The Book of Psalms Session 6: Psalm 137 1) Theme: the Sufferings
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The Book of Psalms Session 6: Psalm 137 1) Theme: The sufferings and feelings of people who experienced the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC, who were deported to Babylon in captivity. It gives vent to intense feelings of homesickness, depression, desire for revenge, patriotism, and rage. a) Verse 1: Verb is in the Past Tense i) How far back we don’t know. ii) Could be after the return to Jerusalem. iii) Could be while they were there in Babylon b) His mind goes back to the agonizing hours when they sat sadly from his homeland i) Tearful eyes and homesick hearts ii) They began to sing their songs of lament and play their harps in accompaniment. iii) Not only homesick, but they felt separated from God and the Temple. iv) It is a theological challenge: Can God have any power in a foreign land? (1) Has God rejected us forever?, Do we have access to God?. Are we being punished? 2) Verses 2-3: a) They cannot mourn in private. b) They hang up their harps on willow trees c) They hear their tormentors walking towards them. d) To make the prisoners aware of their power i) They call upon them to sing happy songs, a song of Zion (Psalms 46, 48, 84, 122) to entertain Gentiles! 3) Verse 4 a) They indignantly refuse. i) Would it be an affront to God? ii) Or is it because God can’t hear them so far away? b) What is clear is that not all situations are appropriate for praising God. i) It would be false and hypocritical if they were forced to sing a hymn to the glory of God? ii) God would be profaned if the Lord’s song is degraded to a means of entertainment for a pagan audience. 4) Verses 5-6: a) I would rather my hand wither and my tongue cleave to my mouth if I ever forget Jerusalem. i) It would mean the betrayal of his homeland to expose it to mockery. b) To see her rebuilt would be his highest joy. 5) Verses 7-9 a) Calls for Revenge i) Not for his own humiliation, but rather to reestablish God’s power. ii) To show that God wins in the end. b) He remembers the day of Jerusalem’s destruction and how the Edomites celebrated (Obadiah verses 11, Ezekiel 25:12ff, 35:5ff, Lam 4:21) c) Then his thoughts turn to the “Devastator” Babylon d) He no longer has the strength or the will power to curb his rage i) He wishes for the extermination of Babylon vs. 9 ii) Then he wishes the violent murder of their children (a common act in conquest). Questions: 1) Have you ever felt homesick? Have you ever lived in a foreign land? 2) What does it feel like to have a dominant culture not recognize you? 3) As a Christian do you ever feel like a minority in your own country? 4) How do you keep your identity and faith intact in a secular world? 5) How do you feel about the violent language in the Psalm? 1 Psalm 137 by J. Barrie Shepherd MORNING This song of rare and solemn beauty, this gem of human craft and loveliness, speaks to me this morning, Lord, as it has spoken to age after age, of that universal sense of longing, exile . homesickness. And the first miracle lies, for me, Lord God, in this: that anyone could create such a poem in the setting of the prison camps of Babylon. This poet was a hostage, I remind myself, one of that vast throng of captives dragged off in chains to Babylon when that mighty empire conquered Judah and Jerusalem. Yet amid all the turmoil, torment, persecution, as his captors "required of him a song" he could not forget his homeland, the city of his God. And in immortal lines he sings of his devotion and his longing for "Jerusalem above my highest joy!" But then the mood abruptly changes. This lovely wistful melody is suddenly transformed into a hymn of angry hate as the singer calls down judgment and destruction, curses Babylon, and cries: Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! From the sublime to the obscene; from the universal longing to be home again to the taking of tiny infants and beating out their brains. All in one song! Lord, what kind of creatures are we? What kind of paradox, of grandeur and of misery, of Hitler and of Beethoven, Genghis Khan and Leonardo, makes up our human frame? Am I, at heart, a contradiction, a living antithesis, a walking chaos, beauty and the beast? Grant me the honesty, Father, to face both the sublime and the obscene; to recognize their reality in my world and in myself. Then to offer myself up to you in faith that you can turn my chaos into order, my paradox to single-minded service in your name and to your glory. Amen. 2 EVENING There is one who knows this paradox— the grandeur and the misery of humankind— knows it most intimately and profoundly because he lived it as no other ever has. In your Son, Jesus Christ, Lord God, I see the greatness and the wretchedness, the grandeur and the misery brought together, yet without the hate, without the malice, without the burning for revenge. In his life and death the heights of love, your love, reached down, embraced the depths of human sin and pride and violence. He embraced it, took it to himself, and thus removed its sting, defused the bomb, cut through the deadly chain of violence-returned-for-violence that has held humanity locked tight within its grasp from the earliest dawn of time. Since that day the door has been wide open, the way has been made clear, the secret of your entire creation has been uncovered, the secret of your love. Love is the way, the only way to life, and the longer I neglect it, the longer I will weep for a land that is my home even though I never knew it, never trod its soil or breathed its air. That is the longing that yearns within the heart of all your people, Lord: the longing for love, the promise up ahead of a land and of a time when your children will breathe free, will eat well, will grow strong, will know love. This is the challenge that redeems my life from emptiness and sets my days within the context of eternity. So let me rest this night within that bright eternal context, your grace in Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen. 3 .