The 150 Psalms model prayer for God’s people – praise, adoration, supplication, intercession, thanksgiving, lament, even anger. When we can’t find the right words, praying the Psalms can connect us to God.
This week, I have been drawn to Psalm 137:
1 By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered you, O Zion.
2 On the willows there, we hung up our lyres.
3 For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth: “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
4 How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.
6 Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
Composed during the Babylonian Exile (597-539 B.C.E.), when Jerusalem was sacked, the Temple destroyed, and the survivors taken captive, this Psalm resonates with anyone separated from a beloved homeland. It had profound meaning to the hapless Africans kidnapped and forced into lives of slavery, as it has spoken to immigrants and refugees throughout the ages. In an 1852 speech, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass referred to it: “If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, ‘may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!’” Somehow this sounds appropriate still today, doesn’t it?
Our own community also mourns the loss of so much we had taken for granted – including the freedom to gather in our beloved space for worship.
Psalm 137 has inspired a tremendous variety of musical settings. Bach, Dvorak, Verdi; the Melodians, Boney M., and Stephen Schwartz have all been drawn to it. In Schwartz’s Godspell, “On the Willows” (a paraphrase version) is sung as the disciples bid a poignant farewell to Jesus during the Last Supper. It is heartbreaking. http://www.themusicallyrics.com/g/237-godspell-the-musical-lyrics/1585-on-the-willows-lyrics.html
But the last three verses of the Psalm are a curse:
7 Remember the day of Jerusalem, O Lord, against the people of Edom, who said, Down with it! down with it! even to the ground!”
8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy the one who pays you back
for what you have done to us!
9 Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock!
Ouch! It was so sad, so moving – what happened? Is this not a totally human response to tragedy? (The Lectionary, of course, would stop us at verse 6. No anger, no cursing, please.) Please remember: these are human beings handing their hurt, their anger, to God, trusting God to deal with it. In confidence, we can join in prayer through the Psalms and know that God hears us.
God bless you and watch over you this week and in the weeks ahead, beloved sisters and brothers.
David