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Bringing Our Pain to God: Michael Card and Calvin Seerveld on biblical lament in worship
“We were created to live with God in a garden, yet we wake every morning in the desert of a fallen world,” says Michael Card, a singer, songwriter, author, and radio host from Tennessee.
College experiences doused him in the disconnect between what Christians are and what they yearn for. Family divorces, deaths, and 9/11 pushed Michael Card to write and sing about lament.
He says that bringing sorrow and suffering to God in worship must start with the preached word. Such worship works only in community, not isolation. Genuine lament in worship often leads to a healing sense of God’s presence. Card and Calvin Seerveld explored lament together at a worship symposium, attended by Kees van Setten, who shared his ministry of musical lament and reconciliation between Jews and Christians.
Preaching lament
Think of lament as an essential ingredient of honest faith. It’s the deep sense that something is wrong, whether with yourself or the world. Card says he experienced biblical lament in worship years before he used the word lament.
He was in college, studying Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christ the Center with friends and being mentored by the pastor of a black Presbyterian church. Card recalls a sermon in which his mentor went through a list of sins that sounded uncomfortably familiar.
“I’d been very proud of the fact that I hadn’t broken certain commandments. Our pastor sort of took that away. He made you feel the weight of sin and pretty helpless. He said if you’re guilty of this sin and that sin and this sin, then this communion table is for you. There was this big sighing in the congregation. People almost rushed the table. The pastor made us realize that we had absolutely no right coming to that table. Nevertheless, Jesus says come,” Card says.
That corporate experience of contrition and longing for grace struck Card as a “transforming moment.” It led him to write the song “Come to the Table.”
“And it began by the preached word. I really think music is best created as a response to the Word and most often a response to the preached word,” he says.
Though creating music in response to the Bible or a sermon is best, Card more often sees “no linkage at all, not even thematically,” between a service’s worship music and Scripture or sermon. That’s why he helped found www.byfor.org, an online site for creating and sharing “sacred worship art by the church, for the church.”
Sacred sorrow
Lament is larger than feeling sorry that you’ve sinned. It encompasses pain, hurt, confusion, anger, betrayal, despair, and injustice. It goes beyond your personal relationships to consider how all creation groans to be restored to God.
“Jesus understood that lament was the only true response of faith to the brokenness and fallenness of the world. It provides the only trustworthy bridge to God across the deep seismic quaking of our lives,” Card writes in A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament.
Like Card, you may recall certain funerals as either dismal or shining examples of lament. The funeral for a relative, whom Card describes as a brilliant doctor, still rankles. “It was all triumphalism. The tears were getting wiped away before anyone had a chance to weep. There was no chance to engage with…this fundamental reality that it’s a fallen world and people get sick and die—and that it hurts,” he says.
Card thinks churches are “embarrassed, almost panicky, that there are situations to which they have no answer. We want to present Jesus as the answer man, and we don’t want Jesus to look bad. And if that’s your theology, Jesus can look very bad at funerals.”
By contrast, he remembers a funeral for a six-year-old girl killed by a drunk driver. Though not many people had known her well, there was a huge turnout in her Missionary Baptist Church. “It was so tragic no one even tried to fix it. The best answer we had was to show up. That’s a big part of lamenting as a church together—basically showing up,” Card says.
In a recent workshop on lament in worship, he quoted from his book The Hidden Face of God: Finding the Missing Door to the Father Through Lament. Card said he’s come to “believe and trust and hope that tears of lament are the missing door, the way into an experience with a God whose depth of compassion we have never imagined.”
Redemptive suffering
On any given Sunday, you may come to church glad, mad, or sad. You’re likely worshiping with people struggling to count their blessings. Meanwhile, it’s certain that somewhere in the world, God’s children are going hungry, falling ill, being persecuted, or denouncing each other from pulpits.
Yet it takes courage, and faith, to move from conceptual agreement that lament belongs in worship to actually groaning with fellow believers. “We’re afraid of other people’s pain. Like Job’s friends, we’re afraid when we don’t have answers. Job doesn’t get any answers for his sufferings, but he gets God,” Card says.
He often uses the Hebrew word hesed to explain how entering into others’ pain can bring us into a shared sense of God’s unfailing love and presence. Worship songs, prayers, liturgies, sermons, visuals, and testimonies can leave room to admit imperfection and weep with those who weep. Such worship lets us drop our masks and bathe in God’s compassion.
At the 2008 Calvin Symposium on Worship, Calvin Seerveld explained that biblical lament is taking Scripture and trying to hear it for our lives. “Some people who’ve been abused may not be able to reconcile or forgive in this lifetime. But they can ask God to set it right, to take their hurt into a larger context to help someone else,” Seerveld said.
Card responded, “I call that redemptive suffering. Lament is not about psychology, about getting things off your chest. It’s about true worship—offering up as a sacrifice your brokenness and pain to God.” In fact, he sees biblical lament as the only way to “reach out to the poor, whom Jesus told us were to be our central concern.”
Calvin Seerveld on Building a Worship Vocabulary of Lament
Put yourself in their shoes. The parents across the church aisle had no comment when reporters turned up at their door. Other church members had plenty to say (though not to those parents) about their son who died in a drug deal gone sour.
Nevertheless, worship proceeds as usual with a twenty-minute praise music set and rousing sermon. And you have no idea how to show solidarity with Christians who feel so solitary in their pain.
It’s a messy situation—variations of which dog every life and church. And it explains why Calvin Seerveld, whenever he can, urges worshipers to build a scriptural vocabulary of lament. When offered in genuine humility and trust, lament in worship need not be the last word.
Building a thesaurus of psalms
As a church elder doing home visits, Seerveld often learned about private troubles. His long academic career includes teaching philosophy and aesthetics, translating Scripture, writing books and songs, and leading worship workshops. “My question has been, rather than talk or gossip about those we worship with, could we sing about it?” Seerveld says.
More than 20 years ago, he wrote “A Congregational Lament,” a hymn that opens with “Why, Lord, must evil seem to get its way?” It’s based on the Genevan tune for Psalm 51 and includes verses referring to imprisonment, illness, divorce, untimely death, and other deep hurts.
After September 11, 2001, when church leaders in the U.S. felt it would be false for worship to ignore the tragedy, many congregations asked Seerveld for permission to use the song. “They needed a song to fit the evil besetting them,” he explained in his Reformed Worship essay “Pain Is a Four-Letter Word.”
During a lament in worship workshop that Seerveld did with musician Michael Card, Seerveld said it takes a largeness of vision to be prepared to lament in worship. One participant asked how churches can “open up worship to genuine lament without making it just another agenda item.”
Seerveld suggested, “Develop an existential love for God’s psalms so pastors, elders, musicians, and people all come to love and live among the psalms. Good ones to start with are psalms 13, 22, 39, 51, 56, and 92. Build up a thesaurus of favorite psalms. They needn’t be the same for every congregation. Let them become part of your worship vocabulary so you have them ready to read or sing when, suddenly, there’s an unexpected tragedy or a soldier comes home in a body bag.
“If people started to sing whole psalms—not just snippets—it would change us. Don’t necessarily do all verses of Psalm 119 on a Sunday, but you could do one stanza a week,” he said.
Building a library of congregational psalms might include:
- Reading psalms in unison or response or listening to a dramatic reading, perhaps from Seerveld’s Voicing God’s Psalms
- Searching out or composing tunes with “rough-hewn character” that fit pain and anger
- Choosing choir anthems such as William Billings’ “David’s Lamentation”
- Singing stark songs a capella or accompanied by a single recorder or saxophone
- Preaching on imprecatory psalms so congregations understand difficult passages (e.g. Psalm 137:7 about dashing infants against rocks is a plea for God to end systemic evil because we can’t do it on our own)
- Incorporating rituals—of confession, pardon, kneeling, prayer, communion, passing the peace, lamenting during Advent and on Good Friday—that help worshipers give and receive comfort
Genuine humility and trust
For all he’s thought about lament, Seerveld hasn’t often experienced it in worship. Memories that still stir him include testimonies heard in African American churches, communion shared with a small circle of Waldensian Christians in Rome, and preaching at the funeral of a younger friend—someone who’d years earlier promised to preach at Seerveld’s funeral.
At that funeral, Seerveld drew words from Psalms, 2 Kings, and the gospels to ask why God let his friend suffer such painful cancer…and how his friend went through the shadow of death certain that the Good Shepherd would not run away.
“I go to services sometimes that feel not in this real world. We need to preach what’s real—the rule of God—not be churchy. Lament has to be genuine, germane, real to circumstances. If you don’t have lament in your publican heart, then don’t make it in your pharisee speech,” he says.
Genuine lament in worship depends on trust. Congregations are full of troubles yet “no one wants to show it. Genuine lament will be scarce till you have close-knit trust with God and brothers and sisters in the Lord. You have to be vulnerable—and the setting has to be ‘tears friendly,’ though not sentimental, pietistic, or weepy,” he explains.
Genuine lament also requires humility. Seerveld thinks it’s often hard for middle-class North Americans to be sensitive to others’ sorrow and pain. The temptation is to ignore “our complicity with the evil in society” and to identify God’s chosen people with the USA, Canada, or nation of Israel.
He urges worship leaders to plan messages and music that “give voice to people with handicaps or silenced women” and avoid acting like “the church or America are powerhouses with all the answers on tap.”
Seerveld especially liked Michael Card’s symposium observations that lament is shaped in the wilderness and that Job’s friends tried to get him to talk about God instead of bringing his frailty and complaint to God in prayer.
Does lament lead to praise?
Biblical lament is not complaint that goes nowhere. It’s the people of God planting seeds of hope in the soil of exasperation and despair, expecting that the Lord will come through in the end.
Seerveld interprets Walter Brueggemann and Michael Card as saying that biblical lament follows a sequence that ends in praise. Seerveld sees lament and praise as more intertwined.
As an example, he recalls serving as homilist for a conference of organists in New York. A Roman Catholic organist played the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) on the foot pedals while playing the Genevan tune for Psalm 51 on the keys.
“We had people there from two traditions, Catholic and Protestant, and all kinds of backgrounds. I felt that somehow, God’s people with all our sins were coming together saying, ‘Lord there are terrible things in this world that should not be going on.’ Yet this tremendous organ music swept us up in awed praise as well as lament,” Seerveld says.
Musically acknowledging fissures in the body of Christ gave worshipers more gratitude for God’s grace and eagerness for Christ to reconcile the entire cosmos.
Interview with C.R. “Kees” van Setten about the Power of Musical Lament to Reconcile Jews and Christians
C.R. “Kees” van Setten traveled from the Netherlands to attend a workshop on lament in worship given by Michael Card and Calvin Seerveld at the 2008 Calvin Symposium on Worship. During a meal together, Seerveld discovered that van Setten had organized a Christian musical group, New Wine Ensemble, that toured Eastern Europe, playing mainly for Jewish audiences.
You can hear some of that music, much of it instrumental or in English, here. The songs are from van Setten’s CD Nigun, a Jewish term for (often wordless) sung prayers.
In this (minimally edited) email interview from spring 2008, van Setten tells how the music of lament has helped heal European Christians ashamed of how they’ve treated Jews and helped Jews feel God’s presence. He explains how combining lament and praise can enrich evangelical worship.
What experiences or ideas led you to produce Nigun?
That whole story has two components, a musical one and a theological/historical one. It began in 1974 with a series of performances in Dutch churches of the Canadian duo Merv and Merla Watson with their group, Schechina. They do Jewish folk music with a special emphasis on the Jewish people.
Their music and dance and message struck me. I shall never forget an old (“stiff Reformed”) pastor—of course, Dutch Reformed—dance during one of the concerts in one of our cathedrals. And it was appropriate! Miracles happen....
Strangely enough it took some years for me to work this out. At that time I was studying theology at the Utrecht State University and music (organ). I was, still am, a Bach lover. Things changed. More and more I started to play the piano. I met a married couple of professional cellists, made arrangements for them and we began to perform in this somewhat unusual combination, together with singers.
Then, in 1988, we were invited to play in Israel. During my studies—I graduated in the field of the New Testament—I did not care much about Jewish theology and the Jewish people. This came later. In the 80s I began to read about Judaism, not only from a theological point of view, but also from a historical and literary point of view. I intensively studied the Shoah in these different perspectives.
It became obviously clear that Christianity has played a major role in antisemitism and has blood on its hands, whether I like it or not. Furthermore I discovered that not only the Germans did kill the Jews, but the...Europeans did too. The Germans just organized it, but could do this on the basis of a long and deep-rooted antisemitic tradition in the whole of Europe. The racial antisemitism (since the 19th century) is only one of many kinds of antisemitism. And European Christianity is in the midst of that.
eside this I was of course influenced by my (more or less traumatized) father. At 17 years old, he was put into a camp for slave laborers. They had to work for the Germans. All over Europe, the Germans picked up people and put them into factories, camps, and so forth, locked them up and forced them to do slave work. This "workcamp" of my father was for Dutch non-Jews and was located in the neighborhood of camp Westerbork, a durchgangslager from where the Dutch Jews were transported to Auschwitz (as was Anne Frank). Besides Westerbork, where Jewish people were brought, there were two other camps, Vught and Amersfoort, where the Germans put “criminals,” such as people of the resistance. Somewhere in 1944 my father escaped and found shelter with farmers in this area until the war was over. After the war, against his will, he was forced to fight in Indonesia, which was at that time a Dutch colony.
In fact this all changed my faith (I am a believer since I was 17), my theology, my perspective on Europe, history and...my music. I am convinced this was not only my action, my interest, but more and more I noticed that God played a (hidden) role in this. I began to feel some of the pain which must be in his heart about this (and lot of other things). This marked more and more my lectures, thinking, and my music: not only the genre but also my way of playing.
I began to feel this subject in my fingers. I cannot express it more adequately. I started to compose and tried to mediate between God's heart and the notes on the paper (which is of course a mission impossible.) In the 70s I had made a lot of travels to Eastern Europe, smuggling Bibles with Open Doors and Brother Andrew. Now I looked for ways to perform in Eastern Europe with this music and especially for a Jewish audience there, “those who survived,” I must say, because a Jew there is by definition a survivor. In 1988-1989 we performed in the former Yugoslavia and in 1990 I was invited—by a Jewish woman!—to come to Russia. Since then I organized several concert tours in that part of Europe, mostly playing for a Jewish audience.
Our message was
- biblical themes of lament and hope, from the psalms and prophets
- comfort
- praise
- letting them know that we are aware of the fact that antisemitism has a big Christian component and acknowledged this
- reconciliation, respect, and more reconciliation
We visited many places of slaughtering, which confirmed my thesis that antisemitism is a European, not a German, cause. I have seen present (!) antisemitism with my own eyes, experienced it in the Ukraine. It is of a very dark kind. In one of the baroque theaters in the Ukraine, we performed for Jewish people while the Ukrainian staff of the theater (which was rented by the Jewish Agency) was very mad at us. And if looks could kill....
I suddenly realized that this was the perfect context—seen from the perspective of the listening Jews in the concert hall—for Psalm 23: “You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.” The Jewish people recognized the lament and hope in the music as their lament and hope, although I think many of them did not fully understand what was happening. They cried when we admitted the sin of European antisemitism. In Russia (Orthodox) Christians never do. Many of them are antisemitic themselves.
In fact God used our music and performance (sometimes also with a professional dance group) to express his feelings of lament and hope about the whole case to the Jewish people. So they knew that God knew. I will illustrate this. In 1990 we performed in a Jewish synagogue in Kaunas, near Vilnius, Lithuania. Jews in WW2 had been slaughtered there by the local people (!) in horrible ways. It was very special for a Christian group (“the enemy”) to get permission to play there. At the end of the concert, all people cried.
At our way back to our hotel in Vilnius, a Jewish actress from a Yiddish theater told us that she had a wonderful evening and that for the first time in 25 years she experienced the Shechinah. “God must love you,” she added. I stuttered: “God loves you too.”
“No,” she said, "Gott liebt die Juden nicht.”
She told us how she was an eyewitness of the slaughtering of her brother. By our European antisemitism, we, all those ages ago, communicated that God does not love Jews. By psychological law the victim internalized the accusations of the perpetrator and now they are a genetic part of Judaism.
I worried about this sentence for seven years.
In 1997, however, we performed in the Ukraine. After the concert we were invited by the Jewish Agency to have a special dinner with them (gefilte fish, vodka, and so on.) The president of the JA was from the start of our visit a very critical person. He did not trust Christians. You could hear him think: “Are you here to convert us or what?” In the light of history, that was totally understandable.
Suddenly, during dinner, he stood up, toasted with us and said these words—which I never will forget and which were an answer to the incident seven years before—“Now I know that God loves the Jews.” It was the music that convinced him, not our words. So music is one of the most powerful languages for God to preach in. As a matter of fact, the CD Nigun is just a reflection of these concerts and happenings.
When you play in Eastern European synagogues, are you playing as a concert...part of worship...or for some other event?
We played (I am not doing this anymore now at this moment) as a concert. Christians worshipping together with Jewish people at this moment should be a miracle... But I think we came near! So it was just concerts. Sometimes we organized it, sometimes we were invited.
Strangely enough it worked as if it was worship. I still have a video fragment of our concert with survivors of the Lodz ghetto where you can see the audience: first very reserved, distant and at the end, together, joyous, clapping their hands and singing along with us. And that was without an altar call.
What reactions or insights can you share about performing Nigun songs in synagogues?
Lots of it I explained already. Most important however is the fact that music is very powerful as an instrument. Not just the vocal but especially also the instrumental pieces. Our first concert series in Poland we gave the name Without Words. Christians, especially in Holland, must learn to preach without words. We have preached too many sermons in which too many words were superfluous.
Be aware of the fact that reconciliation between Jews and Christians is one of the (al)most impossible things! So if Jewish people listen and respond positively to our music, then we have to do with a miracle, due, of course, to the presence of the Almighty but also to the power of the most beautiful non-verbal language in the world: music. Besides that, words will have no effect anymore on this subject. Whatever you say, the European history makes ashamed and enfeebles. People just shut their ears.
But things like these play also a role in the Christian community. We should use this instrument of (instrumental) music more often in our services. There should be a better balance between word and non-word—not only music but also silence, visual elements, and so forth. In the Netherlands our Calvinism (anti-papism and anti-Catholicism) is the cause of the fact that we confuse Word with verb. Of course John teaches us that the Word always has become flesh. This incarnation has, in my view, not only to do with Jesus, but also with the demand that words should become deeds, culture, music, relationship, and so forth.
The interesting question then comes up whether music can communicate concepts, ideas—more than as mere feelings. I now think it can. Music cannot analyze, cannot put things into a system, but it can communicate concepts and ideas in a very special way. In the matter of lament, I many times experienced the cello and the violin express these parts of the psalms better than a sermon. Deeper, I think. Closer to the heart of God. You can play lament. In this it is therefore important that the musician knows about history, theology, philosophy, etc. Musicians should be engaged. To play a bundle of notes is another thing than to have a musical message. So musicians, theologians, philosophers, and historians should combine efforts in a team.
The best thing however is not to make antitheses: the verbal needs the non-verbal and otherwise. But the fact remains: we talk too much, considering the fact that we have two ears and only one mouth.
What does lament look like in church worship? I'm interested in how you've experienced, seen, or led lament in worship. This could be as an entire thematic service, music, way of presenting Scripture, sermon, way of praying, visual art, drama, whatever.
I am a member of the Dutch Protestant (Reformed) church. Not a pastor, because I work in the field of education (manager). Unfortunately I don't know many examples of Dutch churches doing something with lament. The Evangelicals (Pentecostals) don't like it because they have a theology of glory and are deeply involved in the praise movement. In their circles the (whole) psalms are not so popular.
But in my church, which is more traditional, it is not better. Of course the vision about things is somewhat broader (we have many books about suffering, lament), but our liturgies are as they are for ages: traditional, no feelings, “from everything something.” Not really lament as we have also not really praise. I think things are in the U.S. sometimes the same.
I can remember only one example of a real lament service. In 1999 (I was on the organizing committee) we organized in the Utrecht Cathedral a service which was about the past and the guilt of Christians toward the Jewish people. In the committee also sisters from the Darmstad Schwestern (Basilea Schlink) were active. This was a real lament liturgy: texts written by a Dutch pastor who devotes himself to the matter of reconciliation with the Jewish people, some appropriate wailing songs, etc. I wrote Psalm 22 (on the CD) for that occasion, and I played it at the organ with a violinist. 1400 people left the church after 1 1/2 hours in complete silence...
There is however something I try to contribute to this item. I frequently lecture and give workshops and courses (e.g. for the Free University Amsterdam) on the theme of integration of song cultures (music styles and forms, spiritualities, etc.) and the interpretation of church music and songs. I teach how to (tastefully) combine several sorts of music and songs. For instance, I blend three songs of a different taste (old hymn or psalm, a meditative song of a totally different style, and a praise song). Think about it as a medley. Of course you cannot easily combine a contemporary praise song with a Bach aria, but in many cases it is possible to blend songs and styles. The songs enrich each other. They become, when musically properly arranged, each others’ passepartout. In many cases I blend praise songs (traditional or contemporary) with lament songs and make a musical story or narrative out of these songs.
Now, in my vision, our (contemporary) praise songs need desperately the influence of lament. In the psalms, praise is rooted in real (and therefore mostly problematic) life. The praise movement made a mistake in isolating praise from the (whole!) context of the psalms. But, otherwise, lament needs praise (hope) too. A diet of only lament would lead to a nihilistic worldview. So, in music, you can combine songs and use both to color each other—just as Rembrandt used black to put something into the light. Especially evangelicals should learn how to combine lament with praise. It will enrich them and their praise. Our praise will become more honest. As a musician (and theologian) I always seek for combinations of songs that have this message. Lament so can be integrated in a service and just in moments of praise.
From listening to the clips on http://www.bouwuwtroon.nl/Nigun.htm, I can tell some songs are instrumental and some have words. Which languages do Nigun songs use besides English?
On the CD we sing in English and Hebrew (number 12). Nigun is a Hebrew, Jewish concept. As a matter of fact, it is a sung prayer without words, a prayer melody. In Jewish tradition this often was lament, but it can also express grief, hope, asking, pain, and so forth. Martin Buber describes this when he is writing about the life and tales of the Chassidim.
I know of a story that a naked Jew had to stand for hours in the snow in a concentration camp and that the Nigun of his rabbi, which he sang at that moment, saved his life by giving him warmth. He emigrated after the war to New York. This was described by Yaffa Eliach, director of the Holocaust Museum in Washington.
Actually I think we here are near to what Paul described as the “the groans of the Spirit that words cannot express” (Rom. 8:26). It is therefore my opinion that speaking in tongues in this broken creation is often lament and...often far more psychological than we think. Because we are so unable (trapped) to express what is really in us, God gave us this gift “to utter” our (his) grief, our (his) pain, our (his) lament. Freud would have liked it! So, to induce more lament in the church we should more be speaking in tongues! A conclusion that nowadays would surprise most Pentecostals, I think. For a Dutch theological review, I once even wrote an article with the title “Playing in Tongues.” I believe the violinist, the cellist, and the pianist can play in tongues. We can lament on our instruments and those lamentations are real nigunim.
You mentioned that you work in management in education. Where do you work?
My work is at a Dutch high school in Maarssen (near Utrecht), in the center of Holland. As a director I am responsible for the department which educates for university students of 15 to 19 years old. I also give still a few lessons in religion (ethics) and a course in psychopathology for graduates.
Besides that I regularly give workshops in churches for ministers and musicians about blending (integrating and interpreting) diverse forms or styles of music or song cultures, and liturgy. I write theological articles on this subject.
People who read about your experiences may want to buy your CD. What is the best website for them to order from?
Unfortunately I don't have a website for this anymore. When your readers want to order, please given them this mail-address: van.setten@hccnet.nl. I then will send them a copy.
Learn More
Listen to audio interview excerpts from spring 2008:
- Michael Card on the Christian temptation “to live in a bubble,”7:40.
- Michael Card on learning from and with Calvin Seerveld, 4:52.
- Michael Card (whole interview) on his experiences of lament in worship, 38:03.
- Calvin Seerveld on how Psalm 55 and 131 can comfort abuse victims, 2:06.
- Calvin Seerveld recalls memorable lament in worship, 4:47.
- Calvin Seerveld on collaborating with Michael Card, 4:47.
Buy Michael Card’s books A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament and The Hidden Face of God: Finding the Missing Door to the Father Through Lament. Listen to mp3 song clips from Card’s CD The Hidden Face of God. His recent CD Hymns revives Scripture-based songs of yesteryear.
Being willing to talk about the world’s sorrows heightens appreciation for its joys. This comes through in Calvin Seerveld’s work, ranging from books on art and creativity to Voicing God’s Psalms, a song about weather, and Song of Solomon as choral theater. View a brief video clip of Cal Seerveld explaining how and why he translates Scripture.
You may sing Calvin Seerveld’s Pain Blues in worship as long as you include a credit line.
According to John D. Witvliet in Reformed Worship, lament fits into the Christian year (especially Advent and Good Friday) and patterns of Sunday worship. Lament psalms provide outlines for intercessory prayer.
Plan worship that brings all our emotions to God, including a lament service based on Psalm 13. Want to infuse more Scripture into your liturgies, prayers, and “in between words”? You’ll find practical ideas in The Worship Sourcebook and The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship by John D. Witvliet.
Bryan Borger, co-owner of Hearts & Minds bookstore, writes thoughtful reviews of recent books on lament. Internet Monk has an interesting blog post on Card, Seerveld, and lament.
Bible versions variously translate David in Psalm 55:17 as coming to God evening, morning, and noon, tocomplain, lament, murmur, cry out in distress, and moan. Gather your pastoral team and small group leaders to read and discuss Terry L. Smith’s insightful address to social workers on using lament psalms to address grief.
Start a Discussion
Making room for lament in worship:
- David leaped for joy before the ark of the covenant and poured out praise, anger, and questions in his psalms. Ezra led returned exiles in public mourning. Jesus wept in sorrow and frustration. Paul described his Galatian ministry as being in “the pains of childbirth.” Which emotions are worshipers free (or not) to express in your church?
- Which ideas or anecdotes in these stories ring true or strike a false note for you?
- In which parts of your church calendar or weekly order of worship could you most easily make room for lament? What obstacles might you face? Which first steps will you try?
- In the bonus interview, Kees van Setten suggests that lament and praise are as essential to worship as light and darkness in Rembrandt’s paintings. How might you apply this insight to your worship services?
Share Your Wisdom
What is the best way you’ve found to explore or define types of lament in worship that will strengthen your congregation’s praise?
- Did you catalog the songs used most often in your worship and pair them with themes from the entire book of psalms, including psalms of lament, confession, or anger? If so, how did you help worshipers understand and process these raw emotions?
- Which methods—including public Scripture reading, music, sermon discussions, drama, visual arts, renewed sacramental practices—have worked best for designing worship that frees people to drop their masks and share their needs with each other and God?
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