The Healing of Lament, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.

The Healing of Lament, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: Finding Hope in Hard Places A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Psalm 13.

Join us Sunday as Steven discusses the importance of embracing pain and honesty during the season of Lent, emphasizing that faith should allow for the expression of raw emotions rather than acting as a painkiller.

Join us each Sunday, 10AM at bendfp.org, or 11AM KTVZ-CW Channel 612/12 in Bend.  Subscribe/Follow, and click the bell for alerts.

At First Presbyterian, you will meet people at many different places theologically and spiritually. And we love it that way. We want to be a place where our diversity brings us together and where conversation takes us all deeper in our understanding of God.

We call this kind of faith “Spacious Christianity.” We don’t ask anyone to sign creeds or statements of belief. The life of faith is about a way of being in the world and a faith that shows itself in love.

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Keywords:

Lent, hope, pain, honesty, faith, lament, prayer, grief, trauma, sanctuary, emotions, suffering, expression, compassion, despair, presbyterian, church, online worship, bend, oregon

Featuring:

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski, Becca Ellis, Brave of Heart, Guests

Transcript

Unknown: 0:20

Music.

Whitney Higdon: 0:34

Welcome to worship at First Presbyterian. We, at First Presbyterian practice a spacious Christianity, which means, no matter where you are in your faith journey, you belong, and there is space for you at the table, there is space for your doubts and questions. We believe doubts and questions are a gift that invite us into deeper conversations and a more authentic faith. We believe diversity is a strength. Every story is sacred and everybody matters. We do our best to live the spacious and radical love of Jesus so that all might have a chance to flourish in this world. We are so glad to connect with you in this way. We would also love to worship with you in person if you're ever in the neighborhood on Sunday mornings at 830 or 10am and never hesitate to reach out to us to learn more about us or how we might support you. I hope you enjoy this worship service, welcome.

Steven: 4:44

here's a blessing from Kate bowler for when you need a little hope. These days feel heavy and dark like hope packed up and left and forgot to send a postcard. We cry. Where are the good things, and honestly, where are the good people, the sensible ones, fighting for what matters? Why does it feel like bad stuff always elbows its way to the front, pushing everything good to the sidelines. We're tired, exhausted, really. Desperation is knocking and is tempting to surrender. Blessed are you who see the world as it is, the sickness and loneliness, the injustice that never seems to end, the greed and misuse of power, the violence and intimidation, the mockery of truth and disdain for weakness, and worse, the seeming powerlessness of anyone to stop it. Blessed are you worn down by hard earned cynicism, running on fumes with no promise of destination. Maybe hope isn't so distant. Maybe it's there small, persistent and stubborn, may you grasp something in the heaviness, a glimmer of what could be and walk step by step toward the possibility that goodness exists. Hope is an anchor dropped into the future, holding you forward towards something better, even if it doesn't feel like it right now. Blessed are you.

Unknown: 7:11

I will come to you in the silence. I will lift you from all your feet. Hear my voice, I claim you have my choice. Be, still, do not be afraid. I am with you. I have called you each. My name, come and follow Me. I will bring you home. Bring you I am strength for all the despairing, healing for the ones who dwell in shame, All the blood will see the lame will hold free. Day, do not be afraid. I have called you each my name, come and follow Me. I will bring you home. I love you and

Steven: 9:22

Life is hard, really hard, impossibly hard for many of us right now, this is the season of Lent in the church year leading to Easter. The season of Lent is the invitation to stop pretending we're fine and to admit life is hard, we're invited to to lean into the pain, to resist the urge to skip straight to the happy ending. The theme we're following for this season of Lent is finding hope in the hard places and what. Surprising is that hope is often found in those spaces where we can be brutally honest about how we're feeling. The psalmist, in Psalm 13, cried out, how long Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my with my thoughts and day after day, have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Brutally Honest prayers may be the most helpful prayers we can pray. I mean Jesus, quoting Psalm 22 prayed in anguish, My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? God? What the heck is happening? You know, I suspect every single one of us has prayed a version of that prayer, silently or out loud at one time or another. What if we didn't view our faith as an epidural to make the pain go away? What if our faith is the container that can hold the ugliest, most painful of our emotions. A few years back, a woman in obvious distress came to the church in the middle of the week and she asked if she could go into the sanctuary, which was empty, and pray. She said, she said she just needed to scream and wanted a safe place to scream. She said she feared she might do harm to herself and others if, if she just didn't find a way to express and release what was bottled up inside of her. You know, I asked if it was okay, if I just stood outside the door to make sure she was okay, and then she went into the sanctuary and stood in in the middle of the sanctuary alone, and she screamed, I mean anguished, blood curdling screams, no words, just screams that seemed to express a deep pain buried deep inside of her that was being summoned to the light when she finished. I mean, I asked her if she wanted to talk, if she wanted me to pray with her, she said, No thanks. I just prayed. Thank you for this safe and sacred space. You know, as she left, having released whatever was burdening her, having expressed her deep lament, I actually couldn't think of a holier use of our sanctuary than that. The wisdom writer in the book of Ecclesiastes said, there's a time for everything. There's a time to laugh and a time to cry and I suspect, a time to scream. Sometimes I fear people view church, you know, as the place to dress up, be polite, be nice, try your best to appear as if you have it all together, when deep down inside, all you want to do is scream. What if church was a sanctuary where your screams would be welcome, you know, where the messiness of your emotions wouldn't be judged, where your pain would be embraced with with tenderness. We all carry so much trauma, and the healing begins when there's space to feel the pain and allow the tears to flow. Never be afraid of releasing tears. Actually be afraid when our hearts are so protected, so defended, that we have no tears to cry. Richard Rohr reminds us that pain, you know, pain that's not expressed and transformed, just keeps getting transmitted. I remember being part of a youth group growing up when a friend of mine, I thought, bravely asked for prayer in the group amongst his peers. Not long after the sudden death of his twin sister, just 13 years old, I remember clearly the youth pastor praying, God, I pray. That you will take the sadness away from Jimmy, remove his tears, strengthen his faith. Jimmy was heartbroken, rather than a safe space to express his grief, his pain, his sadness, his confusion, his anger, his anger at God. The prayer that was offered implied that that having faith is to no longer have tears, to no longer be angry. I vividly remember Jimmy just just shutting down. You know, Jimmy became really distant. He started to drink, got into a lot of trouble. You know, obviously, obviously, there are a lot of factors. I'm not suggesting at all that that one prayer was the cause, but I do wonder what might have happened if a different prayer was offered in response to Jimmy's vulnerability, a prayer is something like God, God. This is so freaking hard. This hurts so much we just want to scream, God. This isn't fair. We don't understand. Where are you? God? Our hearts, our hearts hurt for Jimmy, and may Jimmy know that he's not alone in his tears. You know, in life's hardest moments, we have actually been given a model of prayer. There's only one book in the Bible named after after an emotion, the book of Lamentations. The Lamentations is a collection of a collection of brutally, brutally honest poems expressing grief, loss, pain, heartache of a community, the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians sometime around the year 500 BC, most of the survivors were hauled away to live in exile, and some were left to stumble amidst the rubble and destruction. Scholars actually believe these poems from lamentations. These poems were written by those standing in the midst of the ruins of the world they once knew, the places where they found comfort, security, peace were gone, and from that place of deep grief, they wrote these words, how lonely sits the city that was once full of people, this city, once great, is like a widow weeping bitterly in the night, tears on her cheeks, with no one to comfort her. You know, I can imagine someone standing in Kyiv or Gaza or even our nation's capital today writing those very words, sometimes the most healing thing we can do is to be brutally honest and lament a healthy spirituality is always honest. You know, when life overwhelms us, unfortunately, there's not an app on the phone that we can turn to that would just make sense of it all, or there's not an app we can turn to that will all of a sudden make it all better. Suffering isn't necessarily rational or an intellectual exercise. Really, when we suffer, it's it's less about analysis and more about expression release. I was speaking with someone recently who's really struggling, really with struggling, really struggling with what's going on in the world right now, and she broke down in tears, and she said to me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm just really, really struggling what's wrong with us that we feel we have to apologize for simply being human. I mean, life is hard, especially hard right now. Our emotions don't require another. Technology. They require honesty. They require expression, release. The book of Lamentations, the book of the Psalms, reminds us crying out to God with heart wrenching honesty was not only okay, it was faithful. You know, if we're angry with God, if we're wrestling with doubts, if we're if we're struggling with despair, we tend to keep it to ourselves. We tend to give God the silent treatment. For some reason, we tend to think that that having faith means unwavering belief, never doubting. We somehow assume that that having faith means that no matter how awful things are, we should never question the goodness of God. We should never question if God cares. We should never question if there really is a God. We've forgotten there's this amazing tradition in the Bible of raw honesty, yelling at God. Someone suggested, if we're going to have a praise ban in our churches, we should also have a lament band, because the people of God, it's always involved both praise and lament. I actually love the way some of the characters in the Old Testament, I mean, they really, they really have it out with God, how they dare to confront the Almighty. I mean, it's downright argumentative. Now, if we're angry with God, we tend to kind of hold it inside of ourselves. I mean, not so with our ancestors in the faith, they had absolutely no hesitation in crying out, complaining to God, shouting their doubts, expressing their anger and despair. And here's the beautiful thing about lament. Lament is praying. Lament is a form of prayer. Lament is more than just simply venting our emotions. Lament turns toward God with our emotions when we're tempted to run away from God and lament, trust that God, God is the container that can hold our rage, that can hold our sorrow. The book of Lamentations begins with lament, this brutally honest expression of pain and grief. And at the same time, the writer says in chapter three, God's compassion never fails. God's mercy is fresh every morning. That's the container that can hold our honesty, that can hold our pain, our grief, our despair, our rage, our sadness, our tears it's not either or. It's not lament or praise. It's lament and praise. Friends, if things are hard, if you're struggling right now, if you're like the psalmist, crying out, how long God, if you feel more like lamenting than praising, please know that this too Is faith, the kind of brutally honest faith, where hope is found. So friends breathe, lean into your pain. It's okay not to be okay, because there are so many things that are just not okay right now. Don't apologize for feeling broken or overwhelmed or outraged or or despairing. Scream, weep, write, paint, protest, question, ask for help. All of this is prayer, maybe the best kind of prayer. There's a time to laugh and a time to weep our tears, tears of despair, tears of outrage. Each are holy, our tears water the seeds of hope for that day when we will laugh again. May it be so Friends, remember to breathe. Lean into your pain. Lean into one another. It's okay not to be okay, because there are so many things that are just not okay right now, there is a time to laugh and there is a time to weep our tears, tears of despair, tears of outrage, our tears are holy. Our tears water the seeds of hope for that day when we will laugh again. Go in the peace and the love of Christ, and May the love and the care that you bring into this world, May it bring peace to someone who is struggling. Amen.

Whitney Higdon: 28:52

Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope you enjoyed this worship service. If you would like to make a donation helping make these podcasts possible or support the many ways. First, Presbyterian seeks to serve our community. You can make a financial gift online at bend fp.org, every week, we hear from someone thanking us for the gift of these broadcasts and what a difference they make. Your support makes that possible. Our church is committed to reach beyond our walls, bringing hope where there is despair and love, where it is needed the most. Your generous support helps us to be generous in love. Go to our website, bend fp.org, and click on the link. Give online. Your support is really appreciated and makes a difference in people's lives. Thanks again. I hope to see you next week. You.