“Much of Our Worship is Cover-Up”
Picking up where we left off yesterday, more Q & A with Chris Wright. If that sentence makes no sense to you, please scroll down and read my blog from December 26 before this one.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m shutting up and listening to Chris —
Q: What role should a book like Lamentations play in our worship, corporate prayers, and sermons?
A: The absence of lament, at least in many Western churches, is a great loss. We have quietly airbrushed great swaths of the Bible from our consciousness.
We sing songs based on the Psalms, but often leave out the bits about suffering or oppression. We ignore the fact that in the Psalms, “lament,” or protest, is the largest category.
So much of our worship is cover-up: pretending to have emotions we don’t really feel, or smothering the emotions we do.
That is not praise. It simply leaves us to pick up our suffering again on the way out—without bringing it into God’s presence or hurling it at him in questioning (but trusting) protest.
Spending time in Lamentations helps us learn how to plumb the depths of lament as well as scale the heights of rejoicing.
