Singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land

Psalm 137: 1 – 9

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday evening, 06 April, 2008

“How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?” (PS 137:4) This is a question which constantly perplexes Christian people. How can we be true to God in a hostile world?

Psalm 137 was written as a response to the pain the Jewish people felt while captive in Babylon, nearly 600 years before Christ.

The rivers of Babylon were fine rivers, the Euphrates and the Kedar are still famous for their waters. But the Israelites could do nothing but weep.

By the rivers of Babylon
There we sat down
There we wept
When we remembered Zion.

— some of you remember that song made famous by Boney M twenty years ago.

Most of us have felt homesickness at some stage in our lives. I felt it acutely when I went on a month-long live-in course soon after finishing High School. I wasn’t where I wanted to be, and I just wanted to go home.

I used to work with an Egyptian girl, and some afternoons, she would put down her computer mouse and say, “I want to go home... to Egypt.” She was missing her mother and father, and her cousin, Gina, and all the other people who had been so important to her before she migrated.

But there is a kind of homesickness that Christian people experience; a homesickness for heaven, where our treasures are laid up. We join with the martyrs around the throne, crying, “How long, Lord? How long?”

There was an old hymn with the chorus,

Oh, Lord Jesus, how long?
How long, ere I join the glad throng?
Christ returneth! Hallelujah!
Hallelujah, Amen!

But it should not be a selfish, “How long before my bus arrives,” kind of thing. When there is suffering, when there is injustice, when people hate and abuse and oppress, who could not cry out, “How long before justice comes? How long before oppression is ended? How long before righteousness reigns?”

However, as Chris says, “If you have just belted your thumb with a hammer, you easily lose track for the moment of the suffering millions of India.”

When we suffer, we will want relief for ourselves, too.

This Psalm has fallen into disfavour because in some ways it is sub–Christian. Who among us wants to see the children of our enemies murdered in cold blood? We have learnt “love your enemies” well enough to have some compassion for their children, even while we randomly murder our enemies and their neighbours with smart bombs and dumb killers.

But there are few writings which speak more eloquently of the feelings of grief and rage which all oppressed peoples feel, which all captives experience against their captors.

And there are few writings which confront us so firmly about the problem of singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.

It is not easy to keep true to our Lord when we live in a hostile environment.

That is as true for us Christians today as it was for the Israelites of 2¹/₂ milennia ago.

There were several times in the history of Israel when they experienced a strange and hostile land, when they experienced the problem of singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.

Around 1600BC, Joseph and his family migrated into Egypt. Through a series of divinely appointed events, Joseph had become a captive, and a slave and even a death–row prisoner before he was elevated to a senior position of rulership in Egypt with special responsibility for protecting the livelihood of the people in a coming time of drought.

With Joseph’s family came servants and hangers–on. Quite a gang of Hebrews arrived. History tells us very little, but it seems that other Hebrew people arrived as well, and that they formed a strong sub–culture in Egyptian society.

But we read in Exodus,

 ^{EX 1:8} Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. ⁹ “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. ¹⁰ Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”

Sometimes when you read the early books of the Bible it is easy to overlook the vast periods of time that they cover.

You might think that this new king who didn’t know Joseph was perhaps the grandson of the one Joseph worked under.

Nothing like it.

The Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years. Moses was further in time from Joseph than we Baptists are from our founders, John Smyth and Thomas Helwys.

It is clear that the Israelites had not worked out how to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land when they were in Egypt.

Things were very different for the Israelites for most of their time in Egypt from how it was in Babylon. These were good times, until the new Pharaoh arose. The Israelites were relatives of the Lord Chancellor, they were cousins of Wayne Swan. People bowed to them in the street.

But four centuries later, nobody wanted to know them.

Often it is comfort which makes it hard for us to sing the Lord‘s song in a foreign land.

We fear losing what we have, so we sit back and keep quiet. We fear prejudice and oppression. We fear rejection and sorrows and the experience of grief.

And well we should. Jesus suffered all those things.

But he didn’t let go of his heavenly vision. He didn’t cease singing the Lord’s song in what had become a foreign land. Where was the justice, where was the spirituality, for which Israel was created?

And the Israelites in Egypt loved their lives more than they loved God, and when people forgot Joseph, they forgot what Joseph’s people stood for, because they heard it no longer.

I often read angry letters in newspapers about how Christians should shut up and not comment on social or political issues. They say that any Christian comment is a breach of the principle of separation of Church and State. They claim that the Enlightenment and the French Revolution invented the principle of separation of Church and State.

That’s untrue. It was Baptists who invented that principle. And they invented it because it is really a principle that goes back to the beginning of the monarchy in Israel under Saul and then under David.

But why don’t people know their debt to the Baptists who suffered and died four hundred years ago? Because we have forgotten the answer to that question: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

It may be because we have become comfortable in our land.

Australia was never a truly Christian nation. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Nor was America nor the UK nor any other country.

Yet sometimes we persuade ourselves that we don’t even need to sing the Lord’s song in a way that a foreign country needs to hear. We convince ourselves that the country where we live has already heard.

But it is just so we will not upset anyone or bring disapproval on ourselves. And so we get exactly what we have tried not to get.

Then again, the Israelites taken captive in Babylon did experience oppression and rejection.

There were the Daniels and the Nehemiahs who made it to the top in Babylon. But most of them were slave labourers camped along the river banks. More likely, they were camped along the banks of the ditches which carried the river water to the farms.

It was a bleak and miserable existence.

And their tormenters, those who had carried them away in captivity, required of them a song. And, as we saw, they lamented,

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

They are surrounded by people demanding entertainment — a song, and a chance to mock. “Sing us one of your songs about the God who abandoned you. Let him deliver you, if he delights in you!”

How do we keep singing the Lord’s song in a hostile land, where identifying ourselves as the Lord’s people can be quite a threat?

This has always been an issue. There have always been Christians who exposed themselves to danger by declaring their faith when they knew it would result in death. There have always been others who kept a low profile, but refused to hold back if they were caught. And some have denied Christ rather than suffer.

It is hard to know where to draw the line.

But we too easlily give up singing the Lord’s song when times get tough.

Throughout history, the most successful strategy has generally been not to wave a red flag, but not to give up, either.

The early Baptists and Quakers were willing to face prison rather than give up their faith. Many spent years in prison, but they only spoke the word of God even more.

At the same point of history, the Anglicans and the Presbyterians were very strong and numerous. But the tiny minorities of Baptists and Quakers stood their ground, while the Presbyterians lost their joy and lost their song, and totally disappeared from England.

The reason that modern Presbyterianism is so Scottish is that the Scottish Presbyterians survived and flourished and re-evangelised England.

But you look at any of the newer denominations, and you will see that they are more like Baptists than they are like Anglicans or Presbyterians. We did learn how to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land, in England and in the US. We sang the Lord’s song, we were true to our God, and our views have prevailed.

The historian, Martin Marty, talks of The Baptistification of the Church. He says that all churches have been influenced by Baptists. People heard a song from faithful hearts, and they eventually began to understand.

Whether we give up singing the Lord’s song because we are too at ease in our foreign land, or whether we give up singing the Lord’s song because life is too tough in our foreign land, the effect is the same. Fear of what is and fear of what might be will both paralyse a person. And the outcome is that we no longer sing the Lord’s song.

So what is the cure?

The Psalmist offers some suggestions.

The first point is, Remember where you come from.

He writes,

 ^{PS 137:5} If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
 may my right hand forget its skill.

Many Christians think that having the right doctrines is the most vital thing, but that’s a form of the gnostic heresy. It is a form of thinking that what we know is what will save us.

For the psalmist, the most important thing is to remember where you belong. Jerusalem is home; Jerusalem is the centre, it’s the place of the Temple, it is the place of God.

This is very similar to what we read in the book of Revelation. Jesus tells the church at Ephesus about the good points he has seen in them, but he also warns them,

^{REV 2:4} Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. ⁵ Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.

Doctrine is important, but first love is vital. The Psalmist keeps his focus on the place where he finds God.

People who focus on doctrine get dry and dusty like an old theology textbook: interesting for research, but distant from life.

People who focus on life get full of life, and their theology becomes a matter of experience rather than of a theory they learnt.

The Psalmist’s second point is, Remember history.

He writes,

 ^{PS 137:7} Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
  on the day Jerusalem fell.
 “Tear it down,” they cried,
  “tear it down to its foundations!”

While the Psalmist writes in anger and with a certain sense of vindictiveness, there’s an important point here.

There are people around who will offer to be your friend when you are down, but they are looking for your vulnerability, and they will attack if ever you get on top again.

If they were destructive once, they are very likely to be destructive again.

Unless they clearly repent, you have to assume that they are not safe, and they will not be reliable allies.

So often you see this in violent relationships, where there is violence followed by apparent friendliness, and the couple drift together; but they are the only ones who can’t see that the violence will return again the moment the victim stands up for herself or himself.

The nation of Israel has been in a violent relationship with Edom, and can’t afford to return to it.

Remember history, and don’t get your fingers burnt over and over.

The third point is, Remember judgment. The Psalmist writes,

  ^{PS 137:8} O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
  happy is he who repays you
  for what you have done to us —

As Christians, we don’t condone murdering babies as a punishment of our enemies. But the Psamist isn’t saying, “We will kill your babies.” He is saying that a judgment is coming on Babylon because of its evil and oppressive deeds, and that the nation which attacks and destroys Babylon — which turned out to be the Medo–Persians — that nation will be happy at the destruction it wreaks.

And judgment comes on those who oppress and abuse us, and we can sing in joy because these evils will eventually end, and our fortunes will finally be restored.

God says,

Vengeance is mind: I will repay.

Never forget that God will ulimately sort out the wicked deeds of men and women.

So, remember where you come from, remember history and remember judgment. Do that, and you will remain true to God, safe from your enemies and hopeful to the end.

Faithful, thoughtful, hopeful people are people who will win; and people who will win are people who can sing the Lord’s song — wherever they are!

Let’s be such people.

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)