CYOA - Psalm 137 - Minor Miracles

Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried,
remembering the good old days in Zion.
Alongside the quaking aspens
we stacked our unplayed harps;
That's where our captors demanded songs,
sarcastic and mocking:
"Sing us a happy Zion song!"

^4-6 Oh, how could we ever sing God's song
in this wasteland?
If I ever forget you, Jerusalem,
let my fingers wither and fall off like leaves.
Let my tongue swell and turn black
if I fail to remember you,If I fail, O dear Jerusalem,
to honor you as my greatest.

^7-9 God, remember those Edomites,
and remember the ruin of Jerusalem,
That day they yelled out,
"Wreck it, smash it to bits!"
And you, Babylonians—ravagers!
A reward to whoever gets back at you
for all you've done to us;
Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies
and smashes their heads on the rocks!

Although I’m tempted to write an exegetical essay on this short passage, I will refrain. I contemplated writing all the comments I would normally censor from a school paper in this article, but I will also refrain. Reading the bible is something that I have avoided since graduation, even while I was studying at Jerusalem University College shortly after. I admit I was rather nervous about what I might discover in this study: a lifejacket or a hammer or worse, something meaningless. Regardless of what I discovered in this adventure, it is a minor miracle that this endeavor caused me to pull my bible out of the box in which it has been packed for over a month and that it will now remain on a reachable shelf because I am committed to reading it at least once a week while I participate in CYOA.

Reading the bible should be a good thing so I read and re-read Psalm 137 and three thoughts crossed my mind which are worth fleshing out: 1) identity and being in a foreign land 2) justice and retaliation and 3) honesty in poetry and prayer.

1) When I chose to live in a foreign land I often thought about home. I compared everything that I saw, tasted, touched and smelt with home. I saw similarities and differences and dwelt on each. I too wept. As time passed and I pursued assimilation, the similarities and differences slightly faded. My likes and dislikes changed, as did myself description. In the transition from being known at home to being unknown in a new setting, my cultural and spiritual identity changed. The question “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” is familiar to me. The mocking carried out by the cultural majority is also familiar to me. How do you practice what is familiar in a place where it is unacceptable? How do you praise a God who “provides” when you are hungry and the mockers are full? How do you praise a God with whom others are unfamiliar? How do you praise God in the midst of other gods? In this psalm, Israelreflects on the loss of home as a result of captivity and exile and expresses deep desire to remember where they came from.

2) Israel’s emotional response to captivity and exile is a cry for retaliation and justice. This is eye for eye, retributive justice - a cry for equality in the face of devastation. Crime deserves punishment. The anger, hurt and frustration Israel must have felt at this time reveals their deeply human desire to want those who have wronged them to suffer an equally great fate. Is this an appropriate response? It is a human response. How does one deal with devastation and suffering?

3) This leads me to my third point: honesty in poetry and prayer. The genre of this psalm confuses me slightly. It seems to be a lament/curse/complaint psalm yet does not follow the typical lament structure, which includes a petition for divine intervention and a song of thanksgiving. This psalm is simply a curse. The honest, raw, straightforward gut-response. So why include this in Israel’s hymnbook? Is it a model for prayer? Does God want to hear our truthful reactions to our circumstances?

If this is prayer, if this is worship, I have been doing a lot of it, by accident. What I appreciate most about this passage is that it is not psalm 136.