Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times
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The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Lament recognizes struggles and suffering, that the world is not as it ought to be. Lament challenges the status quo and cries out for justice against existing injustices.
Soong-Chan Rah’s prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church’s relationship with a suffering world. It critiques our success-centered triumphalism and calls us to repent of our hubris. And it opens up new ways to encounter the other. Hear the prophet’s lament as the necessary corrective for Christianity’s future.
A Resonate exposition of the book of Lamentations.
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- Provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church’s relationship with a suffering world
- Critiques our success-centered triumphalism and calls us to repent of our hubris
- Challenges the status quo and cries out for justice against existing injustices
- Foreword by Brenda Salter McNeil
- Series Introduction
- The Resonate Editorial Team
- Introduction: A Call to Lament
- Lamentations 1
- 1. The Reality of Suffering:The Historical Context of Lamentations
- 2. The Funeral Dirge: The Genre of Lament
- 3. Silenced Voices of Shame: Lamentations 1:1-22
- Lamentations 2
- 4. God Is Faithful: Lamentations 2:1-8
- 5. Lament Over a City: Lamentations 2:1-9
- 6. Privilege and Exceptionalism: Lamentations 2:6-9
- 7. All of the Voices Are Heard: Lamentations 2:10-22
- Lamentations 3
- 8. A Structure for Lament: The Use of the Acrostic in Lamentations
- 9. All of It Is Personal: Lamentations 3
- 10. A Glimmer of Hope: Lamentations 3:21-60
- Lamentations 4
- 11. Persisting in Lament: A Recapitulation of Lamentations
- 12. A Broken World: Lamentations 4:3-16
- Lamentations 5
- 13. A Lament for Themselves: Lamentations 5
- 14. Ending in a Minor Key
- Conclusion
- Epilogue: Ferguson
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
This book illuminates the resilient faith of a current lamenter’s raw trust in God. Everyone engaged in the shared struggle to hope in the midst of a violent and unjust world ought to read this accessible integration of biblical text, witness and sharp insight into the present cultural realties of the American church. Readers will discover a pithy prophetic response to the reality of shame, the problem of privilege and the possibilities of honor, hope and worship with integrity. This volume is a credit to the Resonate series.
—James K. Bruckner, professor of Old Testament, North Park Theological Seminary, author, Healthy Human Life
Soong-Chan Rah adds a significant voice to the rich and growing interpretive corpus on the book of Lamentations. He brings to his study a special attentiveness to the rootage of lament in Korean religious tradition. As Western culture is increasingly in ‘free fall,’ there is compelling reason to pay steady attentiveness to Lamentations. Rah’s book will be of great value in that now-required attentiveness.
—Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary
Let me warn you ahead of time. This isn’t a how-to, feel-good, seven-steps-to-cool-justice kind of book. In a culture today where we often elevate conversations about justice, reconciliation and peacemaking, Dr. Soong-Chan Rah provokes challenge and courage for the church not just to love the ideas of such things but to commit ourselves to the journey—even at the cost of including the oft forgotten process of deep lament and confession. To say that I loved Prophetic Lament by Dr. Rah would be somewhat misleading. I didn’t love the book, but I confess, I needed this book and believe this to be an important resource for the wider church.
—Eugene Cho, senior pastor, Quest Church, author of Overrated