...I am, you are

We are called to be God’s prophets, speaking for the truth and right,

Standing firm for godly justice, bringing evil into light.

Let us seek the courage needed, our high calling to fulfill,

That we all may know the blessing of the doing of God’s will.

---Thomas A. Jackson, 1973

Prophet. When I see the word, my mind goes to oracles, seers, fortune-tellers, or at least future-tellers. Some guy dressed in outrageous rags with a more outrageous hair-do, straight up giving the king the business. Same dude, few days later, found tossed off the city heights or ripped limb from limb ‘under mysterious circumstances’. Is that your mental image, too? This does not sound like a highly sought-after gig, my people. 

In actuality, the word means something less spectacular, and more applicable to our lives today. A prophet is one who speaks a fresh word from God for the world. You see my meaning? We could all be called to be prophets, listening to the guidance of God as we share a fresh message of hope to the world. We could be the ones called to envision and embody the reign of Christ in the world. We could be the ones called to speak hope to despair. Strength to fear. Love to apathy. Welcome to mistrust. Plenty to scarcity.  Sound daunting? It does to me, too. But our help and courage comes from our close relatedness to Jesus and his message.

Prophets. I am, and you are. All of us are called. And family…we have these voices for a reason.

...behind the mask

Will you love the “you” you hide if I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

*

 Lord, Your summons echoes true when you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show.

Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

--John L. Bell and Graham A Maule, 1987

Mardi Gras is a couple of weeks in our rear view mirrors, but I still come across strings of purple beads tucked between the cushions in my sofa, or under the seat of my Honda. I know for a fact I’m still working the Fat Tuesday pancakes off my hips (Shakira preached truth when she said “hips don’t lie”). And if you follow the Mardi Gras pageantry in New Orleans (or in Mobile, where Mardi Gras is even older), or even the Krewe de Tigris fun of a small-town Auburn Mardi Gras, you know that masks are a vital part of the revelry.

Masks allow us to pretend, to be someone or something other than who we are for a bit. They are pretense, misdirection, fantasy. Masks are fun or spooky, glamorous or mysterious.

But friends. When masks become our daily uniform, when we hide the reality of our lives--our truest joys and our deepest anguishes—from the world, and from ourselves, then our masks will be our undoing. Jesus calls us, by name, to repudiate fear’s power over us, the power that keeps us tied to the sameness of those masks. Jesus calls us, by name, to step out from behind the masks that are smothering us, to step into the uncovered truth of God’s love.

Out in the open, unmasked, there is moving, and living, and growing, in the company of Christ.

...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.

...the lips of children

All glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer, King,

To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou didst accept their praises --- accept the praise we bring,

Who in all good delightest, Thou good and gracious King!

---Theodulph of Orleans, ca. 821

Count on a kid to tell it like it is. Maybe this is the reason for the old adage, “Children should be seen and not heard.” Over the course of our lives we develop the ability to filter our thoughts before they become words. We become polite, refined, and maybe just a wee bit fake. We also sometimes lose the child’s ability to see things as they are, without expectation or preconception. We accept nothing at face value, examining each comment and appearance for inflection, shading, nuance. Kids? They see it like it is, and say it like it is.

In today’s text, hosannas stream from the lips of children. They were onto Jesus, and seemed attracted to him without reservation. They saw what they saw, and liked it, and joyously praised Jesus. May we today be like children…no filters, no prejudices, no reservations about praising our redeemer, Jesus Christ.

Let at least one of those hosannas be mine, Lord.

...let's be adventurers!

Excite our minds to follow you, to trace new truths in store,

new flight paths for our spirit space, new marvels to explore.

Engage our wits to dance with you, to leap from logic’s base,

to capture insight on the wing, to sense your cosmic grace.

---Shirley Erena Murray, 1990

Frank Sinatra, or if you preferred your jazz a little more complex Billie Holliday, sang “All of me, why not take all of me?” As Christians, we are used to thinking in terms of offering ‘all’ of ourselves to God---our hearts, our energies, our talents, our financial resources, even our time. One thing many of us don’t think of using in the service of God, sadly, is our minds, especially our imaginations.

What does it mean to engage our sense of discovery and imagination in the service of God? What kind of certainties must we let go of to follow our creative God in the exercise of holy imagination? How might our world change if we leapt unafraid, partnered with God, into the discovery of new insights, deeper understandings of ancient spiritual truths, new sacred heartspace?

Dare we be adventurers together, as we bring the ‘all’ of all of us in offering to the God who has always brought all of Godself to us as joyful gift?

...never stop changing

In the tongues of all the peoples may the message bless and heal,

As devout and patient scholars more and more its depths reveal.

Bless, O God, to wise and simple, all the truth of ageless worth,

Till all lands receive the witness and your knowledge fills the earth.

---Ferdinand Q. Blanchard, 1953

God’s word never changes. But, by God’s grace, God’s people continually do. In the brightness of new light, we see more and more truth. In the warmth of seasons’ turnings, we fathom new depths of wisdom. In the shared scholarship of community, we open ourselves to the prismatic understanding of our brothers and sisters.

So although God’s word is a constant, our approach to the word of God must never be still. We must seek always to find more justice, more compassion, more service, more healing and blessing for our hurting world in its pages. We owe it to our world. We owe it to the Word.

Never stop changing.

...let's don't lie

Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love;

the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.

We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear;

and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.

---John Fawcett, 1782

“Hey! How are you?” “Fine! How are you?” “Fine!” “OK, good to see you!” “You, too!”

Have you had an exchange (or a thousand) just like this with friends, family, and other folks who love you? Are you always fine? Are they? ‘Cause, I’ve said the things. And, I wasn’t. Not even close. But I smiled, and I swallowed back truth and tears, and I lied.

And I snatched away from you, my sister or brother, the chance to be real with me in that moment. I kept it safe. And fake. And I diminished the chances that, when your life is going down in flames, and I ask you The Question, you will answer anything but “Fine! How are you?”

And that’s not the way this is all supposed to work. John Fawcett said it in the text of this hymn in the 1700’s. Bill Withers said it in 1972:

            Please swallow your pride if I have faith you need to borrow,

            for no one can fill those of your needs that you won’t let show.

            Lean on me when you’re not strong

            and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on;

            for it won’t be long till I’m gonna need

            somebody to lean on.

Speak now.

...Light as gift

Light on the path, a lamp about our way,

Wisdom to lead us through the longest day,

Guiding our steps as once the Savior trod:

Here in the Scriptures is the Word of God.

---Timothy Dudley-Smith, 2008

Light. Lamp. Wisdom. Truth for the seeker. Bread for the hungry. Sword of the Spirit. Word of life. Treasure. Promise of mercy and love.

These are some of the gifts to be found in Holy Scripture, according to hymnist Timothy Dudley-Smith. And can you imagine the richness of life, were one to avail oneself of all of these gifts? The richness, even more, of life lived out in community, sharing these gifts together?

How amazing, to have the chance to gain glimpses into the life of the one we call Lord, just by picking up our Bible. To know Jesus better, to know God’s love story with humankind more intimately, because real people quieted themselves, and waited, and shared the moving of the Spirit for us, for the generations.

May we eagerly seek out opportunities to learn from this amazing record of the deep love between God and God’s people. And, rather than ever seeking to use Holy Writ as a weapon against another pilgrim on the path, or a lance against some windmill that needs tilting against, may we seek always to see Scripture used to build up and draw people to the God of Love.

Thanks be to God for Light on the path.

...joy in the coming

A clarion call from the heart of earth,

"The Unsearchable is the most high!

The world you have imagined for us

is set in its course; there it shall spin.

You rule among your people 

with an even and discerning hand."

The stars sing,

the very earth thrums with joy;

the seas churn and and foam their praise,

creatures of the deep take note;

the waving fields bend, 

ready for the offering, 

beasts of the field yield up praise. 

Now the trees,

even the trees of the forest --

where the shadows lie 

long and cool and silent --

even the trees begin their humming.

I hear it, even now, a sound of pure joy

before you, Mystery; 

for you are coming,

you are coming to be judge

on this blue and green planet.

And there is joy in the coming, 

because in the judging, most high,

there is truthful rightness.

---Psalm 96:10-13 (para. laca)