Lately, I’ve been listening to the song “By the Rivers of Babylon” by Boney M (1978) with new ears. Some of the lyrics, based on Psalm 137, go like this:
By the rivers of Babylon, when we sat down
Yeah, we wept, when we remembered Zion
…
There the wicked carried us away to captivity and required of us a song.
Now how can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Colonialism and Babylon
This year, I've begun to hear the voice of mistreated
peoples in the lament of the exiled people of Israel. I'm learning that actions of my forebears must
be reckoned with and acknowledged as wicked even if some of these people
claimed to be serving God.
For Africans forcibly brought from thriving
societies and cultures, North America was Babylon, a place of captivity. They
wept, but their tears were ignored.
Instead, their captors ruthlessly “required” that they sing and dance to
entertain them.[1]
Such requirements are documented in Alex
Haley's book Roots (1976), as they happened to the author's ancestors on
slave ships and on plantations. It is a
form of cruelty to force those under your authority to suppress their valid
emotions simply to soothe your own conscience.
For Indigenous North Americans,
colonialism showed a different face of wickedness. The songs and dances with a history much
older than those of the European colonists were fully dismissed. It even became
a criminal offense under the Indian Act (1876) for dances and ceremonies to be
performed. In residential schools and foster homes, the wicked carried children
away to institutions of captivity and forbade them to sing or even speak in
their native tongues. Likewise, they wept, but their tears were ignored.
Survivors of such mistreatment have spoken, and it's time to acknowledge the
uncomfortable truth.
Pandemic and Babylon
In addition to the applications
to North American history, the pandemic represents a type of Babylon. That
is, Babylon as an experience of exile from our usual ways of being. It truly is a strange land, where an
invisible but potent virus has made us take shelter in personal homes and
disengage from typical social behaviours.
One of the places affected by the pandemic exile is the church. People participating in online worship may
have legitimately asked, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange
land?" Singing along with livestreamed praise songs in one's living room
is almost as odd as singing along with the national anthem when watching a
televised sports broadcast. And yet, leaning in and doing the opposite of what
one might naturally want to do can be therapeutic. When we don't feel like singing, choosing to
sing anyways can have a positive effect on one's mood. By choosing “opposite
action”, some of us have learned to sing the Lord's songs in a strange land.
Some have also realized that
the canon of the Lord's songs is broader than just praise choruses with a
feel-good beat. Of 150 psalms in the
Bible, nearly one-third are laments. Becoming
acquainted with other songs that help us express longing and distress are what
is needed for people used to privileges. Singing the Lord's songs that echo the
sadness, disappointment and even anger which our Christian brothers and sisters have
faced through the ages can draw us together.
Psalm 137 is one of those laments, which can help get us through tough
situations we face.
Meditations of our Hearts
The musicians of Boney M chose to insert
words that come from the end of Psalm 19, into their song about exile. They also make them communal instead of
individual:
[1]I am grateful to Esau McCauley’s
book Reading While Black (2020) , which helps me read this psalm and other Bible
passages from a new perspective.
