Two of the best-known settings of Psalm 137 were not written as liturgical songs. In the musical Godspell, for instance, the psalm’s theme appears in “On the Willows There.” Don McLean’s version of the psalm begins, “By the water, the waters of Babylon”—a round familiar to many.

Every setting, liturgical or non-liturgical, captures the captors’ mockery of the heartsick longing of the scattered Israelites. In spite of this, they were determined to remember their homeland, and pray that God would one day ransom them from their slavery: “Let my tongue be silenced if I ever forget you!”

In our busy lives, we have no time for not forgetting, i.e., memory. It’s there, somewhere, stuck in our mental hard drives; but without time to retrieve it, we go speeding onward into the desert, farther and farther away from our goal, father away from the light. We are diverted by devotions because they’re easy to access, but truly entering into the paschal mystery takes mindful deliberation. If we don’t make time for that—if we settle for what requires little of us, then we will never learn how to restore our lost sabbaths.

Those communities who use only the Year A readings year after year miss the words of John’s gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. …” Christ, the light who came into the world, ransomed every exile, but there were—and are—still people who preferred the darkness to light.

If we remember what God has done for us, and continues to do, we will no longer be slaves to busy-ness and distraction.

  “When from our exile
God leads us home again,
we’ll think we’re dreaming.”

Huub Oosterhuis