A Strange Land
A Sermon by Brent J.
Eelman
Abington
Presbyterian Church
October 7, 2007
Psalm 137: 1-6
1By
the rivers of Babylon—
there
we sat down and there we wept
when
we remembered Zion.
2On
the willows there
we
hung up our harps.
3For
there our captors
asked
us for songs,
and
our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
‘Sing
us one of the songs of Zion!’
4How
could we sing the Lord’s song
in
a foreign land?
5If
I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let
my right hand wither!
6Let
my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if
I do not remember you,
if
I do not set Jerusalem
above
my highest joy.*
I
spent the summer of my last year in seminary doing a missionary
internship in Taiwan. The arrangements for the trip home were
changed while I was there and the result was that I had to spend an
additional week in Tokyo, Japan. Now under most circumstances this
would have been wonderful. It would have been a time to tour that
country and see a great deal, but remember, I was a student. When I
got to Japan, I had less than 200 dollars. I had no credit cards. I
had no hotel arrangements. My $200 had to last a whole week in one
of the most expensive cities in the world! I figured out a number of
ways that I could save money. I stayed at the YMCA, which only cost
15 dollars an evening. The restaurants were too expensive, but I
could get fresh fruit and other foods at an outdoor market. I spent
most of the day walking around Tokyo and seeing the sights there. I
was by myself, with no friends or acquaintances. You might imagine
the loneliness that I felt. I was truly a stranger in a strange
land. It was the fourth or fifth evening of that lonely exile when I
was walking along a street and heard singing. The tune was familiar
and I started to walk toward the sound of the singing. As I got
closer I recognized the tune as A Mighty Fortress. The words
were Japanese, but the tune was one I knew. I walked into the
storefront church and listened to the singing, and for but a moment,
I felt at home. I heard the Lord’s Song in a strange
land.
The
experience of being in a strange place is lonely and frightening. I
also believe that the experience of the contemporary Christian is
similar. Followers of Jesus are strangers in a strange land,
wondering how do we live as modern Disciples of Christ? How do we
sing the Lord’s song in this day and in this place?
I want to look at our experience of trying to live a Christian life in terms of the Hebrew people in exile. First, I will look at our contemporary context, and second, at how we might live out our faith using the metaphor of song and music from the psalmist. How we can sing God’s song in this strange world in which we live?
I
In
587 B.C. the Hebrew people were in the midst of crisis. Their
culture, their temple, their government, and their public life were
being destroyed. Their leaders were carried off into exile in
Babylon. There, deprived of everything that ordered their society
and life, they were taunted by their captors to sing a song. This
was a crisis for them… How could they sing God’s song in
this strange place? Their songs were tied to the Promised Land, to
the temple, to the law, to their culture and language. These were
all gone. They were dislocated. They were aliens.
Modern
followers of Christ also experience dislocation and alienation. It
touches all areas of our existence. The things that were sure at one
time are no longer certain. We are no longer certain about right and
wrong. We constantly face problems that previous generations never
confronted. Privileges that we once enjoyed because of race or
economic position are being challenged. The structures of society
are becoming increasingly ineffective and fragile. From churches to
Rotary Clubs, from schools to judicial institutions: the institutions
that gave our society order are fraying and changing… often
under the assault of selfishness, fear, anger and greed. We long for
order in our world… It is not uncommon to talk about the “good
old days”, because life had some amount of certitude.
I
was ordained 31 years ago, and the world in which I minister today is
different. The church has changed in 31 years. 31 years ago, malls
were not opened on Sunday. 31 years ago, average families did not
have one car per driver. 31 years ago, there were no youth sports on
Sunday morning. 31 years ago there was no email, no internet, no
home computers, no digital television, no satellite radio….
The result: The mission of the church is no longer clear. The calling of ministry lacks similar clarity. Church members are confused about authority, bewildered by mission, worried about finances, fighting about norms and ethics, and anxious about survival. I find myself longing for those “good old days.” But here is the dirty little truth… we can not go back to those good old days. We cannot recreate them. We cannot rebuild them. What we are called to do, is learn to follow Christ in this day, in this age, in this world… as strange as it is. The church, throughout the world, may indeed be in exile.... and we are called to faith as strangers in a strange land.
II
Music
and song are a wonderful metaphor for living out our faith. Music
touches something that is central to our being… it evokes a
powerful response that is greater than emotion, more complex than
rationality. Music is related to the core of our identity. If you
ever travel through an ethnic neighborhood or community, you will
hear different music. In an Italian neighborhood you might hear an
Italian ballad. In a Jamaican neighborhood, it might be a recording
of steel drums. Music and song reinforce our identity. They tell
the world who we are. Christian life needs to be lived like a great
hymn.
First, it is not a solo. Hymns are sung by congregations… they are sung together. Some people sing well, others drag and are flat. Some sing the melody, others harmonize.. but the hymn is sung together… Christian faith in our day is something that lived out with others in community. It means that we blend our lives, our gifts, our callings and our weaknesses with others… and in the process something beautiful is created…
Second,
hymns have one object: God. We do not sing to hear ourselves sing.
We sing to praise God. The Christian life is not lived for its own
glory, but for God. Worship is directed toward God. The Christian
life is lived, to the glory of God, and God alone. God does not
exist for our benefit. We exist to serve and glorify God.
Third,
hymns are not always easy to sing. A number of years ago, I got one
of those anonymous letters from a congregant complaining about the
organist improvising to the final verse of a hymn. The letter writer
complained that it made the hymn difficult to sing. What can you do
with an anonymous letter? One can never answer anonymous letters
directly, so I did the next best thing, I read it in worship the
following Sunday and my sermon was an answer to the letter. In
short I agreed, it was harder to sing during the improvisation…
but I went on to say, that this was an amazing metaphor for the
Christian life. We don’t always get to live the Christian life
with all the rules laid out for us… There are times when we
live through dissonance and dislocation, just as we sometimes sing
through some strange harmonies on the organ. Ultimately the key to
singing when the organist re-harmonizes the verse is to sing the
melody louder; to join together with other voices, looking to them
for direction and support… Ultimately when life itself is
confusing, and our faith is challenged by the dissonances of
circumstance, the key is to live our faith more boldly, and with
greater courage. Literally, we need to sing louder, live our faith
bolder. I fear that we want everything easy and instant in life, and
that has made us soft. We want easy hymns, easy scriptures, an easy
ethic and an easy Christianity. The hymns are not all easy…
the scriptures are challenging and difficult. There is not an easy
answer or an easy ethic in our age and Christianity is only as easy
as the cross!
I still remember walking down the street in Tokyo.. feeling like a stranger in a strange land… friendless and without purpose.. wandering and drifting.. and then I heard the hymn: A Mighty Fortress… calling me home.. indeed the Lord’s Song in a strange land. Amen.
*The New Revised Standard
Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.
Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania, www.apcusa.org