Sermon - October 6, 2013 - Psalm 137: Three years. Three years ago, on Worldwide communion Sunday, I led my first worship service here at Kanata United Church. Three years. For some, it feels I only began yesterday. For others, it has been a very long and painful journey. Do not worry. I won’t ask you to which camp you belong. This morning I thought I could celebrate this milestone of mine by preaching on exactly the same biblical text I used three years ago… and see if you would be able to tell me if I used the same sermon. Psalm 137 has frequently been set to music and gave us great classics. You probably hear the version Boney M made in 1978. It has been also used in many various ways in worship services. However, it is usually presented in its expurgated version. Even in our Voices United you would not find verses 8 and 9 which say: “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!” Nobody is really comfortable with the way this psalm ends. You would be surprised by the amount of resources I used this week that dances around the subject without addressing it, tries to contextualize the text by saying in those time it was normal or simply skips over the whole text as this psalm never existed. In 2010, Religious Studies Professor Kristin Swenson, wrote that these final verses appal her so much that she chooses not to go where these texts would lead her. She will not follow them. Most of us are uncomfortable with this psalm because we do not want to hear those kinds of words or extreme emotions. We do not want to hear about devastation, violence, hate and a desire for revenge, especially in a church. It is not very nice. Morality and good manners seem to require that one be disengaged from emotions, as if it was possible or healthy. For many Church should be all about forgiveness, hope and positive emotions. Even if we can understand this text was written when the pain of the exile in Babylon was still fresh in the minds and hearts of God’s people, we often prefer to imagine a scenario when this desire for revenge would be a cathartic first step toward forgiving the oppressors. We prefer to fantasise about a happy end of this difficult episode, even if the text does not point in this direction. Most of us are uncomfortable with Psalm 137 because it challenges us. We do not want to hear that sometimes we are behaving like the Babylonians. We have this image of those wretched Babylonians who like tormentors order the poor Israelites to sing their little songs about their God and homeland, which they defeated and destroyed completely. Maybe the Babylonians were just curious about those men and women like we are often curious about people coming from another part of the world. Maybe they simply invited them to dress up with their traditional costumes, do their little dances, or to say or sing something in their own language like we sometimes ask people to do. We have done this believing we were acting in good faith and even considered this as a sign of open-mindedness without really thinking about of the pain or the suffering of being constantly reminded that you are stranger stuck far away from home. We have done this without really considering how it could be difficult to entertain people when home is all about war, ruins and devastation. We have done this without understanding why sometimes they just want to sit down and weep. Most of us are uncomfortable with today’s text because we do not honestly understand the reality of being exiled and forced to live in a foreign land. These days if we had to believe some of our politicians or pundits, we would be convinced that refugees come here solely to abuse our system and generosity. We forget so easily that these men, women and children had a life before it was stripped away from them. They went to school. They had a job, a house, a phone, a DVD player and a dog, and suddenly, sometimes in just blink of an eye, they lost everything, and not just material goods but also pride, sense of worth and dignity. I am deeply convinced if we would ask them to choose between a 1 million dollar check and going back to the life they used to have, their answer would be very easy. However, they know they cannot go back home because it means they would be killed. Out of despair they wonder why God has let this happen to them. Like the Israelites in forced exile in Babylon they are enraged and they cannot understand why the world does not get it and does not seems willing to help them. So what should we do with Psalm 137? Should we ignore it? Should we forget about it as soon as we are done reading it? Should we pick and choose only the nice parts of it? We would be probably more comfortable with this text if at least we could find some sort of good news in it, something positive, something preachable. But where is the good news in this text? Maybe the good news could be found in the fact that this text still exists today. As painful as it was to remember Israel and the ancient covenants made with God, the worst possible responses for the Israelites would have been to feel nothing and to forget everything about their past. How many times have we heard victims of aggressions or traumatic events told to forget about it, not talking about it or to change their mind? Devastation, death, despair, grief and anger must be felt and expressed honestly to give a chance to life to continue. God’s people followed that path. They never forgot and they did not disappear. Their resilience helped them to continue to thrive after chaos and exile. Maybe the good news could be found in the potential outcomes following these words. Walter Brueggemann wrote that our very human thirst for vengeance is very natural. The question is how to manage that thirst. We may try to deny our anger and sadness or we can try to use them for something else. Properly channelled, those mixed emotions can be powerful tools for resisting political and economic injustice of world. They could be the thriving force behind revolutionary movements. They could help us to understand our own nature and guide us in our quest to become better human beings. Maybe the good news could be found in the condition of exile the Israelites find themselves. As strange as it may appear, times of profound lost and grief are fertile grounds for profound transformation and renewal. The expression says, ‘If it’s not broken, don’t touch it.’ When we are comfortable and have the impression that everything is going fairly well, most likely we are not looking to make change. For the people of ancient Israel, their reality in Babylon was a harsh contrast to everything they had known and believed and understood about themselves, and to be honest, what they clearly had believed about the God who would keep them safe and secure in the land they had been promised. It was the end of life they had taken for granted. As painful and humiliating as their exile could be, they were forced to look at themselves and explore new paths of existence. Through this difficult journey, they reinvented and redefined themselves away from the powers that have kept us in thrall, perhaps to a complacent orthodoxy, perhaps to excessive self-protection and self-assurance. Away from their homeland, they were able a vision of the future that rarely happen when one is comfortably installed at home. On Worldwide Communion Sunday, a day when we are invited to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in faith from all around the world, we need to hear the words of Psalm 137. Deep longing, grief, and even rage are part of the human experience, especially of those who are living in refuges camps in Kenya, Jordan, Mauritania or India. We have the choice make them sing for us or to weep with them. We have the choice to deny their anger or work with them to create a better world. We have the choice to try to stay the same forever or to discover new ways to remember or past, live in today’s reality and to dream for a better future for all. The good news is that it is up to us to make the choice. Amen.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 14:09:44 +0000