Margie Quinn
There is a group of women in Seattle who call themselves the Women in Black. They stand vigil on the streets of Seattle for one hour any time a homeless person dies from exposure or violence. I remember working with people living on the streets of Seattle. I remember the first time someone from the street that I knew died. His name was Dylan and he was just a kid. He died by a lamp post not far from our office. I know this because on my way to work, I saw a group of youth I recognized from the streets, gathered around the lamp post. They told me what happened. Their dear friend, Dylan, had died. Dylan’s death wasn’t in the news. He didn’t get an obituary, his death went unnoticed for the most part. But the Women in Black noticed, were made aware and grieved for him.
The Women in Black collect the names of our unhoused neighbors, hold signs with them, announce to the public that one of God’s children has died from the elements, exposure, even street violence. They held vigil for Dylan and still today, they hold vigil for those in King County, cutting through the statistics on homelessness to name the people behind the numbers.
The Women in Black is actually an international organization, standing vigil all around the world when injustice and senseless violence takes lives. They have stood vigil for the 40,000 people who have died in Gaza, and will surely stand vigil for Sonya Massey, a Black woman who was shot and killed by a police officer on July 6th after calling 911 for help. Did you know her name? These women do.
We often refer to Jeremiah as the Weeping Prophet. His eyes are a fountain of tears, he weeps for his people day and night. He weeps with God throughout the book because of the hurt of God’s people. God’s people have disregarded God’s law and followed Baal’s law. There has been a series of attacks on the Judeans and a significant number of them have been forced into exile by the Babylonians. Violence and destruction overrun the city and the temple. And there is a lot of death. In chapter 9 verse 21, Death is personified as creeping through the windows, entering the palaces, leaving its mark on all. Suffice it to say, there is very little hope for liberation in the book of Jeremiah.
All of this death and destruction makes God angry. Even before we arrive at Chapter 9, we see the indignation of God as she takes in this chaos. In Chapter 5, God urges Jeremiah, “Run to and fro the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note! Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly, and seeks truth, so that I may pardon Jerusalem.”
God’s people, who have eyes, but do not see, who have ears, but do not hear. This God is hurt by the people she liberated from oppression–she is fed up and in the previous verses, declares that she is going to “give them poisonous water to drink, scatter them and send a sword after them” because they have forsaken the law, not obeyed her voice, stubbornly followed their own hearts and worshiped the false idol, Baal.
Eventually, though, her rage turns to sadness. God feels the devastation of war in his own self. The highly visible wounds inflicted on the city and his people cause deep-seated suffering for God. But instead of turning away from his people, he enters into solidarity with those reeling from trauma. The same God who wanted to poison his people finally breaks down in tears and, In the only message addressed exclusively to women in the Hebrew bible, God calls for the wailing women.
Listen to what scripture says: “Call for the mourning women to come, send for the skilled women to come. Let them raise a dirge over us so that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids flow with water.”
Who are these wailing women? They are professional mourners. They have been trained in the ritual of public witness, of vocalizing what the people need to express, of lamenting on behalf of a community that has faced extreme loss. They demonstrate how to react appropriately in light of all of the destruction and death. They understand that grief is meant to be shared, that communal lament is a necessary response in the wake of unimaginable pain. They are God’s chosen grievers.
And yes, they may have traditionally held very little power in the public sphere, but when they are summoned, they have the power to bring the community together to grieve.
Their grief is not performative or quick. When they enter the stage, as Juliana Classens writes, there is no “happily ever after” moment that comes out of this. They simply raise their voices in lament to help the community deal with its trauma. God calls on them to show a community how to name what they have lost, something that the people in power do not want them to do.
Walter Brueggeman refers to the people in power as having a “royal consciousness.” “Royal Israel” leads people to numbness about death. It delights in apathy, in our ability to ignore the ongoing suffering in our communities and skip straight to despair, knowing that despair paralyzes us, desensitizes us, makes us bitter and unfeeling. It whispers to us that we should move on quickly.
And yet God knows and the women know that a public expression of grief is the way to subvert this royal consciousness. First, it is therapeutic. It helps people deal with societal grief by naming tragedy without avoiding the pain. Isn’t this how we take the first steps toward recovery and healing? Second, it bears witness. It tells the truth about what has happened, urging the community not to forget but to be brave about naming the people and the pain behind the numbers. Third, it is prophetic. It is a powerful, visible expression to the fact things are not as they should be.
The wailing women have showed up not just in Judea but in our lives today
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Black Sash, a group of South African women who opposed apartheid. This group began in 1955, when six working-class white women laid a black sash over a replica of the constitution as the powers-that-be tried to take away the voting rights of people of color. These women continued to wear black sashes in protest over the loss of constitutional rights and over the horrors of apartheid. They organized marches, held overnight vigils and wept for the destruction of their country. Perhaps people heard their wailing in the streets, “How we are ruined!” they may have said. “We are utterly ashamed!” they may have cried.
The Black Sash and the Women in Black know what the wailing women knew…it is not only up to them to grieve the violence and injustice around them. God says, “teach your daughters to weep, and each to her neighbor a lament.” Professional mourning, the ritual of wailing over devastation, cannot just fall on a group of trained mourners. They must go out and teach others how to show up to funerals, lead congregations in songs of grief or give us the permission to let our eyes flow with tears.
Mamie Till Mobely, the mother of Emmit Till, knew this, too. When she realized that she wouldn’t be able to get through the incomprehensible murder of her son without calling on her neighbors to lament, she made a decision that cut through the royal consciousness of white America. At Emmit’s funeral, she insisted on an open casket so that the world could “see what they done to my baby.” Over 50,000 people surrounded the church that day, weeping and wailing in the streets, grieving together and in doing so, becoming reinvigorated to fight for justice together. Like Jeremiah, their eyes were a fountain of tears.
Tears–a way of solidarity when no other form remains. Tears–perhaps the only way out of grief toward hope. Tears that cut through the numbness and ache with God. Tears–that break open our hearts of stone, as Ezekiel says, and expose our hearts of flesh. Tears–that allow people to take back some of their power and to boldly say “No” to the forces of domination and violence.
It is tempting, church, to skip Good Friday and run right to Easter, to skip the haunting stories of Herod, who aimed to kill Jesus, and go straight to Christmas. But we are not a people of a candy theology and cheap hope. We are the children of a God who weeps, a prophet who cries and a group of women who grieve. We need to weep, trusting that those who mourn, as the gospel of Matthew says, shall be comforted. We need to remember that before our savior rose, he wept, reminding us that only those who embrace and name the reality of death will receive new life.
We need to weep, church, for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, for the death of Sonya Massey, and for the 181 people who died living on the streets in Nashville last year. We need to weep for the destruction of our precious earth, for the victims of mass shootings, and for the losses in our own communities and families.
This morning, I invite you to become a neighbor of lament with the wailing women, to allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to have a broken heart and to cry out loudly that things are not as they should be. Weep with Jeremiah, ache with God, wail with the women, Do not shy away from lament, for in doing so you may numb yourself to the possibility of hope.