Reading: Psalms 137
and 126
(Israel’s image of God and of themselves is shaped by two
great journeys. One is the exodus around
1200 BCE, when God frees them from slavery in Egypt and leads them against all
odds through the Red Sea and the wilderness, to the Promised Land to be able to
live their as God’s people in the world.
The second is the exile around 700 BCE, when after they fall into
systemic unfaithfulness to the ways of God, God allows their land, the city of
Jerusalem and their kingdom to be destroyed by enemies, and them to be taken
captive into Babylon. The anguish of their
captivity is reflected in the first of our readings – Psalm 137; the second –
Psalm 126, reflects their later joy and hope of returning from exile, to be in
their land again)
“If I
forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
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.”
It’s hard to lose
Jerusalem. Really hard. No matter where or what Jerusalem is for
you. Or for anyone else.
Jerusalem is the
holy centre of meaning and purpose in life.
It’s a place of sacred groundedness in a world of chaos and
uncertainty. It’s where you feel blessed
and affirmed, held in God’s arms, watched over by God’s love, and opened in
loving ways to others around you.
Jerusalem is a sign of, and the actual experience of the goodness of
life and the trustworthiness of God.
And it’s hard to
lose Jerusalem.
I wonder if that’s
what my wife – or anyone else you know, feels when health fails and you no
longer can be, and do, and enjoy what you used to. Is it what a parent feels when a child of
theirs suffers and dies? What a church
member feels when the church just no longer is what it used to be, and what
they needed it to be? Is it what we
sometimes feel, and what white supremacists in the States deeply feel, when we
suffer the passing of the particular national dream that we grew up with and were taught to count on and to love? Is it what First Nations’ children felt as they
were carted off to residential schools and held there, and what their families
felt as they saw them go, and wondered if they would ever see them come back?
It’s not just Israel
that knows the loss of Jerusalem in life.
Or, maybe more honest to say we are all Israel especially when we know in our
lives the pain of losing and then longing for Jerusalem, wherever and whatever
it is for any of us.
And how does the
story go from there?
In the reading this
morning – in Psalm 137, there is a common and natural next step in the journey
– the step of reacting against the change that’s come and of trying to make things
right again – to restore what used to be, by punishing or getting rid of whatever
and whoever made things change the way they did. For Israel carted away from Jerusalem to
Babylon, the last verses of Psalm 137 – the prayer to God to let somebody do to
Babylon what Babylon did to them, and even worse – is a natural and human response,
and one that even people of faith fall into.
O daughter, Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay back
what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!
I can’t tell you the
number of times I read or hear some story in the news about something changing
or being done in a way that just seems sad and a real diminishment of life as I
have loved it, and the first question I feel is “who’s to blame? Who’s doing this? Who’s the villain here, and who should I
learn to dislike and criticize and maybe even hate?”
When someone is
really sick or suffering, how often do family and friends, instead of just being
able to sympathize and offer support, start offering advice and suggestions and
trying to fix the problem as though the one who is sick or in sorrow must
surely not be doing the right things, and maybe even has been doing the wrong
things. It has to be somebody’s
fault.
And culturally, politically,
socially how easily and how often do we try to deal with our pain at losing
Jerusalem by trying to find out who’s to blame, and what we need to do about
them?
But whether it’s
someone else, God or often even ourselves that we end up blaming and trying to
punish, is the world ever that simply divided into good guys and bad guys,
right and wrong, good and evil?
And does the way of
Psalm 137:7-9, the way of blame and punishment, ever get us back to
Jerusalem? The psalm just ends there in
the anger, and seems to get us and others only further away from where we
really want to be.
But there is a
second, or an alternative ending – a different second step that Israel
eventually finds its way towards. We read
it in Psalm 126 – that dream, and then the memory, and the renewed dream again of
actually returning to Jerusalem – of finding once again, and again and again,
that longed-for place of blessing and affirmation, of meaning and purpose, of
sacred groundedness in a world of chaos and uncertainty.
When the Lord restored the
fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream…
our mouth…filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of
joy…
May those who sow in tears,
reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with joy,
carrying their sheaves.
One thing, though,
about this regaining of Jerusalem: in practice, in the actual history and lived
experience of Israel – any Israel – it was and never has been a journey simply
back to what was ... as though what was is still waiting ... the good old days just waiting to be revived.
The people returned
to their land and to where Jerusalem had been, but when they got there the city
and land were in ruins and they had to rebuild with new materials, with new
partners and neighbours, with new needs and opportunities in mind, and
hopefully also with new lessons learned from what had been before.
One thing they
missed the most was the Temple where they had known the goodness of life, and
the love and trustworthiness of God. But
it’s striking that no matter how much they tried over the years and generations
and centuries that followed, they never really did manage to rebuild the Temple
for a long time. And as sad and sometimes guilt-inducing as that was for them, we can't help but conclude that maybe that was okay, because
once the Temple was gone and they were taken from it -- and it from them, while they were exiled in what at
first seemed to be only-unholy Babylon, they began a whole new way of gathering
as people of faith, and of maintaining and renewing their life together as people of God in the world. With no central
temple to go to, they began to meet more locally and in smaller groups, even under
the radar of their Babylonian masters if need be -- and that’s how the
synagogue movement began. It was not part of their life prior to the exile; it's in the exile that they really developed it.
And even when they
went back to their old land, they took the synagogue movement with them and it
became the new foundation of their life together – a whole new way of opening
themselves to God’s word and God’s blessing, and of knowing the faithfulness of
God to them in the midst of life’s limits and losses, in the midst of the
opportunities and graces of the present day.
They wept for what
they had lost. But it was those very
tears and those losses that were the seeds of a brand new harvest.
Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.
Is the psalm suggesting that the losses suffered and the tears shed in accepting the losses, are themselves the real seed of new life, and of a new kind of harvest?
And I wonder what
that means for us? For any of us in our
own private losses? For all of us in shared
sorrow at Jerusalems that are no more?
There is a natural
and human way of reacting against loss and grief.
But how do we find that
other, maybe more faithful next step, that actually leads to a different and
new kind of Jerusalem more in keeping with the present day and the love of God in
it?
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