Honest Lament and Stubborn Hope
By Nicholas Zork
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
— Lamentations 3:22-23
The Book of Lamentations weaves together themes that resonate as fully today as when they were first written. It gives voice to communal grief, theological confusion, and stubborn hope. It reminds us that worship can point us toward the morning light of God’s persistent mercy, even—and especially—in the darkest of nights. Here we encounter a model of faith that is honest in its lament and therefore credible in its hope. Lamentations invites us to ask what such faith might look like in our worship today.
First, worship cannot skip over confession on its way to hope. The church has not always been the light we were called to be. While the church has at times prophetically confronted injustice, those who claim the name of Jesus have also accepted—and in some cases fully embraced—a form of faith rooted in fear. This faith distorts the Gospel, fails to respect the full humanity of all our neighbors, reinforces racism rather than refuting it, and neglects to protect the vulnerable. We must confess that while we proclaim good news, we have too often been complicit in creating bad news. When we gather to worship, may we, with the author of Lamentations, confess not only the world’s brokenness but our own.
Second, as we look for hope, our worship cannot gloss over grace. The failures we see in ourselves and in our broader society are not primarily the result of insufficient instruction in righteousness or a lack of effort. Whether addressing a community overwhelmed by grief or one desperately in need of ethical transformation, there is little less helpful than the call to “try harder.” Our present circumstances do not reflect a lack of human striving but its limits. No amount of effort can dispel shame and insecurity, which fester like untreated wounds until they give rise to despair, addiction, and cruelty. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously observed, “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” In the same way, shaming cannot drive out shame; only grace can do that. Only as we encounter God’s sufficient grace can we be truly transformed to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. When we gather to worship, may we be met by the morning light of God’s abundant mercy.
Finally, worship that credibly embodies and rehearses stubborn hope is not only honest in its confession of sin and rooted in grace; it is focused on the faithfulness of God. It may seem obvious to say that our hope is built on God’s faithfulness rather than our own, yet we devote considerable energy to the latter. Credible hope persists in the face of evil and injustice not because we are stubborn, but because God is. In the cross of Christ, we see a God who, though profoundly misunderstood and rejected, continues to choose us—continues to confront injustice with love. Only love is stronger than hate, more powerful than evil, and stubborn enough to walk with us and work through us until the day when all things are finally made whole.
