Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times

Written by Soong-Chan Rah and Brenda Salter McNeil

Narrated by Soong-Chan Rah

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When Soong-Chan Rah planted an urban church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his first full sermon series was a six-week exposition of the book of Lamentations. Preaching on an obscure, depressing Old Testament book was probably not the most seeker-sensitive way to launch a church. But it shaped their community with a radically countercultural perspective.

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ChristianAudio.com
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781545918333

Soong-Chan Rah

Soong-Chan Rah (ThD, Duke Divinity School) is Milton B. Engebretson Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. He and his family live in Chicago. His books include The Next Evangelicalism and Prophetic Lament.

Reviews for Prophetic Lament

[deusvitae · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A powerful work challenging the triumphalist narrative of modern American Evangelicalism and a call to recover the lament traditions of the Bible through an exploration of Lamentations both in context and in light of modern American experience.The author rightly exposes the overwrought emphasis on praise and triumphalism in much of modern Christianity: it's all positive and successful all the time, and that's not life, and that's not even the lived experience of many. Such triumphalism cannot bear the exposure of the witness of those who have suffered or been oppressed so as to sustain that triumphalism. The author never denies the place or importance of praise; instead, he seeks to balance praise with another prevalent form of discourse in Scripture, the lament.To this end the author leads the reader through a study of Lamentations, which he believes is Jeremiah's response to the destruction of Jerusalem. The author does well to show the power, value, and need for the lament tradition, and how it works. He speaks of the need to identify that which needs to be lamented, to confess the sin and expose it as such, for as long as the corpse is not identified as such it will continue to cause the room to smell of death. He has no difficulty specifically identifying the legacy of racism and white supremacy in American Evangelicalism as something needing confessing and lamenting and has pointed out the rotten consequences of the attempt to minimize, hide, or justify past behaviors which demand lament. American consumerist culture also comes under indictment. The author continues on through Lamentations, noting the importance of both individual and communal lament, recapitulation in lament, the reason and ground of hope and trust in God, and the ability to persevere in faith through persistence in lament. There will be the great ending when justice is served, mercy is displayed, and life is found in resurrection, but there's no guarantee that the lament will have to stop while we are on the earth: Lamentations, as the author says, ends in a "minor key," and the kind of resolution we all desire and the comfort from that resolution are not guaranteed in this life. The lament penned in the epilogue regarding Ferguson and other travails of the early 21st century is compelling and haunting.This is no doubt a challenging read, especially for those who are white Christians; nevertheless, it is a powerful and important read, and worthwhile to sit in its discomfort. Highly recommended.