Don Friesen
It's been fifty years since I had a dog, but I loved that dog. His name was Buster, a friendly collie that once bit a visitor who accidentally hit me with a two-by-four. We moved when I was nine and my parents didn't want to have a dog in town, so we gave Buster to my brother's parents-in-law some 150 miles away. My brother took him there in his 1959 Volkswagen, and after that, whenever my brother would drive onto their yard, Buster would crawl back into the car, hoping it would take him home! Animals have strong homing instincts and many are the stories of animals who have travelled many miles to get back to their home.
I thought of Buster last week while reading Aiden Enns' column in the Canadian Mennonite. Aiden was trying to think of reasons to stay in church when it appeared he would rather be somewhere else. It seemed to me he was struggling to come up with reasons, because the ones he came up with were not particularly stellar! They were hardly compelling, although they may well appeal to disaffected Mennonites suffering from arrested development! ("Five reasons to stay in church," Canadian Mennonite, October 15, 2007)
The psalmist, in our reading from Psalm 84, expresses a deep yearning to be in church. "How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord...." (Psalm 84:1-2) Another version reads, "I long to be in the courtyards of the Lord's temple. I deeply long to be there." (84:2, New International Reader's Version) It seems to me that my dog, Buster, had a better understanding of this longing than does Aiden. Buster wanted desperately to be home, where he belonged. Aiden, on the other hand, seems to be searching for reasons not to leave home.
Most of us know the powerful urge to go home, and to long for home. A week ago Dorothy and I had visitors from the West who had been on the road for over a month, and they were more than ready to get home! Home is where people understand you; you don't have to explain yourself. Home is where you speak the same language, and eat the same stuff. For example, if you're not from Saskatchewan, you don't know what's it's like to yearn for a Cuban Lunch (nutty chocolate bar) or to long to spread Rogers Golden Syrup on your bread. If you're not from the Prairies, you don't know what it feels like to take in a prairie sky again.
Yearning for Home and Temple
The Israelites knew what it was like to long for home, and there are many passages of Scripture expressing their deep longings while in exile. Who can forget their mournful expression of loss on the banks of a river in Babylon: "...there we sat down and there we wept, when we remembered Zion." (Psalm 137:1) Radically uprooted from their home, they sat in a strange country, pining for a home to which they might never return.
Our exilic experiences may not be as harsh, but I recall a night in Tanzania twenty years ago when a small group of us spent hours singing through our hymnal, singing and weeping through hymn after hymn, the music expressing our visceral longing for our spiritual home, with its familiar strains and phrases.
Psalm 84 is not an exilic psalm, per se, but the Jewish diaspora shared this deep longing for their spiritual home. Pilgrims travelled a great distance to visit Jerusalem, their caravans taking days to arrive at their beloved destination. Psalm 84 is one of the psalms of ascent, one of the songs the pilgrims sang as they made their way up to the temple in Jerusalem. The temple was their spiritual home, and this psalm expressed their longing for it.
The psalmist expresses his longing in a unique way – in the form of jealousy! He's jealous of the sparrows who don't have to leave the temple. They found a place to build their nests and to raise their young there! Would that we could be there 24/7, is the psalmist's sentiment.
Passing Through the Valley of Baca
The pilgrimage to Jerusalem was a long and difficult journey for many, but their longing to be in the house of God, in the company of other pilgrims, was strong. It had to be, to motivate them to make the trip and to face its dangers and discouragements. According to Psalm 84, their pilgrimage to the Holy City took them through the valley of Baca. (Psalm 84:6) Archaeologists have not, with any certainty, located the valley of Baca, and it may very well be a symbolic name. The Hebrew word derives from a root meaning, "to weep," leading one of the early church leaders, fourth-century Jerome (c.347-420), to translate the phrase, "valley of Baca," as "vale of tears". The origin of the name may in fact lie in the balsam tree, a gum-exuding, or weeping tree. The balsam tree favours dry soil, and so the name suggests an arid and inhospitable place. According to the psalmist, however, the long and arduous trek was made to appear much less forbidding because of the joyful anticipation of the pilgrims travelling it. The knowledge that they were going to the temple made even the Valley of Baca seem like "a place of springs (and) pools". (Psalm 84:6) Their destination – the temple – was a symbol of God's presence and a real source of refreshment and renewal. Their eagerness to get there made even the desolate Baca seem attractive!
The valley of Baca is a symbol of desolation, and speaks to us of Baca-like circumstances in our own lives. A poet describes it this way:
I do not enjoy
Because (my Lord) is here,
("Valley of Baca, by Peter J. Blackburn, 2003)
Even valleys of despondency can become places of life-giving springs when our yearning for the presence of God remains our focus. John Bunyan (1628-1688), the author of Pilgrim's Progress, was indicted for preaching without a licence. He was taken to the county gaol in Bedford for an initial three months, but he refused to conform and his imprisonment stretched to twelve years! No doubt this was his valley of Baca, but while in confinement Bunyan dug several wells in this desolate place. While in prison he wrote nine books, including Pilgrim's Progress, arguably the most famous published Christian allegory – which became a spring of renewal for many generations.
"How lovely is Your dwelling place," writes the psalmist. "My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord...." (Psalm 84:1-2) I don't always have that intensity of longing, but I remember another experience in Africa, upon returning to Botswana from Tanzania. I returned with only two hours of sleep and considerable anxiety over immigration procedures, which were not in my favour. I went to Evening Prayers that day in a spiritually parched state, craving spiritual consolation. I hung on every word spoken – every phrase of every creed and text, every lyric and melody. It felt so good to be home – in the house of God, with the people of God.
One of our hymns captures it well, speaking of "that beautiful stream that flows through the promised land.... Its fountains are deep and its waters are pure, and sweet to the weary soul. ... The Spirit says: Come, all ye weary ones, home...." ("Oh, Have you not Heard?" Hymnal: A Worship Book, #606) AMEN
I do not choose
Springs of Renewal
the valley of Baca –
place of dryness,
sadness,
depression,
place of tedious
sameness.
Yet,
without my choosing,
life
has a way
of taking me
there.
the valley of Baca.
I have no desire
to linger there
or to revel
in its desolation.
Yet my Lord
has promised
to be with me
all the way,
even when
I must pass
through this valley.
even the valley of Baca
can become
to me
a place of springs –
refreshed,
renewed
from strength to strength
with (my Lord!)
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.