 One of the real problems about the Psalms is that sometimes they say things which absolutely stick in our throat and we think how can I possibly pray that. And one of those passages comes at the end of Psalm 137 where faced with the terrible destruction that Babylon had wrought on Jerusalem, not just pulling down the temple but killing women and children and just heartless, ruthless slaughter all over the place. The end of Psalm 137 prays that people will be happy if they then do to Babylonian children what was done to the Jerusalemite ones. Many Christians feel quite understandably that they simply can't sing that Psalm or if they do they will stop before you get to the last two verses. But I think whoever edited the Psalter did something different with it because the combination of Psalms and in this case we're going to look at 136, 137 and 138 give us such a range of emotions that I think the combination says that these are emotions that we really do feel and that the only good thing to do with them is to lay them all out in the presence of God and as it were bathed these to our mind very scary and negative and violent images within the larger picture. So I think that 136 and 137 are best read together because 136 is one of the most cheerful, happy, tub-thumping Psalms in the whole book and 137 is one of the most miserable in the whole book and I think the Psalmists editors have deliberately said we need to hold on to these together and all the triumphs and victories which we're celebrating in that earlier passage of 136 then we have to balance them with the misery of God's people. Of course as the prophets say it's because of the long-term wickedness of Israel that all these things happened but then these are the songs that emerge and then 138 kind of brings it back together into a more an easier song of praise. Now the thing about 136 to start there is that it has a chorus every single verse as we saw in Psalms 42 and 43 there was a refrain which came every five or six verses why are you so heavy why are you so cast down my soul hope in God and so on but in this one the refrain in English would be his steadfast love endures forever and it comes every single verse oh give thanks to the Lord for he's good his steadfast love endures forever give thanks to the God of God's his steadfast love endures forever in the Hebrew it's kil olam hasdo hasdo is God's steadfast love kil olam because forever forever is his love forever is his love and so as you read the psalm I imagine it almost as a marching song or as the kind of song you might sing at a party where everyone's clapping along kil olam hasdo kil olam hasdo and it goes through all the great triumphs God has done this God has done that God has given us these great victories his love is forever his love is forever and it's easy when you're doing that kind of song to forget that there's a shadow side to it and easy as well for that celebration to tip over into arrogance the arrogance which God will then pull down now of course the beginning is true give thanks to the Lord for he's good give thanks to the God of God's give thanks to the Lord of Lords this idea of God of God's and Lord of Lords looking across to the book of revelation where Jesus is king of kings and Lord of Lords this is a way of saying that whatever's going on in the wider Gentile world the pagan world well they have their gods they have their masters they have their local tribal deities but Israel's God is the true God he is the only one deserving of that name because he is the creator of all things now that might seem very arrogant in itself many people would say well you would say that wouldn't you and in a sense that praise of Israel to Yahweh as the God of gods is the biggest of the question marks with which you're left at the end of the Old Testament when everything seems to have gone if not totally wrong because some of the Judeans are back in their own land and they have at least rebuilt the temple things are still not going well so the nations say and one might easily say so where is your God and the New Testament is written as the answer to that question this is where he is and this is what he looks like and in Jesus and his resurrection and ascension we see why all those prayers of ancient Israel were justified and in fact we can see in this sequence 136 137 something of the move from the joy of the days of Jesus ministry going around Galilee announcing God's kingdom feasting and healing and celebrating the fact of God coming to be king and then the awesome contrast with Good Friday and Holy Saturday being the kind of quintessential exilic moment so that as the Jews in exile sing how can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land Jesus followers must have thought that's right where we are how can we even know what to pray if this prophet who was announcing the kingdom who we thought was Israel's savior if he is now dead and gone so again we have to hold these psalms within that larger perspective