Get your Harp in Tune [9]
Text: We hanged our harps upon the willows. [Psalm 137: 2]
This is a powerful and highly emotional Psalm, well known for its poetic beauty. One of the easiest ways of understanding the figurative and metaphorical language of the Psalms is to put the words into their context. In other words, to what historical situation in the religious experience of Israel does a particular Psalm speak?
The context for this Psalm is actually quite simple. It refers to the period when Israel was in exile. This basic fact not only helps us to understand what was happening to the people of God at that time of history, it also encourages us – in a quite different situation – many hundreds of years afterwards.
Now, God’s people had been in exile before. For many years, they were in exiled in Egypt and it had been a terrible experience for them – slavery, brutality, starvation, even murder. Finally, to cut a long story short, God had turned Pharaoh’s heart by sending the angel of death over the land. God had then led them out under the leadership of Moses on an incredible journey, even to the parting of the waters of the Red Sea. God promised to take them to home to their promised land from which they had been absent for so long.
But the children of Israel were, as we are told, a stiff necked people. No sooner were they free of the tyranny of Egypt, than they wanted back again. They preferred the security of slavery to the freedom of being the children of God. And, it is nothing new that people often refer back to the “good old days” which, if more closely examined were not just quite as good as they remembered.
This is a game we are quite good at in the Kirk, harking back to days that will never return and possibly never were in the first place, those days when the Kirks were full twice on a Sunday! But for the children of Israel, the eventual repossession of the land some years later, under Joshua, was the culmination of their nation’s history for those who experienced it and also for subsequent generations. It was the climax of the national dream. It was almost too wonderful to be true; they had arrived.
But as the years had gone on, something had happened, just as happens today. Prosperity dulled their acute dependence on God. They became preoccupied with things and possessions. Their zeal cooled off and their faith became more nominal and formal.
But God did not cease to love or care for his people and so he had to allow them to learn the hard way. The majority of the people were carried away into exile in Babylon. In that distant land, they were to be tried and tested, refined and made ready for the day when a remnant of the people would be able to return again to the homeland and build up a new nation to fulfil God’s gracious purposes.
Once the people had been victors; now they were victims. Once they had been their own masters and now they were slaves. Once they had lived in their own homes. Now they were aliens and strangers in a far-off land. Once they had been happy but now they were sad. Once they had sung with joy and made a happy noise before the Lord. Now they had hung their harps on the willow trees and wallowed in self pity. Even worse, they are taunted and ridiculed by their captors. They feel utterly broken by their environment and completely demoralised by their troubles.
So, they quit; they no longer sang. “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Their harps hung silent and un-played.
Well, that’s all in the past, you might say. It is something that happened centuries ago and we don’t associate easily with harps. In fact, few, if any of us will even know anyone who plays a harp. It has become very much a minority instrument. However, harps have great symbolic significance. The harp is, for example, the emblem of Ireland. Traditionally playing the harp is a kind of metaphor for practising what is most important to you – your faith!
I suggest that, at the present time, many people have spiritually hung their harps on the willows. Once they knew the joy of a true and happy Christian experience and greatly valued Christian worship and experience. Then something happened. Maybe there was bad experience in church. Maybe there was some major setback or disappointment in life. Perhaps the faith has got squeezed out by work or by the cares of this world. But the end result was that they quit.
And an uncomfortably high percentage of our congregations include quite a number who fit into the category. I don’t want to sound harsh or judgmental and it is always easy to be critical of people who are not here and cannot even respond. In fact, if I may dare say so, it is always easy to sit and listen to sermons that we think apply to other people, rather than to ourselves.
But what is our response to the (if we are being honest) absent majority in our congregations? They will prefer to remain inactive. They desire status without work, membership without service, receiving without giving and identification without participation. Again, I am sorry if that sounds unduly harsh.
May I suggest that in the church our problem is not with numbers – it is numbness. It is not so much either that people do not have faith, it is rather that the faith does not have people. Deserted harps, it seems, can be found on every tree.
So, why were (and are) the harps deserted?
Those who were giving out such a negative message were living in the past, so much so that they were unable to look at the present, far less the future. Please don’t get me wrong. As I was suggesting to you earlier on, it can be very useful and even encouraging to look back.
The warning note that I would sound is that the greatest lesson of history is that we don’t learn from history. However, I confess that I enjoy reading history, especially through biography and autobiography. There are things we can learn and it is clear that some understanding of the past can help us understand the present. But, beware of the “good old days” culture.
The people who were in exile in Babylon could – or would – only look at the past or, to be more accurate, the past as they wanted to see it, the “good old days”, which were never as good as we remember them. I remember as a child how the beautiful hot summers lasted for weeks on end. That, of course, is not how it was, but that is what I remember. I expect you all have similar experiences.
The people in exile had (fairly obviously) moved both physically and mentally. In this case they had been moved very much against their will. They were far from home. Again, I suggest that this rings a bell with our contemporary situation. There is no doubt that there is a general feeling of alienation among many people.
Community spirit is not entirely lost but it is much weaker than it used to be. This applies especially in our cities where people can literally live under the same roof and not even know the names of their neighbours.
According to the papers, a large percentage of our population now live in post war housing and roughly one in five families will move house this year. We are a much more mobile society than we used to be. Indeed, many people are on the move and yet, only too often, their faith does not move with them. A new job, a new house, an addition to the family – all these and many more factors cause people to slip away from the faith of their fathers. Sometimes it is hurt pride; people have not got their own way and so they vote with their feet. Sometimes also people have bad experiences in church and feel disinclined to go back.
One of the commonest reasons for desertion is when (like the Israelites of old) people do not get their own way. I don’t mean just human stubbornness and again I don’t mean this to sound harsh. The children of Israel were fed up with God. They just could not understand why he had allowed this to happen. What had they done that was so awful? They could gladly have sung God’s praises in the Temple but how could they possibly do so by the far way waters of Babylon?
They were pretty angry at God. He had not acted in the way in which they thought he should and so they took the easy way out. It is not hard to sing God’s praise when the time seems right, when we are prosperous and apparently in control of our own lives and can spare God the occasional hour. It is also much easier to be religious in a religious age. It is not so easy for us, as we live in a sophisticated modern secular age. It is much easier to be a Christian when our friends, relatives and work colleagues are of a similar persuasion. It is not so easy to dare to be a Daniel and to stand alone.
There are many reasons for people apparently quitting the Christian faith. This is a great challenge to all of us. We cannot be responsible for what other people think or do but we can do our very best to make our churches places of welcome and acceptance and show them in particular that the Gospel does work in our own lives.
But what is so hard anyway about being a Christian at this time in history? I suggest that even in “easier” times there were always challenges. Let us not make it all doom and gloom and give the impression that being a Christian is all about negativity and what people should not do or will have to give up. Jesus said that his yolk is easy and his burden is light and compared with the cares of this world and the deceit of riches there is no comparison.
We are never promised a life that is without difficulty or challenge. To suggest that is travesty of the Gospel. There is a great hymn in our hymnbooks that was been ruined by someone, at a later date, adding the drivelling chorus that ends with the words “And now I am happy all the day.” It depends, of course, what you mean by “happy”. If people think it means health, pleasure and prosperity, in fact there is no such unequivocal promise given. Jesus himself was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
Yet it is in Jesus Christ that we see the answer and where the church’s message is (or should be) so very different from that of the world. Yes, we can share the attitudes of other non-Christian people in our concern for caring for the less fortunate and helping to establish a just society. But if that is all we do, what use are we? If the church is nothing more than being nice and following certain moral standards, it has certainly lost its cutting edge.
My friends, the church is always at its best and at its strongest when Jesus Christ, crucified, risen and ascended, is at the centre.
Around 635 AD, a Syrian missionary took the Christian Gospel to China for the very first time. For the next century and a half the Christian message spread and flourished throughout China. Then a kind of rot began to set in. People, especially the wealthier, become more nominal in their outlook and only loosely followed a selection of the moral teachings of the Bible. And even these were only “roughly kept in mind”. The less convenient teachings were relegated and the person of Jesus was sidelined. For centuries thereafter there was virtually no Christian witness in China.
In a very real sense, it was because they had actually forgotten the very real basics of what they stood for that the Jews found themselves in such a dire position. What they stood for had only been “roughly kept in mind”. Their calling was to be a light to lighten the gentiles. Yet they had kept that light hidden and used it only to please themselves.
So, actually, a great deal of the remedy was, humanly speaking, in their hands. It was time to get these harps, the symbols of their faith, down from the trees.
What do you do with a deserted harp?
Get in hand. We all have a faith that God gave us and it is a faith to be used and shared, not kept in a glass case or hung up on a tree.
Get it in tune. Are you “in tune” with the Word of God and playing your part in the orchestra of faithful people (if that’s not pressing the analogy too far!)?
Get it in service. It is a strange fact that if a musical instrument is not played, it deteriorates. Indeed, the more it is played, the better the sound. So, let us use and – in the best sense – enjoy the great faith and message that we have and share.[10]