The sermon text below is not a transcript and may deviate from the actual sermon preached.
Les Miserables is a story of redemption and grace and hope in the face of injustice.
We find the song “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” after a failed student revolution in Paris, which is based on the 1832 June Rebellion. The Students hoped to end inequality, fight against a corrupt monarchy, promote liberty and freedom, and restore France’s glory.
One of the most powerful songs that begins this section of the musical is, Do you hear the people sing? It expresses the hopes of the student revolutionaries. You’ll hear the tune of this song when Mark plays the prelude.
Here are some of the lyrics.
“Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes”
They have faith in their hearts that tomorrow will be bright and freedom will ring.
Later,
The night before the last battle, they sing “One Day More”
They again sing hope for the future.
Here’s some lyrics: There’s a new world for the winning
There’s a new world to be won. One Day More.
After the battle, there is a lone survivor, Marius. All his fellow student revolutionary friends are dead. And with them, their hopes have died. Their plans for a brighter future, gone.
Marius sings Empty Chairs at Empty Tables. The lyrics are universal:
From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn
And they rose with voices ringing
And I can hear them now!
He can hear his dead friends singing the hopes for tomorrow.
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain that goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone
Those hopes and dreams intensify his grief. They were bonded as friends born together in hardship.
We know what it feels like to share a life with someone. We built a life with this person and hoped and dreamed of future vacations, projects, and adventures.
An older friend of mine’s husband died five years ago. They were married for fifty years. Recently, it was the anniversary of his death. She said she still misses him. In their years of retirement, they did everything together. He always sat in the same spot at the kitchen table. She would make him breakfast in the morning. They’d sit at the table and talk about the plans for their day and what projects they would work on. Often, to her annoyance, he was always working on a project. He could never sit still. And sometimes, he wasn’t good at giving instructions. Since his death, she has told me how much she misses the plans–the projects and their future adventures. After this death, she never sat in his chair again.
After a couple of years, she moved to her new home; she decided to purchase a new kitchen table to help avoid a constant reminder of what was.
Grief does not go away overnight, and it certainly doesn’t dissipate within the 3-5 days some companies give their employees for bereavement time. Just filling out the paperwork can take a couple of weeks or more to get through.
Instead of trying to finish grief work shortly. Let the emptiness that grief causes be like hugging a friend. Hold onto it for a while. Cry until there are no more tears left. Pray to God, for God hears your cries. Move closer to God by praying a prayer of lament.
Lament prayers are found throughout the book of Psalms. They are prayers of sorrow and hope. Psalms express the loss of a loved one or ask God to rescue them from their enemies.
Prayers of lament in the Book of Psalms tend to follow a similar pattern. In Water Brueggeman’s book, Our Hearts Wait: Worshiping through Praise and Lament in the Psalms, he outlines five components of these types of prayers..
First, complain. List what is happening to you. List how you are feeling. Our psalmist prays: “For I am lonely and afflicted.”
Second, petition, ask God to take action, and they are asked as imperatives: As our psalmist prays:
Relieve the troubles of my heart
Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.
O guard my life and deliver me
Third Reasons
The prayer offers God a reason for answering the petition.
Our psalm says: Do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge.
The psalmist needs God to know that she takes refuge in God.
Fourth Resolution
Although our psalm doesn’t end with praise, praise is one of the last pieces of a prayer of lament. We can say thank you, God.
Our prayers of lament draw us closer to God because these kinds of prayer are when we depend upon God the most as Comforter and Sustainer. It is true when we say I depend on God to get me through this grief.
Grief changes us; as much as we want to resume normality, we do not return to normal, and that’s okay. For what is normal? Our lives are changed all the time. Every experience, every time we meet someone new, every time we learn something new, every time we fall in love, every time we care for a child. Why would we think grief would be any different?
The memory of our loved ones never goes away, but grief may dissipate over time. It may go to the back of our mind in our subconscious. The sting of the memory may dim. But from time to time, it will present itself when you may least expect it. The emptiness may return for a moment. You may think, I can’t believe he’s gone; it’s hard not to be able to talk to her; it’s hard not waking up next to him.
At some point in our lives, we’re like Marius. All of our hopes and dreams with our loved ones disappear. Do not be afraid to sing or pray a lament to God. God will be there. God will be with you in those items when you empty. Amen.