Psalm 137

We've been considering the exile life of Israel, God's people. Imagine you were a Christian in Ukraine. Or consider being a Christian in Gaza. Or closer to home, consider being a Christian in America when the KKK burned a cross on your front lawn or white supremacists marched through your town of Charlottesville. How would you respond? What would you do with your anger?

Psalm 137 is a prayer for a people in exile. It is a prayer voiced out of a situation of pain, taunting, humiliation, and longing for something better. It is a prayer that gives voice to hatred for one's enemies. It is a prayer that most of us would find disturbingly unpalatable.

So why is Psalm 137 in the Bible? And why is it a model prayer for people in exile? Well I hope to help us understand Psalm 137 as "an act of profound faith to entrust one's most precious hatreds to God, knowing they will be taken seriously" (Walter Brueggemann).