Evoking Lament

Evoking Lament
Author: Eva Harasta
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2009-10-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567553841

Harasta and Brock show how lament seems to introduce notes of mistrust into an otherwise confident relationship with faith, God and His will. In prayer all experiences may be brought to God in openness and trust. Yet lament seems to introduce notes of mistrust into a relationship properly characterized by confident faith in God and His will. Sustained attention to lament presents a challenge to theological reflection in reminding it of the acuteness of the experience of suffering and evil. This volume suggests that a robust concept and practice of lament is an appropriate response to questions of evil and suffering in its refusal to close off questions that cannot and should not be closed. Lament takes place in the eye of the storm of theodicy, and when the distinct content of Christian lament is discovered here the question of theodicy is transformed. The first section reflects on the anthropological conditions of lament, describing it as a hermeneutic for negotiating adverse experiences that transcends the simple opposition of innocent suffering and guilt. The second section reflects on why and how lament has faded from modern theological thought that is over reliant on systematic accounts of evil and whose abstractions have drifted free of religious experience. The third section develops an understanding of trust that includes expressions of lament while not sanitizing its rawness. The final section inquires after the distinct Christian profile of lament. Lament, even as an experience of isolation, stands within the believing community and its traditions. Moreover, because Christian lament is based on Christ's passion and resurrection, Christ endorses and shapes the believers' lament as he shapes their praise.

Practicing Lament

Practicing Lament
Author: Rebekah Eklund
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 86
Release: 2021-02-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725272601

In a faith focused on resurrection hope, patient endurance, and victory in Christ, is there any room for pain, doubt, and anger? In Scripture, lament is the prayer that makes that room. Not only is lament one of the most common forms of prayer in the Old Testament, it's also woven deeply into the fabric of the New Testament and the Christian way. Lament is the cry for all those who ache over the way things are but aren't content to let them stay that way. It's the prayer for all the ways that the kingdom has not yet come, in the hope that God's justice and peace will prevail--someday.

Lament-Driven Preaching

Lament-Driven Preaching
Author: Eliana Ah-Rum Ku
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2024-03-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666774316

This book challenges Christian communities to engage in lament—a mode of existence characterized by impassioned expression, witnessing, and personal or social protest in the face of evil and injustice, reflecting a profound yearning for God’s saving presence. Divine lament responds to, and expresses solidarity with, human suffering, unveiling multiple facets of God’s image and demonstrating a profound sense of divine compassion. Drawing on the Book of Lamentations, Korean concepts related to suffering (han and hanpuri), the Paschal Triduum narratives, and recent homiletic discourses on suffering, the author investigates how complex issues related to grief and hope can be addressed in preaching without diminishing the harsh reality of affliction. Designed to assist preachers, this book encourages a more intentional approach to addressing suffering, specifically by advocating for lament as a transitional space between affliction and hope. Furthermore, readers are invited to contemplate the significance of the church, which, within a world in decline, embodies the body of Christ, manifesting both the demise and resurrection of God.

Reading Romans as Lament

Reading Romans as Lament
Author: Channing L. Crisler
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2016-04-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498232175

Reading Romans as Lament examines how and why Paul uses such a high volume of Old Testament lament in his letter to the Romans. Lament is not merely a poignant cry of distress, but a distinct form of prayer scattered across the pages of the Old Testament. It contains a distinct literary footprint and theology. Although often overlooked, Romans contains a great deal of this prayer form through its various lament citations and echoes. When these citations and echoes are heard, it impacts the interpretation of the letter's argumentation and sheds historical light on suffering in the early church. Building on the work of both Old Testament scholarship and recent trends in Pauline Studies, most notably Claus Westermann and Richard B. Hays, this book explores how Paul uses the language and theology of Old Testament lament to address the tension between what his gospel promises and the pain his listeners experience. The echoes of lament in Romans indicate that suffering stems from various sources, but they share a common concern with divine wrath. The experience of pain, including concern over God's wrath, is a reality for the "righteous" in Rome. Paul consistently answers their cries of distress with the gospel.

Spiritual Complaint

Spiritual Complaint
Author: Miriam J Bier
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2014-01-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0227902262

Every life, and every land and people, has reasons for lament and complaint. This collection of essays explores the biblical foundations and the contemporary resonances of lament literature. This new work presents a variety of responses to tragedy and a world out of joint are explored. These responses arise from Scripture, from within the liturgy of the church, and from beyond the church; in contemporary life (the racially conflicted land of Aotearoa- New Zealand, secular music concerts and cyber-space).The book thus reflects upon theological and pastoral handling of such experience, as it bridges these different worlds. It brings together in conversation specialists from different fields of academy and church to provide a resource for integrating faithand scholarship in dark places.

Bridging Scripture and Moral Theology

Bridging Scripture and Moral Theology
Author: Michael B. Cover
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2019-07-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498567762

This book comprises essays honoring the life and work of Yiu Sing Lúcás Chan, S.J., who died unexpectedly on May 19, 2015, at the end of his first year as a member of the faculty in the Department of Theology at Marquette University. The editors intend to commemorate Chan’s brief but productive career by furthering the critical conversations he started. The essays included thus touch on aspects of the brilliant young Jesuit’s wide-ranging work in the fields of scriptural research, moral theology, and systematic theology. Each essay either engages Chan’s scholarship directly or seeks to advance his design to bridge the disciplinary gaps between scriptural research and constructive theology. This book includes contributions by noted Roman Catholic theologians James F. Keenan, S.J., Bryan N. Massingale, and John R. Donohue, S.J., as well as two original poems by his Marquette colleagues dedicated to Lúcás.

Permission to Grieve

Permission to Grieve
Author: Toby D. Castle
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2024-07-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

Being a follower of Jesus in the evangelical community in America is equated to a posture, practice, and pursuit of triumphalism. Followers of Jesus have misunderstood, maybe even lost, the great value of public and private lament. Lament is incongruent with a theology of continual and ongoing triumphalism. Yet, suffering, loss, and lament permeate Scripture and the human experience. To lament is to cry out to God with our doubts and to bring complaints against God. It is a posture and practice of worship and surrender that helps followers of Jesus wrestle, engage, process, and understand loss, creating a sacred space for the suffering voice to speak. Lament is a practice absent in the church that is recognized and understood as a way of naming grief and suffering, of standing and hoping in the midst of ruins. In the context of San Francisco, the practice and theology of lament in the lives of those who follow Jesus becomes a parody of cultured syllogisms and hyper-vanquishing that forms a community frail to moments of liminality, anxious in seasons of uncertainty, and ill-equipped to deal with the obscurities of everyday life.

Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda
Author: Marcel Uwineza, SJ
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2023-07-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1647123461

The first comprehensive examination of the Catholic Church’s role in the genocide against the Tutsi and its attempts at reconciliation From April to July 1994, more than a million people were killed during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Tutsi men, women, and children were slaughtered by Hutu extremists in churches and school buildings, and their lifeless bodies were left rotting in these sacred places under the deep silence of church authorities. Pope Francis’s apology more than twenty years later presents the opportunity to reimagine the essence of the Church, the missionary enterprise, theology in its multiple dimensions, the purification of memory, and the place of human dignity in the Catholic faith. Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda critically examines the Church’s responsibility in Rwanda’s tragic history and opens the dialogue to construct a new theology. Contributors to this volume offer moving personal testimonies of their journeys to reconciling the evil that has marred the Church’s image: bystanders’ indifference to the suffering, despite their claim as members of the Church. The first volume of its kind, Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda is a necessary step toward the Rwandan Catholic Church and humanity’s restoration of fundamental peace and lasting reconciliation. Catholic clergy, lay people, and human rights advocates will benefit from this examination of ecclesial moral failure and subsequent reconciliatory efforts.

Lamentations Through the Centuries

Lamentations Through the Centuries
Author: Paul M. Joyce
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-06-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1119673879

Covering a landscape of literary, theological and cultural creativity, the authors explore the variety of interpretations inspired by Lamentations. The book explores a examples ranging from the Dead Sea Scrolls; Yehudah Halevy; John Calvin; and composer, Thomas Tallis; through to the interpretations of Marc Chagall; contemporary novelist, Cynthia Ozick; and Zimbabwean junk sculpture. It deploys "reception exegesis", a new genre of commentary that creatively blends reception history and biblical exegesis. --From publisher's description.

Prophetic Lament

Prophetic Lament
Author: Soong-Chan Rah
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2015-09-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830897615

The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Soong-Chan Rah's prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. Hear the prophet's lament as the necessary corrective for Christianity's future.