“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres.” -Ps 137.1-2
How Long Will We Be Separated?
Most Christians in the whole world are experiencing our most important week of the year separated by computer screens. The resurrection of the body of Jesus is being celebrated by members of the body of Christ who cannot meet together and cannot eat together due to COVID-19. This is a time for lamentation amidst our joy.
We think on Holy Saturday of that brief moment when the church (the people of God) were left without the living physical presence of our King, before his resurrection on Sunday. And we too, in 2020, are living constantly now in the lamentable state of being forced apart on Sundays, bereft of the physical presence of each other, the living physical presence of the body of Christ.
A Time for Lament
Throughout scripture, separation from the temple is always seen as judgment. It is worthy of lament when the people of God are forced out of the true worship in the temple. It was a judgement when the ark left the tabernacle (“Ichabod”), and when the Shekinah glory left the temple (in Ezekiel 10), and it was a judgment when the people of God were taken away from temple worship when the Babylonians carried them away.
Likewise, Psalm 137 was written to lament the state of having been separated from Jerusalem. It specifically mentions the sad state of being forced to sing the joyful songs of Jerusalem while being kept from Jerusalem itself. The harps of God’s singers are hung up on Babylonian trees. And the Psalmist prays there to be cursed if he forgets true singing and worship within Jerusalem, the home of the temple. And as the church has sung this Psalm over the centuries, we have uttered the Psalmic thought: may my hand forget to play music if I forget Jerusalem, and may my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I forget the joy of Jerusalem.
What does this mean for us today?
Separation from the Church is Separation from the Temple
I was raised hearing a constant refrain that “the Church is the people, and not the building.” And this is true, because the people of God are now themselves the temple of the Holy Spirit. So it seems very appropriate for us to think along with Psalm 137 about the regrettable state that we find ourselves in – being forced away from meeting with the people of God on Sundays during this crisis of global illness.
While it is wonderful that we can use technology to see each face of our church, and to hear the voices of the members, I believe we should still pray in lament to God – may my voice leave my body if, after months of singing online, I forget the love of singing with God’s people in the same room. May my throat forget how to swallow if I prefer “morning prayer” (a non-eucharistic service) over taking common bread and drinking from a common cup in the same room with the rest of the body of Christ. How long must we live as a broken temple?
How long, O, Lord?
What do you think about the “pandemic” now?
I’m tired of it, and I am angry at excessive over-reach. We have a lot more data now. My church went back to in person as rapidly as possible and I am very thankful. Now knowing more, I would have encouraged going back even sooner (we might have missed 6 weeks total). Initially no one was quite sure how bad it was.