| Before a Thanksgiving break, some words on the practice of Grief among the faithful.
....Israel is not to grow silent about its deserved plight. Israel in exile is a community that grieves and protests. Indeed, in exile the ancient social practice of lament and complaint becomes a crucial theological activity for Israel. The practice of grief is an exercise in truth-telling. It is, as evidenced in Psalm 137 and Lamentations, an exercise in massive sadness that acknowledges, with no denial or deception, where and how Israel is. But this voiced grief is not resignation, for in the end faithful Israel is incapable of resignation. Resignation would be to give up finally on YHWH and on YHWH's commitment to Israel. This Israel will not do, even if YHWH gives hints of such abandonment. This grief of Israel in exile spills over into protest against YHWH. For all of its acknowledgment of its exilic utterances Israel moves stridently past its own failure to focus on YHWH, to protest YHWH's abandoning propensity and to invoke YHWH's new attentiveness to Israel.
Faithful people do not just get up and walk out. We may bitch and gripe and dance around fed up with how things are going - but we do not walk out. There is so much that can be done before one resigns oneself to one last reactions - exiting. Israel grieves and that is like a person in a deep, deep relationship. Things are bad and maybe even over - but resignation is a huge step away and grieving maintains some connection. In that connection is also the hope of a new day. The new day cannot be like the days that preceded it. Rather they must be days that come about through repentance - a turning back into the relationship with God (who, by the way, has never given up on the relationship). It is here that we also see the necessity to protest - to state one's case and to speak up. Resignation is a time of silence in which there is no more communication. So, faithful people are also people who protest the way things are and long for new conditions - a new day - a return home.
Connection: Signs of a good relationship - communication even when it feels as though that is the last thing needed.
O God, who watches how we turn away and follow other powers, you continue to embrace us even as we come so close to giving up completely. It is that embrace that becomes the power that keeps us returning to you. Amen. |
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