Lamentations: An Incomplete Theodicy

Sunday's sermon will come from the book of Lamentations.  I'm not yet sure what I'll be preaching, but I do have this that I wrote some time back.  A Theodicy is an attempt to explain the "problem of evil",  an attempt to answer that question "why?".  This series of poems based on the book of Lamentations is an incomplete theodicy. I believe that all theodicies are incomplete - even biblical ones.


Lamentations: An Incomplete Theodicy

Chapter One

How doth the City Sit Solitary
How doth the city sit solitary that once was full of people.
How she sits alone; widowed
in the stifling heat - like being in a car left in the sun
     in air one hundred and fourteen degrees,
     heat lying upon the skin and filling the lungs like sackcloth and ashes.
She weeps long into the night; her tears carving canyons of grief
     through the dirt and grime of her filthy face
     and there is no one to comfort her.

All my friends have abandoned me and betrayed me.
My lovers are gone, my children - dead.
How doth the city sit solitary that once was full of people.

When the war planes screamed overhead and the bombs fell
and the night was full of fire
(phosphorescent fire fell from the sky and ravaged her bones)
then the adversary spread out his groping hands upon all her pleasant things
copping a feel, plundering, raping, spreading her nakedness for all to see.
Soldiers in their camouflaged fatigues and heavy boots entered her and defiled her.

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by,
flipping past CNN and FOX news for more enjoyable info-tainment?
Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto mine.

Chapter Two

The Bombs Exploded
Our enemies, they hiss and gnash their teeth,
for He has flung a dark shadow over the city.
He hurled a dark shadow upon all the population
and has brought their opened mouths down to gravel and dust.

He bent his bow in his anger
and flung a dark enemy over them.

Like a giant magnesium flare over the fairest of cities,
his bow like an enemy - without mercy the Lord has destroyed them,
They hiss and gnash their teeth.

The bombs have exploded, Lord! Lord!
Your tremendous anger flashed dangerous,
blue-white light and dark shadow over the city.

The explosion brought intense glare and heat and horror,
the explosion brought the rumbling sound
of uncontrolled terror to the heights of heaven.

O God, think about this.

A Burning of My Bones
I am the ash-heap of memory,
scraping infected boils with potsherds
and I can believe that this is
the "no-place" utopia of nowhere.

The brutal assault of daily invasion
and routine inhumanity continued
while the evil-doers,
the authors of nowhere and nothing
trampled me underfoot into the ash-heap of history.

Afflicted in every way, pressed down and crushed,
persecuted, struck down, and struck mute,
hemmed in on every side,
Violence and terror on every side!

Great is thy faithfulness,
great is thy faithfulness, Lord, but
Great is thy terror!
Violence and terror on every side!
I know your hands of peace, your arms of love
but the hands of love sometimes pull down,
uproot and destroy.

I shall not live until I see God
and when I have seen him I shall never die.
But why is he perpetuating the horrors
that pummel me, trample me?
I am caught in the snares of the Lord of Terror.

O God, you liar, you deceived me, you enticed me.
O God, you strong-armed bully, you knocked me to the ground
and beat me to a bloody pulp,
O God, you duped me, thrashed me, raped me.

But it becomes a fire in my heart, burning in my bones
and I can't be silent.

Chapter Three

Who?
Who beat me senseless?
Who kicked me repeatedly in the head and gut?
Who, with steel-toed boots, kicked me in the rectum till I bled?
Who with razors slashed at my face
     causing these "defensive wounds" on my hands and wrists?
Who tore out my hair - pulling away bloody pieces of scalp?
Who imprisoned me; chained  and shackled me, and threw me in the hole?
Who broke my ribs and punctured my lungs?
Who fed me poison till I puked up blood and bile?
Who duct-taped my mouth when I tried to scream for help?

He did.

And like the battered wife I crawled back to him.
I deserved it. It was my fault.
How can I complain about the punishment of my sins?

Three Days
For three days I was trapped under the rubble
when the walls of my home collapsed
under the enemy's bombardment.
Three days in the dark - I thought I'd gone blind.
Three days without food - without water
I drank my own piss to stay alive.

I cried out but no one could hear
I prayed but he would not hear
or, if he heard, he did not care
or, if he did care... I don't know

For three days I lay trapped beneath the rubble,
concrete shards pinned me to the ground as neatly
as a butterfly on display.  My organs were crushed.
My body was twisted, contorted, my face in the dirt,
my legs splayed out in an unnatural direction.
I thought I was dead - buried,
stones rolled over top of me and sealed in the pit.

I cried out but no one could hear

I prayed but he would not hear
or, if he heard, he did not care
or, if he did care... I don't know

Great is Thy Faithfulness
I am disheartened
my words have come to an end.

I think of my LORD,
let him give this human element
some portion of that balm of Gilead.

I wait for God to speak
I wait quietly to hear what he will say,
to heal is Thy faithfulness.

I fear I'll feel his mercies never again.

Chapter Four

A Fugitive Arrives with the News
(FADE IN FROM STATIC)... those killed in the chaos of the initial bombings were, perhaps, better off than those who survived only to starve to death now that the city has been completely cut off.  No supplies of any kind have entered the city for nearly a month.  Food is gone. Water is scarce and the corpses are everywhere.

There are reports coming in of mothers who have actually eaten their own children. The devastation here is nearly indescribable.  Horror like this is inconceivable and yet... (FADE TO STATIC)

But now the anger of the Lord is satisfied
O God! Please say the fury is spent.
We can't go on like this
our resistance is broken
as is our will.
We are obliterated
O, God, please say "no more."

Chapter Five

Tenebrae
In the face of a rocky hill on the western side of the city sits Jeremiah
in the shadowy smoke-darkened twilight.
he has nothing left to say to us; he will speak no more.
He came to us before, but we would not listen.

In the face of a rocky hill beyond the smoldering ruins
we gather for silence;
joy has vanished from our hearts.

Remember Us
We are the orphaned and fatherless;
our mothers are widowed and lost.
We are the children of death,
the progeny of disease.

We are slaves.
We are victims.
We are murdered in the streets.

Our sisters and daughters are raped
Our sons and brothers are sodomized

Our hearts are sick.
Is it enough, O Lord, that you remain the same forever?
Restore us, or have you rejected us?
Remember us.

Remember what has come upon us.
Remember what has come upon us.
Remember what has come upon us.