Words from the pulpit: faith in a foreign land

I want you to consider a familiar passage of Scripture:

    By the rivers of Babylon we sat down;
    There we wept when we remembered Zion.
    On the willows near by
    We hung up our harps....

    Those who captured us told us to sing;
    They told us to entertain them:
    "Sing us a song about Zion."
    How can we sing a song to the Lord
    in a foreign land?" (1)

Come back with me in time, way back to a faraway place, and stand for a moment shoulder-to-shoulder with another people in another place, another time, and another predicament; a people in a predicament of pain nothing like yours, nothing like anything you've experienced or could even imagine. Just quietly stand and feel. Don't say a word; just let their lives speak to your life, their spirits to your spirit. Not even a whisper, for they will fall strangely silent if they detect a stranger in their midst. Just stand where they stand for a moment and listen.

These are an African people, who for the most part are shepherds. They're a relatively peaceful people. They love music. Music permeates the fabric of their lives. They sing when a new life is conceived; they sing when a new baby is born; they sing while they work; they sing as they play. They do hand jive and ham-bone. (2) They are famous for their rhyming and their rapping, and you ought to see and hear their little girls jump Double-Dutch. (3) Such rhythms and made-up rhyming you've never heard.

They sing at weddings; they sing at funerals; some of them sing out their sermons; some of them sing out their prayers. They love music. Music permeates the fabric of their lives. They go into church saying, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing." (4)

And drums? You ain't heard no drums until you hear this people on the drums. They have drums for church, drums for play; they have talking drums, male and female drums, and some drums you can hear in the summertime when the weather is warm, sort of beating the beat that makes even the deadbeat want to start moving. Music permeates every fabric of their lives.

And dance? You ain't seen no dancing. They just make up dancing on the spur of the moment, unchoreographed, unrehearsed. Music is like the air that surrounds every living thing for them. They are engulfed by music from the cradle to the grave. They make up impromptu songs to celebrate everything and anything-from a victory in battle, to a religious processional, to lovemaking between a man and a woman. These people love music and they love life. They love the deep things of life and the simple things of life, the things that give life meaning and the things that make life beautiful.

These are profound people, a proud people, and a praying people. It was these people who built the pyramids, which our western minds, for all of their sophistication, still cannot figure out. It was these people who created the first cultures and developed the first civilizations on earth. It was these people, black of skin and wooly of hair, who gave the world Pythagorean mathematics, and the cosmology of Thales of Miletus. It was these people, with their music and their rhythms who gave the world Epicurean materialism, Platonic idealism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are a profound people, and a praying people.

A People in Exile

But something has happened to these proud people. Stand here and listen. Let's see if we can learn what happened that makes them seem so different. Over here they're singing, and from the song they're singing, it sounds like they're in exile--snatched away from the homes they built, the places where they lived, and the sites that they loved; in exile-pulled away from their places of worship, where they met God and mysteriously felt God's awesome presence; in exile-taken away from the villages and towns where they grew up, fell in love, got married, settled down, started families, and began building on their dreams.

No longer are they in charge of their own lives; no longer are they in control of their daily activities; no longer are they able to sleep as husbands and wives, parents and children. And in some places no longer are they even considered to be human beings. Now they're looked upon as things, pieces of property, as "its," but never as "thous." They're toys to be played with, but never equals to be talked to; they're pieces to lie with, but never persons to be reckoned with, or reconciled to; they're monkeys (if you listened to one racist guest who appeared on the "Oprah Winfrey Show"); they're nobodies, nothings, less than fully human, three-fifths of a person. In exile they are made fun of and mated like cattle. The song they sing sounds like a song sung from the bowels of exile. Listen to it:

    Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home.

In exile! Listen!

    By the rivers of Babylon we sat down;
      There we wept when we remembered Zion.
    On the willows near by
      We hung up our harps.