By The River We Wept

Psalm 137   (NRSV)

By the rivers of Babylon—
    there we sat down and there we wept
    when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
    we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
    asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How could we sing the Lord’s song
    in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
    let my right hand wither!
Let 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.

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
    the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down!
    Down to its foundations!”
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
    Happy shall they be who pay you back
    what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
    and dash them against the rock!

Yesterday morning I joined a dozen or so members of Meridian Street UMC out in the snow and the cold at the March for Our Lives Rally against gun violence.

As I meditated over this Psalm this seems very appropriate for the youth of our nation who are wondering if they will be next

By the rivers of Babylon—
    there we sat down and there we wept
    when we remembered Zion.

When they remembered when they could go to school without fear of becoming the next tragedy.

When the litany of school names wouldn't be added to:

          Columbine

          Red Lake

          Virginia Tech

          Northern Illinois

          Sandy Hook

          Marysville Pilchuck

          Umpqua Community College

          Marjorie Stoneman Douglas

There have been four additional shootings at schools since Marjorie Stoneman Douglas happened just 5 1/2 weeks ago

As we stood hoping that we would eventually be able to get into the Statehouse a group of students were marching around the building chanting and urging any who would listen that they wanted action and not just "Thoughts and Prayers"

While at the same time a counter-protester walked around and around carrying a riffle --- and fortunately everyone seemed to ignore him

But the youth seemed to be crying out with the author of Psalm 13 who begins with these powerful words:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

The youth of today are perplexed that we as a society seem (to them) to have forgotten them

and that we have declared that our right to own an assault style of weapon is more valuable than their lives

A United Methodist Pastor who was walking back to his car following the rally shared that he got called "a liberal scum".  I had to laugh when he posted that, because he is far from liberal --- he is a gun owner and hunter who thinks we need sensible gun laws and not the arming of teachers or ushers.

He said they yelled out: "an eye for an eye is in the Bible."

He then replied that Jesus commands us to love our enemy and pray for those who harass us. He told the heckler “I choose to love you”.

The heckler replied” I don’t want your love.” 

Pastor John replied, “That’s exactly why you need it.”

He said the heckler stormed off and he stopped and prayed for him.

By the rivers of Babylon—
    there we sat down and there we wept
    when we remembered Zion.

As I studied this Psalm I wrestled with the idea of Redemptive Suffering

          Are you familiar with that concept?

It is a concept that is much more familiar with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters.

In the Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. explains redemptive suffering:

Its purpose, . . . is not only to expiate wrongdoing, but to enable the believer to offer God a sacrifice of praise of his divine right over creatures, to unite oneself with Christ in his sufferings as an expression of love, and in the process to become more like Christ, who having joy set before him, chose the Cross, and thus 'to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His body, the Church,' (1 Colossians 1:24).

to unite oneself with Christ in his sufferings as an expression of love, and in the process to become more like Christ

This morning, as I was driving to the church I was listening to On Being on NPR and the guest, Andrew Solomon was talking about depression and how the church often portrays that there is great glory in suffering.

Rick Warren, the Pastor of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Life has written:

Your pain often reveals God’s purpose for you. . . .

Redemptive suffering is when you go through a problem or a pain for the benefit of others. . . .

some of the pain in your life is for redemptive suffering. God often allows us to go through a problem so that we can then help others.

The question that begs to be asked is this: Does God cause the evil in the world to mold us and refine us?

Because that is what these ideas seem to suggest.

          Suffering is caused to make us better --- and to glorify God

But I don't buy that --- If God caused the 17 students to be shot at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida so that the young people of the USA will rise up and demand sensible changes --- then I say: God is a jerk

John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, in trying to understand why suffering happens offered this explanation.

In a sermon titled “The Promise of Understanding,”  Wesley says we may never know.

He writes,

“[W]e cannot say why God suffered evil to have a place in his creation; why he, who is so infinitely good himself, who made all things ‘very good,’ and who rejoices in the good of all his creatures, permitted what is so entirely contrary to his own nature, and so destructive of his noblest works. ‘Why are sin and its attendant pain in the world?’ has been a question ever since the world began; and the world will probably end before human understandings have answered it with any certainty”

While Wesley admits we cannot know the complete answer, he clearly states that suffering does not come from God. God is “infinitely good,”

Wesley writes, “made all things good,” and “rejoices in the good of all his creatures.”

Our good God does not send suffering.

According to Wesley, it is “entirely contrary to [God’s] own nature, and so destructive of his noblest works.”

Suffering is not punishment for sin or a judgment from God.

          God did not send four nor’easters to punish the wicked of the East Coast

We suffer, and the world suffers, because we are human and we are part of a system where things go wrong.

For me, the issue is not to see God as causing suffering so that it IS redemptive, but rather to see suffering as a reality and to recognize that suffering CAN BECOME redemptive

Dr. Martin Luther King would say that although suffering itself is not good, it presents an opportunity for redemption

Rev Dr. Mika Edmondson writes about Dr. King and suffering:

(Unearned suffering has) "the power to bring about a redemptive transformation not only in the sufferer but also in the person inflicting the suffering.  It's a power that we see revealed primarily at the cross of Jesus, when Christ himself set an example of not passively accepting suffering but actively and nonviolently engaging injustice and suffering when it came his way."

Our Psalmist struggled because they had been forcibly removed from their homes and deported to Babylon.

How could they sing songs when they were in such a state of pain and suffering?

Finding redemption in the midst of suffering is to do something

          But we cannot dismiss the suffering

But at the same time, we cannot sit passively by and acquiesce in the face of injustice and suffering. 

          We must engage it --- but we must engage it lovingly

                   Just as Pastor John did to his hecklers

As the church, we cannot put our heads in the sand and pretend that the suffering of our neighbors doesn't exist or that we're not called to address it.

Today is Palm Sunday --- the day we celebrate the counter-revolutionary demonstration that Jesus orchestrated as he entered Jerusalem to protest the power structures of his day.

          It wasn’t just a beautiful pageant of palm waving children

                   It was a calculated political statement

If you read the story carefully, it is obviously that it was a deliberately calculated drama, orchestrated by Jesus to draw attention to the injustices that existed in 1st century Judea

The results, unfortunately were predictable

Jesus was ultimately arrested as a subversive rabble rouser and crucified as a political prisoner

If you look at the criticism of any movement that is trying to change the power structures of society --- the criticism is often very similar

          "Don't mess with my rights"

Remember what the authorities said about Jesus: (John 11:50)

“You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”

We need to weep like the Psalmist when we remember the way it could (should) be.

          When we remember the kingdom of God . . .

But we also must rise up and seek to make a difference, even if the cost is high.

Join me, as we journey with Jesus to Jerusalem this Holy Week.