#soong-chan rah quotes

[persephones-fruit]

Lament is important truth telling. Lament acknowledges that something is wrong with the world. Lamentations offers a real view of what has happened. It does not sugar coat the fact that God’s people are culpable in a corporate sin that has led to the fall of Jerusalem. It is hard truth telling that we are the reason for God’s judgment. We are the ones that have sinned before God. By telling the truth about racism, we acknowledge that our own strength is unable to fix the problem. We acknowledge that even as we have created the problem, God is needed to bring hope. Telling the truth about our tainted racial history and our deeply troubled racial social reality does not undermine our gospel, it moves us closer to the God who redeems.

Soong-Chan Rah

[empty-church]

Learning Lament: The Feminine City - #ec2dot03

The time has arrived for Another Empty Conversation - a show that lets you eavesdrop on a conversation about faith and following Jesus. We talk about our faith so you can talk about yours.

Welcome back to season 2, episode 3 of Another Empty Conversation. Today we are continuing our discussion on Learning Lament: Faith and Sadness of Biblical proportions. And we turn our attention to the City.

In the book of Lamentations, the city of Jerusalem plays a central character in Jeremiah’s tale of sadness and destruction.

But Jeremiah doesn’t talk about the city as an abstract geographic location. It was not a place that was simply located on a map. The city represents more than a place. It represents the people who live in that place.

But how Jeremiah talks about Jerusalem is very critical to our understanding of the suffering of the people living in Jerusalem.

By giving Jerusalem a voice, it should teach us to listen to the cries of the oppressed and down-trodden. To give Jerusalem the voice of a sexually assaulted woman should make us pause and reflect on the current social climate that is going on in the United States.

Without the feminine voice of Jerusalem, we can’t understand the voice of the city and we can’t understand the book of the Lamentations.

Is it possible that without a strong feminine voice in Christianity we can’t understand the Bible and God’s message of redemption?

These insights will guide our discussion today as will our Focus 5 Questions of the week.

This Week's Focus 5:

The sexually assaulted woman (Lamentations 1:8-10) is a powerful image of shame and distress. How does this description make you feel?

The voice of the oppressed and abused often gets silenced especially if it is the voice of a woman (Brock Turner rape case). Jeremiah instead gives a loud voice to the oppressed women. What can we learn from this?

Women have classically played the role of the ones being rescued - in the Bible and in popular culture - is this a bad thing? a good thing?

Some would argue that the story of the Bible is the story of men encountering God and therefore women play a secondary role. How would you respond to someone who held these views?

How has the silencing of women in the church hurt the proclamation of the gospel?

Closing Quote

"The book of Lamentations gives us a clear example of the necessity of women’s voices among God’s people. In these passages in Lamentations 1, women’s voices stand front and center. Lamentations does not survive without the voice of women. Unfortunately, in recent years, the American evangelical community has attempted to silence the voices of women. By silencing these voices, we have an inadequate understanding of Lamentations and the biblical message as a whole."  -- Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

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[persephones-fruit]

The American church avoids lament. The power of lament is minimized and the underlying narrative of suffering that requires lament is lost. But absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart forget. The absence of lament in the liturgy of the American church results in the loss of memory. We forget the necessity of lamenting over suffering and pain. We forget the reality of suffering and pain.

Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

[persephones-fruit]

In the American social-historical reality, there has been a death. Whether it is the actual death of a teen, the death of identity, the death of a cultural history, the death of dignity, the death of community — the racial history of America is marked by death. Lamentations calls us to deal with this reality. We cannot move too quickly to our triumphant cries of victory over race when there are still dead bodies around.

Soong-Chan Rah

[persephones-fruit]

Lament compels us to hear the voice of the marginalized. Lamentations is characterized by a myriad of voices offering reflections on the tragic fall of Jerusalem. One could argue that Lamentations offers the most feminine voice of all the books of the Bible. Rather than the strong and the powerful, Lamentations elevates the voice of the widows and the orphans. The marginalized voices hold the truth. American Christians with power and privilege are often too quick to speak and too slow to listen. Many Christians have already determined that this incident was not about race. Some argue that issues like abortion and gay marriage more accurately reflect the spiritual condition of American society. Listening to the voices of a community that has been historically marginalized is an important element of lament.

Soong-Chan Rah

[persephones-fruit]

‘’A Time to Mourn’’ by Soong-Chan Rah

https://sojo.net/articles/remembering-trayvon/time-mourn

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The painful stories of the suffering of the African American community, in particular, remain hidden. Often, American Christians may even deny the narrative of suffering, claiming that things weren’t so bad for the slaves or that at least the African Americans had the chance to convert to Christianity. The story of suffering is often swept under the rug in order not to create discomfort or bad feelings. Lament is denied because the dead body in front of us is being denied.

Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

[persephones-fruit]

The tendency to view the holistic work of the church as the action of the privileged toward the marginalized often derails the work of true community healing. Ministry in the urban context, acts of justice and racial reconciliation require a deeper engagement with the other—an engagement that acknowledges suffering rather than glossing over it.

Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

[empty-church]

Learning Lament: The Grammar Of Grief - #ec2dot04

Welcome back to season 2, episode 4 of Another Empty Conversation.

Today we are continuing our discussion on Learning Lament: Faith and Sadness of Biblical proportions. On this episode, we are calling on the Grammar Nerds and looking at some of the linguistics of the book of Lamentations.

Don’t worry, we won’t be diagraming sentences or parsing verbs, but we are going to look at the way Jeremiah structured the 5 chapters of his lament filled letter while looking for some clues to help us through times of grief and mourning.

If you had listened to our introductory episode “Preparing Lament” you will remember that Jeremiah used the literary device of forming an acrostic from the Hebrew alphabet. While this is something difficult to pick up on reading English translations, the Israelites would have immediately picked up on it.

What are some of the reasons why Jeremiah might have chosen to use this method?

Was he using a memory aid to help the people remember what he said? Or could it be that he was trying to subtly bring about some structure in the midst of all chaos?

Don’t worry, I promise you this discussion will be more exciting than your High School English class…unless you are into all those participles and tenses. Then you will feel right at home!

So before I get into any more trouble with Mrs. Comfort let’s get to this week’s focus 5.

This Week's Focus 5:

Acrostics are popular memory devices. Do you remember any acrostics from school?

If Jeremiah chose to use acrostics as memory devices then he would intend his audience to remember some of the toughest moments of their life. Our culture wants to forget painful moments ASAP. What are the positives and negatives of remembering painful moments in our lives?

Others view Jeremiah’s use of acrostics as a way to subtly implement order in chaos and to provide boundaries and guidelines where the truth of a situation can be expressed. Of these two options, which do you think is more accurate?

One view of the acrostic method is that Jeremiah intended to remind the people of their journey of sin, judgment, repentance, and eventual restoration. There was beginning (Aleph) and there will be an end (Tav). How would this view be beneficial for Christians today?

Is there a way that we could implement a structure to help us get through our own tough times? What might it look like?

Closing Quote:

"Lament presents the possibility of an order ordained by God in the midst of a somber reality...The presence of the Church can serve as an expression of security that God is in charge of the cosmic order beyond the turbulence of reality."  -- Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

Another Empty Conversation Podcast

iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud

Subscribe to our bi-weekly podcast where friends gather to talk about faith and following Jesus on the six days between Sundays when the church buildings are empty. Iron sharpens iron.