Honesty

 Psalm 137 

Lament over the Destruction of Jerusalem 

1 By the rivers of Babylon— 
    there we sat down, and there we wept 
    when we remembered Zion. 
2 On the willows[a] there 
    we hung up our harps. 
3 For there our captors 
    asked us for songs, 
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, 
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 

4 How could we sing the Lord’s song 
    in a foreign land? 
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, 
    let my right hand wither! 
6 Let my tongue cling 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’s fall, 
how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down! 
    Down to its foundations!” 
8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator![b] 
    Happy shall they be who pay you back 
    what you have done to us! 
9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones 
    and dash them against the rock! 

 
 

Sermon

Honesty 

When I was in seminary, my girlfriends introduced me to what has now become the “classic” ‘90s sitcom, Friends. We had one favorite episode in particular that we liked to watch together that I was thinking about a lot this week while I was preparing to preach on these texts, and especially this week’s Psalm, Psalm 137. This particular episode begins with most of the principle characters sitting around watching the movie Old Yeller. Lisa Kudrow’s character, Phoebe, walks in toward the end of the movie, and is totally clueless as to why everyone is so sad watching one of her favorite childhood movies. When one of the other characters explains to Phoebe that the reason they’re so sad is because they’re watching the end of Old Yeller, it’s revealed that, ironically, Phoebe had never actually seen the end of Old Yeller. As many times as she’d seen the movie growing up, every time she got within about fifteen minutes of the end of the movie—right after the scene where Old Yeller victoriously saves his family from being attacked by a wolf—phoebe’s mom would turn off the TV and say, “That’s it! The End!” So as they get to the scene where the family very tragically decides that they’re going to have to put poor Old Yeller out of his misery because he’s suffering from rabies, Phoebe is horrified that this scene is in such a sweet movie, and screams at the TV, “No no no! The end! THE END!” 

                The reason why I share this with you is because our church’s tradition has done with Psalm 137 what Phoebe and her mom did with Old Yeller. We’re cool with the first few verses, the romantically sad words of a man who misses his home, a man who writes, 
 

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.” 

 

We love those words. We’ll sing them in choir anthems, we’ll adapt them into contemporary hymns, we’ll use them as inspiration for liturgy, for poetry, for prayers, for art, for drama, for all kinds of things.  

But we don’t know what to do with the ending. We can handle a surface-level discussion of grief. We can handle a little sadness. And we can really relate to a man who loves and misses his homeland. But as long as the Christian Church has existed, we have balked hard at the first sign of spiritual heavy lifting. The kind of heavy lifting you have to do to confront real, pure, undressed grief. The kind that isn’t just sad, beautiful, and romantic, but that is angry, vengeful, and even violent. The kind of grief that would write these infamous last lines: 

 

“O daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you for what you have done to us—happy is the one who seizes your little ones and dashes them against the rocks.” 
 

Are there more difficult words to read anywhere in the whole Bible? What kind of nut would preach on this when there was a perfectly nice Gospel pericope that I could have gone with? Maybe covid made me so loopy I’ve lost all my common sense. Fair enough, you can only stick that testing cotton swab up your nose so many times before your brain falls out behind it. Ok, ok, never mind, let’s give this the Old Yeller treatment, end this sermon right here, and sing a nice happy hymn! 

No such luck, your pastor is ME. And I’ve raised some very serious eyebrows with what I’m about to say, so take a deep breath, and hear me out: this is my favorite Psalm. 

Alright, I didn’t see anyone run away screaming. See? Despite what we’ve been conditioned to believe, we actually are capable of talking about this stuff. 

So why on earth, when I have 150 psalms to pick from, some of which are dripping in praise and happiness, would this one be my favorite? Some pastors like to pretend this one isn’t even really in the Bible. If they acknowledge it, they’ll do some limber mental gymnastics to get around having to see it for what it is. 

“Oh, well, it’s the Hebrew Bible, and that stuff comes off angrier.” 

“It was a long time ago, people were more rash and blunt then.” 

“Maybe those that selected the biblical texts included this one because 149 psalms didn’t feel right?” 

“The guy who wrote this Psalm didn’t mean it like it sounds, let me tell you what he really meant...” 

“I read this through the lens of Jesus. These aren’t the words of Christ. Would he sign off on this?” 

The real pastor, who I love, who said that last statement made an important point, and we’ll check in with that in a second. But what kind of dark, dreary lady do y’all got in this pulpit that I have fallen in love with Psalm 137 of all texts? 

The answer is you have a pastor who lives in the real world, and who has no use for a faith that can’t address real life. And all of you have a faith that was born of humanity. We rightfully celebrate passages that make us love being alive, and that show people at our best—words of love, of strength, of valor, of praise, of nurturing, of justice, of kindness. But those words mean nothing if we can’t receive them right alongside the verses that depict us at our ugliest—the wars, the murders, the sex scandals, the betrayals, the greed, the oppression, and especially the heartbreak. 

While I make you face the aggressive words of this morning’s Psalm, you also get the benefit of my seminary degree. Our Psalmist wrote these words shortly after an era known as the Babylonian Exile, after the Babylonian Empire sacked Jerusalem, decimated the population, and took many of the survivors back to Babylon as prisoners of war. The Psalmist was, no doubt, an angry dude. He was also a dad. Probably a husband. A brother. A best friend. A guy who loved his neighbors. And he watched helplessly as his enemy took everything from him, and now harassed him in captivity. If you can’t bear the last few verses of the Psalm that spilled from this man’s grief, then you betray his pain worse than Babylon. Psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross told us in no uncertain terms that grief doesn’t read like a sympathy card from Hallmark, and it can’t if you actually want to heal. The stage of anger, and even the stage of bargaining with God to kill someone else’s child to bring yours back, those are natural, healthy feelings. If we really want to love our grieving neighbor as Jesus commanded us to, then we need to hear his words, and accept them exactly as they are. No sugar coating. No yes, buts. No theological cover-ups. No skipping this Psalm when it comes up in the lectionary. Hear his pain. It won’t break you. 

In fact, in our churchy culture of buttoned collars, white gloves, and a sermon never so long that it makes you late for brunch, this man’s pain helps us immensely to grow. You need to understand in hearing all this that the Babylonian Empire met its own demise in the year 538 BCE, when it was conquered by the Persian Empire. Babylon was LONG gone by the time these words were canonized as holy scripture. No one including them in the Word intended for them to instigate violence against a long-dead enemy. Rather, these painful words are scars, evidence of a trauma that can never completely heal, and proof that the thing that could have killed you didn’t. Further, these words were never addressed to Babylon, they were addressed to God. The man who wrote them trusted God so much that he took off the veil so many of us wear in the presence of the Holy. He didn’t want God to see him through a filter, as a “nice guy” or a “responsible citizen” or a “dud that has it all together.” He wanted God to just see him, maybe at his ugliest, and love him for it. He also wanted God to bring about a kind of justice that is beyond the imagination of us mere mortals. 

I certainly don’t expect y’all to volunteer this information, but if you search your souls, you’ve been there, too. Bereaved, crushed to dust, and no longer able to hide it. And in those moments God reminds us we were made from dust in the first place, and we’ll survive this. Where was the river where you sat and poured out your heart to God? What’s the worst thought you ever had, that only God had big enough ears to hear? If you find that place within yourself, you find your inner Psalmist, and you also find the purest Holy Love that exists. Don’t run from it. It’s the greatest gift God has ever given us. Don’t cover the ears and eyes of your children and friends so they can’t find out about this. Don’t shut off your TV before you ever know what happens to Old Yeller. If you can see God even in the roughest places, then you can see God everywhere, and such a beautiful splendor awaits you. 

May it be so. 

Amen.