Remembrance and Lament - Calvary Baptist Cobourg

Yesterday was Remembrance Day and I hope that you had an opportunity to connect with a community service at one of the cenotaphs in our various towns in Northumberland County.  

Remembrance Day is something that our whole community observes, and it's something that we as a church family take time out for as well.  

If you were to take a pew bible, one of those ones in the rack in front of you, and just let it fall open somewhere in the middle, it would probably land in the book of Psalms, and the chances are good that it would land on a psalm of lament. One third of the psalms are psalms of lament. Lament is something that we as a culture do not do particularly well. It's something that, as evangelicals, we don't necessarily want to engage with. We're not comfortable with lament sometimes because we are evangelicals—we are “people of good news.” We are filled with the joy that comes from that good news.  

And in our wider culture—more so now than ever—we are not great at being sad. We are very good at being angry. We are very good at staying angry. We are very good at feeling offended, but we're not great at feeling sadness and feeling lament. Because lament, as it is taught to us in the Scripture, is a complex thing. It is a complex emotional landscape. The writers of the psalms wrote these brilliant, brilliant poems that sometimes make us uncomfortable, but that provide us with a framework for lament.  

Lament contains elements of grief and gratitude, of complaint and trust.  

Grief and sadness over what has happened and what we've lost.  

Gratitude for what God has done and is doing. 

Complaint where we vent, and we name what is wrong, what is unjust. What is violent, what is oppressive. 

And trust, where we come back to God and say, “Still... Regardless... Nevertheless, I trust in you.” 

So today, as we as a church family take time out to remember Remembrance Day, it is a time for us to lament. It is a time for us as a church family to lament the lives that were lost. To express our gratitude to God and also to the people who fought. It's a time for us to speak our complaint, to recognize the pain of war, and that the world ought not to be this way. And it's time for us to be reminded not only of our trust in God, but of the trust that has been placed in us by previous generations to continue the fight against evil.  

Yesterday at the cenotaph Art, who will come and lead us in a few minutes and who is the chaplain of local Legion, spoke about the fact that there's nobody now living who remembers World War One. There are few who remain who remember World War Two. But there are people in our generation who will remember Ukraine, who will remember the Middle East. There will likely always be a generation who remembers war, who experienced war.  

So as Art comes to lead us in our time of remembrance, I encourage you to fill this time with prayer: prayer to God, prayer in your heart to remember and to lament all that we remember together as a church family this morning. 

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