Tom Wright on COVID-19: Lament instead of Answers →

This is a (weirdly?) busy time, and I’ve had this post as an open tab for a couple of weeks. It was originally published at the end of March, well before Holy Week. It’s as pertinent now as when it was originally published, and maybe even more prescient as there’s more uncertainty now on the world stage with how we come out of this.

It’s a concise post, and the title gives you what you need to know: “Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronavirus. It's Not Supposed To.”

Wright suggests that the proper reaction for Christians is lament:

But perhaps what we need more than either is to recover the biblical tradition of lament. Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world. It’s bad enough facing a pandemic in New York City or London. What about a crowded refugee camp on a Greek island? What about Gaza? Or South Sudan?

Why lament?

The point of lament, woven thus into the fabric of the biblical tradition, is not just that it’s an outlet for our frustration, sorrow, loneliness and sheer inability to understand what is happening or why. The mystery of the biblical story is that God also laments. Some Christians like to think of God as above all that, knowing everything, in charge of everything, calm and unaffected by the troubles in his world. That’s not the picture we get in the Bible.

So, what is the point?

As the Spirit laments within us, so we become, even in our self-isolation, small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell. And out of that there can emerge new possibilities, new acts of kindness, new scientific understanding, new hope. New wisdom for our leaders? Now there’s a thought.

Small shrines where the presence and healing love of God can dwell…May more followers of Jesus of Nazareth be this.