During this season of Lent, our church is focusing on Lamenting. We have explored a variety of forms and kinds of lament. We have talked about and experienced the need for lament. We have examined how when we don’t lament, we often create conflict instead. Yesterday we participated in personal lament. We spent time considering how we destroy ourselves and others. We considered our regrets. Ours is a church that does not have a weekly prayer of confession so I wasn’t sure how people would respond to focusing on personal lament and considering where we have gone wrong and how we continue to do so in some cases. This is a congregation that is as progressive theologically as any I have ever served and at the same time is spiritually very deep (though you might not hear them describe themselves that way). They responded with great care and serious reflection to the question of how we would destroy ourselves and others. As I looked around the sanctuary, I saw more tears than usual and the usual tears were coming harder and faster.
What became clear to me during and after yesterday’s service is how many people have not been able to forgive themselves for things they have either done or they think they have done. There is the case of the parent who blames herself for “ruining” her kids’ lives. There is the son who blames himself for his father’s suicide even though the son was just a child. There is the spouse who cannot live with what was said or not said in the final days and moments of the loved one’s life. There is the teacher who still carries the guilt for the student who was kicked out of class and then dropped out of school. There is the alcoholic who still drinks and carries the shame. There is the friend who revealed a secret and lost a friendship because of it who has never been able to let go of the guilt. There is the sister who blames herself for her brother’s death even though she could not have prevented it. Add to the tragic situations all of the everday situations in which words are said that cannot be taken back, actions are committed that cannot be reversed and patterns are set that are nearly impossible to break, and you have a mass of people who carry tremendous burdens every day because they are unable to forgive themselves.
Why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we insist on carrying guilt around as though it is a necessary part of daily living, almost like air in that we have such a need for it? What are we getting out of carrying this kind of guilt around? We must be getting something. Is it like penance for us? If we carry a heavy enough burden maybe we will satisfy the penalty for whatever we have done? What would happen, pray tell, if we just set those burdens down and released ourselves from guilt? Would life be too good, too enjoyable, too free?
Christ came to set us free – free from needing to oppress, free from being oppressed, free from the burdens of guilt and shame and humiliation. Christ came to set us free from ourselves. We can only be free if we will lay down the burdens we insist on carrying with us.
Two questions for you to consider this week: How would you destroy yourself and those around you? What burdens do you carry and what keeps you from setting them down?