Psalm Meditation 765
Transfiguration Sunday
February 15, 2015

Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
2 On the willows 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! 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!
(NRSV)

I grew up in a musical family, so singing has been a part of my life from the beginning. There have been times in which I did not feel like singing. I sang in the choir, I sang the hymns in worship as best I could, I played music on the instruments I have, however I rarely burst into song on my own. It took a year or so for me to even notice that I was not hearing music in my head and heart. It took another several months before a song rose unbidden from heart to lips.

This was the circumstance of the psalmist here. Having been taken into exile, pulled away from all the familiar routines and places of their lives, they are in no mood to sing joyful songs. As an added piece of cruelty, their captors force them to sing songs of joy and faithfulness. I am sure it is bad enough that they don’t feel like singing in the first place, and then to be forced to sing of a joyous homeland and relationship to God.

These folks want to sing, they want to remember the joyous events of life and worship in the presence of YHWH. They do not want to be forced to sing of a time that makes the surrounding events that much worse. The phrase, ‘the gift of song’ has a deep truth here. It is a gift that one both gives and receives. To be forced to give it, in a mood not currently felt, raises the ire of those forced to sing. Whether folks would really be happy to destroy the children of those who forced them to sing joyous songs in exile is doubtful. That it is an excellent fantasy is understandable. What they want more than anything is to be able to sing from the depths of their hearts in the presence of God as the people of God.

February 9, 2015
LCM