When Hurting - 5-22-2022

When Hurting

Psalm 137

You know how it often goes with church people, sometimes.  Many churchgoers - I used to be one of them, and maybe you are, too —  have come to the notion that it is important that we act like everything is just fine in our lives even when it is not. Somewhere hidden in the recesses of our religious history, we have gotten the idea that being a good Christian means that we smile a lot, that we are always really nice, that we never go through really difficult times and if we do we must pretend like we are fine and okay with everything lest someone accuse of having a weak faith or pitying ourselves. Because of this mind-set in which we have made being a good Christian synonymous with pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, we fail miserably in being true ministers in the name of Jesus Christ to those who suffer through some of the most difficult tragedies and sufferings. 

There’s no better place than church to talk about life and what it’s really like. Life is too hard for God’s children to spend Monday through Saturday trying to figure out the best way to cope with some of their darker days all by themselves and then come together into their supposed community of faith and support and have to act like life is wonderful just because we’ve somehow adopted the misconception that “Good Christians smile, laugh, and say all is great; bad Christians frown, cry, and admit that life isn’t so great.”   The Bible shows us that life brings both sunshine and rain - both joys and sorrows.  In addition, Christians are called to rejoice with those who are rejoicing and to weep with those who are weeping.

      This morning we are studying Psalm 137.  This Psalm talks about loss and pain, about grieving and hurting, about some of the hard emotions that come with life and what we should do when experiencing those.  Today we are reminded that  … 

When You Feel Like Hanging It Up  (vv. 1-4), and …

When You Feel Like Smashing Something  (vv. 7-9)   then…   

Remember Who You Are  (vv. 5-8)

1. Body
1. When You Feel Like Hanging It Up  (vv. 1-4)
1. Everyone goes through times of depression.  
1. Sitting in sorrow
1. The children of Israel were taken by force from their homeland, a place given them by God. In captivity they sat by the edge of the Euphrates and wept, overcome with despair. Anyone who has suffered a significant loss can understand this pain.
2. In this part of the Psalm they express their hurt. They are sad. They are hurting. They are missing their home. They are feeling their loss.
3. Eugene Peterson calls this lament “The Babylonian Blues”. We might compare it to the bluesy spirituals sung by African slaves. “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept.” Sitting on the ground was a sign of mourning and misery. They mingle their memories and tears.
2. Hanging up their harps
1. There the Babylonians decide to ridicule their new slaves. “Sing us the songs of Zion. Sing us the songs of your homeland. Sing us your happy songs. Sing us songs about your God who protects you and loves you.” 
2. Perhaps you’ve heard something like that before?  When you’re down and out and someone blithely tells you to “Cheer up, mister (or missy), It’s not so bad.”  Or maybe they said, “Don’t be so down.  Turn that frown upside-down.” 
3. Maybe we would be inspired if the psalmist declared to us that that’s exactly what these people did.  That they picked up their harps and began singing in unison the 23rd psalm, that they were going to praise God and endure this valley of the shadow with smiles upon their faces. Well maybe, but perhaps the 137th Psalm is not meant to inspire us in that way. Perhaps it is intended to remind us just how dark the valleys of the shadow can sometimes get.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. One of England’s finest preachers was C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892). Frequently during his ministry he was plunged into severe depression, due in part to gout but also for other reasons. In a biography of this "prince of preachers", Arnold Dallimore wrote, "What he suffered in those times of darkness we may not know...even his desperate calling on God brought no relief. ’There are dungeons’, he said, ’beneath the castles of despair.’" 
5. We need more Christians like Spurgeon who will be honest with us about the experience of despair rather than simply sugar-coating others’ sadness with phrases like “Smile. Jesus loves you.”
6. Instead of singing for the barbaric Babylonians, the Israelites hang their harps upon a tree. That generation will never sing the songs of their Lord again. The psalmist seems to climb out of the pages of our Bibles, grabbing us by the collar and asking, “How can we sing the Lord’s song when we are in a foreign land?” 
7. The Hebrew people are going through a dark night of the soul. Although one might easily point to their idolatry and mistreatment of the poor as their sins which have brought about such dire consequences, we miss the point of the psalm and much of Scripture if we choose to soften the suffering of others because we believe that their pain is due to some fault of their own. When our lives sometimes crash and burn, the question of blame is erased in the fiery experience of pain.
8. What sorts of loss do we go through? Maybe the loss of a home, if the lease is up and forced to move. Maybe the loss of a job if we are suddenly unemployed. Maybe the loss of a relationship, we didn’t see that breakup coming.  What do we do when we feel loss?
9. So, how do we deal with loss as a church?  Someone once asked, “What songs do unhappy people sing at church?”
10. What do you do when you feel like “hanging it up?”When You Feel Like Smashing Something  (vv. 7-9)
11. Anger can bring out the worst in us
3. One thing that I can guarantee one ought not to do is written here  at the end of this Psalm, and that is to bash the head of your oppressor’s children against the rocks.  Please, don’t do that.  Even though it seems to suggest —  in the Bible — that this will make you happy… Don’t do that.
4. As we come to the end of the Psalm the emotion moves to one of bitterness and a desire for revenge. When we are hurt we can go through a whole range of emotions, and we don’t need to deny them. And here we have some pretty harsh words and some people can’t handle the bible having these sorts of harsh words, but I think it is good that the Bible is honest about the sorts of emotions that God’s people can feel. 
5. This psalm might be all the more powerful because it is genuine and real. We seasoned church-goers expect the psalmist to end by declaring something to the effect of, “Thy will be done,” or “I will trust and obey no matter what.” What we find instead is an instinctively human and normal crying out to God for revenge. “God, don’t you forget what these enemies have done to us! Don’t you forget the way they tore down Jerusalem!” Then the psalmist turns to his enemies, “Babylon, you devastator. Look at what you have done to us. Happy will be the people who one day conquer you and throw your little babies to the ground breaking their heads open against the rocks!” 
6. I feel hurt, I feel the desire for vengeance, I feel bitter, but notice the context in which these feelings are expressed. They are expressed in prayer. They are expressed towards God and not necessarily towards others, Remember O Lord, what the Edomites did, .. blessed, or happy is he who repays you, it is a blessing on the one who extracts vengeance for the Israelites against the Babylonians.
7. This is the expression of raw emotion. There isn’t a “British stiff upper lip thing,” here is a freedom to allow the emotions to flow, to grieve, to be a people who are having a bad time.  And for me one of the good things of the Bible is that it allows us, it encourages us, to feel the emotions that we feel when we struggle, when things aren’t going the way we want, when we suffer loss, when we feel like smashing something (or someone) against some rocks.
   
8. What do you or where do you go when you feel that way?  These verses would suggest that you pray.

1. Remember Who You Are  (vv. 5-8)
1. You belong to God’s family.
1. Fortunately for us, the middle verses of this Psalm give us the answer to our questions of where to go with our grief, our depression and our anger.  These verses encourage the reader to remember who they are.
2. If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
   Let my right hand forget its skill!
   If I do not remember you,
   Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth—
   If I do not exalt Jerusalem
   Above my chief joy.
3. They cry out to God that if they ever do forget Jerusalem or if, even worse, they forget God, that they should be cursed even further . . . let my hand become useless . . . let me lose the ability to speak if I forget you, O God! They declare that they must remember Jerusalem as their highest joy. Jerusalem: the city whose name literally means “the place that is founded in peace.” 
4. By peace, the Hebrew people mean much more than the “absence of conflict.” Peace, “shalom,” is the wholeness of life. Shalom is when one is of the same heart with God and with fellow humanity, created in God’s image. Jerusalem is the place where love and hope flourish. 
5. For these Israelites, there is no longer any love or hope, but they must remember. They cannot forget. For in remembering, a seed of hope of love remains, a seed which can later be replanted and flourish into the wholeness of life God desires for all God’s children.
6. We see this sort of response in the character of Job. After he loses everything he has, his wealth, his children, and finally his health, his wife says to him, go on curse God and die, but Job’s response is amazing, others have paraphrased it ‘yet though God flail me yet will I worship him’. Yet though I suffer, though things are bad, though I hurt, and the cause of the hurt isn’t what is important, though I suffer, I will worship God. I will respond with relationship with God.
7. And this for me is a step towards spiritual maturity. Being able to go through the hard times and be able to choose to respond to God is one of the biggest markers of spiritual maturity for me. It shows the understanding that life sometimes hurts, that God isn’t responsible, that I mightn’t even be responsible, but that in hurt I can go to God.
1. Conclusion 
1. During WWII six Navy pilots left their aircraft carrier on a mission. After searching the seas for enemy submarines, they tried to return to their ship shortly after dark. But the captain had ordered a blackout of all lights on the ship. Over and over the frantic pilots radioed, asking for just one light so they could see to land. But the pilots were told that the blackout could not be lifted. After several appeals and denials of their request, the ship’s operator turned the switch to break radio contact--and the pilots were forced to ditch in the ocean.
2. We might go through times of life that seem just as dark and hopeless, except for one thing.  We need to remember that we have Jesus Christ, and Jesus is the Light in the darkness.
3. A hope remains and blossoms for all of us even in the darkest hour. It is the hope of redemption, the certain hope that you and I will be brought back to the city of peace founded by God, to a new Jerusalem and new life in Christ Jesus. 
4. This is not a hope that tells the widow to get over it because one day she will be with her husband again. This is not a hope that tells the jobless to get over it because tomorrow will be better. This is not a hope that tells the divorced to get over it and move on with their lives. This is not a hope that tells the parents who have lost a child to get over it because their little boy or girl is now one of God’s angels. The hope of redemption admits that life is often times unbearable, but a new life is promised, a new life to which we must all cling.
5. So…
1. Don’t Quit - When you feel like hanging it up, hold on
2. Simmer Down - When you feel like smashing something, pray, and
3. Remember  -  You belong to God’s family.  Never forget that.