“…I will maintain him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be firmly established forever.” (1 Chronicles 17:14, NAB)
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Monthly Archives: March 2010
Living as Christians: Music
This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Wednesday, March 24, 2010. Midweek services from Ash Wednesday through Maundy Thursday will explore the theme, “Living as Christians.”
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Readings
2 Samuel 6:1–5
Psalm 98
Ephesians 5:18–20
Mark 14:22–26
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Prayer
You call us to return to you, Lord God, and to leave behind all things that keep us from giving ourselves fully to serve you. Speak to us through your Word, so that we may turn to face you and to give you glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Message
Last week, we turned our attention
to the conversation God has made us
to carry on with him: our life of prayer.
The Psalms, we heard, have served as the book of prayer
of the people of God, both Israel and the Church,
for thousands of years.
But at the same time, the Psalms themselves
have become the hymnal of the people of God.
We sing the Psalms as hymns.
And sometimes, the psalms lie hidden behind the words of our music,
serving as inspiration.
There’s a kind of wonderful energy
that flows among us and between us and God
when we combine words and melodies and rhythms and harmonies.
That’s what is going on among God’s people
in the passages of Scripture we have heard this evening.
Listen again to a few key verses:
From 2 Samuel:
David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the LORD
with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps
and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. (2 Samuel 6:5, NRSV)
And from Psalm 98:
O sing to the LORD a new song,
for he has done marvelous things. …
Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD. (Psalm 98:1,5–6, NRSV)
And from Ephesians:
… be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs among yourselves,
singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts,
giving thanks to God the Father at all times
and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18c–20, NRSV)
And finally, from Mark,
where we hear how Jesus shared his Last Supper with the disciples,
they end the meal in song:
When they had sung the hymn,
they went out to the Mount of Olives. (Mark 14:26, NRSV)
This is just a brief sampling of the myriad of passages in the Scriptures
that tell us how prayer and song join together
to give voice to the love and praise the people offer up to God.
And, in fact, not just people.
In Psalm 98, we read:
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who live in it.
Let the floods clap their hands;
let the hills sing together for joy
at the presence of the LORD … . (Psalm 98:7-9a, NRSV)
These verses inspired one of our most beloved hymns.
From the mind and heart of St. Francis,
we have received these lines
from his soaring hymn, “All Creatures of Our God and King”:
All creatures of our God and King,
Lift up your voice with us and sing …
O rushing wind and breezes soft,
O clouds that ride the winds aloft;
Oh, praise him! (“All Creature of Our God and King,” LBW 527, sts. 1–2)
It’s hard, when we hear a great song,
one that moves and inspires and energizes us,
to sit still, and not to reflect our immersion in the music
with some kind of movement,
even if it’s only to tap our toes quietly inside our shoes.
That is to say that music and movement go together.
Our comfort with this partnership depends a little upon our upbringing
and partly upon the social conventions we observe.
If we went to worship in an African Methodist Episcopal Church,
we would expect people to worship in song with their whole bodies.
But if we went to a Lutheran Church of Norwegian background, for example,
the movements would be subtle, at most.
For us, our movements consist mostly of standing when we sing,
of adopting that ancient posture of praise.
Little children are more adventuresome,
swaying and clapping as they sing their Sunday School songs.
But if you go back and reread the passages we heard tonight,
or look up other verses that tell us about God’s people in worship,
pay attention to the descriptions of the movements:
+ dancing
+ processing
+ clapping
+ playing instruments of all sorts.
It’s a clear pattern and message
that when prayer and song combine in worship,
they enact our praise and thanksgiving to God.
And just as Jesus Christ embodies himself in the Sacraments
—in Water and Bread and Wine—
becoming for us present, tangible, visible,
we embody our prayers in song and movement,
offering up our whole being to the God who made us.
That’s why, when Christians gather for Communion,
standing and moving and singing are all parts of the liturgy.
We might not think of what we do as dance,
but it is—a binding together of body and voice and spirit.
This is what we do.
And so we sing and dance, mixing music and movement,
here and now as our prayer and offering of praise to God.
And we do this as our practice—our rehearsal—for our eternity in heaven,
as John reminds us in his Revelation:
After this I looked, and there as a great multitude that no one could count,
from every nation … standing before the throne and before the Lamb,
robed in white, with palm branches in their hands … .
… and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing:
Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor and power and might
be to our God forever and ever. Amen!” (Revelation 7:11–12, NRSV)
High Priest Forever
“This [hope] we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, which reaches into the interior behind the veil where Jesus has entered on our behalf as forerunner, becoming high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:19–20, NAB)
Holding Fast
“We are [Christ's] house, if only we hold fast to our confidence and pride in our hope.” (Hebrews 3:6b, NAB)
Help in Testing
“Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” (Hebrews 2:18, NAB)
Thoughtful Extravagance
This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, March 20–21, 2010, for the Fifth Sunday in Lent.
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Readings
Isaiah 43:16–21
Psalm 126 (antiphon v.5)
Philippians 3:4b–14
John 12:1–8
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Prayer
You call us to return to you, Lord God, and to leave behind all things that keep us from giving ourselves fully to serve you. Speak to us through your Word, so that we may turn to face you and to give you glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Message
Close your eyes for a few seconds
and picture all of the clocks in your home. (Pause)
If you are like many people,
you’ll find it hard to remember
just how many clocks lie scattered around your house.
While we’re on the go, wristwatches, cell phones, iPods, and cars
all offer features to show us the time.
At home, ovens, microwaves,
coffee makers, thermostats, televisions, DVD players,
computers, printers, gaming systems, and so on
bear little glowing numbers to remind us
what time it is here and now.
What we gain in precision and accuracy
we, most likely, have more than surrendered
in freedom and time for reflection
and the simple sense of the organic ebb and flow
of days and seasons.
Our watches tell us it might be 6:20 p.m. CDT or 9:25 a.m. CDT,
but now is also the time of the vernal equinox,
the first days of Spring,
after a long and cold and grey winter.
And without watches, the snow geese know it is time to migrate,
and so they gather and travel in gigantic flocks
that trail like ribbons across the sky.
They have no sense of time getting diced into digits
that flash upon a screen.
We can learn from them
that when we turn our gaze to the sky—
whether in wonder or in silent prayer to God—
we find that time is more relaxed, fluid, supple.
It has a way of speeding up and slowing down
to match the moment and its import in our lives.
That’s why we find those fleeting times of ecstasy—
when we realize how amazing this world is
and what a gift from God it is to be alive in it—
that time hovers and flutters over that moment,
helping us to preserve a mystical memory of it.
But then, that’s what happens too when we encounter
those times that lurk in the depths of our despair.
We find the passing of an instant strangely elongated,
as if the moment stretches and thins itself
so it can fit through the tight crack that breaks open in us
when we learn of a spouse’s disease,
when we face the scorn of relative we have hurt,
when we balance the checkbook and find it doesn’t,
when we hear those leaden words that end a job,
when we catch the images of towers tumbling into dust.
With these reminders of time’s elasticity fresh in our minds,
we easily can sympathize with Mary of Bethany
in St. John’s account of a dinner gathering
at the home of her brother, Lazarus.
She had mourned his death
and had shared her sorrow with Jesus.
He too, wept, over the death of his friend.
But then Jesus had called Lazarus forth from the tomb,
granting him a return to this life,
a reprieve from death,
and new beginning.
No doubt this miracle,
this episode of the power of God
at work in her family’s life,
had been, for Mary,
one of those moments when time slowed to a crawl.
And now again, as the forces arrayed against Jesus
made their moves, rehearsed their plans,
sealed their deals, made their traps,
the pall of foreboding would have settled once again
upon Mary and Martha and Lazarus,
and upon Jesus and his disciples.
And in the midst of that thickening of plots,
Mary found within herself
the capacity to pour out her love for her Lord,
just as she poured upon his feet
a pound of costly perfume.
Judas Iscariot, the disciple who soon would betray Jesus,
made a comment that judged Mary thoughtless and wasteful.
He pointed out she had frittered away a worker’s yearly wage
on the impractical waste of this perfume.
He was clearheaded, rational, precise, measuring the value of the gesture.
But Mary, caught in the swirl of events slipping away from her,
acted out of devotion and generosity,
showing her care and commitment to Jesus.
He, in turn, told Judas to back off, in so many words,
reminding him that Mary had bought the perfume
“so that she might keep it for the day of [his] burial.” (John 12:7, NRSV)
And then, Jesus made an observation
that seems a little callous and somewhat troubling.
“You always have the poor with you,
but you do not always have me.” (John 12:8, NRSV)
When we hear Jesus’ comment,
it sounds to our ears a little selfish,
somewhat dismissive of the needs of people who are poor.
How can it be a good thing
to lavish a year’s work on some perfume for anointing Jesus’ feet?
One commentary notes that the rabbis of Jesus’ time—
and he was one himself—
debated among themselves
which was the greater act of mercy, of charity,
to give alms to the poor,
or to properly bury the dead.
And among those who sided with burial
the belief was that the dead must be properly buried
in order that they might share in the resurrection.
Jesus knew he had to die
in order that death would be vanquished by his Father’s triumph
and so that he might fulfill the promise we know so well,
“… that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16b, NRSV)
So it seems that because of the eternal good
that would come from his resurrection,
Jesus defended Mary’s act of thoughtful extravagance,
preparing him for a proper burial,
even if it meant that some poor people
did not receive alms from Mary’s charity.
And so, as the moment pressed down upon her,
as the sense of impending death drew near,
she lowered her head, dropping her tresses,
pouring out the perfume,
rubbing it into Jesus’ dusty and calloused feet,
wiping the excess with her hair,
as the room’s air grew heady with the sweetness
of the pound of perfume of nard.
We know in our gut what it’s like to feel those moments
when all we know is that our loved one is right here before us
—and we can trust that we have this moment—
but when it ends, we don’t know what will come next.
And so, we give all we have to show our love
in the instant of time we have to share
with our husband, our wife, our son, our daughter.
We know how to do this,
how to practice thoughtful extravagance
when those moments come,
and we ache with the knowledge that this time is priceless
because this person is precious to us.
And it is no different when we stand before our Lord.
There is no moment more dear to us
than the instant in which
the oil and the hands and the cross and the words of healing join together
and we hear afresh that our Lord
fills us with his grace and heals us by his gift of love.
There is no time more memorable
than when we realize
that we cradle our Lord
in the bread that rests in the palms of our hands,
that his blood passes our lips and satisfies our thirst
as we drink the wine from the cup.
These are the moments
when clocks do not matter,
when time stands still,
not as a way to torment us,
but as a gift of grace to enable us
to turn our attention fully, totally
to the one we love who stands before us.
These are the moments
when we find ourselves in fellowship
with Mary and Martha and Lazarus,
when we receive the grace and love of our Lord
so that we may face the times
of joy and pain that come to us—inevitably—
in our lives with one another. Amen.
Through a Son
“In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe.” (Hebrews 1:1–2, NAB)
As Serpent, So Son
“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14–15, NAB)
Faith, Hope, and Evidence
“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, NAB)
Happy in Forgiveness
Introduction
The Congregation Council at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., where I am serving as interim pastor, opens its monthly meetings with devotions. These are the thoughts for the March 2010 meeting. The Psalm is the one appointed for the preceding Sunday.
Reading
1Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
2Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
3While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.
4For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
5Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
6Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them.
7You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.
8I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
9Do not be like a horse or mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you.
10Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the LORD.
11Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart. (Psalm 32, NRSV)
DEVOTION: Happy in Forgiveness
I don’t know for sure what techniques parents use to discipline their children today, but one of the tools my parents used when I had misbehaved was to send me to my room with the instruction, “Think about what you have done.”
To be honest, I really don’t recall what I did spend my time thinking about. But I would guess I spent time licking my wounds, feeling sorry for myself, and gritting my teeth in anger at the injustice my parents had unleashed upon me.
But in the end, I would come to remorse, or something close to it, ask for forgiveness, and then be restored to my place in family life.
This psalm shares with us the thoughts and feelings that run through our minds when we find ourselves placed in timeout by God for the sins we have committed. There is some brutal honesty at work. The psalmist wastes away from the burden of sin, but upon confessing, finds God to be forgiving, high ground in the midst of the flood of life, a hiding place from predators, and a guard against trouble. And then, speaking from experience, the psalmist says, “Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the LORD.” (Psalm 32:10, NRSV)
Discussion
+ What does it feel like to confess a sin and to receive forgiveness?
+ Have you ever used the Order for Individual Confession and Forgiveness in the LBW?
+ If you have misgivings about making an individual confession, what might they be? What blessings might this practice offer?
+ Is there any sin that our congregation is keeping silent?
Prayer
O LORD, be patient with us and help us trust you enough to confess our transgressions to you. By your grace, forgive our sins and be our safe refuge in a dangerous and troubled world; through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.