"The God Given Limits of Patriotism"
The moral foundation of freedom
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Text: Psalm 137
It was February 3, 1959, just over 50 years ago - it is hard to believe - when there was a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa. On board that plane were three of the most famous musicians of their time. Many of you will have read the story and seen the movies outlining what took place. It was the day that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash. The background to it is tragic. They needed to get to another place where they were performing, but the bus on which they had been travelling had no heater. One of them had the flu and the other one had to keep his voice in good shape, while the third one had problems with frostbite, and so they decided to second a plane and fly to Minnesota.
All the other band members went on the bus with no heat through Iowa and Minnesota in the early part of February - no fun! The plane crashed, and the three musicians and the pilot were killed outright. It was a sad, sad day when those who had really been a movement behind the whole rock 'n roll theme, at the heart of it, at its forefront of and probably at the top of their games, were killed.
In 1971, Don MacLean wrote a song called American Pie, in which he recounted that fateful day in Iowa, and he referred to it as “the day the music died.” Well, we all know that the music didn't die on that day, but certainly their voices and what they had brought went with them, never to be repeated - a sad and an awful day when “the music died.”
I want you to cast your minds 2,600 years before them to another day on which “the music died,” very different circumstances, a very different situation, but nonetheless, just as sad and just as poignant. In Psalm 137, there is the story of how the Israelites are in Babylon during the Exile. We read that they sat down beside rivers, probably the streams that run between the two great rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the great rivers of Mesopotamia. They were used to playing the lyre and singing about their days in Zion, the days in Jerusalem, the days of their former country before they were made captive. But, now their captives were using those songs to belittle them, saying, “Come on, now, you Israelites, play your songs of Zion that we might be able to enjoy your music.” Singing for the captives, as opposed to singing in praise, were very different things, indeed!
They were being treated as a curiosity. It was sadistic, because every time they sang for their captors, they remembered Zion. Every time they sang, they remembered their captivity. It made everything that they said and did seem so bleak and dark. And so we read, “by the willows of those rivers they hung their lyres.” They said that they were not going to sing this song any more. It is not surprising, because to remember what they had lost and to have the pain of what had been taken away in front of their captors was humiliating. I think the only equivalent we could grasp is if, for example, our spouse was to be executed, and then, the executioner says to us, “Now I want you to recount all their beauty and virtue in a song or poem.” It would be devastating, would it not?
Well, for those who loved Jerusalem, for those who loved Zion, to sing the Lord's song in a foreign land was a difficult and painful thing to do. So, they responded in a visceral, emotional way, as one could expect. In this psalm there is a sense of defiance. “We will not sing these songs in this foreign land.” When they ask the question, “How can we sing?” what they are saying is, “We cannot sing the Lord's song in this strange land. We wait for Jerusalem; we wait for our return to Zion.” And so, they hung up their lyres.
Then, in a magnificent poetic twist that is so clever, the psalm says, “Even if our right hand withers or loses its ability to play and the tongue sticks to the top of our mouths, even if that happens, we still won't play.” Well, of course if your right hand withers you can't play the lyre and if the tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth, you can't sing, so it is an oxymoron. Even if that happens, they said, “We are not going to sing for these people who have captured us.” But, they are even more defiant: “We will remember Zion! We will remember Jerusalem! No matter what you have done to us, we will not sing, because we will maintain our faith in the place that was our home.”
But, there is a second side to all this and it is a much more aggressive one. Not only is there defiance, there is vengeance. They remembered what is promised by one of the prophets to Edom that it would be razed up. It would be destroyed twice. So, “Babylon, you will be destroyed.” And then, the psalmist places a curse on Babylon. This imploratory psalm goes right to the heart of the anger of the people who were in exile.
Then, in that most troubling text, probably in all of the Old Testament, and one of the reasons why people often don't like to read this psalm, it says, “And may your babies' heads be smashed against the rocks.” That is the extent of the vengeance. That is the depth of the anger. Have we not at times felt like that ourselves? Is this not a natural human response to captivity, oppression, disappointment, sadism or cruelty? How many people have not, if they are absolutely honest, had that spirit of vengeance rise up within their own hearts? How many of those within the world have not felt that very same sentiment?
So, why do we look at it today? Why even bother with Psalm 137? Why not just ignore it completely and pretend it's not there? Well, there are three good reasons why we need to address it. The first is the state of the world that we are living in today. Let us be honest about the state of the world. This spirit of vengeance, this spirit of oppression, of anger, is as real today as it was 2,600 years ago. Is that not what is motivating so many people in Sri Lanka on both sides of the divide, this sense of vengeance, anger, wrath and hatred of the other? Are there not people who are trapped between forces of political power and emerging patriotisms that find themselves on an island and then bombarded and killed? Believe you me, unless you have been in a position where you have had someone point a gun at you with the intention of killing you, you cannot understand the sense of fear, loathing and hatred that exists in such a situation.
Does the same thing not happen in Zimbabwe at the moment, where people are fleeing and moving into the borders of South Africa and going to the Musina campground in the hope that they can find some refuge from the political turmoil and the pain? In the midst of that campground, as one of my friends was telling me, there are now outbreaks of cholera coming into South Africa from Zimbabwe, and people who have no land and no homes - are they not also crying out, “How do you sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?”
Do not many of the people of Gaza feel the same way? How do we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land when we are fearful for the future? For those who are within the borders of Israel and have rockets sent in their direction and wonder whether or not their nation will exist in the midst of a hostile world, do they not also say, “How do we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?” Isn't is fascinating that in a place where there is such visceral anger, hatred and animosity amongst people, there is also this place called Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, which remembers the Holocaust and the millions of people who died?
At an interfaith dinner this past week, I was speaking to one of my good friends, a rabbi, and he asked me what I was preaching on Sunday. I said, “I am preaching on Psalm 137,” and he just went pale. He said, “Good luck, but do it.” Why? Why do we do it? It is because there is still animosity, vengeance and hatred within the world. You can hear it, can you not, in the voice of the president of Iran? You can hear that sentiment of cruelty that often exists. While it is right for nations to desire to have their own their place, their own kingdom, their own land, at times the spirit of vengeance and anger overtakes the wonderful sentiment of patriotism. We need to listen to Psalm 137 because we live in a world that is often repeating it. We need to read Psalm 137 because we need to learn some strong lessons.
One of the strong lessons is that many of the problems that face humanity are not necessarily economic and not necessarily political and they cannot necessarily be solved militarily. Many of the problems that beset humanity are actually moral and spiritual. But, you don't hear many people or commentators coming on television and talking about the moral and spiritual dimensions of the conflicts among people.
I was studying political science, and I know that is a long, long time ago, and there was this idea that if you understand decision makers' thoughts and why they make the rational decisions that they do, you can understand both the international and local spheres and how they interact and how people make decisions. But, the older I got and the more I saw, made me realizedthat people respond not just rationally to situations, but also emotionally. The movement is not only one of self-interest or even of historical basis; very often people are moved by what is in their soul and what is in their heart, and sometimes that becomes dark. Then, it becomes a moral and a spiritual matter.
What was driving the writer of the psalm was that very visceral, emotional response to the oppression and captivity of his people. His anger, his vengeance, his passion arose not just from a rational understanding of the situation, but also from a passionate love of Jerusalem and Zion and what he was missing. So, sometimes we need to examine things spiritually and morally.
Finally, we need to see things in the light of the resurrection. Here we are, basking in the glory of Easter. We have talked about, “the new day, the new dawn, the new life,” and the joy that comes with it. We have looked at the victory of love over darkness. We have seen the power of light over death. We have seen God able to transcend all the power and evil that the world throws at itself. Yet, it seems to me that we need to ask ourselves, “How do we live concretely in the world in the light of that resurrection?” That is where Psalm 137 is a challenge. What is missing in Psalm 137 is any reference to God. The emotions, the nation, the sentiment, the captivity and the pain are there. But where is the good news? Easter causes us to ask what the good news of the resurrection says to this broken world in its vengeance and anger. It says four things.
The first is that there must be a moral foundation to freedom. The Israelites wanted to bash their way out of trouble - they wanted vengeance, they wanted anger and they wanted war. They wanted to get out of the situation they were in, and it was understandable. The problem was that, in their captivity, they had lost sight of what really brought them freedom. They had lost sight of one thing above all else. What is missing in the psalm, and what is missing in so many of the dark places of the world is love. Until you understand what love means by putting yourself to one side for the sake of the other, you cannot understand love's true power.
This was brought home to me by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago. The following words inspired me for years:
How can you stand your ground when you are weak and sensitive to pain? When people you love are still alive, but when you are unprepared. What do you need to make you stronger than the interrogator and whole trap of prison? From the moment you go into prison you must put your cozy past behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself, 'My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there is nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die now or a little later. But, later on, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me, those I love have died, and for them, I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience and my faith remain precious and important to me.' Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble. Only the one who has renounced everything can win that victory.
What a message! Jesus said, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it; whoever will lose it for my sake it will gain it.” And where do we see that manifested? Where do we see this victorious sense of giving up oneself for the other but in the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth? Vengeance will only get you so far. Isn't it ironic that for all the vengeance in Psalm 137, it wasn't a war, it wasn't an uprising by the Israelites that got them out of the exile. It was the work of Cyrus, a Persian and a foreigner, who in the end set them free. All their vengeance meant nothing.
There is also a sense in which faith becomes the source of life. You see, the Israelites wanted to fight their way out of captivity - or hope that someone else would fight to bring them out of captivity. What they had lost sight of was the lives of the people around them. I speculate that the Israelites had been out of Israel for so long - too long - that they had forgotten not so much Zion, but God and his commandments. They had forgotten the word of the Lord. How easy it is to be blinded by patriotic vision and to lose sight of the God who is the Lord of all.
The great writer, C.S. Lewis, wrote the following, and it is the most profound statement that the resurrection of Jesus Christ changes the way that we see every nation and every person. He wrote, and I am quoting from my own book about the good news:
Christianity is such that every individual human being is going to live forever. This must be either true or false. Now, there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live forever.
Lewis argues that one person's life, because it is an eternal thing by virtue of the resurrection of Jesus, is infinitely more valuable than all empires or kings; it is above all powers, crowns, monarchies or national boundaries. The resurrection of Jesus helps us see each individual person as a child of God's who will live forever.
Tell that to those who put people in places where they are refugees and have no land, no hope and no home. Tell them that when they exact violence on the innocent and persecute people, they are persecuting people for whom the Son of God gave his life. Does that not transform the whole way in which we see the other?
I understand the human desire, the right desire, to have a land of your own. People throughout the ages have needed a homeland. They need security; they need to be with people who speak like they do, love like they do and have traditions like they do. These are valuable things. They are right things; they are good things. They make for a good society and a profound understanding, but when those things become more important than the lives of others, it is toxic, vengeful and dangerous.
That is why one needs boundaries in order to have harmony. I don't just mean physical and national boundaries; I mean the boundaries of God himself that contain and constrain human behaviour. I liken it to something I read some time ago that compared a sense patriotism and love of country to water. If it is funnelled in a proper direction, if it is contained within an area, it can drive a wheel and produce things. But if the boundaries are taken away, the water spills out and becomes a bog in which people die and nothing is created. The boundaries are set by God: The boundaries of truth, holiness, love, faith and peace. Lose those things, and you lose the very power of the thing that you want to save. This psalmist had lost those boundaries. He remembered Zion, but he had forgotten God.
There is one final thing, one other thing missing in this psalm. It is there in so many other psalms, and that is that forgiveness is the ultimate source of peace. What many people don't know is that there were two people who missed that plane on that fateful day of February 3, 1959 who were supposed to be on it. One of them was country singer Weyland Jennings. He did not go on that plane, but was forced instead to go on the bus in order to give up his seat for the musician who had the flu. Knowing that he was going to have to sit in the bus with no heat and having to drive all the way to Minnesota, Weyland Jennings was kind of upset, but willing to take it. Then, in jest, Buddy Holly said to him, “Well, I hope you make it through the bus ride and you don't freeze to death.” Weyland Jennings replied, “Yeah, and I hope your plane crashes.” It was said in jest, but it affected his whole life. Weyland Jennings never forgot what he had said. He never forgot that harsh word, though said in jest, and it haunted him. He said it was the biggest mistake of his life. He lived with the pain and the agony of it.
The other one who was supposed to be on that plane was Dion Di Mucci, an up-and-coming singer. But he thought the cost of it was too great - it was $36. He thought of his poor parents at home and how $36 meant rent payments for them, and he honestly, out of the goodness of his heart could not spend $36 on plane fare when it should probably go to his parents who were in need. Dion gave up his seat for Valens, and the plane crashed.
Dion, however, eventually became a devout Christian. He had an encounter with the risen Christ and became a devout believer. He felt that his life had been spared - he didn't know why - but he knew that whatever the reason might be, he should live his life now for God and for others. He wrote a song, which is one of my favourite songs of all time, a Christian song entitled, I Put Away My Idols, the idols of wealth, power, prestige and all the things that go with being a superstar. He put all of those to one side because he saw in the resurrection of Christ the most important thing for his life. “For me to live is Christ,” said Dion, “and to die is gain.” Just what Paul said! Dion is now an active Roman Catholic. He now helps the poor and works with food banks. He has taken a terrible situation and he has found a purpose for his life.
Two responses, two approaches to a terrible situation. You see, my friends, vengeance can live in the heart. Vengeance can kill and destroy not only the one to whom you are vengeful, but also the avenger. But, forgiveness, the life of God and the love of God can transform. In this world, may we see the latter and not the former, for the world desperately needs to hear that word. Amen.