Dr. Peter Lee emphasizes the vital role of the Lament Psalms in worship. He explores how these powerful songs provide a voice for grief, enabling those who feel battered by life to worship authentically.
The following is a transcript of the video above.
How can we use lament Psalms in worship?
Lament Psalms are useful in worship. They so truly are. It’s perhaps something that the church in our day has just underappreciated. I don’t know of anyone who is writing contemporary songs, for example, for use in worship. I don’t know how many of them actually use or write laments or how many of them compose laments nowadays. It’s something that is sort of lost, something that’s underappreciated. Imagine if you have people who come into a place of worship and feel a bit battered up. They’ve had a rough week, and they come to a worship that’s filled with songs that are very happy and uplifting. There’s sort of an experiential kind of dissonance here in terms of the worship and where they are at that moment in their lives.
Worship in Grief and Sorrow
But imagine for a moment if you didn’t do that, imagine that we offered up for them a lament, a sad song. Imagine what that could do. They can come into a place of worship and not have to adjust their thinking. They don’t have to wield some type of a will to worship. They can come into a place of worship, and they’re given a song that kind of gives words to the grief that they’re feeling and the sorrow that they are lamenting over. And it allows them to still be able to worship. You see, we tend to try to encourage people to say, you know, you don’t need to get your life in order to come to worship, but how many of us really believe that? You see, it’s not really expressed in our liturgy. It’s not really expressed in the way that we order our songs. But imagine if you gave to them a lament that allows them to kind of put their teeth into this thing and allow them now to worship in their grief, in their sorrow. You see the power of what that can do. It is inviting them to worship. It’s telling them that it’s okay, that you’re not okay. It’s telling them that you really don’t need to have your life in order to come and worship God holistically, accurately, wholeheartedly. It tells them that the Lord still loves them and cares for them, cares enough for them to give them a song like this so that they can still worship.
From Lament to Praise
Now, let’s be clear. I don’t want people to stay and lament. I want people to be able to rejoice. But if you draw them in, give them a song that they can mourn with where they are joining with other people like them that is in grief to remember that we actually worship a God who knows sorrow, a God who knows pain, a God who knows lament and trials. But to now, in that worship through the preaching of the word, through the sacraments, do be able to lead them now into an experience of praise to remember who it is that they worship, the hope that they have in Jesus Christ. You see, they can go from lament to praise. They can go from suffering to glory. And it’s only you that can see by faith in the preached Christ. In that sense, you could see the people’s experience of worship from suffering to glory, from lament to praise, is really tracking the life course of Jesus Christ Himself because that’s exactly the life of Christ Jesus, going from suffering to glory, from lament to praise. You see, the use of lament in worship can be such a ministry to God’s people who are really sorrowful from day to day. This is why it is so important that we preach Christ in our worship and emphasize the centrality of Christ in our preaching; it is Jesus who knew suffering that goes to glory. And if we preach Christ, we are bringing him to a people who can also experience suffering to glory, fellowshipping with Christ in the suffering and fellowship with Christ in His glory.
