Honest Sadness

Lament in a Pandemic Age

John Holdsworth

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781789591613
• eBook ISBN: 9781789591637
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In the present century, from the twin towers to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is much to disturb our securities and beliefs. The Old Testament presents us with similar situations of bewildered suffering, and one persistent theme of response is that of lament.

Honest Sadness examines lament as a means of articulating faithful incomprehension, and as a resource for what have been called communities of honest sadness. It traces the development of lament through the Old Testament and questions why it is apparently absent from both the New Testament and much of the life of the Church today, at just the point where many think it could be most useful.

Those who work with disabled people and with abuse victims, for example, are realizing the importance of lament. Liturgists are wondering how it can be reintroduced into worship, and whether it is legitimate to do so. Biblical scholars are looking afresh at how and why lament died out.

The book brings these various questions and insights together, suggesting that perhaps the early Church got it wrong about lament, and attempting new definitions for communities of honest sadness. It is written not only from the perspective of lived experience in the wider world in such places as Beirut and Bosnia, but also from the intensely painful personal experience of the author's own bereavement. It will be of interest to all who are reflecting theologically seriously on our times, or helping others to do so.

Notes

1 Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home: Preaching among Exiles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), p. 4.

2 Dorothee Sölle, Suffering (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 70.

3 Kathleen M. O’Connor, Lamentations and the Tears of the World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003) p. 110.

4 Brueggemann, Cadences of Home, p. 5.

5 O’Connor, Lamentations, p. 94.

6 O’Connor, Lamentations, p. 96.

7 O’Connor, Lamentations, p. 99.

8 Nicholas Wolterstorff, cited in O’Connor, Lamentations, p. 101.

9 O’Connor, Lamentations, p. 107.

10 O’Connor, Lamentations, p. 92.

11 O’Connor, Lamentations, p. 128.

12 O’Connor, Lamentations, p. 133.

13 O’Connor, Lamentations, p. 128.

14 Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1981).

15 Westermann, Praise and Lament, p. 230.

16 Westermann, Praise and Lament, p. 274.

17 F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Lamentations, Interpretation Commentaries (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2002).

18 Dobbs-Allsopp, Lamentations, p. 25.

19 Quoted in Sölle, Suffering, p. 9.

20 King Lear, Act 4, Scene 1.

21 Norman Whybray, Job (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), p. 37.

22 Whybray, Job, p. 40.

23 Ellen van Wolde, Mr and Mrs Job (London: SCM Press, 1997), p. 36.

24 Van Wolde, Mr and Mrs Job, p. 107.

25 Brueggemann, Cadences of Home, p. 4.

26 Brueggemann, Cadences of Home, p. 5.

27 John Holdsworth, SCM Studyguide The Old Testament (London: SCM Press, 2005), pp. 99–107.

28 As quoted in Glen Creeber, Dennis Potter: Between Two Worlds—A Critical Reassessment (London: Macmillan, 1998). Creeber goes on to suggest that Potter believed “[religion’s] role, if it has a role at all, should be in recognizing the horror of the human condition rather than trying to offer illusory and false reassurances”. Potter also said, on a radio programme in 1976, “[A] religion that doesn’t go into the dark side, that isn’t concerned with pain, that is something you put on Sunday-best clothes for is of no interest for me whatsoever . . . ” (p. 71).

29 Shirley du Boulay, Cicely Saunders: The Founder of the Modern Hospice Movement (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984), p. 139.

30 The first line of the hymn is “O Love that wilt not let me go”; quoted is the third of four verses.

31 Ronald E. Clements, Jeremiah, Interpretation Commentaries (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1988), p. 175.

32 Westermann, Praise and Lament, p. 59.

33 Westermann, Praise and Lament, p. 65.

34 James Luther Mays, Psalms, Interpretation Commentaries (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1994), p. 105.

35 Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984).

36 Brueggemann, Message of the Psalms, p. 126.

37 Paul D. Hanson, Isaiah 40–66, Interpretation Commentaries (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), p. 141.

38 H. A. Williams, The True Wilderness (London: Continuum, [1965] 2002), p. 31.

39 Williams, True Wilderness, p. 32.

40 See Barnabas Lindars, New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of the Old Testament Quotations (London: SCM Press, 1961), pp. 77–88.

41 Hanson, Isaiah, p. 4.

42 Robert P. Carroll, When Prophecy Failed...

Table of contents

• ivPreface
• Martyr Square
• Kofinou Camp
• Curlew Close
• Bosnia
• Baghdad
• Newport Gwent
• Lancashire
• Craig y Nos Hospital
• The questions we all long to ask
• 149Bibliography
• Notes