Sing a New Song

 

Poem/ Reflection for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost    St. Thomas Church, Ahoskie, NC

Thomas E Wilson, Guest Presider                November 13, 2022

Sing A New Song

Isaiah 65:17-25        Canticle 9          2 Thessalonians 3:6-13        Luke 21:5-19

The opening Hymn for today was Earth and All Stars, with  the refrain “Sing to the Lord a New Song”. The Hymn is so much fun with all those “loud boiling test tubes” and “ hard bashing hammers”, “athletes and bands”: all those images of people gathering and working together. One of the problems we have is that we refer to St. Thomas  as a church building, when it is an assembly of people gathering and working together to be the Body of Christ, singing a new song. The New Testament Biblical word for “Church” Is “ekkelsia” , which is a gathering.

Thank you for choosing that Hymn. It opened up the words for the poem  and the Reflection.

In Luke’s Gospel lesson for today, Jesus is pointing out the Beautiful Temple in Jerusalem. His disciples are so impressed, but Jesus urges them to look beyond the surface and see the institution that exists only for itself.  This was not the first Temple to be built in Jerusalem. The First was built by Soloman and destroyed by the Babylonians.  Many of the people were taken into exile. While in Exile they tried to remember how to worship without the Temple. The Persians overthrew the Babylonians and allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem and begin to rebuild. This rebuilding  is what Isaiah is writing about in today’s lesson with such hope. However the Temple that was built was a disappointment to the people  Ezra will report that at the dedication of the 2nd Temple many people cried out with grief their memories of the old Temple and the  fact that the new Temple was not as magnificent.

Centuries later the Romans conquered the area and set up  a Roman collaborator, Herod , an Idumean, meaning he was a descendent of Esau rather Jacob, as the King of the Jews. This was not a popular move as Herod was seen as a Roman stooge rather than a real King. In response, the Romans decided to subsidize a massive Public Works Campaign to put people to work and assuage the ire of the people and build up acceptance of Herod. The centerpiece of the Public Works Campaign was to  make the 2nd Temple a real eye-popping doozy of a religious center. Jesus and many of his countrymen looked at the Temple as a work of vanity, cynical manipulation and a money making religious  scheme to separate good people from their money; sort of like a 1st Century Las Vegas resort with religious pretensions. So, when the Disciples start to “Ooh”and “Aah” about it. Jesus tells them that the political and religious underpinning of the Temple was rotten and it would be just a matter of time before it would all collapse; and if God was just it would be sooner rather than later. Jesus is telling the disciples that it is past time to “Sing a New Song”.

Jesus was a “Synagogue”, or a “gathering together” kind of person and he, and his cousin John, had very little use for the whole Temple prancing and dancing. I think in the eyes of Jesus, the Herodian Temple is a metaphor for each one of us. If we are like the Temple, and exist only to feed our own ego, wasting our energy of trying to impress people and become the center of our own existence, treating people as objects to be manipulated; then we lose the reason that God created us- to be part of a community of love and care.

I was put in mind of how I grew up. When I was a teenager I wanted to be “IMPRESSIVE”. I was an idol in my own Temple and spent a lot of energy making sure I would be noticed and admired. The problem was I didn’t spend as much energy developing my skills.  My first professional acting job was in an outdoor Drama. I was good in my acting, but  when it was time for the crowd to sing together. I was the only member of a cast of sixty told just to mouth the words because I was drowning out some of the best singers on the east Coast. I so much want to be heard that my ego was not interested in being part of a unified sound. I did not spend the time listening on how I might work with and help others.

I wish I could say that humiliation was the end of my ego being out of control, but it is a lifelong process. The struggle never really goes away.  A decade and a half later when I was a Social Worker and heavily involved in working with and helping others, I was serving as a Lay Reader/Chalice Bearer during a service in Boone, North Carolina, when the Priest, Chuck Blanck, of blessed memory, one of the most compassionate Priests I have ever known, took me aside and asked that I not get between him and the Organist since I was drowning  out the music he needed to hear to stay on pitch. Eight years later, only by the Grace of God and not by my own still lurking egotism, I was Ordained in that Church. 

Jose Marti, a 19th century Cuban revolutionary and Poet who died fighting the Spanish before the Spanish American War, wrote in “Wandering Teachers” :

People need someone to stir their compassion often, to make their tears flow, and to give their souls the supreme benefit of generous feelings. For through the wonderful compensation of nature they who give of themselves, grow; and they who withdraw into themselves, living for small pleasures and afraid to share them with others, thinking only of greedily satisfying their own appetites, will gradually change from a human into pure solitude, carrying in their hearts all the gray hair of wintertime.

The reality for me in my old age is that I cannot stop the gray hairs from growing in my beard, but I can stop them from growing in my heart. The gray hairs of the heart begin when we start focusing on ourselves as the center of the universe.

We need other people to work with and work for in order to Sing a New Song in our lives. Pittman McGehee, an Episcopal Priest, Jungian Analyst, Teacher, Poet and Lecturer reminds us of the truth; “You alone can become yourself, but you cannot become yourself alone”.

 Sing A New Song

As the only member of a cast of sixty asked not to sing, 

Because I was throwing off some of the better voices.

Being told paid as actor was one of the wisest choices 

That I could use; and only that talent to the show bring.

And, as the only Chalice Bearer whose Priest asked 

Me not to get between him and organ melody notes,

Because he couldn’t hear them over my raucous croaks,

Coming from my own contributions to a Santus blast.

Thing about following Christ; you’re not here to perform

For an audience, but to sing a new song with our life,

During all the times of joy, failure, struggle or strife,

To share, not with prancing but living into a new norm.

A norm not burdened with some temptations of glory,

But by being faithful in continuing the old, old story.