TO WHAT END, THIS GLORIOUS PARTNERSHIP?
First Presbyterian Church, Spokane, WA
July 6, 1999
Good morning to you all. I can't tell you how pleased Linda and I are to be here in this beautiful city at this vigorous, very well planned, simply terrific convention. Your welcome and warmth to us two from back East has been simply superb and we relish our presence among you.
I note that we meet in this lovely sanctuary.
According to the notes in your program this gorgeous organ was installed here in 1993. This room itself, bright, attractive and redone I hear using this stunning organ as a centerpiece - and indeed all the lovely churches in this Spokane consortium - calls to attention one of my New England colleagues who persuaded his congregation to redecorate the interior of the church and at a special meeting complimented his flock on a job well done. He then pointed out that just one more thing was needed to make the sanctuary a place of real beauty. He said he had spoken to the board of Deacons about a new chandelier and wondered what the decision might be. The chairperson of the Board rose slowly to his feet and reported as follows:
"I don't think the Board will recommend that, Reverend, and for three reasons. In the first place, none of us could spell it. In the second place, if we got one there's no one who could play it. And in the third place, what this church really needs is more light."
And as for my being among you? What a privilege! When Janet Ahrend called, almost a year ago to ask if I might be available to take a crack at serving as what she called "Theologian in Residence" I sort of choked at the scope of the task. Ignorant of the protocols of this august Guild, a keyboard clod myself, flunking out of the Preparatory Department of the Eastman School of Music as a teenager, trading nagging hours of Czery etudes for the fleeting gratification of high school hoops - possessing ultimate admiration for the technical skills and frequently humbled by the theological acumen and spiritual depth of most of you - I began to get queasy about the title, "Theologian in Residence. I recalled - as these days drew near and the responsibilities loomed - I recalled an occasion an old college professor of mine told about in a relatively small Vermont Green Mountain community. The few Democrats in the region decided to make the highly irregular move of holding a Democratic meeting and issued an invitation to the public. The town minister was a stanch Republican, but he happened to have a Democrat in his congregation and he decided to attend as an observer to find out what was going on. There being no other clergy-type present, he was asked if he would open the meeting with prayer.
He said he was sorry, but he would have to decline. "To be frank," he explained, "I'd rather the good Lord didn't know I was here."
Well, here we are, and I don't want to make any claims in behalf of the Good Lord's support and encouragement, but I do join you with enthusiasm, a high sense of solidarity and a sure conviction that we are all about a great task, and in this thing together. I count it both a privilege and a necessity to serve as one of your teammates - one of your partners - to the end that we reveal, point to, make visible, illuminate, mediate the living God to men and women eagerly seeking something - Someone - beyond the hurly-burly of the moment to provide anchor and foundation, dying for a polar star on a moral compass amid near chaos where the choices stagger and exhaust.
And therefore, as we ask the question this morning, "To what End, Our Glorious Partnership?" we turn to the Psalmist who offers clues, who provides a setting, who knows what he seeks and where his search will end. Remember?, Psalm 84?
I think it was written for us. As the Psalter in the UCC's New Century Hymnal offers it:
"How lovely is your dwelling place,
O God of hosts!
My soul longs , indeed it faints
for the courts of God;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for
herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O God of hosts,
my Ruler and my God.
Happy are those who live in your
house,
ever singing your praise. . .
Happy are those whose strength
is in you
in whose heart are the
highways to Zion.
As they go through the valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs'
the early rain also covers it
with pools. . .
For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in
the house of my God
than live in the tents of wickedness.
For the Sovereign God is a sun and
shield;
he bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does God withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
O God of hosts,
happy is everyone who trusts
in you."
Other, of course, than sitting in this beautiful church, with your friends and colleagues, listening to another of what we heard Ursula Niebuhr call yesterday, "one of those little frock coated men standing behind the Bible who sometimes imagines himself God" - what to you is the most wonderful place in the world? If you had your choice, where more than any place, would you wish to be? I don't know whether you're being here this morning is your fifth or eighth or tenth choice but I don't doubt some of you wish you might be fly fishing somewhere up country, boarding a plane for Rome or Vienna, or playing with your grandchildren in some exotic place. Around our family, spread across the country, we have a couple of thirty year old sons who wish they played with Ken Griffey, Jr. in your new Seattle ball park, and another stuck in Chicago dying to join some of your friends and neighbors scaling the Cascades. I suppose there are as many dream places as there are people here. But church? In spite of the fact that we're here on this Tuesday morning - Church? That's where our Psalmist wants to be. There we find him, waylaid in some distant land, making his way back home, searching for the towers, the domes of his beloved Jerusalem, and rather than yearning for the streets, the playgrounds, the hearth of his youth, he sings in full voice:
How lovely - - how lovable - - is your dwelling place, O God of hosts."
More than any other place, our Psalmist wants respite there in the temple. And yet, as one commentator remarks, the Psalmist uses the language of a lover; not an aesthete who loves the stones, the design and architecture of the temple, but one who loves the God who dwells there. Indeed, the Psalmist continues, "My soul longs . . .," even faints . . "consumes itself by burning" - -for the courts of Yahweh." Though the Psalmist sings this, and though he looks for the telltale signs of the temple as he treads toward his beloved destination, he makes it clear that the building and its rugged outline but symbolize the true yearning of his whole being:
"My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God," he cries.
Indeed, out Psalmist sings the true greatness of the God whose temple he longs for. He knows the route he takes to Jerusalem leads him through some of the worst country in the world. It includes arid valleys threatening thirst and death. The traveler through those dread deserts seeks oases, pools of refreshment, the shade of a leaf. Using that blazing desert as metaphor, our Psalmist sees the God whom the temple represents as one who is like a cool spring in a parched valley, whose presence seems a gentle rain on scorched earth. This is the God who brings joy out of suffering; who bears us through our loneliness; who embraces us amid our illness; whose love will not let us go even as everything collapses around us. Listen:
"Happy are those whose strength is in you;
in whose heart are the highways of Zion,
As they go through the valley of
Baca
they make it a place of springs;
they go from strength to strength."
Our Psalmist seeks, you see, to offer perpetual worship to the living God. He claims my job; your job. His flaming desire lies in magnifying the grace, peace and power of the living God.
Isn't that what we're about, you and I? Joining those who stumble through a desert and making for them a place of springs enabling them to go from strength to strength, creating an ambiance for this most important of human activities: the worship of Almighty God?
In a wonderful reflection on what moments in the Psalmist's temple or in our churches can mean, the British New Testament scholar, and Dean of Litchfield Cathedral, N. T. Wright looks at all our majestic buildings and architecture and affirms the Psalmist's yearnings:
"It is the worship of God," he writes, "that prevents our buildings from becoming mere theme parks and museums. Without the warming fire of worship, these elegant buildings would be ancient monuments rather than living temples capable of inspiring the souls of men and women with glimpses of the divine."
And then, Wright launches into a paraphrase of First Corinthians 13. And almost responding to our Psalmist's longing he tells us - especially those of us forging and choreogrpahing the worship of the church - Wright tells us that it's proper for us from time to time to take stock in what we believe most important, most central, most vital in our common life together. His paraphrase of Paul echoes our Psalmist.
He says, "Though we sing with the tongues of men and of angels, if we are not truly worshipping the living God, we are noisy gongs and clanging symbols. Though we organize the liturgy most beautifully, if it does not enable us to worship the living God, we are mere ballet dancers. Though we repave the floor and reface the stonework, though we balance our budgets and attract all tourists, if we are not worshipping, we are nothing.
Worship is humble and glad; worship forgets itself in remembering God; worship celebrates the truth as God's truth not its own. True worship does not put on a show or make a fuss; true worship isn't forced, isn't half hearted; doesn't keep looking at its watch, doesn't worry about what the person in the next pew may be doing. True worship is open to God, adoring God, waiting for God, trusting God even in the dark.
Worship will never end; whether there be buildings, they will crumble; whether there be committees, they will fall asleep, whether there be budgets, they will add up to nothing. For we build for the present age, we discuss for the present age, and we pay for the present age; but when the age to come is here, the present age will be done away. For now we see the beauty of God, through a glass, darkly, but then face to face; now we appreciate only in part, but then we shall affirm and appreciate God, even as the living God has affirmed and appreciated us.
So now our tasks our worship, mission and management, these three; but the greatest of these is worship."
The Psalmist's hunger, the Scholar's mandate - they sound a little odd, a little obsessed, but their's could be our priorities too.
But let's face it many of us have to overcome some pretty stiff obstacles. When the Psalmist tells us he would rather be a lowly doorkeeper in the house of God than dwell complacently in the tents of wickedness, we really have to wonder! What is it like to be a lowly doorkeeper - or, maybe, a Director of Music and organist in the house of God? Better than the tents of wickedness? Most of us can testify to that one way or another. I did come across one of your more ancient colleagues who recognizes who in our churches bears the brunt of criticism besetting music. Not us preacher types. This coalleague of yours assembled some wry observations on the core of your work and made a dictionary-like list of some of them. I wouldn't be surprised if some of you have them framed on your consoles. For instance, he defines "Absence" this way:
"Absence: The only quality of an organist which is generally recognized."
Or those treasured feet of yours. "Feet: Many organists make use of both of these. Generally speaking the left one is in charge of vibrations, whilst the right cruises gently in sympathy. A good organist does little damage with the right foot."
Or the Offertory: "The process of collecting a wholly inadequate amount of money from a congregation. The resultant tintinnabulation (rarely, alas, a rustle) is covered up in many churches by a hymn, in others by an organ voluntary. In the latter case, the organist needs to watch the progress of the bags and plates, so that appropriate climaxes may be engineered whenever the collectors approach the most promising pews. It is, however, considered bad taste to stop playing and peer into the mirror. At organ recitals, the offertory is taken as the congregation leaves the church. A better idea would be to take it during the intermission - and count it publicly. The organist could then play the second half or not, at his or her discretion."
Or recital: This is usually a performance given by the organist with heavy emphasis on the word 'given.' Practicing for a recital is one of the least understood activities in the church. The start of such a session is signal for three things to happen - the vicar wanders in for a chat, the Verger switches on the Hoover, a student from the Royal Academy of Music pops up to inquire if practicing is allowed."
Sounds to me like the tents of wickedness can beat that any day!
And the tents of wickedness can look pretty tempting to preachers, too. Again, George Buttrick tells of an experience early in his New York ministry while standing at the rear of the sanctuary at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.
The congregants began leaving, as usual, and their greetings were on the whole, friendly and warm, until one gentleman came through the line and said,
"Dr. Buttrick that was the worst sermon I ever heard in my life" - and passed on. Dr. Buttrick was somewhat taken aback, but continued his greetings. And then the same fellow came back. Dr. Buttrick, he said, "of all the sermons I've ever heard in this church that was the weakest, and saddest ever offered" - and he went on his way. Buttrick was startled and continued with some unease to greet the folk. Then again this guy came back. "Dr. Buttrick," he said, "the pusillanimous drivel contained in the homily bored some of us, insulted others, and compelled some us to swear we'd never return to this church again. " Buttrick was, of course, profoundly shaken, until a kindly woman grasped his arm and said,
"Oh, Dr. Buttrick, don't worry about him. You can tell he's a little touched; he only repeats what other people say."
Oh what a job we have - us doorkeepers, lowly or not in the house of the Lord. The Psalmist with his hunger, the New Testament Scholar with his worship priority suggest our priorities too. They may sound a little off beat in our own time, but the Palmist's temple springs, the Scholar's calling attention to our priority of worship - that's what we're partnered to make possible: bending our skills to our imagination, our intellects to our hearts, our knowledge to our hope, surrendering it all to the grace of God, knowing we've developed a brilliant plan A, but realizing this side of heaven, we'll be improvising with plan B or C, and on occasion winging it, perhaps with a prayer similar to that of the Vermont preacher we mentioned a few minutes ago who insisted to that Vermont caucus he in no way wanted the good Lord to know he was there.
Surely, this glorious partnership of ours takes place amid a most challenging and explosive world. Our churches and our church people are no longer isolated from one another. Our parochialism, our denominationalism dissolves in global exposure.
I suspect the smallest town and most isolated cottage of your AGO region here in the Northwest are attached to the world with electronic gizmos of almost incredible capacity. Last week's Economist commented that the future is no longer about the big beating the small; it's about the fast beating the slow. Its living your life on the browser. It's being an Internet company or not being a company at all. "Ask any signed up member of the 'digerati' and you will be told that the Internet is the most transforming invention in human history. It has the capacity to change everything - the way we work, the way we learn and play, even the way we sleep or have sex. What is more, it is doing it at a greater speed than the other great disruptive technologies of the twentieth century such as electricity, the telephone, the car...."
And every day - every second - it seems the ties of a global village become tighter. Walter Wriston writing, not long ago, in Foreign Affairs asserts that "for the first time in history rich and poor, north and south, east and west, city and countryside are linked in a global electronic network of shared images in real time. Ideas move across borders as if they did not exist. Indeed time zones are more important than borders."
Our interdependence is a stunning reality. We do reach out and touch one another. The mingling of global cultures, perceptions, visions is surely one of the most dramatic realities of our own time.
Let me offer an illustration, surely not as erudite as "The Economist" and Wriston, but it reflects the daily story of anyone sitting in this room this morning. Indeed, it might describe the nature and globally independent setting of a Spokane resident this very morning:
"She begins the day when the clock radio in Japan begins to play music composed in Mexico. She goes into the bathroom, washes her face with soap invented by the ancient Gauls, just as her husband steps out of his pajamas - a garment originating in the East Indies - and begins to shave - a masochistic rite first developed by the ancient priests of Sumer and made a little less unpleasant by the use of a razor made of steel, an iron-carbon alloy discovered in Turkestan. She dons a wardrobe designed in ancient Egypt and adjusts a throat scarf, the vestigial garment of a shoulder shawl worn by a 17 century Croat.
Then down to breakfast for a cup of coffee from beans grown in Columbia, a banana from Guatemala, sugar from India, the pewter container made partly of Bolivian tin . She unfolds a napkin of Zairian cotton, and picks up cutlery compounded of Zambian chrome, Canadian nickel and Peruvian vanadium.
Then, of course, off to work, with a briefcase made of leather from a Nepalese Mountain sheep, in a car manufactured in Sweden, fueled by gasoline pumped in Kuwait. She carries an umbrella invented in China, pauses to purchase a Wall Street Journal whose editorial page seems to be written by an 18th century Scotsman named Adam Smith, using coins which first made their appearance in ancient Lydia. Then she scans the day's news - which will be set in Arabic characters on a Chinese invention, paper, but means of a German process. She will cringe at the antics of those dreadful foreigners and thank a Hebrew God in an Indo-European language that she is 100% - a decimal system invented by the Greeks - American - a word, of course, derived from the name of an Italian explorer sailing under a Portuguese commission."
That's the world we worship in. That's the world you and I seek to make coherent as we design our decisive liturgical encounters. Our congregations are constituted from this broad and global interdependent network. Here we gather this morning in a downtown church; my congregation sits on Copley Square in Boston, and wherever we are, wherever we come from there may be in our congregation a pluralistic, diverse, crazy and maddening mix of worshippers. On any Sunday morning, in any of our churches we encounter a diversity and pluralism of guests, searchers, first-timers, children of the children of the sixties - and as one of my friends puts it, we seek to draw together in a common loyalty and vision " a charismatic , dubious as to whether the spirit will splatter like the rain against the ark of our voyage, and beside her a social activist fearful that our prayers will not lead us to service with the suffering. The pietist will wonder why our churches worry about budget so much, while the banker thinks we read the wrong book. A liberal, afraid we avoid matching our faith with current events will sip coffee in fellowship hour with a conservative who expects to hear a quote from Billy Graham or Pat Robertson, but scarcely from Nehemiah and Amos. A feminist will check our language for inclusivity while a Latino waits for the word to be spoken bilingually. A classicist will resonate to Purcell and Palestrina while a boomer waits for Bill Gaither or Donna Adkins. Another musician will wince at the soprano; the tone deaf will know something's gone wrong with the tenor, a visiting minister of music will delight in a cipher, a fledgling music school student will be consoled by a wandering right foot on the pedal, a teenager will squirm at the ponderous pace of the proceedings, a professor will parse our syntax, a scientist mock our three story universe . . .
But there they are, the folk in our congregations, suburbanite, urbanite, rural dweller . . strangers and saints, colleagues and adversaries, leaders and followers, male and female, young and old, black, white, brown, yellow red, small group, spiritual seekers, promise keepers, united and disunited, optimist and pessimist, visionary, reactionary, first-strike-capability cheer leaders and turn-the other-cheek pacifists, fresh shaven and bearded, paunched and slim, curled and bald, wrinkled and smooth, bespectacled and blind, silly putty and pre-cast concrete, timber and tooth pick, shale and marble, wide awake and sleepily bored - the whole greater than the sum of all it parts" - some of them like my own father, as Paul Tillich observed, standing in church, unable to say the creed but eager to stand next to someone who can; none of them realizing that no one can, but all of them leaning on the others for succor and encouragement.
To be sure, they don't all walk into church with our Psalmist's intensity. They do not come with their ears attuned to our language, many can't crack our religious code, and our so called sacred music, some of it modulated and pianissimo is downright boring or anachronistic. The American Guild of Organists must sound like something out of a medieval cult; the metaphors of the Bible, the images of the Christ somewhat out of tune with all of the saviors to be found in medications, drugs, therapists, gurus, self help manuals, 12 step processes, Internet advice. We know motives are mixed and the culture is "multi."
Indeed, some of our congregations may be among those I read about in the New York TIMES a year or so ago. Some of you may recall. The TIMES ran a fabulous article on the religious mood of our time and in one article described the St. Thomas Aquinas House on the campus of Purdue University. "St. Tom's," as they call it, reads like a terrific church welcoming men and women from all over the religious landscape at every point in a religious pilgrimage. In any case, at St. Tom's they sell T-shirts with the best Top Ten church pickup lines. I called them up and asked for the lines. A wonderful young woman said she would send them to me, and as a special gift, send me a T-shirt too. Here, my partners in making worship a profound and life transforming occasion in rapidly changing and wildly pluralizing culture are, with a little editorial touch, the ten-best church pick-up lines:
Number 10: Hi, is this pew taken?
Number 9: Would you like to share a hymnal?
Number 8: Don't worry; I'm attracted to you in a purely spiritual way.
Number 7: I'm United Church of Christ. What's you're sign.
Number 6: So, you worship here often?
Number 5: They're singing our hymn.
Number 4: How about we go over to my place for a little spiritual devotion?
Number 3: Read any good Bible passages lately?
Number 2: This must be where all the angels sit.
Number 1: My prayers are answered.
But we know, that even with all these mixed motives and crazy reasons for stepping into our sanctuaries something wonderful can happen. We know that in the hour or so we are given, motives change, the spirit works in marvelous and unpredictable ways. Something wonderful can take place in our churches amid this vast and variegated flock. We know it can. That's why we show up on Thursday nights and Sunday morning. That's why we read and practice, that's why we study and pay perpetual tuition.
And by gosh our mumbled sermons and our keyboard hacking can, by the grace of God, serve as vehicles of transformation. I came across a wonderful story a month or two ago in Ann LaMott's brilliant collection of essays entitled, Traveling Mercies, Some Thoughts on Faith. And I wouldn't be surprised if some of you carried this little book around in your brief cases. It's a peach. But in one of her reflections Ms. LaMott reminds us what's going on in our mottled and stony, our disparate and seemingly distracted, our variously committed and splayed congregations.
I read this to you, for she tells a radiant story. "One of our new members," Ms. LaMott writes -- "One of our newer members, a man named Ken Olson, is dying of AIDS, disintegrating before our very eyes. He came in a year ago with a Jewish woman who comes every week to be with us, although she doesn't believe in Jesus. Shortly after the man with AIDS started coming, his partner died of the disease. A few weeks later Ken told us that right after Brandon died, Jesus had slid into the hole in his heart that Brandon's loss left, and had been there ever since. Ken has a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaciated, but when he smiles, he's radiant. He looks like God's crazy nephew Phil. He says he would gladly pay any price for what he has now, which is Jesus and us.
There's a woman in our choir named Ranola who is large and beautiful and jovial and black and as devout as can be, who has been a little standoffish toward Ken. She has always looked at him with confusion, when she looks at him at all. Or she looks at him sideways, as if she wouldn't have to quite see him if she didn't look at him head on. She was raised in the South by Baptists who taught her that his way of life - that he - was an abomination. It is hard for her to break through this. I think she and a few other women at church are, on the most visceral level, afraid of catching the disease. But Kenny has come to church almost every week for the last year and won almost everyone over. He finally missed a couple of Sundays when he got too weak, and then a month ago he was back, weighing almost no pounds, his face even more lopsided, as if he'd had a stroke. Still, during the prayers of the people, he talked joyously of his life and his decline, of grace and redemption, of how safe and happy he feels these days.
So on this one particular Sunday, for the first hymn, the so called Morning Hymn, we sang 'Jacob's Ladder,' which goes, 'Every rung goes higher, higher,' while ironically Kenny couldn't even stand up. But he sang anyway sitting down, with the hymnal in his lap. And then when it came time for the second hymn, the Fellowship Hymn, we were to sing, 'His Eye is on the Sparrow.' The pianist was playing and the whole congregation had risen - only Ken remained seated, holding the hymnal in his lap - and we began to sing, 'Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall?' And Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for just a moment, and then her face began to melt and contort like his, and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up - lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and next to her like a child while they sang. . . Then both Ken and Ranola began to cry. Tears were pouring down their faces and their noses were running like rivers, but as she held him, she suddenly lay her black weeping face against his feverish white one, put her face right up against his and let all those spooky fluids mingle with hers. . ."
Ms. La Mott reflects, "I can't imagine anything but music that could have brought about this alchemy. Maybe its because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way."
What we compose and assemble in our partnership for our people, many who like the psalmist got through that desert country is nothing less than transcendent gift, a presence offered from beyond, outside, a mystery even from within.
And just once more, our partnership can bring not only personal transformation, it can provide the impetus for justice. I had occasion to read Paul Westermyer's recent monograph, "Let Justice Sing: Hymnody and Justice." It's a fine and sympathetic piece of work, and I commend it to you. I confess I still bear a wound from this icon of Church Musicianship. He came to speak to our Hymnal Committee at its very first meeting in February 1990, and as he assayed the United Church of Christ and the possibility of its developing a hymnal he spoke as a devout Lutheran convert from the UCC and blistered the UCC for what he called its one practical theological principle: autonomy, assuming, as a result we could never assemble a hymnal equivalent to the denominational hymnals of the Lutheran, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Disciples, the Catholics. He's partly right. We're not so connectional. We do have congregations using a variety of hymnals emerging from both the publishing houses of other denominations as well as a batch of them, like "The Worshipping Church," or "Hymns for the Family of God" from the free standing publishing houses like Hope.
Nonetheless, in his new book about hymnody and justice - a book, by the way, including a footnote about the UCC's "New Century Hymnal" with skepticism about what he terms the justice of the book's disregard for the church's memory bank, but otherwise avoiding reference to the one hymnal which, when driven to choose between aesthetics and justice, exhibits the latter. I must say I am pleased to learn that when the Metropolitan Community Church right here in Spokane canvassed hymnals sustaining the full humanity, under God, of their membership, they chose the New Century. In any case, Westermeyer, in this thoughtful, learned edifying piece brings revealing and feresh insights, yet, he seems reluctant to see that some of the classical Christian metaphors and orthodox code words carry freight that in themselves assume a certain structure of the universe and bear images granting authority or preeminence to a certain nature, human or Divine, sustaining, in God's name, inferiority among the human family. For all of our memory bank, and good works we cannot let that happen. Tony Morrison captured the essence of the argument during an interview a year after winning the Nobel Prize. In it she championed a literature, as she said, "not written for white people." A question came from the interviewer:
"In your Nobel acceptance speech you spoke against 'unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis,' - language that 'suppresses human potential.' Some of your critics thought you were using the Nobel ceremony to advocate politically correct literature."
Ms Morrison answers: "You know, the term 'political correctness has become a shorthand for discrediting ideas. I believe that powerful, sharp, incisive, critical, bloody, dramatic, theatrical language is not dependent upon injurious language, on curses. Or hierarchy. You're not stripping language by asking people to be sensitive to other people's pain. I just can't go around saying, 'Kill Whitey.' What does that mean? It may satisfy something, but there's no information there. I can't think through that. And I have to use language that's better than that. What I think the political correctness debate is all about is really about the power to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them."
And my friends, my partners in this great ongoing project of ours, one of our ends is to disperse and recast this power to name. For God's sake.
To what end, then our glorious partnership? Friends I am in the ranks of the clergy probably for a lot of reasons, and just as we consider, Greg Peterson, the person who plays our organ and directs our choir at Old South, a Minister so I am convinced you represent nothing less. We are team. We are partners. One of the reasons we do what we do emerges from a belief that gathering for worship, to praise the God of the Psalmist, to recall the great sagas of our creation, liberation and destiny, to sing through our suffering, to pray, even though it were, as James Muilenburg once said, "Blubbering before God", - - gathering for worship is to regain a semblance of our true humanity. There we can provide and be captured by a vision, drawing us onward. There we can mediate and offer grace reconciling us to the heart of the universe and including us in a community broad as eternity itself.
Is it any wonder we can rejoice with Gerhard Tersteegen
"Source of every blessing, bless the one's who name you;
let your words and deeds proclaim you.
Like the saints and angels praising you in glory,
may your servants sing your story.
And in all, great and small,
may we do most nearly,
what you love most dearly."
Let us pray:
Sovereign God of earth and heaven, in an age of change and doubt
Keep us faithful to the Gospel, help us work your purpose out.
Here in this day's dedication, all we have to give, receive;
we, who cannot live without you, we adore you. We believe! Amen
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