By the Rivers of Babylon: When Prayer Gets Honest

BEFORE YOU WATCH THIS SERMON, PLEASE WATCH THE BELOW VIDEO UNTIL 1:47

PSALM

By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered you, O Zion. As for our harps, we hung them up on the trees in the midst of that land.

For those who led us away captive asked us for a song, and our oppressors called for mirth: "Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

How shall we sing the Lord's song upon an alien soil? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.

Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.

Remember the day of Jerusalem, O Lord, against the people of Edom, who said, "Down with it! down with it! even to the ground!"

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy the one who pays you back for what you have done to us!

Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock!

PSALM 137

Sermon: The Rev. Dr. Maryann Amor

I’m guessing a lot of you know the group Boney M. Some of my fondest memories are listening to their Christmas album every year—it was my dad’s favourite. And if you think our youth have no idea who they are…they do know them. I learned this during a Just Dance party at youth group when the requests came in for their classic Rasputin. The youth even know all the dance moves—it’s beyond impressive.

But the Boney M song we heard isn’t just a dance number. By the Rivers of Babylon echoes today’s psalm. It begins with the same words: “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.” It goes on to reference the middle section of the psalm: “When the wicked carried us away in captivity, requiring of us a song. Now how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

The words of Psalm 137 come from one of the darkest moments in Israel’s history: the Babylonian Exile. It is hard for us to grasp how devastating this was. The people had families, homes, jobs—everything they needed in Israel—then the Babylonians invaded, destroyed Jerusalem, and carried the people off to a foreign land. Far from home and stripped of everything, they struggled to find joy or hope, and in their deepest anguish they wrote Psalm 137.

The psalm paints the scene in vivid detail. As we heard in Boney M, the people sit beside rivers—Israel has no great rivers, a detail that shows they were far from home. They hang up their harps…the instruments that once brought music and joy, now silent. Their captors mock them: “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” But they refuse. “How shall we sing the Lord’s song upon a foreign soil? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.” Even in exile, they vow never to forget their home, their God, or the covenant that shaped them.

But then the psalm takes a shocking turn—one we don’t hear in Boney M: “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks!” It’s disturbing—wishing death on children—but it is also honest. This is not a call to violence; it is the cry of a people whose pain is too deep for polite, careful prayer. Their grief and rage spill out in words that startle us, but they remain part of scripture, unedited and unsoftened.

Centuries later these words found new life in music. Before Boney M covered it, By the Rivers of Babylon was performed by The Melodians, a Jamaican group in the Rastafarian movement. Rastafarianism—think Bob Marley—expressed faith, hope, and resistance to European colonization through music and culture.

The Rastafarians heard their own story in Psalm 137: a people far from their homeland, oppressed, longing for freedom. For them, “Zion” was Africa—especially Ethiopia, their sacred home. “Babylon” symbolized the unjust systems of the world—slavery, colonial powers, economic exploitation. When they sang By the Rivers of Babylon, they were singing both Israel’s ancient story and their own struggle for justice.

That Psalm 137 could speak to the Rastafarians, living in a time and place so far removed from Israel and the exile, shows the enduring power of the psalms to cross time and space, to speak to the lives of people who were never meant to hear them, but do. The psalms are not stuck in the past; they keep finding new voices and new meanings.

And as we read this psalm today, could it also be our cry? We all experience loss, pain, and anger. Our emotions can be volatile and intense. Betrayal, divorce, illness, grief, the wounds of abuse or addiction—these kinds of experiences can shape us profoundly. But how often do we allow the angry, painful feelings they evoke to come out? How often do we take the less polite feelings to God, instead of hiding them, suppressing them, or covering them up with a quick “I’m fine”?

What I love about Psalm 137 is that it shows that everything—even the ugliest thoughts and words we have—can go to God. I know that I need this reminder. Sometimes I get so angry that I say things I regret and then feel terrible about myself. I think of the days I come into the church only to find garbage scattered across our parking lot. My first thoughts are not holy or kind. They are, to be honest, a few swears and, “I hate people. People suck.” And then I feel like a terrible person, because of course I don’t actually hate people. I was just angry and the words came out, much like we hear in Psalm 137 with the bashing babies’ heads.

For me the psalm shows that everything that we say, think, do, even if it isn’t nice…it can all go to God. God doesn’t just tolerate our honesty; God invites it. The psalms are God’s gift to help us pray the things we can’t put into neat, polite, carefully edited words. They remind us that God meets us in the mess of our lives, not just in the moments we manage to make ourselves presentable.

So today, as we reflect on Psalm 137, remember this: whatever we carry—anger or hurt, grief or despair, the ugly and broken parts of who we are—we can take it to God. The same God who was with the people in Babylon, who was with the people in Jamaica, is with us now. God can handle it all—our worst thoughts, our deepest pain, our rawest prayers—and God will carry us through. Amen.