Exodus 15:1-13
Psalm 98
Luke 1:39-55
Colossians 3:12-17
Anne Lamott is a best-selling author,
a beautiful story teller and theologian. In her book Traveling Mercies, she tells the stories of her life. At age 30,
she found herself living in a tiny apartment, pregnant, addicted to cocaine, a
wanderer who was lost, hurt, and broken. I love this story of how she was
found, of how she came to faith in Christ through the beauty of music. She writes:
On the weekends, the gigantic lot where the Greyhound bus depot used to be was transformed into one of the country’s largest flea markets…every square foot was taken up with booths and trucks and beach umbrellas and tables and blankets…This is where I liked to be when I was hungover or coming down off a cocaine binge, here in the dust with all things for sale to cheer me up. If I happened to be there between eleven and one of Sundays, I could hear gospel music coming from a church across the street. It was called St. Andrew Presbyterian, and it looked homely and impoverished, a ramshackle building with a cross on top. But the music wafting out was so pretty that I would stop and listen.
Finally, I began stopping in at St. Andrew from time to time, standing in the doorway to listen to the songs. I couldn’t believe how run down it was, but it had a choir of five black women and one rather Amish-looking white man making all that glorious noise, and a congregation of 30 people or so, radiating kindness and warmth. Scripture was read, and the minister would preach, and it would be all about social injustice—and Jesus, which would be enough to send me running back to the sanctuary of the flea market.
I went back to St. Andrew once a month. No one tried to con me into sitting down or staying. I always left before the sermon. I loved singing, even about Jesus, but I just didn’t want to be preached to about him. To me, Jesus made about as much sense as Scientology. But the church smelled wonderful. There were always children running around or being embraced, and a gorgeous stick-thin deaf black girl singing to her mother, hearing the songs and the Scriptures through her mother’s flashing fingers. But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open. I could sing better here than I ever had before. As part of these people, even though I stayed in the doorway, I did not recognize my own voice or know where it was coming from, but sometimes I felt like I could sing forever.
Eventually, a few months after I started coming, I took a seat in one of the folding chairs. Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone’s heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food. 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, trickled into coming back to life.
The sounds coming from the sanctuary drew her in, eventually drawing her back into life. It wasn’t the words found in the prayers of confession and thanksgiving, the thoughts of proclamation, or the rituals of sacrament that helped her pick up the pieces of her life, but the sounds and the singing and the songs. The music was breath, food, life to her, sentiments that drew her back into life, drew her to Christ. And she did eventually start staying for the sermon, stayed so much that she has even dared to teach the stories of Jesus to children in Sunday school!
There are so many times in our lives when we simply can’t find the spoken words to express our thanksgiving or our sorrow, our fears or our joys, our absolute brokenness, so many times when spoken words simply aren’t adequate. That is when we turn to the songs that fill our hearts and our lives.
I think about the effect that music has in my own life: about
how I get weepy when we sing the last verse to Love Divine, All Loves Excelling: “Finish then, thy new creation;
pure and spotless let us be. Let us see thy new creation perfectly restored in
thee.” I get weepy since we sang this affirmation of resurrection in Christ at
my grandmother and aunt’s funerals. I think about how I have turned to the
lyrics and melodies of the Indigo Girls and Adele this week as I have
experienced the brokenness that sometimes come with relationship; think about
the beautiful moments of music, some of the most spiritual moments of my life,
as I have listened to 1,000 youth and college students lift their voices in
Anderson Auditorium at Montreat. Music puts breath into my life.
Music fills all of our lives, so I don’t think it’s an accident
that music rings throughout our Scripture, from the very beginning of our faith
story. Moses and the Israelites sang a song of salvation when they were brought
out of their slavery after so long: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has
triumphed gloriously; the Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become
my salvation.” The psalmist sang a song of thanksgiving as he urged us to “sing
to the Lord a new song, for God has done marvelous things. Make a joyful noise
to the Lord, all the earth; break into joyous song and sing praises.” Mary, a
scared, unmarried, pregnant teenager, sang of song of acceptance and praise to
the Lord: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my
Savior.” And I love that Paul tells us to join together in song to celebrate
that we are God’s chosen ones: “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness,
humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another…forgive each other.
Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect
harmony…let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, let the word of Christ
dwell in you richly…and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and
spiritual songs to God.”
From the Israelites who sing praise after their salvation, to Mary who sings praise in her ultimate thanksgiving to God, songs resound throughout our Scripture—songs of lament, songs of praise, songs of anguish, songs of thanksgiving, songs of community. There is something about music that breathes breath into the broken pieces of our lives, something
that leads us to stand in the doorways of the sanctuary and breaks us open until we feel welcomed and ready and open enough to hear the story of Christ. And then, when we are opened up by the life found in the community of Christ, opened up and made new by the message of Christ’s love, we are called to come together, to live. Called to come and celebrate and be community together, to clothe ourselves with the love of Christ and bind ourselves together with psalms and hymn and spiritual songs. All to God. All for God. Thanks be to God.
