Prayer of Lament, When Life Is A Mess – Br. Curtis Almquist

Br. Curtis Almquist

Psalm 511-12

The psalm appointed for our liturgy, Psalm 51, is an intensely personal lament expressed by David, the magnificent King of Israel whose character is so terribly flawed. He is owning up here to abusing his power and for being both an adulterer and a murderer when he prays:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses.

Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin…

Tradition has it that King David is the author of Psalm 51, which we have just prayed. What’s significant here is not that David prays these words of Psalm 51, but that we do, and throughout the year, even if we are not adulterers and murders. For our own quite personal reasons, we can relate to the lamentful words of this psalm. Of the 150 psalms, about one third are psalms of lament, expressing to God sorrow, or grief, or rage, or regret. Sometimes it is we who lament being in the wrong; sometimes the lament is from our being a victim of someone else’s wrong; and sometimes it’s a kind of tragic bad blend of things, a collusion. A prayer of lament is usually a mess, when life is a mess.

Life now, for so many, is a tragic mess, and on so many fronts near and far. You inevitably know this well. The prayer of lament – where you pray your sorrow, or grief, or rage, or regret – is an invitation to pray the mess: to name evil, sometimes to name evil done on our behalf. A prayer of lament is to name the suffering, the dying, and the death we experience or witness. A prayer of lament may be to name other creatures, not human, with whom we share the world and who are suffering or dying because of our greed. A prayer of lament may name our own despair and desolation.

We come together in this liturgy carrying with us the needs and the trouble that has affected us from many fronts. We are invited to express our lament for this pain in our prayers and in the offering of the pain in our selves and on behalf of others whom we carry in our hearts. A lament is an offering. A lament may also be a desperate plea. In Psalm 51 we implore God to “create in [us] a new heart.” Our hearts may be contused or confused; our hearts may be hardened by injustice; our hearts may be broken because of pain. We pray, “Create in [us] a new heart, O God.”

For several years prior to coming to the monastery, I was on a rotation as a night chaplain in a regional hospital. We ministers in the area would sign up for a 14-hour night shift once or twice a month to relieve the daytime chaplains. This was often a ministry of lament. I would spend most of those evening and nighttime hours responding to calls from the Emergency Room and ICU where suffering and sometimes horrific tragedies was unfolding. I oftentimes had little to say. I mostly cried with people. Pain that is shared almost always makes the pain more bearable.

A lament is the sharing of pain. The prayer of lament may be our own prayer for the sorrow, or grief, or rage, or regret we either embody or we witness around us. We may find words to express lament; we may find only tears to express lament; we may give others the safe space to express their own lament which we then carry to God on their own behalf.

The prayer of lament: it’s to pray the mess when life is a mess.