EMMANUEL UNITED CHURCH

AT RIDEAU PARK

SCRIPTURE READINGS

November 7, 2010

GOD’S WORD FOR US

The First Lesson is Isaiah 55:10-13

Introduction: In this text, the Israelites who have settled comfortably into exile, are now being invited back to their home land.  Israel may appear to be a barren and ruined landscape but Isaiah says, "Have a little faith.  God welcomes you back with joy and even the mountains will burst into song."

¹⁰Just as rain and snow descend from the skies

and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth,

Doing their work of making things grow and blossom,

producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry,

¹¹So will the words that come out of my mouth

not come back empty-handed.

They’ll do the work I sent them to do,

they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.

¹²“So you’ll go out in joy,

you’ll be led into a whole and complete life.

The mountains and hills will lead the parade,

bursting with song.

All the trees of the forest will join the procession,

exuberant with applause.

¹³No more thistles, but giant sequoias,

no more thornbushes, but stately pines—

Monuments to me, to God,

living and lasting evidence of God.”

The Responsive Lesson is Psalm 98

Introduction:  The psalm is overflowing with wonderful reminders of how all of Creation sings praises to the Creator. Imagine the rivers clapping their hands! And the hills ringing out with joy! We can imagine the psalmist sitting by a stream and feeling the heart leap at the realization that God is everywhere.

Sing to God a new song,

for God has done marvellous things.

Your right hand and your holy arm have brought victory.

You have made known your salvation,

          and revealed before the nations your saving power.

You have remembered your steadfast love

and faithfulness to the house of Israel;

all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation

                   of our God. 

Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth;

break into joyous praise, sing psalms.

Sing psalms to God with the harp,

with the harp and melodious voice.

With trumpets, and the sound of the horn

make a joyful noise before our sovereign God. 

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it,

the world, and its inhabitants.

Let the rivers clap their hands,

the hills sing together for joy before God.

You come to judge the earth, O God,

to judge the world with righteousness,

          and the peoples with equity. 

The New Testament Lesson is Colossians 3:12-16

Introduction:  This letter to the church at Colossae urges people of faith to live in peace, to put love into everyday practice in their relationships and to express their joy to God in song. 

¹²As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. ¹³Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. ¹⁴Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ¹⁵And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. ¹⁶Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

This Worldly Music

          Where did you learn to love music?  Did you sing around a piano with family or around a campfire with friends?  Did a music teacher communicate a love for an instrument or a parent or grandparent sing to you at bedtime?

          Some of us learned to sing in church and those early songs are still with us even if we haven’t sung them for many years.  My wife Jan tells me she sang this hymn as a solo at a Sunday school Christmas concert when she was six.  Sing along if you can...

“When he cometh, when he cometh to make up his jewels,

All his jewels, precious jewels, his loved and his own.

Like the stars of the morning his brightness adorning,

They shall shine in their beauty, bright gems for his crown.” 

          Music has been there with us from our beginning in the womb.  There was that heartbeat of our mother’s body which we felt as much as heard.  And in those early years we responded to the rhythms of the world around us.  So children naturally move. They wiggle in their chairs.  We have some little ones here that dance in the aisles, moving to the music in their lovely uninhibited ways. 

          But it’s not just our bodies that feel the music; the hills are also alive with the sound of music.

           Church musician Don Saliers and his daughter Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls, remind us that when scientists tried to break down matter to its tiniest components, they moved from atoms, to protons to quarks.  Now some say the most basic bits of the universe are strings, incredibly tiny strands of spaghetti.  And these strings vibrate like strings on a guitar, at incredibly high frequencies.  Just think of it, the smallest particles in the universe might be vibrating strings.

           That sounds more like poetry than science - like the poetry of the psalms where floods clap their hands and hills sing for joy.  All of creation appears to be moving and singing.

          One of the creation stories in India, pictures God as a dancer and all of creation as God’s dance. In that story, we hear music everywhere because all that exists, is part of this cosmic dance, from the rhythmic movements of the galaxies to the vibrating strings at the core of us all. 

           The jury is still out on this one but some think that the world’s first musical instrument was discovered 15 years ago in a dig site in Slovenia.  Archaeologists found a bear femur that appears to have been carved into a flute, a 43,000 year old flute.  An amazing discovery but that is hardly the origin of music.

          Long before that possible hominid creation, there were the songs of the birds and the dinosaurs. Hundreds of millions of years before we showed up, billions of years before us, there was music in the air.  We are just the latest note at the end of an extraordinarily diverse symphony.  Still, it is a wonderful note. 

          The philosopher Suzanne Langer says “ the real power of music lies in the face that it can be true to the life of feeling in a way that language cannot.” 

          Or as Karen Armstrong puts it, “Music confronts us with a mode of knowledge that defies logical analysis and empirical proof.”

          Music has this great power to take us back to a particular time and place.   Gather at a Remembrance Day celebration and for many it is the music that moves us beyond logic and beyond words.   It’s music of lament.   Lament is an important part of grieving and it deserves a place in our lives and our liturgies.   We remember lives cut short in war and we believe toward a time when we will study in war no more.

          Saliers calls music ”a medium of formation & transformation.“

          Music has the power to transform us, to move us from here to there.  When we’re stuck, music can offer us a new possibility.

          Writer Anne Lamott shares a testimony of how that happened for her.  Anne has had “a llfe-long quarrel” with orthodox beliefs and behaviours and religion was the last place she thought to turn to for meaning.   But music was the invitation for this young woman who had battled suicide and addiction. 

          Anne used to visit a flea market just outside San Francisco.  Just across the street was a church, a homely ramshackle old Presbyterian Church.  It was the music n that place that forced her to stop and listen.  She heard words of gospel songs she remembered from going to church with her grandparents.

          Sunday after Sunday she would come back, stand outside the doors and listen.  After many weeks she got up the courage to move to the doorway and then inside.  The choir of five black women and one white man were making glorious music.  The congregation of about 30 seemed to radiate kindness and warmth.  She began to go back about once a month.

           She grew to love many things about that church, their care for one another, their community mission program, the way they welcomed strangers.  But she writes, “It was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.  The music was breath and food.”

          As she writes,

          “Something inside me that was stiff and rotting would feel soft and tender.  Somehow the singing wore down all the boundaries and distinctions that kept me so isolated.  Sitting there, standing with them to sing, sometimes so shaky and sick that I felt like I might tip over.  I felt bigger than myself, like I was being taken care of, tricked into coming back to life.”               

          That’s the point of the song, to bring us into life, and when we lose that connection to offer us new life again.  to invite us and our neighbour back into the song of creation.

          The silence was broken when God sang the Song,

          and light pierced the darkness and rhythm began,

          and with its first birth cries creation was born,

          and creaturely voices sang praise to the morn.”

          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 God. 

Amen.

with thanks to:

Karen Armstrong, Anne Lamott, Suzanne Langer, Don and Emily Saliers.