by Eugene Higgins
Eulogy or Elegy?
Two Psalms in the Psalter stand in vivid contrast. Forgetting, for a moment, our Western mentality’s slavish insistence on always having a chronological order (rather than a moral or thematic arrangement), we can ignore the reversed “after” and “before” pictures in the 137th and 126th Psalms:
Psalm 137:“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’ How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land?”
Psalm 126:“When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing.”
Psalm 137 pictures a melancholy scene of despair. Cut off from Zion, and the place of “The Name,” the remnant by the river wept when they remembered happier days. They thought it incongruous to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land and among the enemies of God.
Something of the sadness pictured here is in the hearts of many saints today. Dr. Lindsay Parks commented in an email recently that, deprived of the opportunity to meet together, to break bread, and to worship the Lord in the midst of His people, it is as though “we are in a strange land.” Well, we certainly are moving through scenes for which few of us were prepared. Like the sorrowful remnant in the Psalm, each of you, no doubt, can recall happier days – breakings of bread so moving you thought your heart would burst; Sunday schools gloriously cacophonous, Gospel meetings pulsating with the power of God, prayer meetings, Bible readings, conference gatherings, joyous fellowship. As a temporary expedient, “Zoom” has been wonderful; but I am sure you long to get back to what “Zion” represents – God’s people congregating in His presence and worshiping “in the beauty of holiness.”
Added to this, believers feel great sadness at the anguish all around. People we know and love are suffering – physically, economically, and emotionally. Believers watching their loved ones die have had to do so from a distance, due to quarantine restrictions, unable to be with a father or mother in his or her last hours here. Funerals, already somber events, are all the sadder for the limitations imposed and the regulations limiting how many can attend. The worry, distrust, and fear that this pandemic has created has no equal in my lifetime except for, on a smaller scale, 9/11. Had we no blessed Savior and no blessed hope we too might stumble disconsolately toward the willow-branches and then weep by the water’s edge.
The contrast in Psalm 126 is unmistakable. Here is a scene of exultant joy. Their captivity had ended; God had brought them back to their land; and, as they climb the ascent to Zion, their praise also ascends to the God Who had done great things for them.
Throughout the ages, God’s saints have always been a singing people. The ability to sing is a kind gift from a kind Creator, imparting to us a means of expressing to Him emotions and thoughts that would be impossible in mere prose. (And it seemeth to me that just as there is a difference in spiritual gifts, some of you have been more greatly gifted in this realm as well!) Apart from the sly Laban’s crafty words of how he would have sung (Gen 31:27), the first recorded act of actual singing is by a redeemed people in Ex 15:1, “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, ‘I will sing unto the LORD, for He hath triumphed gloriously …’” The final reference is in Rev 15:3 and also contains the words “song” and “sing.” There, too, it is a redeemed people: “And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb …’”
But there is another contrast to be noted – a contrast not just between the two Psalms but between the people in them and you as a believer in Christ: their joy (Ps 126) or lack of joy (Ps 137) was conditioned by their proximity to a PLACE (Zion). But your joy stems from your relationship to a PERSON. The captives could not bring “Zion” with them into a strange land. The lofty strains of praise that soared upward from Jerusalem’s sanctuary seemed so impossible to replicate by Babylon’s rivers. But you have this glorious, faithful, powerful, compassionate Person with you wherever you are. One Chinese evangelist who, during the days of Mao Tse Tung, served 22 years in prison for his faith, said that every day in prison he woke up and sang, “All the way my Savior leads me, what have I to ask beside … Jesus doeth all things well.” At first the guards tried to silence him. Failing at that, they tolerated him. Then they began listening to him. Eventually they joined him. Singing! In prison!
Singing has always been a means by which God’s people have expressed their emotions, their gratitude, and their praise. There are times when, singing to God in words that exalt Him, we have felt our souls lifted, seemingly, into Heaven itself. Christian hymns and music are so different from the world’s mindless “music” which often expresses Lilliputian thoughts in forgettable phrases and puerile prose. I recently read a statement about Christian music which is both noteworthy and cautionary. The writer said “Music must pass the test of the catacombs … If it can’t be done in the catacombs below the streets of Rome, it isn’t essential or even good … Music must also pass the test of the stake. It’s easy to picture [a faithful martyr] dying under persecution while singing Luther’s ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.’ But can we honestly picture a martyr singing one of today’s shallow praise ditties?”
Passing the “tests of catacombs and stake!” We have a rich heritage of spiritual songs and hymns that passes those tests with flying colors – hymns written by women and men who knew and loved the Lord Jesus! Think of Charles Wesley often dismounting breathlessly from his horse and, with the road-dust still on him, rushing into his host’s house crying, “Pen and ink! Pen and ink!” so he could write down the incipient words of a hymn that had struck him. We owe him, “O for a thousand tongues to sing our great Redeemer’s praise.” Think of Newton and Cowper, meeting in a small “shed” located between their homes and hammering out those “Olney” hymns that have helped God’s people for ages. We owe them “Amazing grace” and “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.” Think of blind Fanny Crosby (“I shall know Him! I shall know Him!”) or heart-broken Spafford (“It is well! It is well with my soul!”), or saintly Denny (“Sweet feast of love divine”) or eloquent Watts (“When I survey the wondrous cross”) or Kelly or Deck or Peters or Havergal or Bliss – or 100s more! Trying to make a list is pointless because “the time would fail me to tell …” These women and men wrote their profound hymns, not for our entertainment, but for the worship of God and the communicating of sacred truth.
So, with such a rich treasury from which to choose, and such a worthy Savior of Whom to sing, will we be marked by elegy or eulogy? Sadness or Singing? At other times, we have sung, “With Christ in the vessel I smile at the storm.”Still smiling? We have sung, “With my Savior watching o’er me, I can sing though billows roll.” Well their rolling pretty tumultuously right now. Are we still singing? We have sung, “The road may be rough but it cannot be long, so I journey on singing the conqueror’s song.” Is that still the case? Are we sitting by the river or singing on “the road” to glory?
Christianity brings joy because Christianity is Christ. He is the only hope for a dark and sorrowful world. As those who do not know the Savior are overwhelmed by a pandemic of paralyzing fear and worry, your joy and confidence will be all that much more of a contrast. If necessary, pick yourself up from the river bank, dry your tears, and lift your heart to God in praise – maybe some Babylonian, hearing you singing the Lord’s song at a time like this, will be drawn to seek your Savior. Rather than weeping by the waters for what used to be, we can show the world that we have a God Who never forgets us, a Savior Who never forsakes us, and a hope that never fails us. And when that hope is finally realized – “when faith gives way to sight” – another voice will be heard singing; it will be the strongest, sweetest, stateliest voice you have ever heard:
The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing (Zeph 3:17).