Ps 137

7 October 2007

World Communion Sunday

“Remember Who You Are”

            In case you hadn’t already figured this out, today is World Communion Sunday.  This year’s theme comes from Revelation 22.  It’s a reflection on John’s vision of the tree of life, which itself takes us back to Genesis.  “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

            Each year, the scriptural theme for this day expresses ideas like healing, justice, and peace.  They seem like appropriate topics.  Today’s psalm reading would appear to be the opposite of what we need to hear.  It certainly doesn’t fit what we ordinarily associate with “communion.”

            Psalm 137 has been called the “baby dashing” psalm.  It gets that name, not surprisingly, from the way it ends:  “O daughter Babylon, you devastator!  Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!  Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (vv. 8-9).

Hallelujah!  Blessed be the ones who take Babylonian babies and smash them on the pavement!  And let all of God’s people say, “Amen!”

This is one of several psalms in which curses are issued.  These are not to be repeated in polite company!  One of my favorite lines comes from Psalm 58.  “The righteous will rejoice when they see vengeance done; they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked” (v. 10).  And I like the response:  “People will say, ‘Surely there is a reward for the righteous; surely there is a God who judges on earth’” (v. 11).

It reminds me of when people say, “There is a God after all!”  (Except in this case, it’s not when something wonderful happens.)  It’s when the gore is running ankle-deep from the slain bodies of the bad guys!  Unless, of course, you consider that to be something wonderful!

What I’m getting at is that such psalms can create an embarrassing, uneasy feeling.  Even as noteworthy a figure as C. S. Lewis refers to our psalm as “devilish.”[1]  In his book, Reflections on the Psalms, he even suggests an alternative way to look at it—the Babylonian babies as temptations.  They’re “the infantile beginnings of small indulgences, small resentments,” he says.  They “woo and wheedle us with special pleadings and seem so tiny, so helpless that in resisting them, we feel we are being cruel to animals.”[2]

I can understand the impulse that wants to soften the blow, to keep the raw emotion of our psalm at arm’s length.  It’s like the feeling we get when, in the presence of someone gripped with pain and anguish, we hear all kinds of utterances that seem vile and even blasphemous.  It’s a lot like the confessions of Jeremiah, which I preached on last month.

But unless we’re willing to suspend our judgment and listen to the painful lament, it will be impossible to enter anything approaching genuine communion.  If we too quickly turn away—if we simply gloss over the grief—then this day called World Communion Sunday will be little more than a frivolous exercise in warm fuzzies and generating a happy-go-lucky atmosphere.

Psalm 137 offers a treasure trove of good things.  It is a gold mine of wisdom.  And after we sift through the painful stuff on the surface, we can find plenty of joy to go around.  But as I’ve suggested, we have to be willing to hang around, so to speak—no matter how strong the temptation is to take off.

Like so much of the Old Testament, our psalm is the product of the extreme fracture—the severe rupture—that is the exile to Babylon.  The destruction of the temple leads to a reordering of Jewish faith.  It’s pretty hard to offer sacrifices if there’s no temple…and you’ve been kicked out of the country, anyway!  The Jews become a people of the word.  Almost all of their scriptures are written during the exile or post-exile.

As much as anything else, Psalm 137 is a lesson about identity.  “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion” (v. 1).  By the rivers of Babylon.  This is the cry of those who have been dislocated.  This is the cry of the refugee.  It’s the cry of one who yearns for homeland.

By the rivers of Babylon.  “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (v. 4).  Our tormentors asked for mirth; they turned to us for amusement.  How can we misuse what is precious to us, just to satisfy the passing whims of those with power?  How can we cheapen what we cherish?  How can we defile what we hold most dear?

“If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!  Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy” (vv. 5-6).  These are the words of someone issuing a protest.  They’re words of holy defiance.  They’re words of protest against the enticements of empire.

For many centuries, Jews will have to struggle to maintain their identity.  They will be scattered all over the globe, to many different nations.  We live in a world in which many people share that struggle.  Many people surrender what is most precious to them in order to consume the excesses of empire, and that definitely includes the American empire.

Many people forget who they are.  Indeed, there are times when all of us need to hear the words:  “Remember who you are!”  When the call of Caesar contradicts the call of Christ, whose voice do we heed?  Remember who you are.

Still, it will be difficult to do that if we don’t face up to the awkward, unnerving nature of our “baby dashing” psalm.  It’s understandable if we take its extreme language and chalk it up to the depth of pain felt by the psalmist.  We can also take into account the well-known use of exaggeration among Middle Eastern writers.

But that still doesn’t let us off the hook!  I’m certainly no fan of long, frowning faces during worship.  A lot of people behave as though they’re at a funeral.  They don’t seem to have gotten the message:  Jesus Christ is risen!  That’s a good thing; the gospel means good news!  Yet at the same time, we need to hear what the darker psalms and hymns have to say.

Martin Tel, music director at Princeton Seminary, has commented on the need for attention to songs of lament.[3]  When we ignore them, we suffer imbalance.

He notes, “Often congregations in the so-called mainstream want to bottle up the ethos [the essence] of African American worship and unleash it in their comfortable suburban communities in need of a worship ‘lift.’  It will never work.  [By the way, the selection of “I’ve Got Peace Like a River” as the final hymn—and “Ain’t No Need to Worry” by the Winans and Anita Baker as postlude…that has nothing to do with what I just said!]

“Paradoxically, the vibrant joy welling up in the African American community is often closely linked to an intimate knowledge of suffering, past and present.  As we turn our backs on such suffering, we find our worship wanting and in need of a steroid.”  We run the risk of turning our worship—in fact, our lives together—into fluff.

He continues with his pharmaceutical image:  “Many are addicted to praise as a buffer against pain.  As with any illicit drug, we create illusions that will inevitably implode when pierced by the realities of life.”

Here’s another way of looking at it.  If we ignore the suffering around us, and among us, we could wind up looking like the Chinese propaganda that came out at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  The band R. E. M. captured it in song:  “Shiny happy people holding hands.”  You do realize that that’s the way many people view the church?  They see us as out of touch with what’s going on.  We’re in our own little world.

Here’s something I want us to think about.  What are some ways in which we, the church, surrender our identity?  How do we forget who—and whose—we are?  How do we cheapen what we cherish?  How do we settle for less than what Christ offers?

How often do we yield to what Hebrew scholar Walter Brueggemann calls the “temptation to be preoccupied with self, to flee the hard task of community formation for the sake of private well-being”?[4]  He sees this “in the greed that our society calls ‘opportunity,’ in the demise of public health care [even for children!] because it is ‘too costly,’ and in the decay of public institutions regarded as too expensive to maintain, as though taxation were a penalty rather than a necessary neighborly act.”[5]

            Despite the pain and anger expressed in our psalm, the story obviously doesn’t end there.  Or maybe I should put it this way:  because the pain and anger is expressed so honestly (and dare I say, so faithfully?), the story doesn’t end there.  There is a light in the darkness.

It’s been said, “Christ is still longing to touch this suffering world through the compassion of his church, and his apprentices are people of compassion.  They know how to look for pain in the eyes of others.  They know that labels don’t help people change.  They believe that love always has hands and feet.  [Love always has hands and feet!]

“It is our choices that will reveal whether the church today becomes known as a wellspring of compassion or a place where no one particularly cares.”[6]

It’s easy to forget who we are.  It’s easy to go along with the flow and accept our society’s definitions of who are we.  It’s difficult to resist.  We need the power that comes from prayer—and we need to pray together.  There’s a group that meets here every Thursday evening, and it’s a group that’s lonely!  I’m not saying to come to every meeting (I haven’t!); just come to one meeting.

God reminds us who we are in community.  God reminds us who we are in communion.  Each of us has a little spark, a little flame.  When we get those little sparks together, when we combine those little flames, oh what a lovely fire we can get started!  So let me paraphrase the psalmist by saying, “Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I don’t remember who I am, if I don’t set belonging to Christ above my highest joy.”

Remember who you are.

back to home page