How Can I Keep From Singing?

In recent weeks we have had plenty of rain, perhaps enough that we would be willing to share a bit with some other parts of the country, were it possible.

The predominant color of things is Green!

But that is not the case everywhere, or all the time.

The Middle East is not only a harsh place politically, but also agriculturally.

In many areas the predominant color is desert brown, and in other areas, the time when things are green is severely limited.

The observation hits even harder when one rides or walks through the land.

Israel is not an easy place.

Abraham, and so many more, lived on the very edge; from time to time they had to flee starvation because of drought or conquest.

Their neighbors and descendants still live on the edge; disaster and death are always close at hand.

Survival is marked by the availability of water at the right place and right time...neither too much nor too little.

I have been amazed to watch the flocks wandering around the brown landscape in Israel; where are they ever finding anything to eat?

Yet this area where he hold on life is tenuous is also the place where Israel's songs of God's praise grew up.

The collection of 150 Psalms covers the range of human thought and emotion.

One of the words to describe the overall tenor of the Psalms is “confidence.”

No matter what happens, there is confidence that somehow God has the situation in hand and will turn even an unlikely scene to his use.

Even that most solemn Psalm 22, which a single voice intones at the close of the Holy Thursday liturgy, the Psalm which begins “My God, why....” ends not with despair but with profound confidence, leading the assembly to praise.

The Psalmist who laments “..trouble is near, and there is none to help. Packs of dogs close me in. They stare and gloat over me....” moves on to sing “...Praise the Lord, stand in awe of him...he does not hide his face from the poor. My soul shall live for him...he hears them.”

It is this basic attitude which lies behind the Second Lesson today.

Paul has profoundly serious matters to discuss with the church in Ephesus, and he wants to be sure that he places the discussion in exactly the right context,...within the praise of the Lord God.

In fact, the entire passage we heard today is one complete run-on sentence in Greek, one effusive and glorious song of praise of the One who has done all these things for us.

The subject of so many of the verbs is God.

Blessed be God, Paul begins.

God is the one who blessed us, God chose us, God destined us, God redeemed us, God forgave us, God lavished grace upon us, God made things known to us, God sealed us in the Holy Spirit, and God unites all things in himself.

Whew! What a list, in one passage.

Later in the letter he will unpack what some of those things mean, but here at the beginning of the letter they are simply listed as reasons for praising God.

Note where the action is: with God and not with us!

Christians gather on Sunday or other times, first of all, in order to praise God.

We try to live righteously the rest of the week, not in order to get somewhere with God, but because we have already arrived in promise by God.

We bless God on Sunday in worship, and we bless God on Monday in all of our other tasks.

...because God has blessed us, chosen us, adopted, redeemed, and forgiven us.

Our lives are to be a song of praise to God, the one who first blesses us.

And so it begins in this hour also.

It is hard for us to do this seemingly straightforward job, because each of us is caught up in the cult of me, what I think, what I feel, what I want.

Note that Paul mentions none of that!

His message this day is large, grand, and cosmic.

He begins, not with us and our anxious navel-gazing and moral temperature-taking, but with God who creates, chooses, forgives, and redeems us.

We sing because we have been blessed before we could think or say or do anything at all.

This is a consistent message of the Bible, all the way back to Abraham, and up to and including our own Baptism.

There are lots of times when we talk about what to do and what not to do, that is, ethics.

But that is the second thing: the first thing is always praise.

The church is to be more than simply a rule-following place.

It is to be the assembly where we are called, through our praise, to signal the Advent of God's kingdom, --where we will begin even now to be, as the writer of 1 Peter says, “...a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people.”

--wherein our laments are not the last word, and our self-centeredness is overcome;

--where memory is used to hold onto what is vital, not merely to what is comfortable;

--where anticipation is a even stronger word than memory;

--where we do more than grieve for the way things used to be,

but look for ways that we can speak freshly to another generation.

William Willimon warned: “We keep people busy going to meetings instead of looking for the kingdom.

Rather than being a signpost pointing to the kingdom, we become a roadblock constructed by a church which has forgotten how to throw a party.”

May that never be said of us!

The table will be set in a few minutes for the first course of that party's banquet.

Here at St. Mark's it is a rather formal dinner-party, but it is a party.

Let's never forget that.

We sing,

--we tell the most important story the world has ever known,

--we share the banquet's first course,

--we pause the celebration in order to go out and to invite others to join the party,

and then we are back at it next week...

--a bit more praise of the host of this gathering,

--a bit more celebration and anticipation,

--a bit more of the first course of the heavenly banquet,

in the company of still more people who hunger for the news that there is a point to life's struggles,

--that there is a future,

--that there is a good word

--that this good word is the final word from God.

“...as a plan for the fullness of time to gather up all things in him, in heaven and things on earth.”

Let no one hold back; let everyone join in praise of God.

Let all sing Alleluia. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.