Friday  |  October 28, 2011  |  00:00 AM

One of those Psalms we avoid like crazy is Psalm 137, the cursing Psalm.  Eugene Peterson calls it the scandal of the Psalter.  Nothing like language of dashing babies’ heads against the rocks to leave you feeling scandalized.  But this summer, after spending a few weeks in Palestine, I was reminded again why this Psalm, with its unsettling rage from traumatic events reminded me why I love the honesty of this prayer. 

I spent three weeks in July in the West Bank serving with Christian Peacemaker Teams and by the end, I found myself scandalized.  Our time with Palestinian families, Israeli and Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations, and former Israeli soldiers gave me a glimmer into the depth of their pain and struggle.  Like the Psalmist, I didn’t feel like singing and the effects of violence against a community left anger deep within me.  I like how the messy-ness of this Psalm reminds us that life isn’t often cut and dry.  We don’t always feel like singing the Psalms of ascent, life around us doesn’t seem good or pleasant.  I felt the tension of compassion, morality and vengeance; I related to both sympathy and outrage.  This Psalm reminds me that it’s completely normal to come to God in the mess, with nothing figured out, and with a stew of emotions simmering within me.

These kinds of emotions to terrible injustices are understandable and repressing them gets in the way of justice and healing.  I came to see in myself that when I learn about the forgotten people and places in the world, apathy, not hate, is the opposite of love.  Part of the process is an honest articulation of the pain.  Prayer becomes a means of naming the evils and crying out to God with all the anger we’re feeling.  This anger is righteous and responds to loving enemies by praying our hate, not stifling it. 

For the Israelites, Zion or Jerusalem was their home, the city on a hill that represented much more than a geographic place.  Singing a song from your home once you have been forced out just adds insult to injury, a situation the Palestinians today understand well with the continued expansion of Israeli settlements on their land. Sometimes in our life with God we cannot sing, and this Psalm reminds us that this is the relationship with God we can have if we are honest. 

In speaking of a pain so deep, sometimes it becomes hard to know how to end things.  The pain is still there, the history is real, and after acknowledging this all the Christian can do is urge reconciliation despite its difficulty.  One of the most moving moments of our trip was a meeting with an Israeli father and Palestinian mother who had lost a daughter and brother in this struggle.  Both were members of a group called the Parents Circle, Jews and Arabs who have had to endure the death of a loved one at the hands of the enemy.  In the process of grieving together they connected with each other’s humanity and suffering.   Their stories, as with many of the stories in Scripture, remind us that many times those who have suffered most on both sides are the first to forgive.  The two parents who spoke with us were willing to give and receive forgiveness.  That forgiveness, under these circumstances, can take place is evidence that the process of justice, peace, and reconciliation can go forward and hope is not lost despite the grave injustices.