St. David's United Church

St. David’s United Church

Rev. Dan Chambers

February 14, 2010

I Corinthians 13

Laying Down the Soundtrack

(The last in a sermon series for Epiphany:

Love Songs from God)

Some of you who this morning are particularly awake and astute would have noticed that the scripture we just read was put to music and we sang it as our opening hymn, Though I May Speak. This celebration of love is a perfect scripture for Valentine’s Day. So this morning we read and sing about a love that goes beyond the rush of erotic love. As we read and sing, we’re opened to a love that never ends. This Valentine’s Day, whether you’re partnered or single, may love have its way with you. Because this is our common human vocation; this is our ultimate reason to live on this earth: to love and to be humble enough to allow ourselves to be loved.

We can get all dewy-eyed when we speak about love. We can imagine that it’s a soft and romantic thing. But the love that’s celebrated in

I Corinthians 13 is a love that is strong, enduring, at times gritty, at times tender. It’s a love that is willing to wash the feet of the homeless, that’s willing to forgive, that’s willing to go shopping and cook once again for the Out of the Cold program, that’s willing to write a check to Haiti, for example, when you don’t really have the extra funds but you do it anyway because you know they need all the help they can get. This Valentine’s Day, we celebrate a love that’s wide enough to include a range of other people, it’s a love that’s willing to share sadness and is able to celebrate another’s joy. This is why in worship and in song we open ourselves to be shaped by a love that is “the greatest of these…”

I Corinthians 13 is only one example of many scriptures that are put to song, others include Psalm 23…Psalm 100…Isaiah 60.1…not to mention classical pieces like Handel’s Messiah or Bach’s Ave Maria. We sing our faith.

We do this because the Bible itself sings. The beginning of Luke’s gospel reverberates with song: after the visit from the angel, on her visit to her cousin, Elizabeth, Mary sang the magnificat (1:46-55); angels sang to a bunch of trembling shepherds in a field(2:14); and when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple to be purified according to “the law of Moses”, the sages Simeon and Anna sang praise (2:22-38). All that singing in the first two chapters of Luke!

David the king sang and danced in the street; Mariam sang on the banks of the Red Sea after her people escaped the Egyptian army, and even in the tortured darkness of the cross, Jesus offered a song of lament, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me,” which he surely did not literally sing, but it is the first line of Psalm 22, which would have been sung in the Jewish liturgy.

Ours is a faith to be sung. Whether we’re singin’ the blues or clapping and stomping to an ecstatic gospel chorus, music fills us, shapes us, gives expression to our soul. A vivid example happened here in Vancouver on Friday night: did you happen to see the Opening Ceremonies? Besides being visually stunning, inclusive, poetic, inspiring and creatively beautiful, the music played a critical part in sharing the story of our country. Who we are as a country was movingly conveyed through K.D. Lang (singing Leonard Cohen), Sara McLaughlin, Joni Mitchell, Garou, a Celtic flourish, Bryan Adams and Nellie Furtado and others. The music helped tell the world who we are as Canadians.

So when we think about St. David’s and who we are as a congregation — what our identity is as a community of faith — what’s on our worship playlist? I have a friend who, when in university, was one of those students who cranked his stereo system loud enough to be heard by passengers in jets flying 3,000 feet overhead. And he wasn’t playing Bach. He was playing the Talking Heads, The Police, and Aerosmith.

But I’ve seen his ipod playlist. Yes, he does have a solid foundation of rock ‘n roll. But he also has classical and jazz, pop rock and world music, even a splash of country and even a few representative artists from Windham Hill (though he doesn’t like to talk about it).

Most of us, even the most fervent head-bangers and the most solemn classical devotees, probably enjoy a broad range on our playlist, or in our CD or tape, or…album collection. We might be most drawn to a particular genre of music, but also appreciate and even need a diversity of musical expression. We want the range.

Just like our ipod playlist or CD collection, I suspect what we’re looking for in our worship playlist is a range of hymns and songs and musical expressions. We know it’s not our personal playlist, but our collective playlist, and by definition that means the range is going to be even broader still.

One thing is for sure: we won’t all agree on every hymn. Think of your family driving in the car. Even if there are only two people, an adult and, let’s say, a teenager, chances are you will not select the same radio station. These days, as soon as our eldest daughter hops into the car, she fires off her request, “Can we listen to the Beat?” The Beat is a radio station that sounds mostly like… It makes me nostalgic for the days we listened to Charlotte Diamond and Raffi.

Now, if you have three or four people in the car, musical preferences become even more varied: Michael Buble, the Rolling Stones, Mariah Carey, or, “can we just have silence, please?”

And if you get out of your car and walk into a sanctuary where we not only have four generations gathered in one room, but also people from different countries and cultures, well…let’s just say that the range is necessary. The question isn’t, “What hymn do I like?” The question becomes, “What kind of community do I want to be part of? Do I want children and youth around? Do I want people in their 30’s and 40’s? Do I

want people in their 70’s and 80’s? Do I want people from Mexico and China, Taiwan, Korea, the United States, England and the Netherlands?” For ten years I’ve watched you, and I know you value a community of wonderful diversity. If we want to walk with a Christian community of diversity, then that changes our playlist.

I know, for example, that you support our children and youth with heartfelt generosity. You don’t just pay lip service. You’re there for them. You support their fundraisers and talent shows; you come to their worship services and musicals. Many of you have said that your favourite part of the service is when the children come up for the Gathering Time. Sure the service has a bit of a buzz when the children and youth are with us, but thank God for the buzz and thank God for the age-range!

Not quite a year ago, a group of youth put together a rock band, and after the service one Sunday morning, they played a mini-concert. I was so impressed that many of you stayed, younger adults and adults no longer young. And you didn’t just grit it out. You smiled. You tapped your foot and cheered them on, and perhaps I wasn’t the only one a little surprised at how good they had become in just a few months. You gave them a standing ovation when they finished. In a word, you loved them by supporting them, and that morning our playlist expanded.

It seems something about the face of God would go missing if we failed to make room for different generations.

We also know it’s not always easy to include the range. If you asked Colleen Blair, “Do you love our youth?” She’d say, “Absolutely.”

“Each one?”

“No question,” she’d say. “Each one.”

“So they matter to you?”

And I can hear her reply, “Of course they matter to me!”

“Are they sometimes challenging? Not very cooperative? Exasperating?”

And if she were honest, I think she’d reply, “Of course! They’re teenagers!”

To include the range, we need to be stretched. Some of us like stretching more than others. You might consider it yoga for the community; to be willing to stretch our personal preferences so that we include people of a younger age or different culture.

A few weeks ago I attended a conference in Victoria called Epiphany Explorations. Leonard Sweet was one of the bright and engaging speakers that weekend and he made this point:

If you were a citizen of India and Christian missionaries visited your village, what would you think if they said, “You’re clothes are funny, your hair is strange, your food is primitive, your music is weird. Oh, and I’m here to tell you that Jesus loves you.”

Who would believe them? We don’t want to be told Jesus loves us, and then told everything about us is strange. It’s meaningless to be told Jesus loves a hypothetical version of you, but actually everything about you is a little off.

But isn’t this what even the most encouraging of us can do with our youth? “Your clothes are too risqué, yours are too grungy; your hair’s too long or too purple; your music is obnoxious and way too loud; and what’s that thing in your lip – a piercing? But hey, come to church, we’ve got a great youth program that’ll help straighten you out and Jesus loves you.”

Love never fails, the letter from Corinthians tells us. So we must ask ourselves, how well do we express that to the youth, the person from another culture, the gay person, the elderly, the physically challenged? Do we let them know that they are accepted here for who they are? How well do we communicate that there’s a place for everyone here, that in the wideness of God’s mercy, all are welcome here? How hospitable are we to the range?

A broad-reaching hospitality will affect our playlist. Our worshipping soundtrack will change and will always change, because the community changes and that’s how we stay fresh. I don’t know about you, but I like to buy CD’s or download songs to my playlist. I don’t want to have just three CD’s in my collection. I’ll hear a song on the radio I like and will write it down and look for it, or someone will give me a CD and my collection is expanded. Sometimes I’m given a CD and I don’t really appreciate it right away. I have to listen to it a few times before it grows on me and becomes an important part of my collection.

It’s no different for a church. Thank goodness we don’t still use the same hymnbook that was used in the 1950’s! We’ve had four different hymnbooks produced since that time because our playlist is alive, dynamic, changing all the time, just as we are. The hymn book we use today was published in the mid-90’s, and already we’ve put together another one called More Voices, because we want to make room for the range.

We want people to know in our music, as well as in our words and actions, that they are welcome here. In our music and hospitality, we want to be a community that doesn’t just celebrate Valentine’s Day once a year. We live it every time we come together. It’s part of us. Because love calls us together. Love defines and shapes us. And this is a love that never ends.

Through the grace of God.

Amen.