PSALM 137

137:1 By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
2 On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
3 For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“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 forget its skill!
6 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!

7 Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!

Tell me, when was the last time this happened to you? You’re reading a book or chatting with some friends or watching a movie.  All of a sudden the neural circuits in your brain begin to reverberate.  Chemical and electrical impulses start to surge through your body.  Your pituitary gland kicks into high gear.  Hormones and endorphins begin to race through your blood stream.  Your body temperature rises half a degree while your blood pressure and pulse increase.  Your arteries and thoracic muscle contract and your vocal chords start to quiver while your face begins to contort.  Pressure builds in your lungs until your lower jaw becomes uncontrollable and a gust of air bursts from your mouth at nearly 70 miles an hour. 

While that sounds like something you might do to jump start the battery in your car, it’s actually a clinical description of what happens when you laugh.  Now it’s been said that laughter is good for the soul and I’m not going to argue with that. Studies have shown that laughter can be beneficial both physically and emotionally.     

Laughter can help you cope when life starts to get the best of you.  Consider if you will this odd but true story.  You’ll find it in the book “Help! I’m Laughing And I Can’t Get Up.”  In the book Liz Curtis Higgs tells the story about a woman from Indiana who “adopted” an elderly grandmother named Lucille. Lucille was in her 90’s and nearly blind.  One day while the woman was talking to Lucille on the phone she heard a man’s voice in the background.  “Oh,” she said, “if you have company, you can call me later.”  Lucille laughed.  “No, no,” she said, “that’s just Sam.  He was here late last night.  So I had him spend the night.”  The woman was shocked. “You did what?” Lucille laughed again. Then she went on to explain that Sam was her new talking clock.  Well, Sam-the-clock became Lucille’s constant companion over the last few months of her life.  He went everywhere she went.  He went back and forth with her to the hospital.   When Lucille passed away the family decided to put Sam-the-clock in the casket with Lucille. It was a fitting tribute to her whimsical spirit.  That especially proved to be true at the funeral service. When the minister said, “Let us pray,” a deep husky voice from the casket announced, “It is now 11:00 a.m.”  The room, of course, erupted in laughter which is exactly what Lucille would have wanted.

Laughter is good for the soul.  At the same time it needs to be said that it isn’t a sin to be sad. That’s why I’ve always liked the 137^th Psalm.  It’s a psalm that is full of emotion. 

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O 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!   (RSV)

That psalm was written at a time of great despair.  The Jewish people were in exile in Babylon. They were convinced that God had abandoned them and that they were never going to see their homes again.

Now with all of that weeping and wailing in the psalm I can tell you this with absolute certainty.  The people in the psalm weren’t from New England.  After all, we New Englanders are made of stern and stoic stuff.  We don’t wear our sadness on our sleeves and we certainly do NOT cry in public.  That would be more embarrassing than walking through a restaurant with a trail of toilet paper stuck to your shoe.

Sadness makes a lot of people uncomfortable.  That’s why people say all those silly things when you’re sad.  They’ll tell you to “cheer up.”  They’ll tell you that things could be worse or they’ll tell you that things will get better.  When I hear that I always wonder, “How do they know that?  How do they know things are going to get better?  How do they know that things won’t get worse? And besides, what’s wrong with being sad?  It’s one of the emotions that God gave us.”

So, when I’m sad I don’t want someone to cheer me up.  

When someone you love passes away go ahead and show the world your love for the person by showing everyone your sadness.

When you turn the television on and see a child suffering in a far away country don’t quickly change the channel. Spend a few minutes in the sadness of that reality.

When you have a fight with someone forget about the anger. Instead of getting angry let yourself feel the sadness of that broken relationship.

That, by the way, is the mistake that the psalmist made.  The psalmist let his sadness turn into anger and bitterness.  The psalmist let his sad go bad.  You can see that in the psalm’s final verse.

“O Babylon you devastator. Happy shall he be who requites you for what you have done to us.

Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes their heads against a rock.”  (RSV)

Now I can also tell you this with absolute certainly.  That is not the Word of God.  When it comes to the Word of God I think Martin Luther was right.  Martin Luther said that the Word of God is like the stable in Bethlehem.  When you look into the stable in Bethlehem you will see the Christ child, but you’ll also see a lot of dirty hay and cow droppings.  So, you have to decide what is and isn’t the Word of God.  The best way to do that is by holding the Word of God up to the Incarnate Word of God and what is the Incarnate Word of God?  Do you remember what John says at the beginning of his gospel?

“In the beginning the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth.”

So Jesus Christ is the Incarnate Word of God and if there is a discrepancy between the written Word of God and the Incarnate Word of God you go with the Incarnate Word of God.  So, in this case you ask yourself this simple question.  Can I see Jesus telling someone to bash an infant’s head against a rock?  If the answer to that question is no then you know that that isn’t the Word of God.

So, the psalmist let his sad go bad.  He let his sadness turn into anger and bitterness.  That’s what happens when you don’t take your sadness to God.  When you don’t take your sadness to God all kinds of crazy things happen.  On the other hand when you do take your sadness to God it can be scary and it may hurt a little but, if you’re patient, you will find God waiting for you.  You’ll find God waiting for you with a healing that will eventually lead you back to a hope that will eventually lead you back to happiness.

There’s a story about an African-American poet by the name of Paul Lawrence Dunbar. He lived in Dayton, Ohio in the late 1800’s.  After he died suddenly his mother made his room into a shrine.  She kept it exactly as it was at the moment he died and that included a final poem on his desk by a window.   Many years later when Dunbar’s mother died her family went to the room and discovered the poem on the desk. Unfortunately, over the years, the sun shining through the window had bleached the ink on the paper and the words were no invisible.  The poem was lost forever.

Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s mother let her sad go bad.

Now compare that story to the story of another poet from the late 1800’s.  This poet’s name was Dante Rossetti.  When Rossetti’s wife killed herself he found himself plunged into a deep depression.  His grief was overwhelming and because many of his poems were written to and for his wife he decided to do something really drastic.   He took the poems and wrapped them in his wife’s long golden hair.  Then he buried the poems with her.  As the years passed Rossetti began to regret the lost poems.  He finally decided that it was pointless to leave some of his finest poems to molder in the grave.  So, after much legal wrangling he received permission to open the grave and retrieve the poems.  Those poems were published in 1870 and became a huge success.

Now I don’t know if Dante Rossetti was a man of faith or not but I do know that that’s what happens when you bring your sadness to God.   It may be scary and it may hurt a little but if you’re patient God will find you.  In that grace filled moment you’ll discover that life is really fragile.  You’ll discover how small you really are in this great big universe.  But most of all you’ll discover that there is healing in God’s grace and there’s hope in God’s grace and that with God’s grace you can be happy again.  Amen.

Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes

October 3, 2010