Lent Day 11… First Sadness, Then Gladness

Today’s Lent post is from Walter Brueggemann’s devotional book, A Way Other Than Our Own.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

—Luke 6.21b, 25b

In his “woe,” Jesus reviews the “laugh now” party. The “laugh now” party consists of those who celebrate the way things are, who benefit from the way things are. The “laugh now” party is filled with buoyancy and confidence, looks extremely well fed, speaks only positively, and sleeps unhindered at night.

Jesus says of the “laugh now” sect: “You will mourn and weep.” You will have your laughter silenced. You will plunge into grief when the bubble bursts, as it surely will. You will face loss, because… Jewish control will not last and because the Empire of Rome, like every empire, will pass away soon. And you will be left bereft.

Mourning and grieving and weeping have to do with relinquishment, about which we are always reluctant. I think, speaking to that point, that the church’s struggle… is about clinging to an old world we could manage wherein we felt safe. We always fight… against relinquishment. It is a common temptation—for nobody I know wants readily to give up what we treasure.

Laugh later! It is an Easter laugh. It is a laugh when all the powers of death‚ that come in the form of greed, violence, anxiety, exploitation—have been defeated.

The church is that body of disciples who have relinquished enough of that old world of death—that is, greed, violence, exploitation—that we can watch and notice the coming of God’s new rule that is an Easter arrangement.

What if the church is the place in town that refuses to participate in the “laugh now” movement of buoyancy, prosperity, and sureness? What if the church becomes the venue for processing loss and acknowledging grief for a world that is gone? It is precisely such processing of grief that permits hope.

Prayer: Strengthen us to relinquish the old world, O God, that we might receive the gift of hope and joy on the other side of grief. Amen.