D.A. Carson read the manuscript and helped me sharpen the theological focus. Their remarkable openness and the reassuring promise of their future help has made an enormous difference. I felt as if the safety net of their scholarship was always there. Thank you, brothers.

Dr. George Guthrie (Union University) has been a longtime friend and encourager, especially since Bill Lane passed away. His openness and willingness to join me as a conversation partner on this difficult journey has been a deep blessing. Thanks, George.

The writings of Ingvar `Floysvik and Michael Jinkins became primary resources and have helped so much to guide and shape the direction of this book. My gratitude to them for the enormous help provided in those volumes.

Most of all, I would like to thank Walter Brueggemann. His many articles and books not only shone a much needed light on this sorely neglected subject but they also provided a new vocabulary for thinking and talking about what is true of lament. His unique words and creative phrases will appear and reappear in this manuscript. I have sought to place them in quotation marks to show they are not original. His thought is present on nearly every page as is my gratitude to God for him.

As I was beginning in earnest to work on the rough manuscript, after having read many academic books and technical articles on the subject of lament, I picked up a remarkable book entitled A Fistful of Agates. It had been sent as a gift by the author months earlier. I had intended only to skim through it. Hours later, when, in tears, I finally put it down, I was given a whole new appreciation for Bill Lanes’ often repeated maxim, Timing is of the Lord. The timing of the reading of Jane Wipf’s book was perfect. I had done the background, academic work. It was intensely interesting and held together intellectually. But God wanted a fully engaged person to write this book. And so, by means of Jane’s book, He gently led me through the experience of lament at a heart level (which is, of course, the only level it can genuinely be understood or experienced!). All this is to say, thank you, Jane, for what it must have cost you to write that book.

I do not know how to adequately thank Dr. Eugene Peterson for providing the foreword. All I can say is, it was a hesed type of experience for me.

I want also to thank Rachelle Gardner and everyone at NavPress for their commitment to seeing this book through to completion. Rachelle’s dedication to excellence and gentle encouragement to finish the task gave the final form to this project.

Finally, I want to thank the many brothers and sisters in my community of faith in Franklin, Tennessee, who listened and encouraged as the ideas for this book were simmering on the back burner. The Tuesday night study at First Missionary Baptist, the Wednesday night study at Christ Community, and the Sunday night home fellowship group helped enormously in the organization of the material. Thanks also to the men of the Empty Hands Fellowship, especially Scott Roley whose unqualified acceptance of every new idea was a great encouragement, and Mike Smith, who took the time to read the manuscript and help me find several places that needed adjusting. To Ken Cope whose dialogue about the personal and soulish aspects of lament made this, I pray, a deeper and more helpful book. To everyone who supports the work directly, Barbara Emerson, Connie Morkel, Kevin Kookogey, Danielle Schouten, and Tifany Borgelt, blessings to you for all the long days. Thanks also to Ron Davis and Sam Judd for their encouragement on the road. We have lamented a lot together in the past several years, haven’t we?

This book is dedicated to my wife Susan and our four children: Kate, Will, Nathan, and Maggie. The Lord has walked together with us through many lamentable losses, not the least of which are the large blocks of time we are apart when I am on the road. Thank you for not giving up, not letting go, and never leaving the dance floor till the music was over. If indeed we are called to lament in this present world, I am thankful that we have each other, our family, and that we are not alone.

This book is presented by all of us as a gift to the church.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Much of the Old Testament Scripture quoted in this book is from the Tanakh, a new translation of the Holy Scriptures by the Jewish Publication Society.

The translation has a marvelous clarity and reflects the richness of rabbinic scholarship.

FOREWORD BY EUGENE PETERSON

It’s an odd thing. Jesus wept. Job wept. David wept. Jeremiah wept. They did it openly. Their weeping became a matter of public record. Their weeping, sanctioned by inclusion in our Holy Scriptures, a continuing and reliable witness that weeping has an honored place in the life of faith.

But just try it yourself. Even, maybe especially, in church where these tear-soaked Scriptures are provided to shape our souls and form our behavior. Before you know it, a half-dozen men and women surround you with handkerchiefs, murmuring reassurances, telling you that it is going to be alright, intent on helping you to get over it.

Why are Christians, of all people, embarrassed by tears, uneasy in the presence of sorrow, unpracticed in the language of lament? It certainly is not a biblical heritage, for virtually all our ancestors in the faith were thoroughly acquainted with grief. And our Savior was, as everyone knows, a Man of Sorrows.

A number of years ago my mother died in Montana. My brother and sister, our spouses and children, gathered and prepared for the service of worship in which we would place our grief for her death and gratitude for her life before God. As the first-born I was appointed to conduct the funeral. I lived in Maryland at the time and so except for our immediate family and a few old friends, knew almost no one in the congregation. I called the congregation to worship and led them in prayers. I began reading Scriptures—several psalms, Isaiah’s strong words of comfort, Jesus’ parting words to His disciples, Paul’s architectonic Romans 8, John’s final vision of heaven. I had done this scores of times over many years and always loved doing it, saying again these powerful, honest words that give such enormous dignity to death and our tears. While reading, the air now thin between time and eternity, without warning lament surged up within me. I tried to keep my composure and then just let it go. I knew I was making everyone uncomfortable but remember thinking, They get to cry so why not me? Why am I the only one not permitted to weep? I had read these same Scriptures at the burial of my father eight months earlier, and at that moment it came to me that my parents had always been ahead of me, a barrier against my own death, and now they were gone. I felt suddenly exposed, alone. I was next in line. I gave in and let the lament out in uncontrolled sobs. It probably didn’t last long, maybe twenty seconds or so. I wiped my tears, got my voice back, and continued with the Scripture readings and the rest of the service.

The benediction pronounced, I ducked quickly into a small room just off the chancel. I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. My twenty-two-year-old daughter slipped in beside me. We sat together, quiet and weeping our own sacred sorrow. And then a man I’d never seen before entered and sat down. He put his arm across my shoulder and spoke some preacherish clichés in a preacherish tone. Then, mercifully, he left. I said