Sermon by Rt Revd Robert Thompson, Bishop of Kingston, Jamaica
Sunday 11 August 2013
“By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept; when we remember you, O Zion.”
These words speak to a context that is clearly different from ours today. Psalm 137 is a psalm for exiles, and that, we are not. And yet we cannot easily dismiss such a text since it speaks to a feeling many share about Jamaica, the land we love. Our text makes it possible for us to be honest in our worship; to lay certain things before the Lord, even my homeland, as we celebrate the 51st Anniversary of our independence.
Ancient Israel gathered for worship as we do now, with rage and indignation for what had become their homeland. They gathered around a liturgy with words that could help them describe how they felt, while at the same time pointing towards an alternate script that could give them hope. In such a context of worship, despair is never an option. Yes! Things may be unacceptable and unbearable, but the unexpected God cuts through the hurt and alienation with words and acts of healing. This faithfulness and commitment of God to the healing of life as we experience it is articulated best by, yet another voice from exile, the prophet Jeremiah, when he said: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you, and you shall be built.”
Psalm 137 was written for a people who had been uprooted from their homeland. It evokes rage and anger at the displacement and the physical and psychological oppression; while at the same time affirming Israel’s remarkable expression of faith. This is precisely what is required of us today. On the one hand we must demonstrate our anger and repulsion of structural arrangements that have undermined our credibility as a nation. But we are required to do more than that if the festering evil of crime and violence is to loosen its hold on the society. Because our faith is in a God who is committed to justice and compassion, we are required to revise our world in a manner consistent with God’s dream for us.
The Psalmist expresses for all dispersed people the anguish and emptiness of not being rooted in anything. Israel is in a land she could never call her own, she is exposed and made vulnerable without the necessary resources for wholesome living. Yet it is precisely within such a context that promises are received, risks are run and hope energised.
So the Psalm does three things:
First of all it acknowledges the grief. Living at this very moment in our Nation’s history the struggle between the forces of life and death, light and darkness, freedom and annihilation is perhaps more transparent than ever before. But these forces have been with us from the beginning of time. The culture of death that is threatening to overtake our world today is far more insidious than we may wish to admit. It makes us numb to injustice and violence and undermines the very foundation of social order. The prophet Isaiah spoke of it long ago, when he said; “We have made a covenant with death, and with sheol we have an agreement; …. for we have made lies of our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter.” (Ch. 28:14)
The pact with death to which the prophet speaks, is not made by losers of history but by those who have so much to lose. They will go very far in their bargaining with oblivion. They will invest in a power of their own creation and hold on to the very end despite every indication that such power is self-destructive. And please know this, that it is the social elite that is being addressed by the prophet. In the name of God they are ready to consign their world to nothingness if that is the only way they can preserve their own souls, their own properties and values, their prosperity. That is what is meant by those words from the prophet. They describe very well the life denying system and structure that have pervaded our social life for decades. Failure to contend with it will lead to our own condemnation.
The second thing the psalm does is to remind us of Israel’s resolve, never to allow the raid on their memory to undermine their confidence in the future. They may not be willing to sing Yahweh’s song as estranged persons, but says the psalmist, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill. 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.”
On the one hand verse 4 asks; how can we sing the Lord’s song upon alien soil? It admits that the present arrangements are not right, and cannot be accepted. However amidst the refusal to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land; amidst the opposition to this strangeness there comes a call for resilience. There is no point “storming the gate” but it doesn’t mean we sit and do nothing. The Jews are very good at waiting. And every dispersed people need to learn from them how to engage a kind of waiting that does not lead to despair. This is the kind of waiting that says before anything changes, before I can change comes a period of waiting. This time of waiting, is not a time for folding our arms and doing nothing. It is not the kind of time that cares care of itself. This waiting is an advent time. A time for preparation – for the reorientation of the mind. Genuine change must involve a critique of who we are, where we are and where we want to go. It is not an easy thing to work for personal and institutional change while at the same time exercising patience and watchfulness. That’s not an easy thing to do. Our world of instant gratification knows nothing about living in that kind of tension, however, that’s the place where we find ourselves in Jamaica today and God is inviting us to patiently engage in that slow process of transformation. As Christians we know we can count on the reliability of God’s promises.
The Psalmist draws his power and authority from his vision of God’s promise, which seems remote, but is not for one instant in doubt. There will be a homecoming to peace, justice and freedom. It is that vision that keeps hope alive against enormous odds.
Finally, the resolve to maintain hope against all odds concludes in verses 7 – 9, with a stern resistance to Babylon’s oppressive measures. It is not exactly a noble prayer, but demonstrates a faith that expresses itself in resistance. To endure against despair in the way that Israel is being invited to do in this psalm, requires an alternative vision of one’s world. That is to say, coexistence with systems of oppression and death must be ruled out. That, we must remember, is what every act of worship does for us. It envisions a world that God himself promises. A world of compassion, mercy, justice, righteousness, truth and equity. It is a promise against all other worlds – the worlds of Pharaoh, Babylon and their successors. The significance of both the gift given in Christ in our worship, and the fulfilment of that gift in the future, lies in our willingness to embody those activities that are consistent with God’s vision for the world. This act of envisioning that worship engages us in is world creating because it invites us to embody God’s hope for humanity. That’s exactly what we are being invited to do when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” It promises a hoped-for-world that is beyond present reality. Whenever Israel worshipped as they do in the psalms, they are once again committing themselves to this hoped-for-world. It is defiant, because it says, the only world it will give its full allegiance to is Yahweh’s world, not the world of Babylon. And because Yahweh’s world is the only one Israel will give it’s allegiance to, it means that other worlds are excluded from Israel’s social horizon and possibility. Without such a commitment, our worship today will be little more than an empty rite.
That kind of commitment is what makes Israel’s worship and the worship of Christians so threatening to the false powers of the world. This was the problem the former slave masters and their representatives had with our slave ancestors when they secretly met for worship. Physically they remained in captivity, but their spirits remained free to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Moses – in a mode that was liberating. Because they could visualize a world beyond chains, and therefore a different future, not controlled by the slave master, they were considered a danger to the State. In the nights, after their long days in the field, their songs of freedom would break out in hope for a new day. They could do this, because ultimately Yahweh’s power for life could not be contained.
The remarkable thing about Israel’s struggle in singing Yahweh’s Song is that it did not lead to resignation. Neither did it lead them to abdicate into some kind of religious escapism. Out of their grief and weeping they found the resolve to resist, and work for an alternative. It is hard for those of us who live relatively comfortable lives to understand the tenacity of the dispersed and enslaved. From the moment our ancestors arrived in the so-called “New World” they resisted their enslavement. In fact that resistance began along the west coast of Africa and continued among the slaves in Haiti and the maroons in Jamaica, who eventually proved slavery to be unprofitable, if not unworkable. Faith in God’s sustaining presence, provided them with a place to stand in a hostile world, while at the same time sustained them with hope and courage to fight for an alternate world. The significance of celebrating our nations independence around the same time when we also commemorate the end of slavery in the British West Indies must not be lost on us. If we so choose it can inspire in all of us the courage to break the silence of shame and face head on the challenge of creating a new paradigm for our nation’s future – one that involves the transformation of structures, the infusions of new values within the present cultures and the healing and reconciliation of broken relationships. In order for this paradigm to take root, civil society, including voices from the Diaspora will have to become far more active in demanding a higher level of stewardship from our leaders.
Only a faith that can show itself strongly on the side of life can make way for the good society that we all dream of. Our collective witness must reaffirm that kind of faith. Not for its own security, but for the wellbeing of nations. That witness must consist of living within the present world according to the new rule of God. That is simply to say, consider what is on God’s mind and set your thoughts on that. Putting into practice the generous self-giving love which is at the core of Jesus’ own message; demonstrating to the world that there is a different way to be human, a way of charity and compassion, a way of patience and prudence, a way of joy and justice. These are the things that mattered most to the early Christians, and they must matter to us too if we are to play our part in contributing to the good order that God wills for his world.
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