DAVID'S EMAIL BIBLE STUDY:
Homesick Blues
A. BACKGROUND
... Almost done! In five months, we’ve scoured the Psalms, covering all the types, looking in depth at the main themes and most popular Psalms. Dare I try a summary? Ok – In the Psalms we praise and thank God for the wonder of creation and God’s protecting care. We express our gratitude every way possible: from musical instruments, to faithful living, to expecting the best of ourselves and others and our leaders.
C.
SUMMARY.
Psalm 137 is haunted by the writer’s experience of defeat and exile. When the Babylonians conquered Israel, they forced many Israelites into bondage in Babylon. That bitter experience, with daily humiliations, leads to a powerful yearning to be “home” AND to wreak revenge upon the Babylonians. The writer promises never to forget his homeland AND to rejoice in the deaths of Babylonian kids someday. Psalm 133 is called “the concord of kindred souls”, a beautiful ode to unity. With poetic imagery, the writer aims for a transcendent unity greater than any division.
D.
KEY POINTS
1.
HOME IS __(fill in the blank)__. America, and the world, is struggling with immigration and it’s effects. This leads to topics like assimilation, English-only, no hyphenated identities, dual loyalties, etc. Ps. 137 is a powerful reminder of the lure of where we came from. No matter how we got there we came from somewhere else, most often under duress: famine, persecution, slavery, tyranny, poverty, war. Left behind were centuries of culture, family history, and memories. The Israelites, at least some of them (see the Book of Daniel), were offered the chance to assimilate in Babylon. Be successful, productive, happy Babylonians. But the Psalmist cannot forget “home”. Yet, many must leave, complicating feelings of home. Alida and I visited the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Boston, a powerful exhibition on today’s refugee/migration crisis. We found a poem that is a modern Ps. 137. Here’s just the beginning. In both poem and Psalm, you feel the visceral response to the horrors of home-leaving. The Psalmist says he’ll rejoice in the deaths inflicted on Babylonian children “dashed against the rocks”. Who could say such a thing? Only someone who had seen it happen. Thus, the cycle of evil continues.
Home
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
By Warsan Shire
2.
E Pluribus Unum is
not
Latin for “my way or the highway”. It means “out of many, one”. Every country has many differences whether defined by caste, tribe, creed, skin tone, culture etc. Even Israel had 12 tribes and they didn’t all get along. America may be the most obviously diverse. Yet our motto echoes the grand hope of Psalm 133, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people dwell in UNITY”. During our Lent Bible Study, we’ll look at Jesus’ “Great Prayer” from John 17, a clarion call for unity. But whether it’s Jesus as the Psalmist, the world falls short of unity. America falls short. Christianity fails to a stunning degree. In my “My America” essay I lamented that unity most appears in America right after an awful tragedy like 9/11; and I wrote that we shouldn’t need an awful event every few months to keep us together. The hard work of unity is to uncover and maintain our unity despite various difference. Unity isn’t lockstep in agreement, it is above and beyond issues. The unity of love, the unity of God’s Spirit, enables us to rise above differences. It boils down to priority: which is more important, God’s call for unity or my/your particular issue? I’m not pretending this is easy. Only that it is Biblical, Godly, and Christlike. Other than that, unity isn’t that important.
