Praying Instead of Praising? (Psalm 137)

This sermon was preached on 14/7/2013

This psalm is well known for several reasons, including the fact that it was sung a couple of decades ago by a pop group and managed to get into the charts. It is also well known in Christian theology because of some of the sentiments expressed within it, which some say are sub-Christian. Indeed it is common for preachers to suggest that we should omit the last verse if we ever sing the psalm in public worship. Of course, such opinions are also questioning whether it is appropriate for the psalm to be in the Bible. Yet it is in the Bible and its statements are part of the Word of God given for our guidance and for spiritual growth.

It is straightforward to see when the psalm was composed. At some stage during the captivity in Babylon a psalmist wrote a sad song for his people to use. Clearly, it was a difficult period to live through if one was a believer in God. The cause of God had been crushed by Babylon, a seemingly unstoppable enemy, and God’s people, instead of being conquerors, were captives. What does a believer do in such a time? He sings a lament to God.

This is a reminder that praise should be realistic. We are not to use our songs and pretend that we live in a different world from what we experience. Of course we can sing songs about the spread of the gospel, but sometimes today we should sing them as aspirations and not affirmations because at the moment the gospel is not making much progress in our society. And we can sing songs about the character of God as long as we don’t focus only on his attributes that make us feel good.

Further, this psalm indicates that our praise should be rational. It is obvious from the contents of this psalm that its composer has thought carefully and theologically about its contents. Because this psalm is full of theology! And true theology is merely the rational expression of what the Bible says. To state a theological truth is not to make an addition to the Bible or to suggest an adjustment of its message. Instead it should always be an accurate reflection of what the Bible says.

Moreover, the psalm is relational and is so at two levels. In it we can see how believers in such times should relate to one another and we can also see how they should relate to their God. We will see aspects of both levels as we make our way through the psalm. The health of our relationships is never more visible than when we are going through a deep crisis.

It is interesting what the psalmist does not take comfort in as a remedy for the difficulties they faced. No doubt he was aware that some of his countrymen, like Daniel and his three friends, had places of influence in the government of Babylon. Perhaps he wrote the psalm after their influence had declined following Nebuchadnezzar’s death. Yet I suspect that the psalmist would not have wanted to use God’s providence as arguments against what God had revealed in his Word about the future of Babylon and Edom. Daniel and his friends were raised up by God for temporary positions, but they were not the long-term answer to the situation. The remedy for Babylon was not a few believers in places of power in a pagan country, and Daniel and his colleagues would have agreed. Instead the psalmist looked for a remedy from God’s revealed will and he could have found in the words of the prophets who ministered before the exile.

The tears

The waters of Babylon were the streams connected to the great rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Some of the streams were redirected as canals to provide places of rest and refreshment for the inhabitants as well as providing water for agriculture and industry. Yet it is obvious that was not why the psalmist and his friends gathered together in those locations. His words give the impression that the seeming omnipresence of the waters reminded them of the great dominance possessed by Babylon. But the achievements of Babylon brought no admiration from their hearts. Instead they remembered another city and as they did so they wept.

The other city was Zion, but what kind of tears did they shed? Were they merely the tears of a Jewish nationalist who was devastated because his people no longer lived in their own land? Or did their tears indicate that something more important was taking place within them? After all, why were they now suffering in Babylon? They were captives in Babylon and away from Zion because they as a people had departed spiritually from God. Their physical exile was caused by their willing departure from God, of their giving their hearts to all kinds of idols. So now they had tears of regret, but it was the kind of regret that accompanies repentance. Living in exile was a good place to reflect on how one arrived there, because it led to repentance.

Does their example have anything to say to us as we live beside the waters of our Babylon? How have we arrived where we are, in a society whose songs say nothing about God? We know it was not always like it is now. There was a time, long ago, when our country focussed on God. We were even called the Land of the Book. Of course, the past was not perfect and we should not pretend it was. Yet we have lost God’s favour in a national sense, and the collapse in the knowledge of God and the disappearance of a credible national church should make us sad and penitent. Because it is not only their fault, it is also ours. All we have to do is read devout Daniel’s prayer (Dan. 9) and see how he included himself among those who caused God’s judgement to fall on his nation. It is not part of true discipleship to distance ourselves from situations that we have contributed to by our own lack of zeal. Believers sobbing in Babylon should have tears of repentance and not merely tears of nostalgia.

The taunt

Life was hard in Babylon for some and easy for others. If some of the captives preferred the new lifestyle, and many of them did, then life was easy for them. God had told them through Jeremiah that they should seek the good of Babylon (Jer. 29:1-9), and many of them also discovered how good Babylon could be to them, whether they lived in the capital city or elsewhere in the Empire. Life had become so good that when an opportunity came for them to return to Zion after the Babylonian empire fell they chose not to go. I doubt if many of them had joined the psalmist in singing his lament and therefore I doubt if many of them had heard the taunts that went like swords through the hearts of the author and his companions. I suppose the lesson is that those who will eventually get involved in the rebuilding of Zion will be those who feel its reproach while it is in ruins.

Why did the captors and tormenters want the Jews to sing the songs of Zion? I suspect it was because they thought those songs from another world were relics from a defeated kingdom. They described a God who had been tamed by the power of Babylon. How little they knew! Songs that had been written for worship and edification were now only to be used as a form of entertainment to celebrate the demise of God. So these exiles refused to sing them in such a manner.

It is hard to be the subject of taunts, but it should be harder to endure taunts about God and his kingdom. Yet there must have been a temptation to compromise and sing to the crowd rather than to God. Of course, the name for such a response is blasphemy and therefore it was better for them not to sing and use God’s name in vain. So it was an act of corporate courage to hang their harps on the willows. Strangely, those exiles remind us that courage is also seen in what we do not do as well as in what we do.

The tension

I can only imagine that those with harps normally wanted to help others sing down by the riverside. But they realised that there was more to singing than using the right words and tunes. They knew that it was inappropriate for them to rejoice while Zion was in ruins. They were afraid that thoughtless singing would give them a bad memory (they would forget about Jerusalem) and wrong priorities (Jerusalem would no longer be their chief joy).

I doubt if they were suggesting they should never sing during the exile. But maybe they realised the inappropriateness of singing now about what had happened at the temple before it was destroyed by the Babylonians. After all, no sacrifices were offered in Jerusalem during those long years. Whether they sang or not, we should be thankful that we don’t face such a predicament because the remedy for our sins remains constant even when the church is on the sidelines. Yet when we sing, perhaps we should check to see if our words are accompanying a bad memory and wrong priorities. Because it is possible to sing the right words in such a manner that reveals we actually are quite happy to be where we are.

The threat

It is almost absurd to imagine that those Israelites crying at the riverside were a threat to the mighty power of Babylon. But they were, and the reason why they were was because they prayed for complete vindication and deliverance. If those requests about Edom and Babylon were only cries of revenge, then we could suggest that the Jews had overstepped the mark. But their requests were linked to prophecies that God had given elsewhere about the complete destruction of Edom and Babylon.

Taken in isolation, the awful words of the final verse cause us to stop and think. It is possible to interpret them as belonging to the days of the law rather than to the days of the gospel, but that suggestion does not really deal with the strangeness of the request. Perhaps the solution is to see the words as a prediction of what the conquerors of Babylon would feel as they meted out to its young ones what Babylon had done to theirs. Maybe it is a reminder that the authors of the Bible were sinners and sometimes their wrong desires for revenge are recorded for our benefit so that we will know how not to respond in difficult situations. The one thing that can be said is that they shock!

Difficult though this closing verse is to understand, we should not miss the point that the greatest threat to the dominant evil power came from those who prayed for its demise. Their petitions, which were based on what God had predicted would happen, were instrumental in bringing about a global change. Here in this unusual song, which recommends not singing at certain times, we see a group of despised people who were world changers.  And in that are they not a great challenge to us to be the same as them?