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WUMFSA Devotionals for Advent to Epiphany, 2003 - 2004 Sunday, November 30, 2003 By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion / On the willows there we hung up our harps / For there 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 strange land? Psalm 137: 1-4 That last verse is the theme for this year's Advent Meditations. The editors com-mented, "For many of us, the United States of America and the United Methodist Church have become a strange land.Each day brings news which alarms us and discourages us and diminishes us." So how do we sing the Lord's song in this strange land? Yet that very question was apparently first sung. It is found in the Hebrew Hymnal (The Book of Psalms). Its setting is among the Jewish exiles in Babylon who were alarmed, discouraged, diminished. It was as if the sky had fallen. The world they knew was gone. They were separated from their land and people. So how could they sing? Some were saying they shouldn't sing! The Lord's song belongs in the Lord's Temple (now destroyed) and God was not among the Babylonians. Others said they wouldn't sing, certainly not on command. The more the Babylonians demanded to be entertained, the more resistant the Jewish exiles became. And there were others who said they just couldn't sing, because they were too depressed. So they hung their harps on the weeping willows. Yet somehow that very question was sung! And daring to sing the question may be its own answer. The most frequently played piece of classical music on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Music by Request" happens to be based on Psalm 137. It is the song of the Hebrew slaves from Verdi's opera "Nabucco." The Babylonian exiles sing of their thoughts flying back to Jerusalem. When the Italian audiences first heard this chorus in 1842 they wept, cheered and demanded an encore. They dared to sing it in the streets and it became an unofficial anthem for this nation which was then seeking independence and unity. To watch this chorus being sung by the "Hebrew slaves" on an opera stage still moves audiences to call for encores. The haunting question in Psalm 137 continues to strike chords in hearts. Each generation understands it anew. But the question begs another question. Is this Psalm basically an ode to nationalism or can we envision a land that is not strange to anyone, and then begin to live that vision? The Jewish prophets learned from the Exile
that God is not limited to any one land or people. We are still
learning. |