This month we are looking at some of the more emotional parts of the bible, the parts where you can go and maybe relate to the feelings and emotions that we go through. Last week I looked at feeling abandoned and Ps 22. This week I want to look at general hurts and pains and Ps 137.
The situation here is that this song describes a group of Israelites who have been captured, taken away in exile and suffering torment, teasing, by their captives. In this part of the Psalm they express their hurt. They are sad. They are hurting. They are missing their home. They are feeling their loss.
Not that they don’t talk about the situation that brought about the loss. Some people will know the situation, the cause of the loss, what the loss is, but they don’t really dwell on whose fault it was. You don’t really see any confession of sin in this passage, you don’t see any blame in this passage, or anger at God, you just hear the pain, the loss, the hurt. There we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. They gave up singing, there was no joy in them. They hung up their harps, unable to sing the happy songs that they previously were taught about God.
You see the torment or the teasing of others, come on sing us a happy song that you used to sing. All that does is heighten the sense of loss that the people feel. How can we sing in a strange land? We have lost our home. We have lost our security, we feel loss and others are making fun of it.
This is the private abandonment of someone that we looked at in the last Psalm, this is a corporate feeling, it is ‘we sat … we remembered … asked us’. It is a group of people feeling the loss together. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt less.
At college there was an article which we discussed called something like, ‘what songs do unhappy people sing at church?’ This is one of those songs. It is for unhappy people, unhappy because of major hurt in their lives.
The other week we had the Grand final, and the Tigers won. For them there was an incredible amount of Joy, however for the opposition there were tears. It was a corporate experience, it wasn’t just one player crying over one mistake, or over his personal hopes, it was the loss of hope for the team for the year. For the group there was loss, hopes not realised.
What do we do when we feel loss? When do you feel loss? DO you know when you feel loss? I know for me sometimes I’m not even in touch with the feelings of loss because I just don’t want to do there. Where do you go? How do you respond?
What sorts of loss do we go through? Maybe the loss of a home, if the lease is up and forced to move. Maybe the loss of a job if we are retrenched. Maybe the loss of a relationship. Maybe it is the loss of a community, the morning congregation are feeling the slow loss of community as their congregation has gone from a couple of hundred to forty or so people. That sort of loss is difficult to deal with.
But what sort of responses are there to loss? There are two that I see in the Psalm. And the first one is a commitment to God and we see that in v5-6.
Within the midst of the loss there is a commitment to stay true to God, to hold on to God, in whatever shape that might come. Here it is in the memory of Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God. Jerusalem is their highest joy, and not because it is a physically nice place, it’s alright as places go, but because of God’s presence there, because of the importance that God put on that place. So therefore they commit to holding dear the things that God holds dear, even though they didn’t do that in the past. But notice how, again there is no dwelling on the past. It is like the past doesn’t matter, what is important is the here and now, the emotions of the moment, the hurt, the desire for commitment to God that comes from that hurt.
We see this sort of response in the character of Job. After he loses everything he has, his wealth, his children, and finally his health, his wife says to him, go on curse God and die, but Job’s response is amazing, others have paraphrased it ‘yet though God flail me yet will I worship him’. Yet though I suffer, though things are bad, though I hurt, and the cause of the hurt isn’t what is important, though I suffer, I will worship God. I will respond with relationship with God.
And this for me is a step towards spiritual maturity. Being able to go through the hard times and be able to choose to respond to God is one of the biggest markers of spiritual maturity for me. It shows the understanding that life sometimes sucks, that God isn’t responsible, that I mightn’t even be responsible, but that in hurt I can go to God, regardless of my other feelings as we see in the rest of the Psalm.
Again I ask the question, do you invite God into your loss? Despite the other feelings you might have, can you allow God to be a part of that. For some of us that is easier than others. It is part of upbringing; it is part of discipleship as a follower of Jesus. Yancy’s book about seeking an unseen God talks about how some people just know that God is there listening to their thoughts, and I’m a bit like that I was brought up like that, but others aren’t.
Sometimes it is good to have things up that remind us that God is with us in the difficult times, not just the major difficult times, but the slow Monday morning, or when we come back from a difficult day at work, or a bad date, or whatever it is. Having a place, or a space, or a time that God is part of can be helpful.
Yet despite the commitment to God there is still bitterness and a desire for revenge, there is a normal grieving process and we see this in v7-9.
As we come to the end of the Psalm the emotion moves from one of commitment to one of bitterness, a desire for revenge. When we hurt we can go through a whole range of emotions, and we don’t need to deny them. Here we have some pretty harsh words and some people can’t handle the bible having these sorts of harsh words, but I think it is good that the bible is honest about the sorts of emotions that God’s people feel. I feel hurt, I feel the desire for vengeance, I feel bitter, but notice the context in which these feelings are expressed. They are expressed in prayer. They are expressed towards God and not necessarily towards others, Remember O Lord, what the Edomites did, .. blessed, or happy is he who repays you, it is a blessing on the one who extracts vengeance for the Israelites against the Babylonians.
There is the expression of emotion. There isn’t the British stiff upper lip thing, there is a freedom to allow the emotions to flow, to grieve, to be people who are having a bad time.
Sometimes you go to places, some churches, other social groups, where you’re not allowed to be a going through a hard time. We expect our cricketers to suffer disappointment and not show some emotion, or we expect politicians not to have emotions and when they do suddenly its like, well let’s all show some contrition and put the bad show of emotion behind us.
I remember a poem in high school, an aussie poet (can’t remember), which I’m betting most of non-Australian upbringing people wouldn’t know anyway, but it is about a person crying in George street, or somewhere in downtown Sydney. Just crying, just showing emotion, and how people stop and stare, and can’t understand how it is that someone can just show some emotion so clearly.
But for me one of the good things of the Bible is that it allows us, it encourages us, to feel the emotions that we feel when we struggle, when things aren’t going the way we want, when we suffer loss.
Are you frightened of your emotions? How do you react when you read such a passage as this one, blessed are the ones who smash your children? Do you recoil in horror? Do you want to shut off the emotions? Does it make you emphatic towards these people’s situation? Does it make you want to enter in to their pain or run away? Does it make you curious?
Can you allow yourself to feel the emotions, not just of this song, but of your life? God wants us to be able to feel the emotions of life, but not to get stuck in them. The story of the Israelites goes on, they don’t stay in Babylon.
God continues to reach out to them. God sends words of healing to their pain. They recover, they return, the restore relationship, the move forward, but in the midst of the devastation, they are in touch with their feelings.
God wants to be a part of our lives, the fullness of our lives, the good and the bad. He has created people with emotions, with hearts we might say, can we allow ourselves to feel with our hearts, invite God into the situation, receive his healing, receive his words of healing when we are ready and then go on from there.
