We are usually minding our own business when trouble finds us. We have a full calendar and a dozen good deeds to do. At home, our family expects dinner. Frozen peas and ice cream are thawing in the trunk of our car. Wham! Some fool driving a beat-up red pickup runs the light at Fifth and Shady. “Are you okay?” We ask our eighty-five-year-old passenger. She says, “Fine,” but her X-rays reveal a broken hip. We share her spirit of denial, thinking our car — bent like a wishbone — will soon be okay to drive. This turns to anger the next day, when the insurance adjuster tells us it’s been totaled. We bargain with him for a reasonable settlement. The whole mess is depressing. It will take us forever to accept that this event was God’s will.
This is what it means to be a saint in trouble. Events derail our plans. Recovery requires us to relinquish denial. We experience anger. It may be obvious, or hidden behind passive-aggressive words. Depression complements our anger, pulling us away from the Christ-like life we wish to live. We know that “Poor me” is not saintly talk. But it feels more comforting than admitting we have made some poor decisions, which put us where we are. Accepting our own responsibility is hard, especially when we have suffered trauma. And so, anger becomes a long-term resident in our hearts. Even the great saints of old spent months and years wandering in its emotional distress before they turned to God and found healing.
In 587 BCE, Jerusalem was destroyed and the people of Judea were sent into exile in Babylon. The last thing these people of faith saw was their temple in flames. Everything they had was lost. They were depressed, yes, but more than that, they were angry. With that in mind, read Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the willow tree
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy…
…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 137:1-4, 9
I admit that I often skip that last line. Anger is one of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ 5 Stages of Grief, and as Scott Peck reminds us, grief is a part of every transition. Say, we lose our job. While adrift, we stew. “I gave the best years of my life to that business.” In time, we move on to another career, or discover that God had a reason for it. We accept it as a blessing. Still, anger was an actual stage in our transition. When someone we love dies, anger causes us to lash out at the doctor on call. Or, we move into a new neighborhood. Seemed a good idea at the time, but soon reality sets in. We may find ourselves alone, commuting further for work, and dealing with shoddy home construction. We may spend endless hours bemoaning the events and decisions that led us to this new place. It is because anger is a part of all transitions that the Bible gives us this unedited version of Psalm 137.
Being a Christian doesn’t shield us from participating in the five stages of grief. As Jesus shared his last supper with his disciples, he awoke them from their state of denial by stating that one of them would betray him. Some sleep on in denial; others become angry. Judas went to the city council and made a bargain. The other disciples couldn’t stay awake in the garden. This speaks of their depression. Peter is still angry, so he picks up a sword. The disciples are us. Acceptance comes slowly.
Life always brings us to a new place. There will always be a resurrection. The people who sang about willows and harps and being exiled to Babylon discovered a new way of living. During the next seventy years, they codified the Torah and developed their worship liturgy. At some point, we all go through the five stages of grief. The thing we must remember, though, is not to get stuck.
Psalm 137 is also about our communal life. It is about a people who have lost their home and must now live in exile. It is a brutal transition. For workers in the traditional industries of our nation; coal, steel, heavy manufacturing, a similar transition is under way. Denial-depression-anger-bargaining is the mix that fuels today’s social polarization and political debate. Only be working through our grief will we become brave enough to fashion a new future.