Praise Be!: Good Friday and Ukraine: An Occasion for Praise?

Good Friday and Ukraine: An Occasion for Praise?

Certainly Good Friday is a lament. The psalm appointed for that day is a psalm of lament. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” intones Psalm 22. Jesus quotes this psalm from the cross in the passion narratives of both Matthew and Mark. But why then does Psalm 22 go on to exclaim “Praise the Lord…. My praise is of him in the great assembly.” Psalms of lament are expressions of praise (Bernard Anderson). Praise is lament answered (Walter Brueggemann). Praise is confidence (hoping against hope) that the God who has “forsaken me” will nevertheless hear the cry of the poor and satisfy the hungry (Psalm 22).

As Russia began its large scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Yaakov Dov Bleich, the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, invited Jews and Christians to pray Psalm 31, an individual lament (as is Psalm 22). This psalm according to Luke’s Gospel contains Jesus’ last words: “Into your hands I commend my spirit…”(v. 5). This psalm too in spite of cruel affliction: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble;/ my eye is consumed with sorrow, and also my throat and my belly” (v. 9); turns to trust: “But as for me, I have trusted in you, O Lord./ I have said, ‘You are my God,” (v. 14) and “My times are in your hand;/ rescue me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me” (v. 15). By March 1, five days after the Rabbi’s call to prayer, the city of Kharkiv amidst fierce fighting was surrounded by Russian troops. And the Psalm continues astonishingly, “Praise be to the Lord, for he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city” (v. 21, NIV). Ukraine’s Good Friday is an occasion for lament without question, and according to the psalms it may also be an occasion for trust and praise.

Praise shapes “pain into hope, and grief into possibility.”^1. The Welsh poet Waldo Williams remarked that the purpose of praise is “to recreate an unblemished world.”^2. This is a “world marked by justice, mercy, and peace.”^3. Praise is not “transactional” though it is often seen that way – offering praise as a precondition to obtaining some benefit. In fact, it is a letting go. Brueggemann begins and ends his book Israel’s Praise with this assertion: “Praise articulates and embodies our capacity to yield, submit, and abandon ourselves in trust and gratitude to the One whose we are.”^4. One sees this submission in praise and trust in the Rabbi’s recital of Psalm 31, “My times are in your hand.” At a deep level there seems to be a human need (Brueggemann calls it a vocation) to praise. The Syriac Christian, Jacob of Serugh (5^th century) wrote: “The very pulse of my created being requires Your praise, and, as by its nature, it hastens to You to give praise.”^5. The utterance of praise then according to Jacob is an essential quality of being human. If this is so we should see it across various cultures.

We find praise often expressed as poetry. There is Syriac praise poetry, African, Arabic, Celtic, the psalms and so forth. I hope the following brief survey will demonstrate this human need to praise and draw us more deeply into its meaning for our own Christian tradition, even on a Good Friday.

Syriac Praise Poetry

Let’s start with the Syriac tradition and its most famous poet/theologian, Saint Ephrem (4th century). Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. Language carries meanings and associations, and perhaps Syriac allows us to get closer to some of the thought patterns of Jesus.

Ephrem’s poem, “The Eucharistic Marriage Feast,” situates praise as an integral part of Christian life. Mary says to her son, “they have no wine.” And of her son she says, “Do whatever he tells you.” Praise places Jesus at the center around which everything else is oriented. Jars are filled with over 120 gallons of water that Jesus transforms into wine. It is an epiphany, revealing praise as a transformation from emptiness to superabundance. Praise is the way humans cope with the extraordinary and continuing magnitude of God’s love. ^6. Ephrem begins his poem on the Eucharist with this reference to the wedding feast at Cana:

I have invited You, Lord, to a wedding feast of songs,

but the wine – the utterance of praise – at our feast has run out.

(You are) the guest who filled with good wine the jars;

fill my mouth with Your praise. ^7.

In the daily prayer of the Episcopal Church there is the assurance that when God opens our lips, “our mouth shall proclaim your praise.”^8.

Ephrem concludes his poem with paradox. Greek philosophy with its rather static categories had not yet arrived in Syria. This happenstance freed Ephrem to use paradox as a more dynamic and fluid way of doing theology.

It is right that humanity should acknowledge Your divinity,

it is right for the supernal beings to worship Your humanity;

the supernal beings were amazed to see how small You become,

and those below to see how exalted! ^9.

The refrain finds praise grounded in truth:

Praise to You from everyone

who has perceived Your truth. ^10.

Praise roots itself in truth, not deception or ingratitude.

African Praise Poetry

Many had their first encounter with African praise poetry at President Barak Obama’s Inauguration ceremony in 2009 where Elizabeth Alexander read her poem, “Praise Song for the Day, Praise Song for Struggle.” I first became aware of African praise poetry in 2002 at a workshop on Creativity Through Writing and Storytelling with storyteller Jay O’Callahan who tells his tales all over the world. He first came upon the idea of praise poems when he was telling stories in Africa. Jay says that “if you give people a gift of praising themselves, it is a sacred act.”

In Lesotho boys were expected to compose their own lithoko (the word for praise poem that comes from the verb ho roka - “to praise”). “At one time almost every adult male Sotho was able to compose and chant his own lithoko…”^11. The poem is not self-congratulatory as though the poem was oriented about one’s self. Instead, the context in which the poem was composed would be one of proud traditional values, a love of the land, and an historically continuous community. Here is part of an initiate’s lithoko. Each initiate is given a new name that begins with the letter “L.” In this case the boy’s new name was Lefata. He makes me smile. I can just imagine a thirteen-year-old coming up with something like this!

Lefata, wander on and go down

To go and see how huts stand

To go and see dark-complexioned girls.

A dark-complexioned young man, I, Lefata

A young man with a beautiful voice

A young man to be called a chief

A young man to be given a shield.

Girls love him without knowing him

They go about breaking themselves into small pieces.^12.

When we praise a person or ourselves in the context of the divine, each one is part of God’s good creation. The boy Lefata with a 13-year-old’s enthusiasm rises on the tide of his community and tradition none of which is removed from the divine. We praise the activity that leads to fulfillment of each person in all that they were created to be.

In the Episcopal Church at confirmation instead of composing a lithoko, the bishop prays that each confirmand may continue God’s forever, and daily increase in Holy Spirit until arrival in that everlasting kingdom.^13. Each belongs to God with the space to stretch out and be all that God meant everyone to be. That prayer is very much in the tradition of praise. In O’Callahan’s words, at confirmation, the confirmands are being taught the meaning of praise for themselves and that is a sacred act.

Three weeks after the Rabbi’s prayer in Kharkiv, Russia, having already surrounded the city, though unable to capture it, resorted to destroying it. “Russia aims to demoralize the city’s inhabitants with overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower.” One resident concluded, “They want to destroy it all, they want to demoralize people.”^14.A week prior Vera Lytovchenko, a concert violinist, began to play her violin in a basement bomb shelter. She said I want people to see that “Someone is alive and someone keeps hope and is optimistic.”^15. That is an act of praise. She was teaching others to have praise for themselves, that they are God’s forever, and that lesson is a sacred act. No matter the incessant shelling and demoralization, we are alive when there is room, small as it may be, for praise in our hearts. Perhaps it is like finding a small, morning ember in ashes that had been banked over coals in the night.

Israel’s Praise Psalms

In addition to psalms of lament that express praise there are praise psalms proper such as Psalm 136. This psalm begins with an invocation that calls upon the community to praise. The divine Name is spoken. The God of Israel has an identity and may be addressed personally even though God is beyond our grasp and control.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,