Sermon: 5th Sunday in Lent, Year A – evening service
Reading: Psalm 130
Do you know what happens when you play blues music backwards? You get out of jail. Your dog comes home. You get rich. And your wife comes back.
I don’t know if any of you are acquainted with blues music. Some of you might be fans like I am. It is a very popular kind of music and it goes through revivals about every ten years or so.
It has a soulful, rough-cut beauty to it. It was mostly pioneered by black Afro-Americans in the early years of the 20th century, so it deals with the issues they faced in life which were very tough. Racial hatred from white Americans, poverty, exploitation of black workers as cheap labour, terrible injustice and inequality, unjust imprisonment and punishment, death.
Hence the joke. Blues music is generally quite dark – it’s about suffering. It is lament. It’s shockingly, sometimes gut-wrenchingly, honest. It comes out of the depths of the soul. It’s heartache in audible form. Sound a bit gloomy?
One musical expert noted that this is probably the very reason it continues to be so popular. It deals with suffering and pain and sorrow, especially in the public, corporate sphere. And people need to find something that does that.
In our culture today, we have been robbed of appropriate ways for us to express our sorrow and pain. Advertising and marketing has sold us the idea that we can be, and should be, happy all the time. Life is about success and prosperity and getting what you want. We work hard to get happy and be happy.
The new US TV hit “Desperate Housewives” is an interesting commentary on this – it’s the sad and painful reality behind the facade of happiness in perfect Wisteria Lane.
Part of the false happiness of our culture entails the denial of death.
I have been to quite a few funerals, where apart from there being a coffin up front you’d wonder what kind of occasion it was – there is a big emphasis on celebrating the person’s life, having a laugh, remembering the good times, up-beat music. The worst funeral I have ever been to was a cremation where they played Elvis Presley singing “Hunk of burning love”.
You might think that’s good. Think positive! Get on with life! But what about grief and loss? You cannot get on with life until you have addressed and expressed these things.
And so people don’t have many chances to express their sadness or their grief or their pain – people do not have many chances to lament. As Michael Leunig says, We hide behind our plastic smiles and hope our eyes don’t give us away.
Blues music is one of those forms that taps into our deep need to express our pain and sadness and loss.
A bit like Psalm 130 which we sang tonight. Maybe you thought “Gee this is a bit mournful.” Yeah, it is. That’s the point. Ever read the psalms? They are kind of the blues music of the Bible – they are often laments. They express the writer’s loneliness, grief, feelings of abandonment. They are sometimes angry. The writer sometimes dumps on God, curses, rages, vents his bile and disappointment and feeling of being the victim of injustice.
I remember having a discussion about the psalms with a fellow Christian and we were talking about these psalms of lament. And she said: Yeah, I am not so sure about those psalms – seems like that guy didn’t have much faith in God. Aren’t we supposed to praise God and be at peace no matter what?
Well, it’s interesting, when you look at Jesus, God’s Son, the Lord.
He weeps – “rageful” weeping at the death of Lazarus.
He cries out in pain – expressing his despair, quoting Psalm 22: “My God My God, why have you forsaken me?”
How could the Son of God say those things?
Because he was human, like us. Suffered like us. And needed to express this.
He could do it because he was in a deep and trusting and intimate relationship with his Father. He knew that his Father loved him, and he knew he could be absolutely honest, even with his anger and despair.
And that’s why we Christians too are free to lament. Through Jesus Christ, God has brought us into a deep, trusting, honest relationship in which we are free to be real, to be honest, to be sad sometimes as well as joyful. It’s like your closest, deepest friend – you don’t have to pretend with them. You know they will still love you even if you are in a foul mood. That is how God’s love is: God won’t stop being there if we stop being happy!
And so throughout the centuries, Christians have always written musical laments, usually based on the psalms. The church has its own blues music – that’s why not everything we sing in church is upbeat boppy praise songs and hymns. We need to lament sometimes – that too expresses our faith in God. It is being honest with God, opening up our soul and letting him see what’s really inside, even when it’s dark and painful. Because that’s where healing begins.