David Orendorff, Psalm 137:1-4

There is a time in our faith history called The Exile. It was one of many holocausts the Jews, our parents in the faith, have suffered. The Exile was a time when home was stolen by a vicious enemy. It was a time requiring great faith that in the face of hopelessness God will bring us home. The history:

In 587 B.C.E., King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia (today’s Iraq) invaded and conquered Judah. Most of the fortified towns were burned to the ground. Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, built upon the hill of Zion and dedicated for ever to Yahweh, were destroyed. Thousands died in battle, of starvation and disease, or were executed. Many became refuges and fled the country. Israel’s population went from 250,000 to 20,000 in a year.

It was Nebuchadnezzar’s desire to completely break the back of Israel. Deportation of the leaders was an important part of his “pacification” policy. Rabbi’s, priests, teachers, government officials, if they were lucky enough to have survived the war, were deported to Babylon where they were slaves serving the pleasure of their captors and tormentors. The Exile lasted 60 years and only ended when Cyrus of Assyria, and enemy of both Babylon and Israel, overthrew Babylonia. In 538 B.C.E. Cyrus began sending the people home.

For their amusement, the Babylonians would make the Jewish slaves sing their sacred songs and tell their sacred stories. Sort of like our minstrel shows which were born in the slavery of the south. Psalm 137 was written during The Exile and mourned how difficult it is for slaves to sing the Lord’s song to their captors in a foreign land. It is not a song sung by those coming home from vacation, but by those who have been stolen from their country. In the darkness of hopelessness the old songs would not come from their hearts, and the old stories tasted bitter in their mouths. And so they hung their lyres, the instruments upon which they played the tunes of Zion, on the willow branches, where they were blown by the wind and decayed in the sun and rain. The bitter prayed for the destruction of the children of their captors. The faithful waited for God to take them home.

I think of the millions of refugees in today’s world who weep over their songs of faith in a foreign land. And I think of those who are far from home because an illness invades their body; because dreams break; because relationships fracture; because of all the other ways we are exiled. We know what it is to wonder if we will ever see home again. We know what it is to fear that God has abandoned us and left us homeless. None of us wants to die in a foreign land, or a hospital, or even a place called a nursing home. We want to go to the place where dinner is served with memories, laughter and joy; to a place where our souls are held as precious. From our depths we want to be brought home from whatever exile is ours.

Popular music of every generation has sings of our desire to go home. I think of Dean Martin singing, “Detroit City” and mournfully chanting “Oh, how I want to go home.” I think of the folk ballad written by James Allen Bland in the last century and now Virginia’s state anthem, “Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginie.” One of my favorite is John Denver’s “Country Roads.”

Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.
Life is old there, older that the trees
Younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze.
CHORUS: Country roads take me home, to the place I belong; West Virginia, Mountain Mama, Take me home, country roads.
All my memories, gather ’round her,
Miner’s lady, strangers to blue water,
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine, tear drops in my eye.
CHORUS
I hear her voice in the morning hours, she calls me,
The radio reminds me of my home far away,
And driving down the road I get a feeling that
I should have been home yesterday, yesterday
CHORUS

Living before and during the exile to Babylon was the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah, unlike most of his contemporaries, learned how to sing with joy and faith the Lord’s song in a foreign land. As a young man God spoke to Jeremiah of the coming of Babylon’s armies. Jeremiah tried to tell his family and his country, but they ridiculed him, accused him of being a traitor, persecuted and imprisoned him.

Jeremiah was in prison for sedition when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem. When he was freed from prison he was enslaved by Nebuchadnezzar and taken to Babylon. There he was eventually given the choice of staying in Babylon or returning to Jerusalem. Jeremiah chose to go home. In the midst of all this suffering for his home and the people of his home, Jeremiah heard the unfathomable, the promise that God would carry the people home. Jeremiah writes that God says:

I shall be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.”
Thus says the Lord: …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, O virgin Israel!
Again you shall adorn yourself with timbrels,
and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.
Again you shall plant vineyards upon the mountains of Samaria
the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit…

For thus says the Lord:
“Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob,
and raise shouts for the chief of the nations;
proclaim, give praise, and say
‘The Lord has saved his people, the remnant of Israel.’
Behold, I will bring them from the north country,
and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth,
among them the blind and the lame,
the woman with child and her who is in travail, together:
a great company, they shall return here.
With weeping they shall come,
and with consolations I will lead them back,
I will make them walk by brooks of water,
in a straight path in which they shall not stumble;
for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my first-born.

What Jeremiah understood even as he and his people suffered was that God can do what we cannot do. God will take the people home even if it means using an enemy, in this case Cyrus, to do so. God’s power and love are not limited to a certain people in a certain place and time, but are over the entire creation and always brings the children home. And so in prison or a foreign land Jeremiah sang the songs of Zion.

The musical Godspell uses Psalm 137 as background to Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. It is the next to last tune of the show and a mournful tune of seeking joy when hope is dying. It is sung at communion because Jesus will soon be exiled, but like Jeremiah, Jesus knows God will bring him home. It is sung at communion because soon the disciples will also be exiled.

On the willows there, we hung up our lives,
for our captors there required of us songs,
and our tormentors mirth.
On the willows there, we hung up our lives,
for our captors there required of us songs,
and our tormentors mirth.
Saying sing us one of the songs of Zion.
Sing us one of the songs of Zion
Sing us one of the songs of Zion
But how can we sing, sing the Lord’s song, in a foreign land?
On the willows there, we hung up our lives.

Jeremiah and Jesus answer our deep longing saying that God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, God takes us home. God says over and over to us, “Though you are far from home, and things look bleak, and you find no one to heal your wounds, remember I am here. I love you with an everlasting love. I always bring you home.”

And in being brought home a mystery happens. As we are carried by God, by God we carry others. Jesus lives this mystery best among us. As he is carried by grace and carries others with grace. And counter intuitively the more we allow ourselves to be carried by God the greater is our capacity to carry others. By the grace given to us we are God’s fools carrying the weary home. Miriam Therese Winter says it well when she writes:

“Out of Exile”
We are ministers of a new covenant:
We are coming out of exile!
We are afflicted, but not crushed:
We are coming out of exile!
We are puzzled, but we do not despair:
We are coming out of exile!
We are persecuted, but not overcome:
We are coming out of exile!
We are struck down, but not destroyed:
We are coming out of exile!
We bear in our bodies the death of Jesus,
that his life might show forth in us:
We are coming out of exile!

Bear Creek is a people called and brought out of exile by God’s everlasting love. We have been placed in Cottage Lake to proclaim and practice before the world the wisdom and promises of Jeremiah and Jesus to a homesick world. Here the songs flow sweetly from our hearts, here God’s mercy saves the lost soul, and here friends, strangers and enemies are welcome to dinner. In prayer, in music, and in acts of compassion this is home. In worship, in small groups of believers and seekers, and in service centered lovingkindness we are home. Here, trusting God to be God, lives are healed and souls matured in the way and mind of Christ.

Are you exiled and weary? Do you want to go home? Then let God carry you. And being carried and you will carry others. And together as one body we will be home in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Shalom and Amen.

Jeremiah

Jeremiah