“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

These old words sprung to life when an awkward request from the Rabbi had to be carried out by a nervous disciple. Jesus, their teacher, asked them to go asking for a donkey, so he could ride into Jerusalem. I wonder if some knew that he was walking into a trap, or perhaps it would be a trap from which he would emerge and pull off that one hattrick that would prove him to be their radical warrior king. Is this where he would shame the empire and show its finite capability in quenching the coming kingdom? Jerusalem, a congested city of many reveries and divided allegiance, was alive with festivities. It was the Passover and its lamb was watching from a distance. He watched the city as though watching his path towards a lover for whom he would give everything to love, yet knowing that the ultimate act of his love would be unrequited. The elite of the city undermined him, with their eyes and scaling hands they had already weighed him.

But there was a place where this Savior was visible. Just like his entry into the world, he was shown to be of the highest order of royalty to the lowliest in society: the shepherds, the peasants Mary and Joseph, prophet Simeon and prophetess Anna. Throughout his life, these margin bodies, the adulteresses, tax payers, and outcasts, they saw God with them, talking to them, eating with them, putting their lives together. And there, at the edge of the city, they saw him. And so they did what the common people did in that culture when a king would grace their streets. They placed palms on the floor to let him triumphally parade himself among them.

In this hour of global crisis, this part of our Lenten journey finds us forced to pause with pain as we reflect again on this Holy Week entry into the city of Jerusalem. Covid-19 has dealt a global blow to us that has us feeling exceptionally out of control. Whether we have our social immersion at the margins of the city, where life is hard and poverty and lack of access makes room for more destruction, or in the heights of the affluence of the city, where consumption disguises itself as the acquisition of meaning, where anxiety and emptiness cause havoc, in this moment we have a common vantage point. We see that the flesh alone has no capacity to shield itself from forces bigger than itself. Our finiteness is on full display.

All of us would not be lost for words to describe our disorientation in this period. The haunting realization that there is no certainty around our approach and longing for a future after this virus calls us to find a more tangible and concrete point of reference for time and its motion towards purpose. It is this kind of Lenten season that invites us to re-enter into the story of Holy Week with a more humble posture. We all stand at the threshold of the city with him, hoping that somewhere in the distance, our warrior king could flip the script on us and give us a reprieve from this global nightmare.

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A Lenten Lament

Suffering blurs the vision. Through the fog of confusion or the veil of tears, afflictions obscure our lens of life. They tend to displace our emotions and reconstitute our rationale. Normality is often abruptly upended. Suffering becomes what feels like an inescapable labyrinth of lament.

This emotional entanglement is explored throughout various books of the Bible, but it is particularly palpable in the Old Testament. The Psalms, for example, express various authors’ raw feelings, and the unhinging nature of suffering is on full display:

“My soul pants for you, O God… My tears have been my food day and night… how I used to go with the multitude.”(1)

In our distressful moments, we long for this language of lament. We long for approval to voice our sorrows, an invitation to lament both individually and corporately. This invitation is found in the Christian religious tradition called Lent. This 40-day period is a time of spiritual and emotional preparation leading to the events of Holy Week and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It is a time where all who lament can feel encouraged to do so. It is also a time where the suffering of Christ reorients our focus. We are not alone.

Jeremiah was arguably the biblical figure most known for his intimate relationship with sorrow. He was burdened with the unenviable task of prophesizing God’s justice and ultimate judgement against his fellow Israelites, who, despite warnings, were engaging in unjust practices and behaviors. Their disobedient hearts resulted in exile and the destruction of their beloved city. Throughout his lengthy book, Jeremiah endures rejection, suffers loneliness, languishes in isolation, and sustains beatings. Anguish is ever-present. “My grief is beyond healing; my heart is broken… I hurt with the hurt of my people. I mourn and am overcome with grief.”(2)

In the midst of our current global crisis, we feel besieged by the presence of suffering, too. Like Jeremiah, our eyes may feel like fountains of tears. Perhaps it is the persistent prick of seclusion. In this time of social distancing, isolation can be even more discomforting. Perhaps the anguish of anxiety looms in a ubiquitous manner. Uncertainty and the unease that accompanies it have ironically become synonymous with regularity. Perhaps the loss of a loved one has soaked our joy in sadness. Hope can feel as fleeting and remote as the mandated lack of human embrace.

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Someone told me recently that he wondered if humans only truly ever pray when we are in the midst of despair. Despite creed or confession, is it only when we have no other excuses to offer, no other comfort to hide behind, no more façades to uphold, that we are most likely to bow in exhaustion and be real with God and ourselves? “For most of us,” writes C.S. Lewis, “the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model.” In our distress, we stand before God as we truly are: creatures in need hope and mercy.

The words within the ancient Hebrew story of Jonah that are of most interest to me are words that in some ways seem not to fit in the story at all.(1) Interrupting a narrative that quickly draws in its hearers, a narrative about Jonah, the text very fleetingly pauses to bring us the voice of Jonah himself in his own words before returning again to the narrative. The eight lines come in the form of a distraught and despairing, though poetic prayer of desperation. And while it is true that the poem could be entirely omitted without affecting the coherence of the story, the deliberate jaunt in the narrative text seems to provide a moment of significant commentary to the whole. The eight verses of poetry not only mark an abrupt shift in the tone of the text, but also in the attitude of its main character who has been swallowed up by despair and darkness. The poetic words of the prophet, spoken as a cry of deliverance, arise from within the belly of the great fish that has swallowed him. It is a stirring image reminiscent of another despairing soul’s question: O Lord, cries the psalmist: Where can I flee from your presence? If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me.

Jonah’s eloquent prayer for deliverance stands out in a book that is detailed with this prophet’s egotistic mantras and glaring self-deceptions. By his own actions, Jonah finds himself in darkness, and yet it is in the dark that he speaks most honestly to God. The story is vaguely familiar to many hearers, and yet memory often seems to minimize the distress that breaks Jonah’s silence with God. The popular notion that Jonah went straight from the side of the ship into the mouth of the fish is not supported by either the narrative as a whole or Jonah’s prayer. As one theologian suggests, “[Jonah] was half drowned before he was swallowed. If he was still conscious, sheer dread would have caused him to faint—notice that there is no mention of the fish in his prayer. He can hardly have known what caused the change from wet darkness to an even greater dry darkness. When he did regain consciousness, it would have taken some time to realize that the all-enveloping darkness was not that of Sheol but of a mysterious safety.”(2)

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