What do we sing? A song of liberation? Or a song of damnation against those who have wronged us?

October 3, 2010

Psalm 137
Proper 22C

The Jewish Temple in Jerusalem had a really good choir, famous throughout the world. That is, they had a really good choir until the Temple was destroyed in the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. The Temple treasures were plundered and the Temple personnel were carried off to exile in Babylon. The conquerors wanted to make sure that there would be no continued worship of the God of Israel.

Today’s psalm reflects the Babylonian captivity: “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered you, O Zion.” “Zion” refers to the Temple Mount, now a heap of rubble. The psalmist continues: “As for our harps, we hung them up on the trees in the midst of that land. For those who led us away captive asked us for a song, and our oppressors called for mirth: ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’ How shall we sing the Lord’s song upon an alien soil?”

By the time the psalm was written, the captivity was ended. Babylon itself had fallen in 538, to Cyrus, King of the Persians. The Babylonians had razed Jerusalem, but Cyrus took pains not to destroy the fabulous city on the Euphrates. As for the Jewish captives, there, he proclaimed release and a return to their homeland. He even ordered the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem—a most enlightened despot.

Our psalmist is among the returnees, probably of the second generation of exiles, telling a story of the captivity to those who had been left behind in Palestine. His story goes like this: He and some of his fellow exiles had been down by the riverside, singing some of the sacred songs their fathers in exile had taught them, accompanied by the little harps they had brought with them. Perhaps they were hoping that their God would hear them, though in the theology of the time there was no certainty that their God had a toehold on alien turf. Anyway, there was a tradition to maintain and they were doing it.

Along come some of the destroyers, Babylonians out for a stroll along the river. “Hey, those guys are supposed to be really good singers. Let’s ask them for a song.”

Nothing doing. As if the sacred songs in honor of Yahweh could be sung before Gentiles in a foreign land. The holiness of God would be diminished if the Lord’s song were degraded to entertainment for a heathen audience. Nothing doing. They hung up their harps.

But now the storyteller gets a little carried away in his religio-political fervor: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you above my highest joy.” That’s a nice, pious sentiment. But now that he’s sainted himself, he chokes on his own virtue: “Oh yeah, and remember the Edomites?” Edom was a close and unfriendly neighbor that had sided with Babylonians during the siege long ago. They had rejoiced in the fall of Jerusalem. The psalmist hasn’t forgotten. They never forget anything in the Middle East. “Remember the day of Jerusalem, O Lord, against the people of Edom, who said, ‘Down with it! down with it! even to the ground!’” And now he goes completely off the rails: “O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction.” Or doesn’t he wish? Remember, Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, had treated the city with great consideration. But the psalmist is in a rage now. And he’s taking it out on the women and children. “Happy the one”—or better translated “blessed”—“Blessed is the one who pays you back for what you have done to us! Blessed be he who takes your children and dashes them against a stone!”

In his understanding, the enemy of God’s people is the enemy of God. But come on, that’s no excuse for that kind of talk or that kind of sentiment. This is religious fervor turned to the dark side. And there are only too many examples of it in history; and we see only too many examples of it these days, in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in Hinduism. And it’s appalling, the wicked identification of one’s own worst desires with the will of God.

Not surprisingly, when this psalm is used in worship, it’s usually bowdlerized, with the last three verses dropped. And tellingly, it’s not used in Jewish worship at all. But today it's here in all its ugliness--perhaps because we need to remember that our religious tradition, like all the rest of them, has some warts on it. And they need to be recognized and treated.

So what do we do with all this?

Maybe we need to look at our own times of exile. We’ve all had them, times when we’ve felt displaced and distressed, stuck in the wrong place, caught in a bad place, an alien state. Sometimes, of course, we’ve put ourselves there and have nobody but ourselves to blame—not that we won’t try to find a target. But sometimes someone or some ones have facilitated our exile, colluded in our captivity. We’ve all had or will have bad bosses, malicious co-workers, bad teachers, false friends. We’ve all known people who have something against us and are able to do something about it, people who’ve had it in for us, found a way to get to us. We know what it’s like to feel trapped, powerless, humiliated, distressed. We know what it’s like to be unable to sing.

Usually, though, we find away out, by ourselves, or with a little help from our friends, or through some liberator, or by the grace of God. We find our place, our self again.

And what do we sing? A song of liberation? A song of thanksgiving? Or a song of damnation against those who have wronged us—a song of hatred and retribution? We’re not really free from exile until we let go of the hatred. Remember when Jesus says, “Whosesoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven; whosesoever sins you retain they are retained.” We think it has to do with the church’s power to forgive sins. But there’s more to it than that. If I can’t forgive someone who has sinned against me, their sin against me continues to hurt me and distort me, maybe even destroy me. I’ve retained their sin alright. Or if I say, or more likely think, “God damn him; God damn her,” I’m judging the deity not competent to judge. I want God to pour out my wrath, figuring that God may be insufficiently vituperative. Is that less appalling than “Blessed is he who takes your little children and dashes them against a stone”? It’s the wicked identification of our own worst desires with the will of God.

There are warts not only on the tradition, but on us, and they need to be identified and treated.

There’s some good anti-wart medicine in today’s collect: “Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior.