June 28, 2026
Summary: This is a sermon on the spiritual practice of lament. Pastor Aaron opens with Psalm 19's cry of abandonment ("How long, O Lord?") and explains that lament—an ancient practice rooted in Jewish and Christian tradition—is a faithful, honest cry to God in the face of suffering, not a sign of despair or weak faith.
He argues that modern culture has largely lost touch with lament, leading people to instead deny pain through blame, addiction, or numbness, which can erode faith by suggesting God doesn't care. Lament, by contrast, isn't about personal sin but about honestly confronting a broken world that doesn't match God's intended "good" creation—whether through global suffering like war and poverty, or personal struggles like illness, loss, and financial anxiety.
Drawing on the psalm, Aaron outlines a three-part model for lament: voicing complaint to God, petitioning for God's intervention, and ultimately expressing trust in God's mercy—even when circumstances haven't actually improved. This doesn't always resolve suffering, but reflects a hope that isn't rational, a hope grounded instead, in faith that God remains present and faithful through pain. The sermon closes by tying this to the Easter story, suggesting that resurrection power is discovered within sorrow and suffering, not apart from it.
I speak to you today in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
How long, O Lord?
will you forget me for ever?
how long will you hide your face from me?
How long shall I have perplexity in my mind,
and grief in my heart, day after day?
how long shall my enemy triumph over me?
On the surface, this isn’t a very comforting passage from Scripture, is it? This morning our psalm is a prayer to God for help. But it’s not just any kind of prayer. It’s an example of something called “lament”.
Many of us are unfamiliar with lament. Or if we are, we associate the word with catastrophes. A mother inconsolable at the death of her child, for example. Or the aftermath of a hurricane or an airplane crash.
And those are things we lament. But lament is more than our response to a sudden, extreme event. And although lament seems like a downer, it’s actually vital to a healthy spiritual life. So today I want to talk about lament – what it is, and what it isn’t, and why it’s an important spiritual practice.
Lament is an ancient spiritual practice that Christians, and our Jewish ancestors, have practiced for thousands of years. It’s the cry of the exiles who, feeling abandoned by God, demanded “Where are you, Lord?” They are the prayers of people who are bothered by God’s bad sense of timing: “Why are you taking so long? Don’t you see what’s happening?”
Lament, though, seems to have fallen by the wayside in our culture. It feels jarring, especially if our lives are relatively free from tragedy. It’s not acceptable behavior. And so – consciously or unconsciously – we look for ways to avoid the need to lament. Maybe, for instance, we play the blame game – taking the problem that’s causing us pain and blaming “someone else” for it. There’s no shortage of boogeymen.
Or we can deny that there’s any pain at all. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think about the ways we try to deny pain and sorrow. It can be alcohol or drugs. Sometimes it’s compulsive shopping or excessive gambling or some other addictive or destructive behavior.
When we walk down these paths, instead lamenting to God, we become numb. Numb to our own pain, and the pain of others, and the sorrow of the world. And in that numbness, we start to believe that God might not be involved in life at its worst. Our spirits rot with the heartbreak and anguish and anger that comes when we start to believe that God might not really care, after all. And that is a sure-fire recipe for losing our faith.
Importantly, lament is not about our sinfulness. It’s not about how we’ve failed to love God and love our neighbor. Lament instead faces the reality that the world is broken in ways that are beyond our ability to control or fix. The reality that a broken world can break us.
We lament because we see and experience sadness and sickness and agony every single day. Wars in foreign lands. Stories of poverty and neglect and unspeakable violence. But the brokenness is close to home, too. We suffer with cancer or the ills of aging. Our neighbors lose their house in a fire. Our communities are riven by anxiety and conflict. Young people face financial stress over the cost of higher education, housing affordability, and an unstable job market. All of us, no doubt, could add to the list.
But, my friends, take heart. Because while lament confronts brokenness, it is not despair. While lament is an expression of sorrow, it is not a shriek into the void. Lament is the prayer of those who are deeply disturbed by the way things are – who know that the world as it is does not match God’s vision for the creation that God called “good”.
Lament is deeply faithful. And so we need to reclaim and engage this spiritual practice both individually and as a Christian community – because our faith has to help us give meaning to all the parts of our lives. The good, the bad, and the ugly. The things we do here have to matter. Because without the fruits of lament, we can easily find ourselves lost when the time comes – as it inevitably will.
The good news is that our psalm today is a great model for how to lament in three easy steps. So when you’re lamenting, read Psalm 19.
First – we offer our complaint. We honestly, faithfully bring our pain to God. You have forgotten me, O Lord, our psalm writer says. There is grief in my heart as my enemy triumphs over me.
Next – we petition God. What does the psalmist ask for? That God would intervene – that God would turn back toward us – that God would set aside God’s anger and answer our prayer.
Finally – we express our trust in God. “I trust in your mercy”, the psalmist says, “and my heart is joyful because of your saving help.”
Moving from complaint to trust does not mean the crisis is over. Things may not be better. But expressing our trust in God signals that, even the midst of crisis, our faith includes hoping in and clinging to the promise that God is faithful to the end. That God is faithful even when there is no outside, rational reason for hope. Because true hope – that God’s saving help makes life possible even in the face of death– is never rational.
Today’s Psalm – and the spiritual practice of lament itself – demands that we be honest about what is real in the lives of the faithful. That pain is often placed next to praise. The suffering is often placed next to glory. That hurt is often placed next to hope. We are simultaneously people who bear the cross and people who rejoice in the resurrection.
As we practice lament, we come to discover how the story of Jesus shapes our lives. Our spirits delight to discover – as the dear ones at the tomb on Easter morning did – that the power of the resurrection is found in the very midst of our pain and sorrow.
Amen.