July 23, 2025
Good afternoon,
Read Psalm 137
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks. Psalm 137:8-9
The writer of the Psalms is proclaiming the politics of revenge. Once, when I was a guest speaker, I had the worship leader read the above text. Some people were angry that I would read such a text in the worship service. It is a troubling passage. The people of God were taken from their homeland and put in Babylon for many years. The writer is telling the readers how he wants to respond to the Babylonian atrocities. This is why the Bible is so hard to understand, and then live out, when you disagree with all your heart, soul and mind in many passages ( read the end of the book of Esther. )
” Never again” Israel proclaims in response to the Holocaust ( 1933-1945 ). Armenia says this when they remember the Turkish genocide ( post-WW 1 ). We never want mass killing to happen. But it always happens, all over this planet. Jesus tried to stop it in the Roman Empire, but the Empire continued for a few more centuries. Jesus’ words of ‘ loving your neighbour ‘ is still relevant, even if it does not happen.
And it is happening today in Gaza. The Israeli Defence Forces announced today that they were not responsible for the starvation of the Palestinians. People are starving. The IDF does not allow trucks with food to enter. The United Nations is powerless. The government of Israel has slowly killed Palestine since 1947. It did not start on October 7, 2023. It has been a war crime for a long time. The Palestinians did not kill 6 million Jews, Christians did., but ‘ never again’ is being carried out as revenge against innocent civilians. Who has killed all those children waiting for food ? Revenge is in the air, but it cannot be the way to peace.
Jeremiah is known as the prophet of wrath and tears. He had anger for Israel, and all of its enemies. He had tears for himself, and the life he had to live as a prophet. Israel was angry about their lives in Babylon ( the great Satan in the book of Revelation ). Richard Rohr offered these words today. I am not sure it is as easy as he portrays it, but it is what we must be about… no revenge.
In Jeremiah’s prophecies, all hopes for the future of the Jewish people lie in those who endured a three-stage process of transformation: first, those who entered into exile; second, those who retained hope and did not turn bitter during that exile; and third, those who returned from exile with generativity and praise in their hearts instead of self-pity. Richard Rohr, July 23, 2025
Praying for Gaza. Amen
Fred
Ponder Anew 