Lamentations for Holy Week

At first I thought it strange that my main devotional resource, Treasury of Daily Prayer, would recommend additional readings in the book of Lamentations during Holy Week, but I have come to appreciate it. Lamentations is the prophet Jeremiah's description of Judah's destruction at the hands of the Babylonian empire. It is grim and often grusome. With brief and beautiful verses expressing faith and hope in God, most of the book describes an outpouring of God's wrath that is almost painful to read. That is, I think, what makes it an appropriate reading for Holy Week.

As Christians we become accustomed to the wrath of God taking one particular cruciform shape. We see God's wrath poured out on our Savior at the cross, and we say to ourselves, "God, in His mercy, has saved me from that." Very true. But as we see God's wrath in the same form and the same shape week after week, year after year, the danger is that it can become almost tame to us. In a way we are tempted to domesticate the cross. In Lamentations we have the opportunity to see the fury of God's wrath in another form -- in a form that more closely resembles the sort of depravations that even people in our own generation have suffered. There, in the writings of Jeremiah, we have the opportunity to bow our heads and say, "Christ suffered this in my place." He drank to the dregs the cup of God's furious anger against my sin. In God's great mercy, my sin has been entirely forgiven. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and and forever!