Psalm 137: 1-8

1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. 2 There on the poplars we hung our harps, 3 for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. 6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. “Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!” 8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us.

After four weeks we are bringing our Epiphany reflections to a close today. We started Epiphany with the arrival of the Magi, and we continued our Epiphany journey with Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan. And these are both classic, Epiphany biblical passages that highlight those sudden, powerful insights that change how we understand everything. But today, I am taking us far from the normal Epiphany scriptures. Over a year ago, I felt the need to explore the life and ministry of the legendary Frederick Douglass during our observance of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Day. In August as I finalized this worship service, I needed to settle upon the scriptural passage that God was giving us to help us understand Frederick Douglass’ ministry and message for 2019. But unlike many historical saints whose lives and ministries I explore, I never studied Frederick Douglass in Church History. He is not often remembered or celebrated for his radical Christian faith, for his contributions to theology, or for his preaching. I had a little background on him from American History in college, but I knew very little of him as person of faith, as a Christian, as follower of Jesus. But in August, when I stumbled upon Psalm 137 as a lens for understanding this radical Christian, I had a sudden epiphany that this scripture was the right way in. Unfortunately, I knew as little of this hardly ever preached Psalm as I did about Douglass, but it felt so right in my soul that I started to explore. And over the last two months this sermon has required over 1,000 pages of reading and research to bring this message into being. For those of you who want to learn more, I will have a recommended reading list in this week’s TFTD.

In 1852, the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, New York invited the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass to be their speaker for their 4th of July Celebration, which ironically, they had on July 5th that year. Douglass had escaped from slavery 14 years earlier and was now one of the most famous if not the most famous anti-slavery crusader in the United States. In his 77 years of life, Douglass preached thousands of sermons and delivered thousands more speeches. He wrote and published three autobiographies and hundreds of other essays, editorials, and articles, but none of his other publications or messages had the prophetic power, both to his day and age and to our day and age, as his powerful and biblical message that he gave that July 1852. Douglass entitled his speech for the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” and he rooted his speech in the deep theological words of the Psalm 137 and the words of the Prophet Isaiah.[i]

Douglass was a gifted preacher who knew the Bible like few of us know it today and it wasn’t on a whim that he selected this Psalm for his 4th of July message. There are lots of passages in our Bible that deal with slavery. There is the famous story of Joseph who was sold into slavery by his brothers in Genesis, the powerful witness of Moses standing before Pharaoh with God’s message “Let, my people go,” and even Paul’s letter of Philemon which has been included in slavery sermons for centuries as well as dozens of other passages. But the 137th Psalm is unique. It is a deeply emotional, theological cry. Professor David Stowe wrote a whole book just on the powerful reception of this unique psalm.

Psalm 137, the Song of Exile, is the only one out of the 150 psalms in our Bible that is clearly set in a particular time and place. This lyrical psalm takes place between the years 587 and 586 BC after the Babylonians had conquered Judea, destroyed the Temple, and carried off the leading citizens into slavery. The author of this Psalm is a captive in exile sitting by the streams of Babylon and pouring out the people’s deep anguish, pain, loss. I want us to think of these words as a ballad, a song that shares a story of love and loss. The author recounts the pain of being forced to sing for the entertainment of their captors. For centuries, exiles, slaves who had been ripped away from their homelands, refugees who had to flee their countries, victims of genocide who have lost everything, and countless other communities of people who feel exiled, marginalized, and alienated have grabbed onto this psalm because it expresses their story, it shares their pain, it speaks to their heart-breaking condition.

Throughout history the message of the 137th Psalm has spoken God’s message to so many. Bach, Dvorak, Verdi, the Jamaican group the Melodians, Paul Robeson, as well as song writer Don McLean whose version of it was used in an episode of “Mad Men,” all wrote music about it. There is even a disco tribute to it by Boney M. And numerous leaders of social movement and exile groups from Ireland to Korea have invoked Psalm 137’s powerful message. And Frederick Douglass understood this theological lament when he selected it as a foundation for that 4th of July speech. He put his heart, his mind, his Christian faith, and his 34 years of life on this Earth into its 30 pages.[ii]

Douglass had been born around 1818 but like many people born into the horrors of slavery his exact birth date and even the year are not certain. He was born on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, and he was named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey by his mother, Harriet Bailey. He would never know who his father was, but as he recorded in his autobiography “the opinion was…whispered that my master was my father.” Fred Bailey was separated from his mother when he was still an infant, as was custom by the slave owners who wanted to weaken family bonds and was raised by his grandmother. He would remember seeing his mother only about five times during his life and only at night when she walked through the darknes to see him from the plantation that she had been hired out to. She died when he was around ten years old. When he was six years old, his grandmother told him that he had to go live with his master and she and him walked the 12 miles to the Wye House Plantation where his owner Aaron Anthony worked as the overseer.

In his three autobiographies Douglass would spend chapters recounting the horrors he witnessed as he was held in slavery: the physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological violence. In spite of laws against it, he learned to read and through the ministry of two pastors was formed as a person of deep faith. Douglas understood how the owners were using the clergy that they brought to preach to the those held in slavery to tell the enslaved that this was God’s will for them. He understood how some churches were compliant and even benefited from slavery. How some churches used corrupted theological reasoning like the Curse of Ham to justify and even support race-based slavery.[iii]

When Douglass grew into an unruly teenager, his current owner rented him out Edward Covey so that Covey could break Douglass’ will. Covey was known as for his use of fear, surveillance, and physical violence to break the will of people in slavery, but Covey was also known as a deeply religious Christian who was in church every Sunday, gathered his entire household to sing hymns every evening, and didn’t beat his slaves on Sunday. After Covey failed to break Douglass’ will, his owner hired him out to William Freeland who didn’t attend church or pretend to be a Christian but treated everyone with respect and was fair to even the slaves. It is really amazing that Douglass became such a deeply committed Christian with all the hypocrisy.

Douglass had unsuccessfully tried to escape from slavery several times but in 1838 he meet a free African American woman named Anna Murray in Baltimore. Together, they created a plan for him to escape using a soldier’s uniform, travel papers supplied by a freed African American sailor, and some of Anna’s savings. Twenty-four hours after his escape he was safe in the home of well-known abolitionist David Ruggles in New York City. Once Douglass was in New York, Anna joined him and days later they were married.

They moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts and Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey changed his name to Frederick Douglass after a character in Walter Scott’s poem “The Lady of the Lake.” First, the Douglasses attended the Methodist Church in New Bedford but was disappointed to find that the seating was segregated so they joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Frederick became a licensed preacher in 1839. Two years later, they moved to Lynne, Massachusetts when Anna started working as a shoe binder and Frederick started traveling as an abolitionist speaker with his Bible in his hand. He traveled across the United States and Europe campaigning for the end of slavery and reached even more people through the publication of his autobiography in 1845.

Anna and he later moved to Rochester, New York and established the abolitionist newspaper the “North Star.” In 1848, Frederick was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights and when Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked those attending to pass a resolution asking for the right to vote for women and many of the attendees opposed the resolution, Douglass passionately spoke in its support and it passed. But he also experienced many set backs during these years from personal financial struggles to support his growing family, to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law to professional struggles with colleagues over strategies as many could only envision a future where African Americans were segregated and sent to live in Latin America or Africa.[iv]

Frederick Douglass brought all these experiences to that July 4th speech for the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, New York. Some major historians have called this speech one of the greatest 4th of July speeches of all time and major theologian recognize it as one of the most important turning points for the Christian Church in North America. His speech that day had three major movements.

In the first movement, Frederick honored America’s founders and explored the genius of America’s founding, but for those in his audience who were listening closely, there might have been some discomfort. As he honored the building of the USA, he was strongly stressing a second person voice, He writes, “it is the birth day of your National Independence and of your political freedom. This is, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God.” And he continues in this vein for several pages as he honors the founding of this country but places himself outside of this celebration.

This became the foundation for the indictment against both the United States and the Christian Church. Frederick unmasks the hypocrisy of Christians who were willing to go to church on Sunday and yet allow slavery and racism to exist unanswered. As Yale historian David Blight writes, “Douglass poured out a litany of historical and contemporary evils caused by American slavery. He did not merely call Americans hypocrites; he showed them and made them feel, see, and hear their ‘revolting barbarity’ in aggressive language.” And in the center of this argument against this injustice he reads Psalm 137 as a message to the people in both the church and America.

In the third and final movement of his message. He challenges his listeners to live up to the full potential of the gospel message for the church and for the country. This section of his speech draws heavily upon the words of the Prophet Isaiah and the style of the Prophet Jeremiah. He calls upon the church to live out the full potential of Jesus’ gospel as he delivers an indictment tinged with hope.[v] This is the radical Christian faith of Frederick Douglass and both he and the powerful message of the still speaking God through the words of 137 Psalm have some important lessons for us today:

First, they show us the importance of remembering, of remembering pain and suffering that need to be addressed. Theologian Clinton McCann explains that remembering is at the heart of Psalm 137. He writes “it must be remembered. To remember is painful; grief is always painful. To remembering is unsettling; anger always unsettles. But to remember is also to resist the same thing’s happening again. To remember is to choose to live and to be faithful to God’s purpose of life for all people.” This remember is key. When we are part of injustices, honesty is painful but the worst thing, we can do is hide it and feel nothing. Hypocrisy and injustice must be remembered to be unmasked.[vi]

And after the pain is unmasked as in both Psalm 137 and Douglass’ message, remembrance can turn grief and anger into life-giving action. It can empower people to see and to act. Psalm 137 and Douglass’ message are both challenges for us today in 2019. Frederick Douglass was and is a thundering prophet whom God sent to preach and teach and in his 77 years of life he accomplished so much from learning to read, to escaping slavery, to preaching the word of God, to working tirelessly to end slavery, to championing women’s rights, to changing the mind of President Abraham Lincoln about how the races could co-exist in America, to bringing the American Church to a moment of truth. This is the prophetic voice used by God to bring transformation. If we can only accomplish a tiny fraction of what Frederick Douglass did during our lifetimes, then we can truly say that we have done great work for the Reign of God.

[i] David W. Blight. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

[ii] David Stowe. Song of Exile: The Enduring Mystery of Psalm of 137. New York: Oxford, 2016. And J. Clinton McCann. “The Book of Psalms” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2015.

[iii] Frederick Douglass’ “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave,” “My Bondage and My Freedom,” and “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”

[iv] David W. Blight. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018., D. H. Dilbeck. “The Radical Faith of Frederick Douglass.” Christianity Today, January / February 2018., Ameen Hudson. “Frederick Douglass: Thundering Prophet to America.” Available at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/frederick-douglass-thundering-prophet-to-america/., and Frederick Douglass. “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” Available at: https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/douglassjuly4.html.

[v] David W. Blight. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

[vi] J. Clinton McCann. “The Book of Psalms” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2015. P. 690.