While Psalm 137 is so clearly the cry of a people in exile, there’s something about this psalm that draws me into the depth of grief and loss. Our hearts cry out with those in exile as we experience our own “exile” – our own separation through loss and death from those we love. And so we cry out to God in prayer:
By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our harps.
For our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth,
saying “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?[1]
By the water’s edge we sit and watch the river flow by. Whether it is a wide, slow moving river or a rocky, white-water river we sit by the water’s edge gazing out at the water in our grief, pausing to let life flow by. Perhaps we toss a flower in and watch it float downstream. There’s something about the river that allows our tears to flow more freely. And we weep as we remember. We weep as we remember those we love.Tormentors fail to grasp the depth of our grief and invite us to laugh and sing. Perhaps they are simply trying to cheer us up. But how can we laugh? How can we sing? How can we praise God at a time like this? No, this is a time for sitting, not a time for doing. The laughter and the singing will come later, but for now we must simply be. And our prayer continues:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
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.
In grief and sadness we want to remember; Lord, don’t let us forget! As we sit with our grief we remember the person, the place, the community we have lost. We remember the laughter and the tears. We remember the joy and the sadness. And somehow – even if we don’t believe it at the moment – we remember that in life and in death we belong to God. And yet, even as we remember, there is fear. What if we forget? How can we forget? Lord, don’t let us forget!
As we sit by the water’s edge we remember that love never ends. There is hope. We glimpse the joy that comes from loving and serving our Lord. We remember that God is with us; even if we forget, we know that God will not forget. And then, in that moment, just as we glimpse the possibility of joy, the grief sweeps over us again. And that is okay. Our prayer continues:
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!”
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
With the grief comes a shocking anger. We didn’t know we could hate so much. We didn’t expect that we would want to lash out at someone, anyone. We didn’t anticipate that the pain would manifest itself as a desire for revenge, as a need to blame someone, anyone. And yet, these emotions overwhelm us. The unfairness of it all. The injustice of it all. Anger threatens to consume us. And then, in the act of shouting out our most horrible thoughts and desires and threats to God, somehow we find some comfort, some peace.
How fortunate we are that we can share both the sadness and the anger of grief and loss with our Lord. As we sit by the water’s edge and our hot tears continue to flow, God sits by us and listens. God sits by us in our sadness and in our anger and weeps with us. And when we are ready we will leave the water’s edge and re-enter life. Forever changed, yet stronger. Knowing we will laugh and sing again. Giving thanks to God with our whole hearts for His steadfast love that endures forever.
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