Sermon: Singing the Lord's Song

SINGING THE LORD’S SONG
Sermon by Judy Turner

I don’t know exactly when or how it happened that American culture changed so much, but it seems like we of the mainline church recently woke up to find ourselves in a “foreign land”. Wasn’t it just yesterday that American culture was “Christian”? Oh, we know everyone was not a committed follower of Jesus Christ by any means, but the culture was built on some shared values and standards. The first television shows I saw portrayed an Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best kind of world. And the mainline church with its white columns and tall steeple was the center of that world. People generally respected and supported the institutional church. Now we’re in a fragmented culture. Everyone seems to be defining their own center, and if there is an orientation point in communities, it’s Wal Mart, not the church. Church leaders are singing songs of discouragement, like “We’ve Been Working at the Church House, All Our Live-Long Lives” and “Where Have All the People Gone?” Shortages of people and money seem to be the common experience of churches of the old denominations such as Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Disciples of Christ.
And in the midst of all our discouragement and troubles, the secular culture is out there taunting us with their indifference. It’s as if unbelievers are saying, “OK, just show me what this God of yours can do for me. He doesn’t seem to be doing much for you.” Or maybe the taunt is, “Give me some reason I should even notice the church.”
God’s People in a Foreign Culture
But this is by no means the first time in history that God’s people have found themselves in a foreign culture, with everything changed. In the Sixth Century before Christ, the little kingdom of Judah had been invaded and destroyed by the powerful Babylonians. The conquering army destroyed homes, killed lots of people, and others they rounded up like cattle and herded them from their homes and relocated them in the foreign land of Babylon. Psalm 137 reflects the experience of God’s people in exile. Those exiles sat by the rivers of Babylon remembered- bitter, sad memories of loss and destruction. Saddest of all was remembering Solomon’s magnificent temple in Jerusalem, destroyed, nothing left but rubble, all the precious holy things of the temple carted away – just booty. The temple was the place where through the centuries God met His people, sacrifices were offered for sins, forgiveness was granted. It was the holiest place in all the earth, and now it was no more. The taunts of their captors, “Why don’t you sing one of the songs of Zion like Psalm 48 (“Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise, in the city of our God, his holy mountain…God is in her citadels; he has shown himself to be her fortress”) made the pain unbearable. They couldn’t sing for the tears and the choking in their throats, when they remembered Jerusalem. They just hung up their harps on the nearby trees and wept for their homeland.
Psalm 137
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. 2 There on the poplars we hung our harps, 3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill . 6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. "Tear it down," they cried, "tear it down to its foundations!" 8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- 9 he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

What is helpful for us in this Psalm, and in what way?
What do we do with a Psalm like this? It’s called a Psalm of Lament. No kidding! And it expresses a bitter vindictiveness that the New Testament makes clear is not to be the spirit of a follower of Jesus. But there is a reason this Psalm is included in among the divinely inspired scriptures, and as 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” So I think we benefit from prayerfully studying the Psalm to see what in it is helpful for us, and in what way.
1. In this real relationship we have with God, we must be real with God.
We can express to God our deepest anguish and our bitterest anger. We don’t have to put on a happy face or pretend with God. Straight to the arms of God is the safe place to go with our rage and despair. When life is hard, turning our backs on God is a temptation. Instead, we choose to turning toward God with our pain. Our honest openness with God gives God a chance to start redeeming and healing the pain.
2. Value our spiritual heritage, but don’t make an idol of it.
The first 5 books of the Bible are about God forming a people to represent Him in the world. He gave them a shared history, a culture, practices, that would remind them continually of who they were and why. It was a good thing for the Israelite exiles in Babylon to remember their spiritual heritage, to not forget their homeland and the temple and their religious practices. But what about considering Jerusalem their “highest joy”? Could that be a form of idolatry? Idolatry is giving anything other than God first place in your heart and in your life. If their trust was placed in their religious system or their religious traditions or a sacred building rather than in God Himself, then their trust was misplaced. So, here we start learning from the Psalm as a negative example. In the light of the whole counsel of scripture, we say, “Yes, we are to always remember what God has done in the past. Yes, we are to value our spiritual heritage, our traditions and our places where we’ve met God. But we can’t value any of that more than we value God Himself. And we can’t put God in the box of the past. The Prophet Isaiah wrote during the time Israel’s destruction as a nation started taking place. He saw the time when Israelites would be taken from their homeland and into exile. But just because the kingdom of Israel was no more didn’t mean the Kingdom of God was in trouble at all. Isaiah forsees how God will continue to work in human history until His purposes are fulfilled. In Isaiah 43:18-19, God says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” God’s people are always supposed to have a rear-view mirror so we can see where we have come from, but we need to have a big and clear windshield so we can see where God is taking us now! If all we have is a big rear-view mirror, we’ve got serious problems.
3. Choose to believe that God can empower us to be effective witnesses for Him now (even in this “foreign land”, our changed circumstances)
I think we can understand the choice reflected in Psalm 137: “things are so hard here, we’ve lost so much, we can’t give bold, joyful effective witness to the loving goodness of our God. So we’ll just give up. Literally, they hung their harps on the trees near the river and went silent. That was just a picture of the surrender in their spirits. They would have their religious memories, but they wouldn’t have a living, vital faith.
4. Repent and retrieve our harps
What about us? Are we singing the Lord’s Song in this strange land? Are we breaking through the darkness of our culture with a joyful witness to the love and power of God made known in Jesus Christ? Have we stopped trying to influence our culture toward God and become influenced by it? Have we lost our joy and confidence? Have we hung up our harps and gone silent?
Jill Briscoe reflects on this Psalm and suggests that if we suspect that we’ve lost our joy in the Lord, but want to rediscover it, it would be a good idea to look where we hung up our harps. Will each of you come with me into the realm of the Spirit and walk around for awhile and see if there’s a tree where your harp is hanging?

There is the grief tree. Some hurt or loss has taken your joy in the Lord, and maybe even caused you to doubt God’s goodness. God wants to heal the hurt and fill the empty places inside of you, but you can’t seem to let go of the sadness and the anger. You want whatever it was you lost more than you want God. Together as a church we often hang our harps on the grief tree. We’re focused on what the church used to be like and long for the good ol’ days. We forget that God’s name is “I am”, not “I was”.

There is the gripe tree. You take your focus off God and focus on what’s wrong- with the world, your spouse, the church, your neighbors, the country – never thinking something could be wrong in your own spirit. When your harp is hanging on the gripe tree, it’s easy not to thank God or praise God. And pretty soon you’re not thanking or encouraging anyone. In front of many churches (not this one, of course) we see gripe trees, just covered with harps! And chances are, there aren’t many people inside.

There is the fear tree. We’re so afraid of how people will respond that we don’t do anything. We want to share our faith with people outside the church, but we just can’t bring ourselves to risk rejection. So we never initiate spiritual conversations, never say anything about the Lord. As congregations, we’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid of not having enough money or people to extend our outreach, so we never try. Or, maybe we’re afraid of success. What if we really sang the Lord’s song and the pagans heard it and came? What if they came? They might change our nice little church! So, we hang up our harps on the fear tree.

There is the tree of unbelief. We really don’t believe that people today encounter the risen, living Lord Jesus, and that their lives are changed! We really don’t believe that God’s Spirit can empower us and that God will provide what we need and that we can live in the Kingdom of God. And so we live the Christian life as if it were a set of abstract principles instead of a dynamic relationship with the living Lord Jesus! We do church as if we were volunteer members of a charitable organization instead of the very presence of the Lord Jesus in the world today! We’ve hung up our harps on the tree of unbelief.

If we see our harps hanging on any of these trees, what do we do? We repent. Reverse direction. Ask God to change the focus from what we’ve lost to what lies ahead, to replace our griping with gratitude, our fear with faith, our unbelief with faith.

5. Ask God every day to see where He is at work and ask for the privilege of joining Him in that work
God is up to something here at First Christian Church. Can you see it? Can you perceive it? I heard we had very meaningful worship services the last 2 Sundays, even when our pastors weren’t here. Wednesday night we counted 65 people here. Someone who was so discouraged she could hardly get out of bed received new hope and strength as people prayed for her here. A teenage girl told John and me her life has been turned around since she has been coming to our church, and she had the privilege last week of leading a friend to the Lord. Let’s ask God to open our eyes to see what He is doing here, and ask for the privilege of joining Him in that work.

Every day as we live our lives, we are on a mission field. At the beginning of the day we pray, “Help me make your love real.” Even small things done with great love can be a big influence. We ask every day to have opportunities to influence people toward Christ with the way we live our lives, our loving deeds, and our words.

By the grace and power of God, we start singing the Lord’s song, even in this strange land.

RELEASE YOUR SONG by James Forbes
There’s a song inside of me, I can hardly wait to see What it is I have to say Or the music I will play. It’s been so long in coming, First the thought and then some humming. But before I find my key Something stifles it in me.
What keeps my song from being sung? Past hurts, deep fears, a timid tongue? What makes my freedom come so hard? A self-made, live-in prison guard. Meanwhile my song still groans in me. I can’t be me til my song is free. Debating, hesitating, getting ready to sing, My song could die, like a stillborn thing.
“Release your song,” said the Spirit to me. “Be free, be free. It’s Jubilee!” Cast out each fearsome song patrol; Proclaim deliverance to your soul.”
The courage of life now danced in my blood. I said “yes” to my song, and it came like a flood. Up from within and down from above, A Kingdom built on the power of love. Thank God my song has been set free. The rhythm and words are right for me. I’m finally ready to sing out strong. My soul is saying, “This is my song.”