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By the Waters of Babylon
Psalm 137 and John 3:14-21
James S. Lo wry Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian Church, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina
Joe Banks Cooper lived on Dantzler Street in the house between my grandmother’s house and the house where they carved out an apartment for my mother and brother and me to live while my pappy was off fighting the big war:
My grandmother here; My mother and brother and I here; and Joe Banks Cooper here (between) (we always used all three names).
Some say the house where Joe Banks Cooper lived is haunted… haunted by the ghost of a woman who died there many years ago under mysterious circumstances. You can’t prove it by me. I was never so bothered by the ghost as I was by Joe Banks Cooper.
Oh, in time, Joe Banks Cooper and I became fast friends: Went to the picture show together every Saturday along with my big brother and Junior Grier only Junior Grier was black and had to sit in the balcony. That didn’t make any more sense to me then than it does now; but that’s the way things were then:
Some things change that need to be changed; Other things never change.
Anyway, when we first moved back to Saint Matthews so my pappy could go fight the big war Joe Banks Cooper was the bully of the neighborhood:
I was a new kid on the block. He was probably a couple of years older. He was definitely half a head taller, a whole lot stronger, and wiser by far in the ways of Dantzler street.
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Mean is what he was: Knock me down; Rub my nose in the dirt; Say bad things about my pappy… things I knew weren’t true and there wasn’t a blessed thing I could do.
That’s one of the things that never changes. Sometimes when things go wrong there’s not a blessed thing you can do.
Except I could do this: I could stay awake at night Plotting ways to get even… ways I could break not only his arms and legs; but ways I could break his back; and ways I could train our dog, Penny, and my grandmother’s dog, Dopey, to become killer dogs who would lie and wait and attack Joe Banks Cooper when he least expected it… no matter that Penny was only this big (about twelve inches high) and Dopey didn’t have but three legs.
My five-year-old plotting was not one of my finer moments. I really have become a very nonviolent person;
and, as I said, Joe Banks Cooper and I became fast friends. In fact, I would like nothing so much now as to hear where Joe Banks Cooper is and how he is getting on and what he’s been doing for the last forty-five years. The last time I was in St. Matthews I couldn’t find anyone who knows. One of the sad things about becoming an adult is that we seldom have such friends as Joe Banks Cooper any more where raw bitterness can turn quickly to raw devotion and it is as though the bitterness was never there.
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Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Too bad as adults we forget how to do that.
But, at the time, as unthinkable as they were, my dreams of breaking Joe Banks Cooper’s arms and legs and back were utterly honest.
Wonder what would have happened if I had turned my honest dreams into equally honest prayers?
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept…
It starts off nobly enough: a sad psalm for sad people; a psalm for a people once held captive; a psalm now used for any people whose pain is by someone else’s hand… whose pain is out of control and there is not a blessed thing you can do.
By psalm’s end, however, the psalm is anything but noble: it became a mean psalm; a psalm for an angry people; a psalm for a people held captive to bitterness; a psalm so vicious it is now seldom used by any people no matter how resentful they may be of their circumstance.
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, the psalm begins.
How shall we sing the Lords song in a foreign land? the psalm continues.
But then the psalm ends:
I pray God will dash their babies heads against a stone.
Worse than that. The psalm really ends:
I pray it will make God happy to dash their babies1 heads
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against a stone.
Walter Brueggemann, one of the leading Old Testament scholars of our day, says this psalm is not one of the noble moments of the Bible. That seems to me an understatement. Brueggemann, I think, has been too kind. This psalm may be the very lowest moment of the Bible. I can think of no lower moment in all of holy writ. It’s right there somewhere below the killing of the first-born of Egypt so Pharaoh would let God’s people go and striking Uzzah dead because he reached to keep the ark from falling off the cart.
But then, crawling from somewhere beneath the dark underside of this ignoble psalm comes a back door invitation to a kind of prayer that is passionate in its utter honesty:
Prayer that is almost like the day dreams of little boys and girls confronted for the first time with stark injustice.
Our God will no more dash the heads of children against a stone than I could break the arms, legs, and back of Joe Banks Cooper or have him attacked by a vicious three-legged dog;
but such an honest dream once helped a little boy deal with evil at a time when his daddy was not there to help.
Maybe prayer that honest can also help God’s people at a time when there is no other help.
Oh, to be sure, to dwell on such dreams and prayers, and certainly to act on such dreams and prayers, would be pathological;
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but have you never stayed awake half the night dreaming of all the caustic things you could have or even should have said to someone who caught you off guard and left you momentarily speechless:
“I wish I had said…” “Next time I see him I’m going to tell him…” “Why didn’t I think to say…”
Or, have you never spent hours writing a nasty letter… I mean really nasty… one that, if taken seriously, would end all injustice forever:
“Madam, In response to your asinine statement which insulted my integrity…” “Dear Sir: You are a disgrace to your office and to the cause of freedom and justice…” “To whom it may concern: This is to inform you that I am about to consult a lawyer…”
The only time you get in trouble with letters like that is when you mail ’em. As long as you don’t mail ’em, they can help you blow off a lot of steam.
Being able to turn such raw and honest emotion into raw and honest prayer is even better. God is more understanding than the people to whom we might be tempted to send nasty letters. Besides that and much more important,
VENGEANCE REALLY DOES BELONG TO GOD… AND ONLY TO GOD.
Thus said, however, might we yet dare to pray: “Lord, it will make me happy as a clam if his new wife’s pretty young face turns into lizard leather. She cost me my family.”
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“Lord, it will make me just pleased as punch if that so-and-so corporate raider’s jet crashes into the Andes. He cost me my job.”
“Lord, it will just tickle me to death if Saddam Hussein steps on one of his own land mines. The carnage he caused is still going on.”
I don’t recommend those prayers. As a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I don’t recommend them for one minute. I think there are better things for the church to be praying; but coming from the dark underside of this scandalous psalm, there is the voice of God with sadness saying,
“If they are really honest, I will listen even to the pain of those prayers.”
Coming, then, welling up from the top side of the psalm the psalmist makes it clear God is saying,
“All of your prayers must be utterly honest.”
I hadn’t been out of seminary long when I had to go tell a young mother that her husband had fallen under the track of a bulldozer on the construction site where he was foreman. He was dead. I found her at the beauty parlor and had to call her out to tell her. News like that would travel like wild fire around our small community. I didn’t want her to hear it from a stranger.
Standing there in the parking lot with her hair in curlers she beat on me with both her fists. She beat on me not because she was angry with me. She beat on me because she was angry with God and I was God’s representative.
It was an honest prayer.
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It was a good prayer. It was a prayer that brought healing.
It is no accident, I am sure, that in the Lectionary this lowest of all passages of scripture is paired with what, in my opinion, is scripture at its absolute highest.
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept…
and before it is over,
Lord, bash the babies7 heads against a stone.
It is awful… just awful… no matter the time… no matter the culture… it is an unthinkably awful prayer; but it’s standing here for us to read today.
But listen to what is standing beside it, also calling out for us to read it today:
God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world might be saved through him.
Pairing the passages like that makes it clear doesn’t it? I don’t have to preach it. It preaches itself. The pairing of the passages makes it clear, doesn’t it?
For us there is no pain so deep there can be no relief; For us there is no loneliness so absolute there is no friend;
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For us there is no fear so great there can be no calm; no death so final there can be no life; no grief so deep there can be no consolation; no injustice so insidious there can be no truth; no sin so serious there can be no forgiveness; no war so fierce there can be no peace; no hate so deep there can be no love.
For us there is no prayer so honest it will not be heard.
Our honest praying will not force God’s hand; but our honest praying will bring God into focus;
and to our honest prayers God will say,
“Here, let me take your bitterness from you and your pain. Now, come and follow me.”
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