Lament. The Essay.

I want to share with you today some writing, some recent and some not, that I think communicates a lot of what I've been learning and working out here lately.

First is an essay. It is long, but please read it through. It is meant to be the introduction to a collection of short stories I am working on, hence the mention of stories in the second half.

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The original version of this essay was written in the spring of 2001. It is now early 2025, and I have grown and learned much. I am continuing to learn, of course, and to Become that which I was created to be. This rewritten essay retains the message and some of the imagery and phrases, but I hope it more clearly communicates the message of this lament without muddying the theology.

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My heart hurts tonight. It's knotted in upon itself, clenched tightly in the grip of the One who sends the tears to run coursing down my cheeks, welling from the store of the great love He bestows upon me.

Whoever said love hurts is right.

The tears remain within tonight. They spill over the fingers holding my heart, drip out from beneath to run down His arm and land on the ground at my feet.

I do not cry for myself alone.

These tears are mine, but they are not of me. No, I am crying tonight for God, for the world, for all people, be they enslaved by sin or enslaved by Christ.

They are tears of grief, of sorrow, of longing for the lost.   The pain is real - that of a heart broken in two over the waywardness of the saved.

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How often do we remember to come before the Lord our God on our hands and knees, trusting not in the strength of our will or our deeds to save us from His wrath, but in the love and mercy of Christ?   "We are not worthy So much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.   But thou art the same Lord, Whose property is always to have mercy..." (Book of Common Prayer, ©1962, The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, p. 83.)

Somehow we miss the awe and wonder and terror that should be a part of our relationship with God.

I fear that at times we become complacent, comfortable, familiar.

There is something almost ridiculous in the way we come to God, whining and begging, confident in our own worth and how we deserve this or that.  We 'deserve' nothing.  (Exodus 19:5)

Everything we have in this world and the next comes from Him.   It is only through His grace that we have anything of value.

Grace sent Christ to the cross; mercy allows us the certain hope of Heaven.  (I Timothy 1.13,14)

Don't get me wrong here; I'm not saying that we're just supposed to be scared of God, and that's it.  No, if we spend our lives afraid of our Creator, we will miss out on a lot of what He has in store for us.

But there is a certain amount of respect that His presence should command, and all too often, we do not show this respect.  (Exodus 3.5,6)

We come before God singing our love and praises for who He is and what He has done, confident that we are clean and pure in His sight.  (Romans 3.20a)

But are we really dressed in those robes of righteousness?   (Zechariah 3.1-3; Revelation 7.9)  Or have we allowed them to get dusty with the sin of our world--our sin--and forgotten to clean ourselves again?  We need to come to the cross humbly, in the knowledge of just how inconsequential and unworthy we really are, crawling on our knees through the mud... look up through tear-filled eyes at our Lord and Saviour as He dies--for us, even as the sin is hardening on our clothes... and bathe in the cleansing power of His blood.

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I think we forget that God is three distinct Persons.   He is not just the terrible, powerful being of the Old Testament.  He is not just the friendly, frail-yet-strong Man of the Gospels.  He is not just the rushing wind of Acts.

No, God was, is, and shall forever be all three of these.

We do not need to live our lives in fear.  God is not Zeus, sitting in his mountaintop palace, looking for places to throw his thunderbolts.

Neither should we dare to always treat God as casually as we treat our friends and family members.  Christ is friend, lover, brother.  We can tell Him all, bring our problems and weaknesses to Him, and rejoice with Him in our triumphs.

God is not dead, He is not asleep.  He still sends visions and prophecies to His children via the Spirit.  He still performs miracles in the name of His Son.  He is a living, acting entity on us and in our lives.  He is not to be worshipped only on Sunday mornings at church.  We should not save our prayers only for when we need things.

No, we should be worshipping and praising and praying every moment of our lives!  (Ephesians 6.18)  The Creator of all that is deserves nothing less.

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Jesus loved everyone.  He spent all of His time on earth with the dregs of society--the people nobody wanted to have anything to do with.  He touched sick people (Mark 1.40-42; Matthew 8.2-4; Luke 17.11-19), talked of God with people who had no idea what or who God really was (all the Gospels), and He was a friend to the friendless (John 4.1-26).

Above and beyond accepting His friendship, I believe we are called to share that friendship, that love, with others, with everyone we come into contact with in a given day.

Sometimes a smile and a wave from a stranger will make someone's day.  The girl you sit beside on the bus may be lonely and in need of some kind of decent human contact.  The loud, rude bully probably has never had anyone really care about him.  And the disruptive drunk deserves just as much consideration and dignity as anyone else in your life.

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When Christians get together, 'church' becomes a social event.  We say we come to worship, but do we really?  How many of us attend events simply to hang out with our friends?

We turn against outsiders who threaten (challenge) our sense of what is right and good, and we argue with insiders who try to tell us--show us--where we have strayed from the path set before us.

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Here ends the acceptable sections of the original essay. What follows is my current understanding of these concepts. I continue to learn, but I hope that this further exposition will help in your understanding of this Lament.

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I write about my personal faith journey on a blog I called "In the Mist of the Becoming", a happy accident as I meant to say "midst". The Becoming is what I call the process of Christian transformation, from who we currently are to who God created us to be. The "mist" here is a symbol of the lack of knowledge we possess regarding who we are going to be at the end of this process. On the blog, I break down the different ideas I encounter as I read Christian literature and Scripture, and I emphasize the impact these ideas have on my faith and my relationship with God.

This Lament is part of my Becoming. It is a set of little stories, about regular people, regular Christians, and how their lives change (or don't) and how they change the world around them (or don't). I lament the world, our current culture, the sin that surrounds us, yes. But I also lament the Church, which has somehow managed to degrade itself, to stoop to resemble so much our secular culture that there is hardly any difference. We don't distinguish ourselves from non-Christians. Christian culture is just as nasty, just as damaging, just as full of itself as the general culture. We have created for ourselves a "Christian" culture that parallels the secular world, and that makes it so much easier for post-modernism to seep into our theology.

That is not okay.

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In 1896, Charles Sheldon published a novel called In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? 100 years later, his great-grandson, Garrett W. Sheldon, published a (much shorter) modern retelling of the original novel. "WWJD" became a Big Thing for a while.

But I don't know that this is the correct question to ask.

Rather, we should perhaps be asking "What would Jesus have me do?" because that is a very different thing.

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We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, Trusting in our own righteousness, But in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy So much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, Whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, So to eat the Flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, And to drink his Blood, That our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, And our souls washed through his most precious Blood, And that we may evermore dwell in him, And he in us. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, ©1962, The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, pp. 83-84.)

This beautiful prayer is called "the Prayer of Humble Access", and it is placed following the Eucharistic Prayer and prior to actually partaking of the Host. It is not included in the order of service for the Celebration of the Eucharist given in the Book of Alternative Services (BAS).

There is a balance to be navigated, between beating ourselves up and uplifting ourselves more than we ought. We are God's beloved children because we have reached out to meet Him and accept His merciful gift of salvation. That doesn't magically make us righteous; the Becoming is a continual striving for that status, and we need to remember that we are sinful beings who have nothing without God.

Remember that salvation is undeserved, that we are spiritually bereft without Christ. Acknowledging our lowly status does not take away from our status as God's children.

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Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men: We acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we from time to time most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings. Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve and please thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, ©1962, The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, p. 77.)

Repentance is our best response to our sin. It implies a turning away from sin, towards righteousness. Grace is how God deals with our sin; it is Christ crucified. We tend to overemphasize grace, though, and when we do that we are prone to ignore sin. How often do we truly acknowledge and repent of our sin? How sorry are we, truly, for our wrongdoing?

We cannot be sinless. We will always fall short of the Glory of God (Romans 3.23). It is only because of Jesus' sacrifice that we can hope to come into His presence. He died for us; He died because of us. We should be contrite, sorrowful, repentant.

It is human nature to resist this guilt and condemnation. We don't want to believe that we could possibly be bad, wrong, worthless. We are the heroes of our own stories, after all. And it is true that this can be taken to extremes. Of course we are beloved of God, of course we are His children. And of course we are unworthy of that love, of being His children. It is only through His grace and mercy that we are able to even begin to come near to Him.

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I think that the desire to play down our unworthiness is understandable, but I also think that it does us all a disservice. When we fail to acknowledge our sin, when we fail to repent and turn towards true righteousness, when we hold ourselves and others above considering ourselves as we truly are, we fail to glorify God and all that He has done for us.

For where people are put down and called unworthy and made to feel less than by the world, there is no redemption available to them. The world doesn't just hold people accountable for their wrongs, it crushes them beneath the weight thereof. And the beauty of faith in Christ is that we come to Him in the knowledge that we are unworthy and less than, and He lifts us up to stand alongside Him, or He carries us when we need carried, because He loves us. Jesus re-forms us when we repent, and we do not need to be crushed by our sin.

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So many Christians today are lacking in a right attitude towards other people. We are called to be gentle, to be humble, considerate, courteous, self-controlled. To me, this means respect. Respect other peoople. Meet them where they're at. Treat them well. Be kind, be courteous. I don't think this means just letting people walk all over us. But do acknowledge that God created all of us, and that this requires us to show respect. We oughtn't to disparage or destruct that which God has created.

It's another tight balance, of course. We need to respect others but also refrain from granting them too much power over our lives. We should be compassionate to the needy, regardless of their faith or lack thereof. Remember that we live in a fallen world, and that means that people's lives are fallen and less than what they could have. Caring for fallen people is that outward sign of an inward grace that should mark the lives of Christians.

Compassion doesn't mean avoiding discussion of sin, though. I don't think it's possible to have a true, living faith in and relationship with Christ without first recognizing and repenting of (and continuing to do both) our sin.

What is possible is adhering to the principles of Christianity and caring for others without condoning sin. We don't need to preach fire and brimstone and condemnation to get the point across. After all, sin is sin is sin, and none of us is free of it. So we should come to one another and to the world with humility, acknowledging the ways in which we fail to live up to God's standards and encouraging others to do the same, repenting together and supporting each other to pursue righteousness above all else.

There are three components of righteousness. The first is legal, which is justification. That is Christ crucified, risen, and ascended. He justifies us through His sacrifice. The second is moral, which is our character and our behaviour. Ethics, how we behave in private and in public, these are the things that matter to God. And the third is social, which encompasses much. We should pursue liberation from oppression and promote civil rights, for people are people the world over. We should also pursue justice in legal matters, not revenge. And Christians should be upright citizens, pursuing integrity in business dealings and honour at home and with family. In all cases, righteousness is about the state of our hearts.

We are meant to live life in the open, to be sincere and transparent about our faith and everything else. That certainly doesn't mean that we should share literally everything about our lives with the world, but it does mean that we should do our best to live lives above reproach, to have nothing in our lives that could be used against us and against Christ.

We fail in this, completely, without Him.

Presently, the Church is seen by many as judgmental, hateful, and selfish. I am unsurprised by this. We judge the world (and it is lacking in all ways). We do not express compassion for the needy in the world (instead blaming them for their status or encouraging them to continue in their sin). And we hold up as examples rich, powerful people whose lives contradict the essence of what Christ should be about. We are hypocrites, and the world sees it and is not moved by it.

We must be open and sincere in our expression of faith. This is how we draw others to Christ, how we engender reconciliation. It is not helpful to seek out conflict, though it can be tempting when we feel we are righteously angered.

It is important to hold firm to our faith. We cannot allow the desire to draw in the world, to be compassionate, to convince us to sacrifice purity, doctrine, or our behaviour. Jesus calls us to make drastic changes to our lives, and pretending otherwise--trying to make the gospel palatable to the world--is fraudulent.

And this brings me to my final point, which is much like my first.

We must follow Christ's standards, not those of the world. We must be authentic in our faith, living open, transparent, sincere lives that are characterized by the pursuit of righteousness.

And the world, this broken world in which we live, ought to bring us to our knees daily. We must mourn it. We must pray for it.

And so, I lament the failure of the Church in caring for the world. I lament our failure to meet God's standards, to uphold the Truth laid out in scripture.

We will face torment in this life if we genuinely pursue righteousness in the ways Christ tells us to. The world will not like the example we set. People don't like having their shortcomings illuminated, and the world currently is labouring under the misguided assumption that its values are not shortcomings at all, that all of the ungodly things society promotes will bring happiness and satisfaction and contentment to the populace. This is demonstrably false, but the Church is not offering an acceptable alternative: either it is identical in nature to the world, or it is obviously hypocritical.

This lament is a call to repentance.

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Christians, repent of your sin fully and turn and follow Christ with all of your being.

First, love God with everything you are.

Second, love other people by taking care of them.

Third, Become that which you were created to be.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who was and is and is to come.

Amen.

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And a poem I wrote... oh, 20 years ago.

Sacrifice (2002)

A life laid down for another--for enemies and friends alike
No greater love...

Candlelight reflecting in gold, in red
Precious metal caressing precious blood
We chew the flesh so freely offered
The cost of this feast forgotten in the midst of remembrance
Celebration of the risen Christ become ritual
Lacking meaning
"Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty"

One by one the communicants come forwards
Kneel at the foot of the cross...

Flame an expression of His presence in us
We forget
Though bread must be chewed and wine burns to the stomach
(My body broken, My blood shed)
Symbols of His sacrifice
Death on a cross
We wear so freely on our necks and display on our walls
The instrument of tortuous despairing
Triumph
"Heaven and Earth are filled with His glory, Hosanna in the highest!"

We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth...
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord...
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life...
We believe in the holy, catholic, and apostolic church...

Candle-flame shadows the beauty of death
More than just the empty tomb, the bloody cross
The ascendant Christ
Who sits at His Father's right hand
And weeps for those who do not know Him as He weeps for those who do
For all are lost in our broken world
And all forget each week the cost of the gift He's given us
Eternal life
Love and happiness
Truth
"Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest!"

Singing "Hosanna"s and "Glory to God"s
"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..."

A faint light glows dully, no longer brightly guiding us in
Our debt is worth more than our measly lives
(Our bodies broken, our blood shed)
But these we offer with strings attached in exchange for His suffering
Even as we remember
Proclaim
And await
As it was in the beginning
Is now
And ever shall be
World without end
Amen

"Go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit."
"Thanks be to God. Alleluia!"

And we commence fellowship.

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The foundation was laid so long ago. I hope I can build upon it something that is worthy of the trust God has placed in me.

I will, with God's help.

Peace & Blessings.