...music just works

So has the church, in liturgy and song,

in faith and love, through centuries of wrong,

borne witness to the truth in every tongue:

Alleluia!

---Fred Pratt Green, 1972

I will admit it…I’m partial. I believe that the most enduring, penetrating, impacting method of teaching any truth is music. Sit through a PTA meeting where the third graders sing a rousing rendition of the fifty states and capitals. Listen while your child learns the multiplication tables to the beat of an uptempo rap. For sealing in the memory, music…just…works.

Southern trees bear strange fruit. The answer is blowin’ in the wind. Brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dyin’. Imagine all the people. Fight the power. Stop, hey, what’s that sound? The revolution will be live. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. I’m everyday people. People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’. I am woman, hear me roar. We are the world. We gon’ be alright. That’s just the way it is. And I’ll rise up, I’ll rise like the day. This is my fight song. We shall overcome. For gathering around a common cause, and rallying when your flame burns low, music…just…works.

In the history of the church, music has always played a prominent part of worship and transmitting theology. The apostle Paul quotes a first century hymn in his letter to the Philippian church. Believers have always sung the songs of faith, and so participated in the liturgy, or work of the church. I often say that most of us keep in our memories some  Scripture, but many hymns and songs of faith. If we are retaining most of our theology through hymns and spiritual songs, we would be wise to make sure the songs we sing in worship include the great truths of the faith. For strengthening our faith, and the bonds of community, music…just…works.

Jesus spent his last night with his disciples weaving a web of music around their hearts, sealing in their memories the image of a singing Savior. Thanks be to a God Who sings.

...while supplies last

God pours the Holy Spirit on all those who believe,

on women, men, and children who would God’s grace receive.

That Spirit knows no limit, bestowing life and power.

The church, formed and reforming, responds in every hour.

---Jane Parker Huber, 1981

*while supplies last. Surely these words were designed to strike fear in the hearts of every red-blooded human on the face of the earth. If you might run out of something, I need one. Who am I kidding?...I probably need two. And if there is a countdown clock in the corner of the QVC screen or the Instagram ad (check your generation), those beads of sweat, and a sudden desire for previously unknown (but now totally life-giving) goods pop out all over.

Is there a better marketing principle discovered than the principle of scarcity? It stands to reason that if something is in short supply, only the real winners will end up possessing it. The rest of us? The waited-too-late, didn’t-pay-attention, stayed-in-on-Black-Friday, don’t-queue-up-for-Ticketmaster-at-midnight, wasn’t-tuned-in-to-the-faint-ache-of-longing-that-was-emptiness ones? Oh, yeah…the losers? Well, we’re gonna lose. That’s the way of the world, baby. Winners and losers—get used to it.

But on Pentecost, the rules go out the window. It’s not that winners and losers switch places, though Jesus used to talk about that scenario sometimes. No, at Pentecost, the only loser is the principle of scarcity. Here in this gathering of believers, inquisitive onlookers, and straight-up gawkers, the Spirit breathed a new sort of energy on God’s love story. And for once, it seemed, there were no losers, and there was no FOMO (fear of missing out). This Spirit was like the wind, or fire, and didn’t have to be measured or conserved. There was plenty for everyone, and more.

Still is. Still is.

...making it to Monday

Mother's Day. It can't have snuck up on you, or me. The sweet, tear-jerking commercials; the handmade cards smelling of Elmer's glue and crayon; the preschool 'teas' and musical programs with dress-up clothes and tissue-paper and pipe-cleaner flowers; the bouquets in every store, and cards that never quite say what you intend, but fit the envelope just fine.

While for lots of us Mother's Day is a lovely time of sharing with our own children, or celebrating the love of our mothers for us, for some folks this day is among the toughest on the calendar. While others celebrate, these seek out solitude and separation, counting down the hours to sundown.

Some of these may be children of mothers who were never 'moms' --- those who would not, or could not, love their children; those who withheld human kindness or approval from children starving for it; those who abused the trust placed in them as mothers by hurting their children. How lonely it must be, to try being sold on the idea of a Mother's Day for a mother who wants nothing more from you than your absence.

Then there are women who mourn for children who are not. Women who carried life in them, only to grieve a too-early goodbye, never getting to celebrate birthdays, 'first days', Christmases with children hoped-for and dreamt. Women who struggle with fertility, hope with each turn of the calendar page that this might be the month. Women left with holes in lives and hearts when illness, accident, violence walk in the door and beloved children no longer do. Sometimes Mother's Day means getting through the day.

Then there are the ongoing struggles of motherhood that can complicate the feelings around general 'happiness'. Mothers who wait for their children's busy lives to settle down enough to include them. Mothers who find themselves lifelong advocates for their children in a variety of settings. Mothers who find themselves navigating with their children the deep waters of the health care system or the mental health system; mothers who become over-familiar with the tangled web of the juvenile justice system, or consistently stand in the gap in the halls and classrooms of school systems designed around the 'typical' student. Sometimes putting one foot in front of the other takes precedence over a Hallmark-driven remembrance.

For some of these folks, they hold onto what they can. When it comes to Mother's Day, they are just making it to Monday.                                               

—from Mother’s Day 2013

...practice makes permanent

In the bread of life here given, we become what we receive.

In the cup of love here offered, affirm what we believe.

In the word of God proclaimed here, the good news of truth is heard.

In the telling of the stories, be open to God’s word.

---James Chepponis, 2002

Been there. Done that. I admit it. I am the first to make the jaded comment, or, on choking it back, to think it. This again? Or maybe, like Yogi Berra, It’s like deja-vu, all over again. And it’s kind of true.

Each time we gather and take communion, there is a familiarity to the elements, a sense of ritual in the setting. If I’m not careful, I can coast through the serving of the elements, the doing this in remembrance, on autopilot. If I am not present in the moment and attending to the story of my friend Jesus’ sacrificial love for me, a high holy moment can be, instead, just another holy snack pack and some pretty mumbling.

And those Bible stories? For heaven’s sake, I’ve been coming to church now for, well, for a long time. I have heard them all. Twice. What good does it do me, really, to be here with you, listening to the stories again? To sit and listen to the same old words and phrases over and over, till they are so burned into my soul that I could tell them myself? To know them so well that the words spring, unbidden, to my mind at unlikely times during the week? What good are a bunch of stories?

I have to be careful. I wouldn’t want to mix up being transformed with being done. Because being transformed? That could take a lifetime.