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Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Eighth Sunday of Pentecost

Within My Heart a Melody

Luke 10:38-42; Colossians 1:15-28

Reverend Richard E. Allen, Jr.

“Tweet Less, Kiss More,” was the title of Bob Herbert’s op-ed in The Times yesterday.  His point is that we should control our gadgets, rather than have them control us, so that we might truly live in our lives rather than becoming technologically one step removed from them.  Then he quotes a character in August Wilson’s play, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”  This character, writes Herbert, “says [that] everyone has a song inside of him or her, and that you lose sight of that song at your peril.  If you get out of touch with your song, forget how to sing it, you’re bound to end up frustrated and dissatisfied.”  (Bob Herbert, “Tweet Less, Kiss More,” The New York Times, July 17, 2008, page A19.)

Herbert’s on to something, I think. It’s a truth that the church has known for a long, long time:  Songs carry the day, and they carry our lives. Songs weave themselves into the very fabric of our lives and our hearts.  I know that while I was in seminary I learned a lot about God and about my life as a Christian, but what has truly supported with me through decades in the ministry and the up and down of my own life is the faith that was planted in Sunday School – by the teachers who loved our little class, and the songs that they taught us to sing. “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” comes to mind, and a few others. Nor am I alone in affirming the songs of my childhood.  Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, when asked to summarize his dense German “Church Dogmatics,” simply said:  “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”  Our faith is as simple, and as complicated as that.  Our hymns teach us our theology.  We live that which we deeply believe. And we deeply believe, because we long remember, what we sing.  Songs carry our lives; they teach us about our faith, and they linger in our hearts. The song of Jesus, the Christ, is the song that faith invests a lifetime in helping us learn and remember.  We lose that song “at our peril.”

As I pondered this truth, I recalled a song I haven’t sung in years, in fact, it’s a song describing our faith as a song itself:  “There’s within my heart a melody Jesus whispers sweet and low, “Fear not, I am with thee, peace be still, in all of life’s ebb and flow.  Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Sweetest name I know, Fills my ev’ry longing, Keeps me singing as I go.”  We’re here as Methodists, after all, because of the hundreds of sermons that John Wesley preached, to crowds in 18^th century England. But hearts of folks in those crowds were opened to John Wesley’s sermons by many of the six thousand hymns written by his brother, Charles.  The John’s sermons now seem strange to our ears, but we keep singing Charles’ hymns.  And so do other denominations, including Roman Catholics.  Among these, you might remember a few:  “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus;” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing;” “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today;” and “Love Divine, All Love’s Excelling.” And there are others, thousands of others.  Charles Wesley wrote these myriads of hymns out of his love for Jesus, so that we might praise God together; and so that we might learn a bit of theology sweetened by poetry and melody; and so that our hearts, once warmed by the gospel of Christ, might carry that sustaining knowledge of God.  Our faith, if alive, is carried in the deepest part of our hearts, where hymns sustain our lives.

Because of this power of song, it’s no surprise that when Paul writes to a small congregation of new Christians in the village of Colossae, to remind them of the faith in Christ that sustains both him and them, he begins his letter by quoting an early Christian hymn.  Indeed, these words may be part of the earliest hymn we know about, and the theology is deep, describing Christ as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation….  He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.   …  He is the head of the body, the church; he is the firstborn from the dead….  For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things … making peace through the blood of his cross.”  (Colossians 1:15-20, New Revised Standard Version.)

And, having quoted the hymn that they had likely sung together, a hymn that carried them in bad times and gave them their theology, he reminded them of their faith’s core affirmation:  “And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, [Christ] has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless….” (Colossians 1:21-22)  Do you hear that theme song of our faith?  “Jesus loves me, this I know… for the [songs they] tell me so.”

Yes, it’s the song that carries those early Christians, back to the heart of their faith.  It’s the song that Paul uses to sustain them when their trials begin, and their doubts confuse.  It’s the song, the core of their believing that Paul lifts for them as the reminder of the goodness and grace that is theirs in Jesus, the crucified, who now reigns in their hearts and their lives as the risen Christ.  And it’s the song that carried the earliest church, and songs carry us still.

In the heat of the summer, in the depths of despair, in the confusion that comes to every life, remember your deepest song.  Sing the song of your own life, and take comfort in the song of faith, and find hope in the song that God sings for the world in Christ our Lord.

And when we stand at the end to sing “Crown Him With Many Crowns,” remember that songs like these, that we sing over and over until we carry them in our hearts, ultimately carry us through hard times and celebrate with us in good times, and teach us who and whose we are, even as we sing them together, and when we hum them through our week as we go our separate ways.

Amen.

Mamaroneck United Methodist, July 18, 2010. SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1

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