A Poem/ Reflection for First Sunday after Epiphany St. Andrew's Church, Nags Head, NC January 12, 2020 Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy
Remembering the Song
In the Hebrew Testament Lesson for today from the book of Isaiah, the writer we call 2nd Isaiah is writing a song for the exiles in Babylon to tell them that they are chosen to come back from exile and return to the Promised Land to begin a ministry of being God's ministers of reconciliation of the world; “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”
Matthew remembers that song centuries later and uses it to tell the story of when Jesus came to the River Jordan. John the Baptizer is on the border to the Promised Land helping people put the past of spiritual exile and separation from God behind them, washing their ghosts away in order to enter a new future. Here he meets Jesus. John tells Jesus that Jesus has no past to forgive, but Jesus says, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” The Greek word that the Matthean author uses is “δικαιοσύνην”, (dikaiosuné) which means something that the God of all Creation would really smile upon.
My favorite way to define “righteousness” is not about being especially good or well behaved but about being able to sing with God in a way that transcends all differences. In the mid- sixties there was a duo who sang songs like “You Lost That Loving Feeling” and “Unchained Melody”, and some black Marines from El Toro Marine Base heard the singing with what would later be called “blue eyed soul”, and said to them, “That was righteous, brothers!” They took the name as a compliment. I take the term as a definition of how we are to sing with God, God's songs, in our lives to break down all barriers. When I told Pat about this as I was writing the poem and about listening to Unchained Melody, she said, “Tell me, please, you aren't going to sing that song from the pulpit.” Well I haven't made up my mind yet, but it has been recorded at least 1,500 different times by 670 different artists in 14 different languages since it was first written in 1955. Maybe after I get rich and famous off being a Supply Clergy, I will record it. Maybe not.
When Jesus submits to Baptism by John, he is breaking down the barriers. Ignatius, the 2nd Century Bishop of Antioch, wrote in his Epistle to the Ephesians: “For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary according to the plan of God, he was from the seed of David, but also from the Holy Spirit. He was born and baptized [έβαπτίσθη], that he might cleanse the water by his suffering.”
“To cleanse the water”. In a human body there is between 50 to 75 percent water. On the surface of the earth, 71% is covered by water. The air is filled with water vapor. We are born into this world when the water breaks after it covers the baby for nine months. In dreams, water is the symbol of the unconscious, which we must spiritually enter to understand to depths of creation, the mystery of our lives and the mind of God. It is through the water of Baptism that we hear God's song and through communion, taking the body and blood into ourselves in the hope that we become what we eat, the body of Christ in this world, as we sing God's song by bringing justice, mercy and healing into this broken world.
Too often Baptism has been seen as a washing away of sin, but Jesus saw it as a new birth of singing a song with God. We humans are obsessed with sin, so much so that we never quite get around to cleansing the water with our blessings. In many churches there is a small basin of water found near the entrance to the sanctuary, a “font” from the Latin meaning a spring, in which a person dips his/her finger into the water and blesses themselves with the sign of the cross and saying, “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. It is a simple act of rededication of one's self to be a blessing to all with whom we come in contact. It is a reminder of our own baptism, not of our being sinless, but our main work in life is to bring blessings and healing to a broken world. The sins and ghosts of the past pale in importance to the gracious spirits of loving action in the present and the future of healing the world.
Often when I come to the font I am reminded of the font, the spring of living water, and rededicating myself with spiritual water, I will sing another song, a hymn written in the 18th century:
tune my heart
to sing Thy grace!
Streams of mercy never
ceasing,
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming
tongues above.
Praise the mount! Oh, fix me on it,
mount
of God’s unchanging love.
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that goodness,
like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to Thee:
prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
prone to leave
the God I love;
here's my heart, oh, take and seal
it,
seal
it for Thy courts above.
Last year that song became especially
important to me as I was with some of my nieces and nephews and a bunch of the
grand-nieces and grand-nephews. Thaddeus, age 9, wanted to give me a present,
so he sang that hymn he had memorized for the church my nephew Mike, his wife
Kristy and their seven children attend. I looked at him, with his red hair and
clear soprano voice, and I remembered the faith I had when I was his age and
the song took me back to that place. It was a gift to break down the barriers
of 60 plus years. As he sang the second verse, the version he memorized has the
old words, “Here I raise my Ebenezer”; and the old Theologian in me wanted to
ask him if he knew what an “Ebenezer” was. It means a “stone of help”, an
outward and visible sign of God faithfulness, a rudimentary altar to remind the
Old Testament Prophet Samuel, and us, of God’s grace and love. When he finished
the song, I knew his singing was an Ebenezer. Sometimes we don’t need to
define; we just have to encounter. Thaddeus blessed me.
Today,
remember to sing the songs of God in your lives.
Remembering the Song
Righteous Brothers, singing Unchained Melody,
blasting out of the juke box as a freshman's beer
uncovered the bottom of his glass and of his year
at that school in which he had found no remedy.
His school work was behind and he lacks a clue,
of how he'd catch up with growing a year older,
yet not being anyway close to a maturity holder,
about knowing differences 'tween false and true.
Left behind were his Sunday school ideas of sin;
empty, as there hadn't any lightning bolts divine,
only there had been a lack of meaning in his time,
longing for touch of joy coming from deep within.
Decades later I tell him; "Comes from caressing
actions of reaching out to others, giving a blessing."
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