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Less aggro, more conversation.
Is it even possible to have a deep discussion without it descending into chaos? Michael Jensen and Megan Powell du Toit think yes, and want to show the rest of us how to do it.
There’s plenty of things they disagree on: free will, feminism, where you should send your kids to school and what type of church you should go to. But there are also plenty of other things that they have in common. They want to talk about all these things with conviction. But they also want the conversation to be constructive. Tune in to find out if that’s possible.
An Undeceptions podcast. Respect brought to you by Anglican Aid. I'm Michael Jensen. And
Megan Powell du Toit:I'm Megan Powell du Toit
Michael Jensen:And we try to talk about the big topics with respect and a modicum of grace.
Megan Powell du Toit:We're and, look, we're very trying.
Michael Jensen:It's true. Today, in an episode that we're partnering with Living Hope Funerals in, we are gonna be talking about grief, which is a bigger topic as as it comes really. Grief is an experience that gets a lot of airtime in the Bible. God is described as experiencing grief. The suffering servant of Isaiah, whom Christians connect with Jesus, is described as acquainted with grief.
Megan Powell du Toit:On the other hand, we also hear a lot the words from 1 Thessalonians 4 that Christians are not to grieve as those with no hope do, which then raises the question, does this mean we are not to grieve at all?
Michael Jensen:Well, that's we kinda wanna talk about. How do we grieve as Christians? Is there something distinct about the way we grieve? We are also gonna speak to Old Testament scholar, doctor Kit Barker, on the biblical practice of lament and how that connects us with grief.
Megan Powell du Toit:And we're gonna chase that up with a new hit comedy that's all about the various manifestations of grief. Comedy? I know.
Michael Jensen:Let's see whether there is hope to be found there.
Megan Powell du Toit:For argument's sake, where we take a debate, cut out the party politics and try to talk it out. Now it's really intriguing to me that perhaps the most well known apologist for the Christian faith, c s Lewis, whose book Mere Christianity has been devoured by many a faith seeker, also wrote perhaps the most famous Christian book on grief. That's called A Grief Observed After the Loss of His Wife. Now in mere Christianity, he describes hope as 1 of the theological virtues, something a Christian is meant to do. But then his book on grief isn't 1 full of pious platitudes.
Megan Powell du Toit:For instance, he describes his experience of grief thusly. Says, at present, I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps, I shall presently be given a wooden leg, but I shall never be a biped again. Lewis, this giant of the faith, speaks of his grief as an all consuming experience. And here's another quote from the book about his wife.
Megan Powell du Toit:It says, her absence is like the sky spread over everything. So given all of that, that experience of grief that even someone like CS Lewis can have, what are we meant to do as Christians with the verse in 1 Thessalonians 413, but we do not want you to be uninformed brothers and sisters about those who have died, so you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. So Michael, what is it like to grieve as those with hope? What is this about?
Michael Jensen:Well, I mean, the first thing to say is, of course, that I don't think that the scripture is saying that we don't grieve. Yeah. I think I think that would be right at odds with the rest of scripture,
Megan Powell du Toit:which is
Michael Jensen:I mean, I've been working through the Psalms on a daily basis. And you can't read the Psalms without kind of experiencing viscerally experiencing grief. The trauma and grief of exile and, you know, being a refugee and death and cancer, it seems to me, deep sickness, abandoned feeling, got abandoned, all of those things. So I think those experiences are are normal, and they're part of living in the in the fallen broken world. And I think the question is not whether we grieve or not, but how.
Michael Jensen:And that's what I think this this particular verse is saying. I think this verse is conditioning and pointing our grief, reminding us of the temporary the temporariness of what seems permanent. And it needs to say that because grief does seem so all encompassing and permanent. I do I I love that quote that you mentioned from CS Lewis. I I read that book.
Michael Jensen:He he actually published it pseudonymously pseudonymously Yes. Without his name.
Megan Powell du Toit:Originally. Yeah.
Michael Jensen:Because he was afraid people would see it as sort of loss of faith. Mhmm. And undermining his other book, you know, his rather rather sort of jovial book, The Problem of
Megan Powell du Toit:Pain. And it's Experience is a huge pain. Yeah.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. It's still a very valid and valuable book. But here, I think the Grief Observe book is just, yeah. It's extraordinarily powerful and a more mature expression of it. And it's really lovely to hear the it's wonderful to hear his honesty in it.
Michael Jensen:The grief spreading her absence like the sky spread over everything. I mean, that just, I think, sums up grief so well. It's all you can't see past it. So we need the reminder of hope. We need that line, even though it feels very thin, into the midst of our hope because grief is so all encompassing, all surrounding, we can't seem to escape it.
Michael Jensen:That's been my pastoral experience is that people feel like they should move on from grief, but 6 months, a year later, they're still weeping. I've got a man in my congregation who, 9 years after I buried his 19 year old son, still bursts into tears at the communion rail or at the door when I shake his hand. And he just says, Oh, I'm just thinking about James today. You know, I just he's just with me all the time. I can't get over it.
Michael Jensen:And he's actually a mental health professional. So it tells you how permanent or how difficult and how all encompassing that feeling of grief.
Megan Powell du Toit:I think that's quite interesting too, is it doesn't say don't grieve, it says don't grieve as those who do who don't have hope. So the grief and hope are not exclusive of each other. Right? You can be experiencing both. And I think 1 of the things, actually, if you have your hope in the world to come, then in some ways, you may have stronger grief in this world.
Michael Jensen:Yes. I think so.
Megan Powell du Toit:Or be able to enable yourself to have stronger grief because the hope enables you to be able to sort of give into the grief, I suppose. Because you're not kind of going, I need to get over this because it's the only life I have. Right?
Michael Jensen:Yeah, that's right. I think that's right. I imagine if the only frame is this frame, you need to shut out the sorrows of this world because otherwise, you couldn't cope. You couldn't bear them. They're just too unbearable.
Megan Powell du Toit:Well, what our hope says as Christians is that there is a lot that's unbearable in this world and this is why we have a hope. So in a sense, hope can make you more sensitive to grief, I think. And certainly we see in the Bible that when grief is spoken about with God, it is often a grief over sin. That's very interesting too.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. It's a grief over the the sinfulness of human beings and the grief over the the the wickedness that's, you know, great god grieves that he makes that he's made human beings before the flood because of our our violence and bloodshed.
Megan Powell du Toit:And, of course, death is a result of of sin. Right? Yeah. And so so death isn't meant to be something that we are resigned to, I think. And so grief as a response to lost relationship, I mean, the answer in that is our hope, not that that, you know, needs to be gotten over with.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. Having said that, it is interesting that the grief at the funeral of a 19 year old boy cut short and so much lost potential is very different to the grief at the funeral of a 95 year old who'd been suffering for a number of years. There's a sort of, but it's still grief. It's worth saying. There's still a loss and a parting of the ways, but there's a sense in which there's a completion.
Michael Jensen:I felt completion in the 95 year old, which isn't in the 19 year old. And I've noticed that they're very different. There there's a there's a palpable difference in in those experiences.
Megan Powell du Toit:There's different experiences of grief. I'm thinking about, like, that that kind of grief that then comes upon you in unusual moments, that happens to me with had a cousin who died who was only about 3 months older than me. And so there is a loss for me of going through life's events which we would have gone through at about the same times, and now she's not there with them. So that grief has that loss to her, I suppose, but loss to me of her companionship in those experiences. Even like she died when we were about 12.
Megan Powell du Toit:And now at 50, you know, there's always an experience in life that I would have had with her and I don't have. That's really different from, say, the grief with, like, my grandparent perhaps when they finish their life. So in some ways, it's more complete. But also, I remember having grief about some of the difficulties in those relationships as those, you know, that in fact there wasn't any more time to perhaps have developed the relationship more or that kind of thing. So there's different flavors or shades to the grief that we have that are very particular to the loss that we've had.
Michael Jensen:Which is interesting because having just spoken about fandom in our last episode, which is a kind of rivuletary of our desires, our loves I think grief also reveals our loves. Julian Barnes, English novelist, he lost his wife to, I think it was to brain tumor and wrote a book called Levels of Life, which I read, which is kind of a companion piece to CCS Lewis, but from an atheist perspective. And he certainly had read c s Lewis. And he said, I thought this is very wise and right on the right on the money. He said, every love story is a potential grief story.
Michael Jensen:And that's right because if you love, then given that we're humans and we're only temporary and we die, we're mortal, then we will lose. If you don't want to grieve, don't buy pets or have children, you know. Don't don't give your heart away. And yet, we are made to love. So, yes, I think as our hearts open to love, we will experience more.
Megan Powell du Toit:And I read a really interesting quote on grief, I think from, like, a fantasy novel of all places, from from The Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare. And in that she says, they say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite. And that was so interesting to me as a Christian because I think 1 of the reasons that we experience grief the way we do is because love, in fact, should not be finite. And we are responding to that that we don't want an end to love. And and, of course, in in God, love is not finite.
Megan Powell du Toit:That that that God is the ground of love, and so therefore, love is infinite. And so there is a holiness, in a way, to grief of wanting to enter in again to the infinity of love.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. That's fairly well said, I think. I only gonna have to go and go and think about that, actually. And I hope our listeners will too. I think that's really I wanted to turn now, perhaps, to thinking about how we do funerals and we were partnering this episode with Living Hope Funerals.
Michael Jensen:And I do a lot of funerals. Have you done some funerals in
Megan Powell du Toit:the past? You know what? I've never done a funeral. I've spoken at funerals like I've done the sermon or done the eulogy, but I've never done the whole funeral.
Michael Jensen:Right. I know. Yeah. I mean, I had the conversation recently with my parents about their funeral.
Megan Powell du Toit:I've been with that with my mother recently.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. Which I I do by the way, I mean, you know, pro tip, I do encourage people to do that if you're the elderly parents. It's actually really interesting conversation to have. But as Christians, they'd been to a number of Christian funerals and thought that the person in the coffin was too central to the funeral. They thought we too readily saint people and they don't want they want to, they want to hear, yeah, he was a sinner.
Michael Jensen:You know, yeah, she had imperfections. They don't
Megan Powell du Toit:need permission to just get up and say what you think about them at their funeral. Is that what's happening?
Michael Jensen:I don't know if I'm I don't think I'm 1 of the speakers.
Megan Powell du Toit:Oh, well, my mother, Gabe, said to me, Megan, you can preach, but don't go too long. I'm like, you're gonna be dead anyway.
Michael Jensen:That's right. But they want they wanna hear the gospel. I suppose that's the thing. They wanna hear the word of hope. So they want Yeah.
Michael Jensen:And I I really appreciate that. I mean, I think that was, that is a celebration of the life because it's a celebration of the home. That is a kind of giving thanks to god. And I say this when I'm meeting with people for a few and I say, we are gonna give thanks for the life Mhmm. And for god's goodness in the person's life, but we are gonna recognize loss.
Michael Jensen:So I always say have the body in the building because it reckons with the heaviness of mortality. Mhmm. People don't wanna see it, but it did really I think it's very helpful cause you don't you're not just kind of saying, oh, you know, mom's up in heaven knocking the top off a glass of Chardonnay or the bottle of Chardonnay. You're saying, well, no. Actually, there's separation here.
Michael Jensen:But it helps us to hope grieve with hope, in this living hope because we can have the tears. And god invites our tears, allows it, makes space for our tears, wants our tears, and then we can speak of the hope we have in Christ. So I want us to go through the whole gamut of those emotions in the process of grieving at a funeral.
Megan Powell du Toit:And I think too, you are. Like you're entering into a funeral with a whole gamut of emotions. So there's something really affirming to go to a funeral which acknowledges all the emotions, which acknowledges loss, which acknowledges thankfulness, which acknowledges worry even about what's going to happen in the future, all those kind of things. Just bringing everything and who you are to your community and to God.
Michael Jensen:I I think that's right. So an old minister friend of mine, he used to, he used to say at the beginning, he'd say, you have you know, we need to give ourselves permission to cry the tears, laugh the laughs, whatever it is. And, sometimes people do need permission because they're told sometimes it has to be kind of just a party, denial of death.
Megan Powell du Toit:Yeah. It's kind of get that people who are wanting a party or people who want it to be really solemn. But I think all of the rich is kind of an odd word, but but the the fullness of the experience can be part of that.
Michael Jensen:Still to come, Megan quoted CS Lewis. Now, his friend, JRR Tolkien, put these words in Gandalf's mouth. This is my Gandalf impression.
Megan Powell du Toit:Okay.
Michael Jensen:I will not say not to weep, for not all tears are evil. Well, that's how our next guest, doctor Kit Barker's book on Lament starts. And then we discuss a new show in which Jason Segel plays a therapist wracked with grief after the death of his wife. It's a comedy. Be our guest, opening up the conversation to others.
Michael Jensen:Well, doctor Kit Barker is director of teaching and learning and lecturer in Old Testament at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. Along with his colleague Jeff Harper, he co edited and contributed to a book on lament called Finding Lost Words, So we thought it would be helpful to talk to him about how the biblical concept of lament can help us to think about and deal with grief as Christians.
Megan Powell du Toit:Well, welcome to Waterkit. It's really good to have you with us today.
Kit Barker:Thanks, Megan. Thanks, Michael.
Megan Powell du Toit:We're talking about grief in this whole episode, but we wanted to talk to you specifically about, biblical lament because you've co edited a book about that with Jeff Harper. Can you tell us first this is just a very basic starting off question. What is biblical lament?
Kit Barker:Well, lament's often found in the Psalms, but it's in other places as well. It's basically when God's people cry out to him in the midst of experienced experiencing dissonance between their faith and their expectations and how they're experiencing God's faithfulness in the world around them. So it's a it's a cry. It's a cry for help. It's a cry that often questions God and what his purposes are, and it's usually quite desperate.
Michael Jensen:Do you have any particular favorite passages of lament? Favorite Psalms or other places in the bible that I mean, favorite might be the wrong word here, but ones that really stick with you.
Kit Barker:Well, that's a good question. I I get asked that quite a bit, I think, and it depends on my season. But for a number of reasons, Psalm 88, which is the darkest and perhaps the the most troubling of all laments, is 1 that I've spent quite a bit of time in personally and and in class and corporately in in congregational settings. I I find that 1 1 of the most profound expressions of faith in scripture because it is coming from a context of such despair and such unrelenting pain. And so I think it's a great gift, and it's certainly underutilized by God's people.
Reader:I call to you, Lord, every day. I spread out my hands to you. Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness and destruction?
Reader:Are your wonders known in the place of darkness or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? But I cry to you for help, Lord. In the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth I have suffered and been close to death.
Reader:I have borne your terrors and am in despair. Psalm 88 verse 9 to 15.
Megan Powell du Toit:And that's often because Psalm 88, of course, doesn't end with any sort of follow-up of hope or
Kit Barker:or That's right. Yeah. Yeah. There's only a couple of Psalms that that it doesn't really have any lift in it. Some of the Psalms have a little lift and then and then drop again into, a cry of lament.
Kit Barker:They might express some kind of praise. Usually, lament does, in the Psalms, express an element of praise at some point. But Psalm 88, while it begins with a declaration of confidence that god is the the lord is the god who saves me, it doesn't it doesn't end or even have a lift at any point. And I think that is, as I said, a profound gift to God's people.
Michael Jensen:Well, that was the question I was gonna ask. What kind of gift is that? So how is it god's word? Like, how do we we Anglicans at the end of the Bible reading, we say, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Michael Jensen:Some weeks, I don't quite see how that, you know, it it comes easier than others some weeks. How is Psalm 88 or a lament, a gift?
Kit Barker:Yeah. That's and I think that's that's as a side note, it's a great it's a great practice that I, I often I often tease the Anglicans for cutting out some of the Psalms or or removing some of the verses when they're doing that from the prayer book. But at least you have a prayer book where you work through some Psalms. Us, Baptist, certainly use them in the summer to fill in between other sermon series.
Megan Powell du Toit:Ouch. I feel I feel seen there, Keith.
Kit Barker:Yeah. Me too. And and and this is this is this is critical under understanding that the power of the Psalms and their purpose in scripture and and how it functions as God's word to us today. I think, God, he offers us in the lament Psalms, He offers them to us and invites us to inhabit that space. So they're God's words to us.
Kit Barker:He's acting like the editors of the Psalter who say, here are words to use in your deepest and darkest moments. Here's an expression of righteousness and godliness to respond appropriately in a way that honors God in the midst of your grief and confusion. And so for Psalm 88, it's, as I said, it's the 1 dealing with protracted and life altering grief and and possibly injury or illness, isolation. So it's it's crying out from darkness, and it's just clinging to God when there it appears to the psalmist that God has abandoned them and that all of this that has happened to them has come at God's hand, and yet the psalmist won't give up. Day after day, day and night, he's wide open crying out.
Kit Barker:And in that moment, can't see God's hand or purpose. And so God God is in the darkness in Psalm 88 by giving us these words and saying, I hear you, and this is how you respond to me in those moments. There's a great there's a great tragedy, I think, that we don't access and take up that invitation more often than we should as often as we should.
Megan Powell du Toit:That's so interesting because you're talking about the Psalmist as an individual lament from the psalmist themselves. But then of course you talked about that this is given to us to use. How was lament used back in Israel?
Kit Barker:Mhmm. Yeah. That's a that's another great question. We don't we don't know exactly, but the a lot of the Psalms have superscriptions, have those introductory titles, and they're actually in scripture. A lot of our bibles put them above verse 1, so it looks like it might just be a heading that some of the, say, the NIV or other translation writers and editors have put together.
Kit Barker:But in the Psalms, these are actually in the Hebrew text as verse 1. And the superscription of Psalm 88 and other individual Psalms of lament, which are personal Psalms, they're actually there for the choir director. They're actually intended for song and for corporate worship. So we know that while this does have a place for the individual in an individual prayer life, it's designed not only as a it's designed to be taken up by the community to be sung together and to be sung along with a host of other Psalms of praise and lament as part of a regular act of worship. And I think the lack of communal lament people have been talking about this for many years now, but the lack of communal lament, particularly in the Western church, doesn't, clearly doesn't reflect the weight of lament in the Psalms, and, again, is not only underutilizing what God's given to us, but really is is not doing our best to help those who need those words when they need the most.
Michael Jensen:Might the argument be that the new testament kind of transposes this whole, domain, this emotional domain so that we don't need it or, so that we really have joyful expectation and hope. Is it isn't might that be that there were past here that we're really that's not our our mode anymore.
Kit Barker:That's certainly something to wrestle with, and I think that probably is an underlying assumption. And and perhaps there's something to that in how we read and interpret the New Testament. But I think if we look closely, we see even Paul, he's arguing for us to be thankful and give praise all of all of the time. I was reading something this morning just reminding me of it was 2nd Corinthians 6, I believe, where where he's sorrowful yet or is rejoicing. That these 2 things aren't at odds with each other, that we can be deeply sorrowful and full of grief, and yet have a confidence, a hope, and perhaps even a joy in the midst of that.
Kit Barker:It's really complex. And I appreciate that the nature of that being complex that you you might find moments of joy and be able to rejoice in in god in the midst of pain and suffering. But Paul is deeply sorrowful, and we see that at times. We also see Jesus in his most deepest and darkest need doing exactly what generations and generations of God's people have done in the past by picking up the Psalms and appropriating them as their own. And so when Jesus stand stands on the cross, in his moment of deepest agony, he accesses the words of Psalm 22, as we know, and cries out to God and asked why.
Kit Barker:He, of all people, knows why, but he's feeling that pain and that dissonance and that he doesn't really want to go through this right now. He's he's questioning God's presence even though he knows God his God the father is with him. So, we have the example of Jesus. We have a call to be thankful and to praise, but that doesn't dismiss the pain and the grief, and the call for us to stand with those who are suffering, both in the Old and New Testaments.
Megan Powell du Toit:Talking about that call to stand with those who are suffering, what are the the proper topics of lament? We're talking a little bit about grief that we haven't really sort of dug down into, what would we be lamenting?
Michael Jensen:Rising mortgage rates, perhaps. Very middle class.
Kit Barker:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All kinds of things in our context. Yeah.
Kit Barker:1 of the beautiful things about them is that they can be applied to rising mortgage rates and some of the pressures that puts on families. There's an ambiguity to a lot of the Psalms where you don't you you can't often pinpoint the exact nature of the threat or the injury or the physical ailment, and I think that's beautiful in itself. Sometimes it's quite clear. Sometimes it's clear that, someone has been slandering the person, and they've been ostracised and rejected, and they've been cast out of their community. So that's that's certainly in the Psalms.
Kit Barker:But at other times, it's unclear exactly what kind of struggle is is happening here, and I think that's beautiful because it allows for a surplus of of application where where we're allowed to resonate with particular Psalms. And we have so many to choose from. Out of the 150, roughly 40% of them, the largest majority here, the largest kind of psalm is lament. There's more lament in the Psalms, in the book of praises than there is praise.
Michael Jensen:I mean, so helpful, is a kind of realism about this, which I think is so striking. And, also, then you you use the word ambiguity. At 1 level, there's a kind of Christian temptation to wanna say, Jesus is the answer to all our questions, and yet, actually, Jesus is also the question to all our answers. You might you might say there's a sense in which lament allows us ambiguity recognizes the tension and the the lack of a full information the lack of our full information, doesn't it?
Kit Barker:This is what I think this is what's drawn me to it over the years, that that it really it really stares the complexities of life, straight down the barrel. It it looks directly into the face of of grief and dissonance and wrestles with faith. Where is God? What are you doing in this space? And it doesn't give up.
Kit Barker:It it has at the forefront, at at the the very basis of what it's doing, it's confronting God. It's communicating with him. It's wrestling with him. It's not it's not turning its back away from him or or giving up. It's looking into the realities of life, and there's an authenticity that it brings.
Kit Barker:It says, if my life can't if my life and faith can't honestly confront all of life, then what good is it? And so the Psalms in their beautiful gift of a 150 different scenarios gives us the highs and lows and everything in between and says all of life can be brought before God honestly and in a godly, righteous manner. And so that's a beautiful gift to say all of life. There's nothing to be frightened or ashamed of here. Life is full of trouble and full of joy, and in all of those troubles and joy, we can confidently bring ourselves before God in thanksgiving, in praise, and in lament.
Megan Powell du Toit:Mhmm. Just a few weeks back, as a local pastor was confronted with the Bondi killings and then having to get up the following Sunday and deal with that in my community. And of course, we saw in fact some corporate dealing with grief at Westfield in how they had to deal with it. How have you seen lament used well? Or how have you heard about it being used well in a corporate context?
Kit Barker:That's a great question, and my pause is probably part of the problem. We really don't we we we do it in in moments of crisis. I can think back to all kinds of moments where people in our congregation of and other congregations have lost children. I'm thinking about deep moments of of grief for the community and the family where we've cried out to God in prayer with them. We've just cried with them.
Kit Barker:I think, though, that part of the problem here, part of the challenge, is that we aren't prepared well for those moments if we don't corporately talk about lament from the pulpit, sing lament, and model lament in our worship, don't stand with another in 1 another in those moments regularly, then when it comes time to those time for those moments of intense grief, we haven't learned about that resource, haven't and so I often have questions with people who wrestle with feelings of guilt that they don't know how to process this and come to God with their grief, or they think that they shouldn't, or their questions aren't aren't right or good, and they haven't had that modeled to them corporately. So I think we do do it, particularly when times are acute, but we don't do it regularly enough to make it something that is just a natural progression for us, a natural response. Each week, I think, you know, we come into church, and we ask people to sing praise and thanksgiving. And that's that's wonderful. We should be doing that.
Kit Barker:And even those who are in moments of grief and lament are swept into those moments of community life and are reminded of times when lament perhaps isn't hasn't been part of their their life, and the grief the grief could have a transience to it, and they should rightly be able to stand there and have people praise around them. But how often do we do the opposite for those in the room who would just benefit from those who don't need to be those who aren't currently experiencing the grief singing lament with and for those who need it.
Megan Powell du Toit:Both directions is a corporate exercise of empathy, if you like.
Kit Barker:Yeah. Empathy, and not just empathy, but almost substitution.
Megan Powell du Toit:Yes. Yep.
Kit Barker:That you're singing you're singing for them when they can't really often be often it's really hard to access. I've, as you know, it's hard to pray sometimes, and it's definitely hard to sing. And so when you have a community doing that with you and for you and as you, it's powerful, a powerful way we can commune with God and recognise we're not alone, which is part of the problem with Lament Psalms. They're often lamenting their isolation, and that they've been cast in the community. And I say, in an ideal circumstance, the Lament deconstructs that situation because Psalm 88 is calls for a community to be singing it with the person who's crying out that they're alone.
Megan Powell du Toit:Oh, that's a that's a wonderful insight, I think.
Michael Jensen:So once this lament becomes an answer to its own its own prayer in that now I wonder about contemporary worship music. I struggle to think of examples. Mind you, are there any old hymns? I suppose, it is well with my soul has an element of, lamenting, and it's interesting how often that's been sung recently. It's become a kind of modern favorite.
Michael Jensen:And I think of, blessed be the name of the lord, which has a really dark verse, and I really appreciate it, I gotta say. But I've I've struggled to think of other examples. Do you know any?
Kit Barker:Well, I was prepping for this question because I I ask my students this every every year every second year when I teach psalter. And there are certainly lots of good resources there, but very few of them are congregational, and even fewer are popular. So when we wrote our book on lament several years ago, we actually commissioned a local Christian musician here in Sydney to to write a lament based on Psalm 88. And in years since, I've talked with Christian musicians and writers about this, and they recognise the need for it, but they just often pull back. They don't think that their I think their publishing house, will accept it, or their congregations, or their wider denominational base will will really be able to appreciate.
Kit Barker:And I think that's a shame. I think we need more of it. There's not there's not a lot. So even blessed be your name and Desert Song, they're good songs, and III love them too, and they have an important place. The problem is that those are the ones that my students always pick as lament songs, and they're actually taking context which should be lament or could be lament, and they turn them into praise in the refrain and in the tone of the music.
Kit Barker:So what you just mentioned, the old hymn is a classic, and I think that's really it's a beautiful psalm and a beautiful song, and yet it does still push us towards praise, which some of the Lament songs do.
Michael Jensen:Well, it claims it is well with my soul.
Kit Barker:It is well with my soul. Right? Right. And blessed be the name. It's a praise psalm.
Kit Barker:And and the Desert song, even in the midst of all this, I will praise you. I will sing praise. I will sing praise. So there's a beautiful song that's, sort of, Lord from sorrows deep, I call. It's, it's based on Psalm 42, and and it has more of a a lament tone, a tone of lament.
Kit Barker:But even so, it's it's really talking to your soul, asking your soul to be consoled and to find a place of praise. But it is it at least is reflective and sits in a moment of lament. But we need more. We need more. We need lament that sits in a minor key and actually allows people to cry out directly to God and ask why.
Megan Powell du Toit:I feel like you've just given us perhaps the topic for another episode, talking about maybe how capitalism has affected the worship industry and why we might need to rethink the worship industry. But thank you so much for joining us and giving us a bit of a glimpse into Lament. And of course, people can check out your Finding Lost Words and, you know, go and study the Lament for themselves.
Kit Barker:That's right. Thanks for having me here.
Megan Powell du Toit:Thank you. If you remember Jason Seagal from the Muppets movie and from the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, you might be quite surprised by
Michael Jensen:I haven't seen the Muppets movie. I just want you to know.
Megan Powell du Toit:Okay. Are you trying to, like, are you trying to say you're better than me?
Michael Jensen:Correct.
Megan Powell du Toit:Right. We'll we'll talk about that later. You might be surprised by his all in performance in shrinking, an Apple TV comedy drama about grief. That's next. Through the Wardrobe, Reading Stories and Finding Truth.
Megan Powell du Toit:The Shrinking is an American Apple TV comedy drama created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Seagal, and Brett Goldstein, and starring Jason as Jimmy, a therapist grieving the death of his wife. As he comes out of rock bottom, he starts approaching his work in a very different way, which has a huge impact on his own life and that of his clients. Now his is not the actually the only grief in the show. There are stories of other characters in which we see the effects of different kinds of grief, whether that's relational breakdown, degenerative disease, or the other common losses of life. It's got a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and they just started filming, thankfully, their second series.
Megan Powell du Toit:And here's a clip from the trailer, which gives it a glimpse of how Jimmy is going with dealing with grief.
Clip:Oh,
Clip:hey. Paul. I'm worried about you, kid. I mean, grieving her. You've been numbing.
Clip:Stop. You're doing sad face.
Clip:This is just face. I have resting dead wife face.
Megan Powell du Toit:He just kept on going on and on and on. Well, I love that he's got dead wife face.
Michael Jensen:Dear.
Megan Powell du Toit:Poor Jimmy. Well, Michael, what did you think of this show? How well does it explore grief? Well, it
Michael Jensen:it doesn't. It doesn't. That is, it kind of it, it kinda comes up in certain various moments. I I think it's a it's a compelling watch. It's really well done.
Michael Jensen:I mean, I I trust it because Harrison Ford's in it.
Megan Powell du Toit:But he's very good as as the grumpy older colleague.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. Yeah. I related. So that was that was really good. And I think also taking it into a into a therapist's like, he's a therapist and but it shows you how broken a therapist can be.
Megan Powell du Toit:Yeah. That was a really interesting choice. Yeah.
Michael Jensen:Position heal thyself and how much he learns from his clients as well. So I think that's kind of interesting because, actually, grief, you can't just go and see someone for your grief. You kinda have to work it through in community. I think
Megan Powell du Toit:1
Michael Jensen:of the key moments is the fact that his daughter says to him wonderful wonderful character. His daughter says to him how selfish his grief has made him, how grief has closed him in. I think this is 1 of the temptations. This is not to blame the grief laden, of course. But grief, you do kind of become grief can make you think you are the only 1 experiencing grief.
Megan Powell du Toit:And he
Michael Jensen:misses the fact that his daughter is also experiencing her own grief and it becomes quite a selfish individual. And I think that's where the show really brings him out. I was interested to compare it with Ricky Gervais' show, Afterlife
Megan Powell du Toit:Yes.
Michael Jensen:Which is much heavier. And, there's much fewer laughs in there.
Megan Powell du Toit:This is actually very funny. Like, I found this laugh out loud funny. Yeah.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. A bit blue in place, I have to say. We watched it with our 17 year old daughter. And so there were a few kind of cringe moments for us there. But it did I did think it expressed the sort of shutdownness of grief, his inability to see or he discovers that that other people are actually struggling really badly too.
Megan Powell du Toit:Well, it really does, I think, show the universality of grief as sort of you realise, in fact, that everyone is dealing with some form of grief in in the show. And also the importance of community, even sort of quite imperfect community.
Michael Jensen:Oh, it's the next door neighbor who's sort
Megan Powell du Toit:of She's mourning the loss of all her kids having gone away.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. So she's mourning and so she's sort of muscled in on the daughter
Megan Powell du Toit:and sister. It's played by Krista Miller from, Scrubs.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. Oh. Yeah.
Reader:Yeah. Okay.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. Just showing your fandom again. Yeah. That's right. Well, I mean, that's very that's a very interesting little relationship because in she's a kind of person who looks like she's being helpful but isn't being helpful.
Megan Powell du Toit:Well, but she is gonna be helpful. Like, there is a lot of that where people sometimes get it wrong, but in the end it doesn't really matter that they sometimes get it wrong. There's kind of a lot of grace in this show. Perhaps even more so, there's some problems with the professional ethics in here.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. Well, absolutely. But then it shows that what you need like, what's interesting about the traumatized ex soldier is that he needs to go and he doesn't need to go over and over again with the past to relive it. What he needs to do is actually get it out of his body. So I was thinking of The Body Keeps the Score
Megan Powell du Toit:Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Jensen:Really interesting analysis of trauma and grief and loss and saying that, actually, we store it in our bodies and there's a kind of we need to reckon with our bodies. I think that's interesting, too, given the way CS Lewis speaks about grief as a physical pain, which it is. You feel it physically.
Megan Powell du Toit:Yes.
Michael Jensen:And so it's interesting that, perhaps, there's a more physical outlet that we need to take when it comes to when it comes to our grief.
Megan Powell du Toit:Well, really interestingly, I think it shows the benefits and the limits of therapy in terms of grief. And and even, like, the the the way it has to interact with the professional ethics, and I won't give any spoilers there but it definitely does, Just shows that as well. And it was so intriguing to me, I think particularly as a pastor, that I could see, in fact, the difference of a role of a pastor in grief in terms of a therapist. And in a way, I thought that the friends and family in this show are actually performing more of that pastoral role.
Michael Jensen:So what's the key the key the difference there? This is not just listening, not just distance?
Megan Powell du Toit:Yes. I think I think it's not just listening or helping them to work fruit for themselves, but actually journeying alongside, getting involved in each other's lives, being there in trivial ways and non trivial ways, being able to actually speak definite words rather than sort of sitting back, allowing them to come to those thoughts by themselves.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. I mean, because that's 1 of the key things where he breaks the physical body. He
Megan Powell du Toit:does. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Jensen:Yeah. Yeah. He actually tells people what to do.
Megan Powell du Toit:Yeah. You
Michael Jensen:shouldn't do if you're a therapist. And as a pastor, we're we're also listeners. But we we also have the medicine of the gospel, which is which again is kind of the the hope there. It's not cheap. It's all we don't offer it as a kind of cheap band aid, but I think, I I think you're right too.
Michael Jensen:And and and as pastors, we we draw people into community. We're not just people in offices that you go and visit, pay, and then go away.
Megan Powell du Toit:And so I do think, although, you know, in in a sense it's not this show is not offering the kind of hope that we're talking about in terms of the hope of the gospel, but it is it is about finding you can find life again, but that doesn't mean that the grief is no longer there, or that it hasn't changed you, or that you were starting over or something. But that the grief finds a place in a life which is still really worthwhile.
Michael Jensen:And a new, yeah, a new configuration of that life which may change things. I mean, interested that just speak speaking about therapy, I wouldn't under under cut therapy.
Megan Powell du Toit:No. No. Well, it seems to be really useful.
Michael Jensen:However, it was interesting. I live near Bondo Junction and in our local community, obviously, we had this horrible thing happen in the last little while. It's been absolutely horrendous in I mean, just stunning and awful. And many connections with people I, you know, not I didn't know anyone, but there are people I know who knew people killed in it. And the way it was just interesting to me that at every sort of event, they said we've got counselors standing by.
Michael Jensen:And actually, that's interesting and I think that's kind of a great response. But it was the politicians and I spoke to a couple of our local politicians who were kind of acting as pastors. They they were seeing the community wanted to talk to them because they were in charge. They didn't wanna talk to a counselor, just to someone to listen to. They wanted to talk to someone who would represent the care of the whole community for them.
Megan Powell du Toit:Well, that's right. Like their community rather than just having a, here's my individual response that's taken off to the side. And sometimes that absolutely has to happen. But as you say there's some way there's a point at which a community has to grapple with things like grief. Even with what you would think, that the grief of a wife.
Megan Powell du Toit:It's it's very much shown in this show that it's not like a a grief that's just his.
Michael Jensen:No. No. It actually it it radiates out and Mhmm. It belongs to the to the others
Megan Powell du Toit:just to be shared. Yeah.
Michael Jensen:Thanks for being part of With All Due Respect brought to you by Anglican Aid. Coming up next episode, this year, record numbers of women have been killed by violence in Australia. We've already had this topic on the agenda for this season.
Megan Powell du Toit:But it's now become an even more essential and important conversation. So join us as we talk to an expert on the topic and wrestle with the response of the church.
Michael Jensen:See you then.
Megan Powell du Toit:Talk to you then.
Michael Jensen:With all due respect is hosted by me, Michael Jensen, and Megan Powell Du Tois. Mhmm. And it's produced by lovely Mark Hadley, edited by Richard Humwee. We should thank especially our series sponsor, anglicanage.org.au. You can find them there.
Michael Jensen:And with all due respect, is part of the Underceptions Network. So head over to undeceptions.com, where you'll find show notes and other stuff related to our episodes. And click on to our Facebook page to join in the debates, with all due respect. An Undeceptions podcast.