Book Notice: Soong-Chah Rah on Prophetic Lament

Soong-Chan Rah 

Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times
Downer’s Grove, IVP, 2015.
Available at Amazon.com

By Jill Firth

Soong-Chen Rah (DMin, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) is Milton B. Engebretson Associate Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of The Next Evangelicalism (2009) and Many Colors (2010). Rah founded the Cambridge Community Fellowship Church (CCFC) in Massachusetts, a multi-ethnic, urban ministry-focused church committed to living out the values of racial reconciliation and social justice in the urban context. His initial sermons were on the book of Lamentations, an unusual choice for a church planter.

Prophetic Lament is a commentary on the book of Lamentations in the Resonate series that seeks to connect Biblical books with contemporary voices of hope and lament, in a practical, pastoral and culturally conscious ‘un-commentary’. In each chapter, Rah moves between the text of Lamentations and its historical setting in the fall of Jerusalem, and contemporary or historical situations in American life such as the death of Rah’s father, the establishment of the slave trade, the ignoring of women’s voices, and racial violence in America today. Lamentations 3 is in acrostic form, ‘that attempts to cover the full expression of human suffering from A to Z.’ In a plea to hear all voices, Rah critiques the triumphalism of current American evangelicalism, and calls for recognition of the lament of the ‘have-nots’. Celebration of stability and lament over suffering are both needed if the church is to flourish.

In his final chapters, Rah explores the need for a response to lament not only from the God who hears lament, but also from the human community. He notes that Dietrich Bonhoeffer may have learned his concept of ‘cheap grace’ from his black pastor in an African American church in Harlem, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, which Bonhoeffer attended in 1931. Bonhoeffer was also influenced by the writings of African American Christians in the Harlem Renaissance. Rah invites partnership in response, saying ‘I want to be a colaborer in Christ with you, not your reclamation project.’

Rah connects the book of Lamentations to responses to the fatal shooting of 18 year old Michael Brown by a white police officer on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. After his death, Michael Brown was left uncovered in the August sun for four hours. Rah comments, ‘Michael Brown was deemed no better than roadkill.’ Another African American, Eric Garner, had died in Staten Island, New York City, after choking while being arrested on July 17, 2014. Garner was 43 and the father of six children. He was left without emergency medical attention from police or medics on the roadside. The decision not to indict after the death of Eric Gardner led to further grief over racial injustice. These deaths led to the declaration that ‘black lives matter.’ Rah concludes, ‘There are no easy answers to unabated suffering. Lament continues.’ He offers a contemporary lament based on Lamentations 5 which begins,

1. Remember, Lord, what happened to Michael Brown and Eric Garner;

look, and see the disgraceful way they treated their bodies.

2. Our inheritance of the image of God in every human being has been co-opted and denied by others.
3. The children of Eric Garner have become fatherless, widowed mothers grieve their dead children…

Jill Firth lectures in Hebrew and Old Testament at Ridley College in Melbourne. She has recently completed a PhD on lament psalms.