 Dr. John E. Harnish Senior Pastor |
The Lord's Song in a Foreign Land
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The year was 587 B.C. The nation of Israel was overthrown, the city of Jerusalem was leveled, and the people of Israel were taken into bondage in Babylonia. The survivors of the brutality and the death march found themselves in captivity in a foreign land, cut off from the holy city and their heritage, their hope and roots, and, most important of all, from the temple, the center of their faith. No longer able to offer their worship around the Ark of the Covenant, unable to offer sacrifices on the altar, they literally felt cut off from God. Even worse, their captors made fun of them by mocking their ritual practices, mimicking their sacred melodies, and laughing at their holy hymns, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” No wonder they asked:
How can we sing the Lord’s song
in the midst of such devastating You can hear their anguished cries at the very thought of their beloved Jerusalem in ruins:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither! No wonder they cry, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” It’s not easy to sing God’s song in a conflicted culture; not easy to lift up the values of God’s kingdom in a society which mocks them; not easy to sing the Lord’s song in what often feels like a foreign land. But it is the song we have been given to sing… 1. IT’S THE SONG OF SHALOM IN A WORLD OF VIOLENCE The Babylonian captivity was neither the first nor the last of the seemingly endless history of conflict and conquest, violence and retribution in the land called Holy—the ancient saga of the politics of “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” which only ends when everyone is blind and toothless. It is as old as the psalmist and as recent as the Gaza Strip. As this psalm reflects the people’s grief, you can also feel the all-too-familiar tug:
And the cycle of violence ends with the part of the psalm we don’t like to read in church: O daughter of Babylon, you devastator, Happy shall he be who pays you back for what you have done to us. Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! (Psalm 137:7-9) (And who said that the Quran was filled with violence?) Let’s be honest. We human creatures invariably turn to the ways of retaliation rather than to the paths that lead to peace. For the Hutus and the Tutsies, Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, pro-life and pro-choice, Methodists and....ah, Methodists, all too often our differences provoke resentment, and resentment begets violence, violence calls forth retribution, and the cycle goes on and on. But against the backdrop of this age-old cycle of violence, the Bible holds out the vision of “Shalom”—God’s vision, God’s kingdom of justice, wholeness and holiness, brotherhood and peace. Gary Haller, pastor at First UMC Grand Rapids, preached a series of sermons on the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah and his vision of “shalom.” He reminds us that “…in Hebrew, peace/shalom is never only a negative state. It is never just the absence of violence, war or trouble. Shalom means the presence of justice. Shalom is the active presence of God resulting in wholeness of life. It is life as God intends, where God’s presence is the bedrock of well-being and peace.” (Gary Haller, “Searching for Shalom,” April 14 and 28, 2002) The vision of shalom calls us to sing a different song, to live out of a new set of values:
and often it feels like singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land. When we first moved to Nashville, Tennessee, I didn’t know much about Country and Bluegrass music. Frankly, it felt like a foreign song in a foreign land! Yet over time, I came to enjoy it, in spite of all its sappy lyrics and silly story lines, its sometimes simplistic patriotism and glib God-talk. You can summarize a lot of it by the theme: “My mom died, my dog died, my truck died and my wife left me.” But the first time I heard Toby Keith’s song in response to 9/11, it literally stopped me in my tracks. I really did feel like I was in a foreign land:
Uncle Sam’s got you on the top
of his list, I wanted to shout back at the radio: “YOU’VE GOT IT ALL WRONG!” The ringing of “that bell” is the sound of liberty and freedom, not revenge. The Statue of Liberty is raising her lamp, not her fist, and the last I knew, her song still said:
Give me your tired, your poor, That’s the song which needs to be sung, the song which the world needs to hear. Out of the incomprehensible conflict and deadly cost of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln desired to bring the nation together. On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House, and two nights later, a crowd of people gathered at the White House to serenade President Lincoln. They asked the President if there was anything he would like them to sing. Lincoln said, “Yes. There is one song I would like you sing for me. I wish you would you sing ‘Dixie.’” They were stunned. “Dixie,” the theme song of the Confederacy? Why? Lincoln replied, “Because we are all one in the Union, not North and South, not Yankee and Rebel, not winners and losers, but one people. The Union has prevailed and I want you to sing ‘Dixie.’” And they did, and our nation has been working to heal the wounds ever since. (quoted in a sermon by Gary Haller, Weave a Web of Peace, May 5, 2002) We are called to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land—a song of shalom in a world of violence… 2. AND IT’S A SONG OF HOPE IN A WORLD OF FEAR Here, even in this psalm of lament, you can catch a glimmer of hope. When they couldn’t find the voice to sing, when they hung up their harps on the willows, they hung on to the memory, the vision of the kingdom, and in it they found hope. You can almost feel their spines stiffen and heads lift as they remember Jerusalem. Their captors may have taken them out of Jerusalem, but they could never take Jerusalem out of their hearts, and in that memory they found hope.
Oh, don’t let me forget the
temple, the Ark, the Holy City. Times of uncertainty, times of crisis can call forth fear which itself becomes “terror.” And in times such as these, it’s easy to begin to live out of fear rather than confidence and hope. Perhaps President Roosevelt was at least half right when he said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Perhaps the terrorism we ought to fear most is the terrorism of “fear itself” which begins to control our thoughts and actions, distorting our sense of reality, shaping our actions and controlling our lives. Now, I am not a Pollyanna. I know the threat of additional acts of terrorism is real. I know there is always the possibility of some misguided messiah trying to disrupt our lives. I know there are legitimate enemies to be concerned about. But I refuse to live my life in fear. As a nation, we cannot allow fear to undermine basic values we hold dear, to allow so-called “Patriot Acts” to threaten patriot dreams that see beyond the years, to allow fear to become the dominate, motivating force in our lives. And as the Church, the Body of Christ, we are called to sing the song of hope grounded in the presence of the Risen Christ and the confidence of God’s steadfast love; to hold onto hope in the promise of the God whose eternal kingdom is shalom and whose will is justice and peace; to proclaim the word that ultimately the victory belongs to God and one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. To be the people of God means to hold onto the hope that one day we will overcome. One day we will walk hand in hand. One day we will all be free. That we will live in peace, and we shall overcome some day. I grew up on gospel songs and camp meeting music. It’s a bit simplistic, but the tune that has been humming through my head all week says:
I don’t know about tomorrow, I
just live from day to day; We are called to sing a song of hope in a world of fear. 3. AND WE SING A SONG OF LOVE IN A WORLD OF HATE It is so basic to our Christian faith that it ought to be nothing more than restating the obvious, but it isn’t. Jesus’ central teaching is:
Love one another.
When asked for the shorthand
version of his message, he said the greatest law was “Love
the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and
the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as you love
yourself.” (Matthew 22:37) He contrasts it with the message of many of the televangelists and much of contemporary Christian literature which basically focuses on “you,” not on “others”—how “you” can be a better person, how “you” can find more fulfillment, how “you” can be rich, successful, happy, rewarded. McKibben says: Not that any of this is so bad in itself. We do have stressful lives, and you should pay attention to your own needs. Clearly I do need help in being more positive… it’s just that these authors, in presenting their perfectly sensible advice, somehow manage to ignore Jesus’ radical and demanding focus on others.
At the moment, the idea of Jesus has been hijacked by people with a series of causes that do not reflect his teachings. The Bible is a long book, some of it contradictory and hard to puzzle out, but “love your neighbor as you love yourself” is a good place to start. There is no disputing the centrality of this message, nor is there any disputing how easy it is to ignore. (Bill McKibben, “The Christian Paradox,” Harper’s Magazine, August 2005, page 31) To sing the song of self-giving love for others is like singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land…the song of love in a world of hate. For many years, Tom Starnes was pastor of Chevy Chase UMC outside Washington, D.C. One day he preached the funeral sermon for a family who had lost both of their sons in succeeding incidents in Washington—one a murder, the second a car accident. Tom named the losses for what they were—terrible, incomprehensible tragedy—but in the second funeral he told the story of a hospital administrator who had been through tough times himself. Multitudes of administrative problems coupled with his compassion for patients who flooded the emergency room every day drained him of energy and spirit and soul. One Sunday in worship, Tom said his friend seemed to be singing exceptionally loud—not always on pitch, but loud and strong. On the way out, Tom said, “Gee, you seemed to be enjoying the singing this morning. You nearly blew me out of the pulpit.” The wearied hospital administrator looked him in the eye and said, “Ah, you know, sometimes, all you have is a song.” (Quoted in a sermon by James A. Harnish, “A Song of Hope,” Hyde Park UMC, Tampa, Fla., June 24, 2001) That’s what the psalmist learned—sometimes, all you have is a song. But if it is the right song, if it is the Lord’s song, the song is enough and we can learn to sing it, even in a foreign land.
NOTE: For further reading, I highly recommend Bill McKibben’s article in the August 2005 Harper’s Magazine entitled “The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong.” On request, I will gladly provide you with a copy.
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