Rx:Joy Part II

Nobody asked for it, but here’s my stab at a Babylonian Captivity Blues (BCB) song:

How many toxic cocktails must I drink
Before joy looks in my direction
Only God knows
How I sip these poison potions from golden goblets
Just to cop a single droplet of it;
But, oh, how sweet
Like antifreeze
My happy
Little hubris be

Well, that’s all I got. So, let’s quickly cue a tedious guitar solo; or, better yet, let’s read a more inspired version of the BCB. This one comes from Psalm 137:1-4. I call this song “Harps on the Willows (Joy on the Gallows)”:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the willows
we hung our harps,
for there our captors requested a song;
our tormentors demanded songs of joy:
“Sing us a song of Zion.”
How can we sing a song of the LORD
in a foreign land?

I can imagine a captive Israelite, stuck in a sticker bush along a Babylonian river’s edge, slowly waking up from a long stupor:

“Dude, where’s my harp?”

Dude, your harp…it’s still hanging on the willow, with all the other harps. Right where y'all hung them— first in defiance, then in despair.

But how did they get there? How did we get here?

What if I told you that forging your own delusional path to happiness is an uber-reliable Lyft to Babylon. It’s always on time. Thankfully, after some blight nights in the big city, a true child of God will eventually find they just can’t get no satisfaction. Not even a fraction. At least not the enduring kind fashioned in ethereal material.

Yet, we keep going back, taken hostage by the holograms. There's just something about a pile of vomit that looks like filet mignon to the hungry dog in us.

In Psalm 137, we read that the Babylonian captors asked the Israelite captives to sing them a joyous song. Maybe for entertainment. Maybe as mockery. Nevertheless, the captives refused. Because, cognitive dissonance aside, it takes a happy heart to sing a happy song.

Thankfully, for the prodigal, a contrite heart is a wonderful start. It signals that the heart’s compass is recalibrating, which is necessary to make a return voyage.

And, thankfully, our personal and corporate Babylons are not designed to be final destinations. They are designed to be remedial layovers. The length of a layover largely depends on the depth of our pride and the breadth of our stubbornness. However, if the extravagant mercy of the Lord truly endures forever, then, theoretically, our Babylons will not.

Still, sin for a season brings a Babylon for a reason.

That reason is repentance.

Changing their minds is what God had in mind. And it worked. Maybe not quickly, but it worked. After half a century or more of exile, He looked upon the bottomed-out Israelites and said it was time. Time to guide His children back to the metaphorical willows. To retrieve their harps. To recover their hearts. So, He had to call them out of the unholy city and back to Holy City.

It was an autumn day in 445 BC and the Southern Israelite tribes were back together in Jerusalem. The walls of the city had just been rebuilt. The people were summoned to the public square in front of the Water Gate for an important family meeting and the reading of holy scripture. It should be noted that the Water Gate was the only city gate that needed no repairs when the city was being rebuilt in Nehemiah 3. It represents the place where the Living Water imbues the Living Word, which is spoken to the ones who are broken, that they may be revived and renewed.

This is how I imagine this scene, because I’m not normal. God is retrieving an exiled jar of peanut butter from the very back of the pantry, where it’s dark and things get lost. But this particular jar wasn’t lost or forgotten. It had been hidden decades ago, for the purpose of being saved and savored, at an appointed time. He looks upon the jar with a nod and a smile. The gathered Israelites are the sediment in the bottom of the jar, hardened and distinct from the Ancient Oil above. The separation was obvious.

But God says to the jar, “Fret not, separation is not dissolution. The latter has finality. But the former needs only to be stirred.”

It was for this reason that God called His wayward children back to Jerusalem. To stir the jar. And to show them He never left the jar.

In Nehemiah 8, Ezra the Priest begins reading the Law of Moses to the Israelites. Even without clear interpretation or direct application, the Spirit used the law to begin stirring the container of prodigals. The plain reading of the law caused the people to praise God with raised hands, proclaiming “Amen!”. As they continued to worship, their posture began to change, as face-to-the-sky became face-to-the ground. The freedmen recognized their position relative to the One holding the keys. This brought submission and humility.

The Levite priests then stood up and began teaching the Law with profundity and clarity. They made direct application of the Law to the people’s lives.

And the Spirit stirred.

And the people wept.

The Law of Moses had broken their hearts, as per design. But if the Law is a heart-blender, what is the heart-mender? Let’s find out.

Amid the chorus of weeping, Governor Nehemiah stood up and made this declaration (Nehemiah 8:10):

“Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks and send some to those who have nothing prepared.”

Hold up. Read the room, governor. Sounds like the folks need sackcloth and ashes. Maybe some handkerchiefs. But probably not party food.

Oh, sorry, he wasn’t finished.

“This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

In case the people in the back didn’t hear — “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!”

The people were humbled, noses to the ground, in the posture of a beast. They needed strength just to stand up again on two feet— a strength they didn’t have on their own.

But what remedy is powerful enough to overcome the gravity of their sadness, their shame and a generation of sin?

Nehemiah’s answer:

Rx: Joy!

Specifically, the Joy of the Lord. Nothing less than embracing the Lord’s absolute delight in them as His beloved children . Only this could break the chains of Babylon from around their hearts. Their strength came from God’s very own joy implanted in them.

See, God had stirred the jar until the hard hearts of a sunken people were softened within the Oil of Gladness.

And, boy, did that joy spread.

The anonymous writer of Psalm 137 had declared in verse 6, “May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth (like peanut butter?), … if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.” He longed to return home because somewhere deep in his heart he knew he could only be free and full of joy within the safety of God’s love. To be home in Jerusalem was to be home in God.

This message has been resonating in my heart this summer. I knew it was just as critical for me as it was for the Israelites 2500 years ago. Our hearts are destined to be captive. We must only decide who or what will be its captor. We will only be as strong (or as weak) as the one that rules our heart.

On my walk home this summer, with Nehemiah 8 on my mind, I decided to invent a word. I pronounce it “Jsho-tel”, in a French kind of way. It is a word I speak to myself often now, especially when I am feeling physically, emotionally or spiritually weak.

The word is spelled: J-O-T-L.