A spoken and sung message for a worship service at Shiloh Inwood United Church, Ontario as we dedicated a new keyboard in memory of Irv and Ruby Syer, thanking God for their ministry and service to their Lord through music.
How do you navigate through the unsettled and unsettling space between the ending of one world and the beginning of a new one?
How do you venture into the deep end of life instead of just splashing around in the shallows?
How do you hold onto your integrity and your humanity while all week long you are subject to great pressures to act in ways that are less than human?
Every Sunday we dare to proclaim that the way to get through this confused and confusing time is to worship the living and true God who meets us in Jesus Christ. You find your way by following wherever the Holy Spirit leads. You live deeply and fully by risking your life in the company of a Jew from Nazareth who “lived briefly, died violently and rose unexpectedly” (Will Willimon) over 2000 years ago. You retain your humanity by letting your worship of this Triune God shape the kinds of community you build with others.
You get through this confused and confusing time by worshipping Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
It is a bold claim that we make. It is a contested claim. There are many people who will not agree with us. Indeed, there are many other gods on offer. There are many saviours vying for your time and your energy and your devotion.
Living in a time such as this is hard on your soul. It can leave you restless and wounded and weary. So, you will need to be intentional about who or what you are worshipping with your life. You will need to make sure that what you are giving your life to is worthy of your devotion:
Will it feed your soul or diminish it?
Will it see you through the hard parts of life or will it let you down, betray you, leave you without the capacity to keep going?
Is whatever or whomever you are worshipping deeply true — so true that it will make your life true, maybe even holy?
Some of the hymns that we know and love have stood the test of time because they point us to the true and living God who alone can make our lives true and holy. We sing these songs and we find ourselves in God’s presence. There, our souls are healed and strengthened and made new. For many people, “How Great Thou Art” does that magnificently.
We sing our way into God’s presence and discover that we are in the midst of great mystery — the great mystery of God’s wonderful love and grace and blessings and truth. Most of us are not very comfortable with mystery. We prefer explanations and strategies and certainties. We like feeling like we are in control, that we can manage whatever is going on.
The problem is, explanations and strategies and certainties and management and control are too shallow to grow your soul. They do not feed your spirit.
If you want to have a soul that is healthy enough and deep enough and resilient enough to navigate through the difficult wilderness that our world is facing, you are going to have to spend time in the mystery of God’s love and grace. You are going to have to spend enough time there that God can do God’s healing and saving work in you.
That’s what some of our hymns do for us. They act as gateways into deeper and richer communion with God. They invite you into God’s gracious welcome. “Here, taste of the joy and delight that are God’s intention for you. Here is space for Christ’s forgiveness and healing power in your heart. Be assured you that God’s love and welcome and forgiveness and healing include even the most wounded parts of your soul — the parts that you try harest to hide or ignore.”
You sing those songs in the company the other wounded or broken souls that Christ has rescued, that the Holy Spirit is setting free, that God is healing with mercy greater than we can say. We sing these songs together and we create a little more space for God’s mysterious love to do its life-giving work among us. Come, let us sing of that wonderful love.
“Come, let us sing of a wonderful love”
Do you know who Neslon Mandela was? He was the leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. He was arrested and put in prison for 27 years because of his work against the injustice that was destroying his country. In his autobirography, he wrote that one of his greatest sources of encouragement was the times when the other political prisoners in the jail would sing. They sang the hymns that they had learned in worship. They sang the gospel songs that their communities had taught them.
The prison guards would say, “As long as the prisoners sing, we know that their spirits are good. When the prisoners no longer sing, we know that we have won. They system has succeeded in killing their spirits.”
As long as the prisoners could sing, they were free.
Civil rights leaders in the southern U.S. in the 1960’s tell a similar story. When they were put into prison, the system would separate them from each other. That way they could not communicate with one another.
“We found another way,” said one of them, a Dr. Ernest Patton. “We sang. The guards would say, ‘If you don’t stop singing, we are going to take your mattresses away from you.’ So, we threw our mattresses out into the hallways and kept on singing.”
You and I may not be facing the threat of prison because we live out our faith but we do live in a spiritually dangerous world. We live in the midst of pervasive fear and violence. That wears away at our soul. Somebody said once that people these days live with more anxiety than the human soul was ever meant to bear. The atmosphere we live in pollutes the air with life-eroding lies.
There will be times when we feel like we don’t have the courage and support and strength within us to keep going. The songs that the church sings that develop, nurture, grow our souls, making them stronger for those when the times come that we need deep courage and strength and the capacity to endure. The church sings its faith and points us toward the Saviour who has come to dwell in our midst. In our singing, we are met by Jesus who gives us what we need.
The changes that are happening in our world can be exciting for some people and terrifying for others. They can unsettle us or make us feel like we are on a grand adventure. One of my favourite authors, Craig Barnes, has written that everyone is ‘on the move’ these days. Even those who stay at home are finding that the world is changing around them at a rapid pace. People can be ‘on the move’ in one of two ways. They can be ‘on the move’ as nomads, simply wandering from place to place; or, they can be ‘on the move’ as pilgrims.
Pilgrims are on a journey with their hearts and minds and spirits attuned to the presence of God. Wherever they are, they are looking for signs that the risen Christ is on the premises. It is that presence that make the journey holy. It is Christ’s presence that makes every part of the journey a gift of God’s grace to you. That is especially true in those wilderness times when you can feel abandoned, alone, without resources. You make it through by leaning on the promise that nothing in all creation can separate you from the life-giving, life-transforming, life-renewing presence of God.
Some of the church’s hymns give voice to our prayers in such a time. They hold our souls till we make it home to God.
“Guide Me , O Thou Great Jehovah”
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