Psalm 137
Midweek Advent 2023: “Exiles”
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace Lutheran Church
Exiled by Enemies and Tormentors My Friends in Christ, It is not the version we would use for worship, but there is a version of Psalm 137 that was very popular around the world in 1978. It is a song with reggae roots done by a Caribbean, German-based disco band, if you can believe it! Some of you may know the song. It landed on the US Top 40 chart, Canada’s Top 25, and was the #1 hit in South Africa that year! It sounds upbeat and happy—but that’s hardly the way this psalm must have been sung by God’s people, because it was like a window into their tragic past. Listen to the words, and you’ll know what I mean: Beside the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, and, yes, we wept as we remembered Zion. There we hung up our lyres on the willows, because there our captors asked us for words of a song, and our tormentors asked for a happy song: “Sing for us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing a song of the LORD on foreign soil? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget how to play music. May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember the day of Jerusalem, O LORD, against the descendants of Edom who said, “Tear it down, tear it down to its foundations!” Daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, how blessed is the one who repays you with the same deeds you did against us. How blessed is the one who seizes your children and dashes them against the cliff.
Pain & Suffering Between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the land that we now know as Iraq sat a world superpower. God had used it to take his people into captivity because they continually rebelled against him despite his warnings not to do so. The year was 586 BC and that superpower was Babylon. They completed their devastation of Jerusalem (also called Zion), destroyed the magnificent temple of the LORD, and carried the people of Israel off into captivity. We know the names and stories of some of those people: Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. God’s people were separated from their home, exiled in a foreign land, trapped under foreign rule. They could worship God, as we know Daniel and others did, but it was not the glorious temple worship they were accustomed to. So, it was painful for them to be separated from there, and they longed to be rescued by God. I recently saw some Grace members’ family pictures on Facebook. The parents were good-natured about the picture-taking, but their 1½ year-old girl just wasn’t having it at all! You know how it can be trying to get children to smile for the camera when they are sad or upset about something. The Babylonian captors tried to make the exiled children of God sing songs that would normally have made them smile, but smiling then was an impossible task. Their enemies goaded them: “Sing for us one of the songs of Zion!” They knew well that their worship songs were happy songs of praise to God, songs that they would sing as they gathered and joyfully made their way up the path to Mount Zion, to the temple of the LORD.
God’s people were cruelly mocked as they sat by the water. And they refused to sing. Weeping willows growing on the banks were an appropriate place for weeping Israelites to hang up their instruments. Just as Babylon’s king had ransacked the LORD’s temple and used its vessels for his drinking parties, they were trying to take what was sacred to the Israelites—their worship songs—and use them for their heathen entertainment. Their refusal to sing wasn’t something as simple as a defiant protest against their oppressors; they could actually not bring themselves to do it. There was no way to smile through the sadness. A small child who doesn’t want to take pictures can’t explain why, but the Israelites could explain where their sadness came from—they were exiled from their homeland and the Holy City and their place of worship. How could they sing when they were so far away from the glorious place where they sang those songs of praise to the LORD? They would rather have lost all skill to play or be made unable to speak or sing at all! Our physical situation is not like theirs. Our nation is not a theocracy, there is no central place of worship in our country for Christians, and we are completely free. But the spiritual pain we endure can be similar to theirs. We fail to listen to God’s direction and his warnings against sin, just like his people have always done. That this offends God is the most serious thing. Like the Israelites, it can also lead to suffering earthly consequences: We can’t stop running our mouths, so people don’t want to confide in us anymore. We misuse alcohol, and we get sick or offend someone… or something worse. In lots of ways, our own sin causes us pain— and that is our doing. Our sinful nature is our own worst enemy. But there are other enemies, others who torment us and spiritually oppress us. People mock Christians for what we believe—I’ve discovered that it’s easy to find in social media comments. Young people hear it from friends who think less of them because of their faith. College students hear it from professors in the classrooms. Say “Merry Christmas” at the store checkout and often you’ll get a smile and a “Merry Christmas” back, but say it to the wrong person… Christian holiday traditions and celebrations may not be appreciated by some in our own families—and it causes problems. Unbelieving people make snide comments about your faith or your church involvement. No, it’s not exactly the Babylonian Captivity, but godless people and a sinful world cause us spiritual and emotional distress. It’s painful to listen to. It’s painful to have to deal with.
We heard in our first lesson: Your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. The Devil is often the furthest thing from our minds, I think, because we can’t see him. But God calls him your enemy, your adversary, the one who can devour your faith and eternally own your soul. He is the whisper in the background, your sinful nature’s best friend, the nudge from behind pushing you toward sin. When our spiritual enemies—our nature, those around us, the Devil—torment and tempt us, and we fall to sin, God calls us to repentance. Children of God today find forgiveness in the same Savior that those Old Testament children of God did. The Savior they looked forward to is the one we look back on. Jesus came, and he overcame the world and sin and the Devil. This is why we have a season of Advent. It is a time to prepare for a celebration of his coming into the world to bring forgiveness and eternal life by conquering the spiritual enemies that threaten all people. Longing for Rescue Reflection on that brings repentant hearts from us and comfort from God. But here we are, still in this world, dealing with spiritual opposition. We want it to go away! Better yet, we want to go away! We long for our true home that we are distanced from. We long to be rescued and taken to the new Jerusalem, the heavenly Mount Zion! Those who wept over their exile from Jerusalem wanted so badly to be rescued—and the psalmists words show it. It is a little difficult to read the last words of this song. What might be the Bible’s harshest curse is found here. The psalmist calls on God to remember in judgment “the Day of Jerusalem,” the destruction of their city—the day that Edom, the descendants of Esau, helped Babylon and celebrated with them. What a jarring, discordant note of the song this is: how blessed is the one who repays you with the same deeds you did against us. How blessed is the one who seizes your children and dashes them against the cliff. No, this verse never made it into modern, popular versions of this song—and you can see why. No one wants to hear that. Especially in this season of Advent, as we sing songs that prepare us to celebrate the birth of a child, we don’t want to hear that…or envision that this really happened when the Babylonians conquered other nations…and that other nations did this too…and that God’s vengeance would include the Medes and Persians doing the same to Babylon when they defeated it and allowed God’s people to return to Jerusalem. It is an ugly thing. Judgment on sin always is. It is when a person rejects God. It was when God punished his own Son on the cross because he was wearing our sin. And it will be on the Last Day. Such severe judgment will be brought down on those who rejected God and his love. So many thrown into eternal captivity in hell and made to suffer without relief.
What the Israelites knew—as we do—is that the day of God’s judgment on our enemies and his is also a day of rescue for his people. They knew from the prophet Isaiah that it would happen to Babylon; we know that judgment and rescue will happen on the Last Day. Advent is a time when we think a little more about how we long for release from our confinement in this world. We know that this world is not our home; the new Jerusalem is. Enemies and tormentors bother us here; they won’t when we’re on heavenly Mount Zion. Earthly sorrows sometimes sink our spirits and suspend our singing, but there will be no more sadness or pain when we are with the Lord. We can’t worship God here in the same way we will in his eternal temple. Peter reminded us earlier that while here in this world we will suffer for a little while (1 Peter 5:10). And in a happier song than Psalm 137, we heard Zechariah assure us that the Lord raised up salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us…to grant deliverance to us from the hand of our enemies. (Luke 1:71,74). Jesus came to save us from being spiritually exiled by our enemies and tormentors. Instead of being distanced from him and without hope, he brought us close to him. He rescued us from being held captive by sin and death and the Devil. Though distanced from our eternal home, we are not alone. Our LORD is with us just as he continued to be with his people in captivity. And he promises to come to our rescue again—physically leading us out of the foreign land that is this world, away from those who oppose and harass us, and into the peace and safety and glory of his heavenly Jerusalem. Our Rescuer is coming again. Amen. Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.