Pray Twice

Our Church has been gifted mightily by its musicians and our Hymnal is a treasure trove of these gifts.

This sermon was preached on the Feast Day of William Byrd, John Merbecke, and Thomas Tallis. The readings which inspired the sermon were the following:

Revelation 15:1–4

John 15:1–8

Psalm 47

When I say “meeting” what words come to your mind? Boring. Excruciating. Awful. Waste of time. Too long. These are some of the words that typically pop into my head when I think of most meetings. And, I think this is often the case. I know I have been in meetings that make it feel like time itself is standing still. However, there’s one meeting I have always enjoyed since getting here to St. John’s: our music planning meetings!

Now, when Evan Garner was still here I loved these meetings because watching Foster Bailey and Evan negotiate hymn selections was like watching two seasoned boxers go toe-to-toe for twelve rounds. I often felt like the underqualified referee who tried desperately to keep the fighters from taking any low blows, punching after the bell, or biting anyone’s ear off. The conversations now are a little less lively, but nonetheless they are times when I genuinely look forward to attending a meeting. Why is this? I’ll give you three reasons.

First, and please don’t tell him this, but I have learned so much about church music from our organist. I say don’t tell him because he’s insufferable already. Still, he has always been brutally honest with me about things I can do better, and he’s also shared so much about what makes for good church music—most notably, that people can actually sing the hymns we choose! So, during these meetings I joyfully look forward to figuring out what pieces both apply to the church season or day and get people singing.

Second, I look forward to attending our church music planning meetings because it is amazing to watch how we can weave together music, readings, prayers, and eventually sermons to fit a day or a season perfectly. Sometimes parishioners remark about how great everything fell into place on a given day. Well, I am sad to break it to you but there is a lot of prayerful planning, probably a couple of arguments, and of course God’s Spirit that leads to making those selections. In other words, our liturgy doesn’t magically fall into place. Still sometimes even I am taken aback at how perfectly our songs reflect everything else in the liturgy.

Finally, I happily anticipate music planning meetings because in them I am always reminded that to sing is to pray twice, as St. Augustine is supposed to have said. Yes, sometimes I needed to pray not twice but continually when Evan and Foster were arguing over hymns. And yet, so often during a service I get most lost in prayer when I am singing. During other parts of the service I might be so focused on what I need to be doing (“Am I holding my hands right?” “Did I annunciate that prayer well?” “Was I smiling or frowning during the Eucharistic Prayer?”). However, when we sing I receive the great gift like the rest of us to pray doubly. And, we not only have our own church musicians to thank for that, but also those who came in ages past, like the saints whom we celebrate today.

John Merbecke, Thomas Tallis, and William Byrd were church musicians in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Merbecke composed a musical setting to accompany the 1549 Prayer Book. Tallis survived four monarch shifts back and forth from Catholic to Protestant, and all the while he provided for the changing needs of the Church of England. Perhaps that is why he is known as the father of English Church music since the Reformation. Byrd composed mass settings, motets, graduals, psalm settings, anthems, and hymns for the great feast days of the Church. Tallis and Byrd even combined for some years and held the Crown Patent for the printing of sheet music. These musicians and so many others have given us a treasure trove of songs to sing. And, they have been ones who help our music and our liturgy to be a sacrifice of praise, worship, and thanksgiving.

As we celebrate the feast of Thanksgiving tonight and tomorrow, may we with joyful hearts be grateful for Church musicians throughout the ages. They may at times be insufferable, pigheaded, irreverent prima donnas. However, they help us to pray twice as we sing songs that bring us into not only describing who God is, but also participating in the wonder, love, and praise of Our Lord. And for that, thanks be to God. Amen.  

Just Another Day

Happy Birthday Teddy... It's Just Another Day, or is it?

Today my family is celebrating my son Teddy’s first birthday. It’s a lovely day! We will feed him his favorite foods of almond butter and guacamole for dinner—yes, we are aware of how pretentious and hippie-ish those foods are! We will let Teddy open and play with presents throughout today. And, we will even stretch the celebration out as he got to see family and godparents last week and will see his other godparents this weekend. But, as my former boss liked to say, “It’s just another day.” So is the nature of our lives.

When I was in seminary, Brother Curtis Almquist SSJE came to speak to us. He spoke with such self-evident wisdom that afterward I felt like in one night I had gone through 365 days of one of the flip calendars with bits of brilliance on each day. Something from that night in particular stands out to this day. Brother Curtis said we must hold two truths one in each hand. In one hand remember that for you the universe was made. And, in the other hand know that you are dust and to dust you shall return. I have loved wrestling with these contrasting principles since that night—and today especially these words come back to me. They also are connected to the truth that Jesus shared in thiscoming Sunday’s Gospel lesson.

Jesus responded to the religious leaders of his day by reminding them of their collective ancestors. In the midst of talking about himself as the Bread of Life Jesus said, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” As Tim Callahan, our Director of Youth Ministries said in today’s staff meeting, these are harsh words from Jesus. They are direct. Even though God provided abundantly for those wandering in the wilderness that physical food was not what believing in God was all about. It was not what God yearned for in God's people.

(As a particularly important aside, this is not about the Israelites "Jewishness." That is not why they died. Remember Jesus was a faithful Jewish person. The trouble was that in the wilderness those People of God were constantly grumbling to God, they missed the food that lasted beyond the next time they were hungry. And, we too often make this mistake in our own day. We can be too worried about our physical needs to comprehend our spiritual needs.)

We, like the people in the wilderness long ago, like the people of Jesus’ day, and like those people since then, must be fed by more than just physical food. For we are dust and to dust we shall return. Even my precious baby boy will one day die. I weep just thinking about that truth. Still, it is the truth. Our physical bodies will give out, our minds will become feeble, and yet there is more to the story.

Jesus told those who had ears to hear that he was the bread that came down from heaven. Those who believe have eternal life. If we consume the bread of life, then we will live forever. Anyone and everyone; you, Teddy, and me can rejoice in the truth that for each of us the universe was made. Even more joyfully we remember that God sent Jesus to show us the way of love. There’s nothing—not even death—that can separate us from God’s love and light and life!

Sometimes it is difficult to allow more than one truth to dwell within us. Sure, today is special because I get to celebrate Teddy and remember what a blessing and gift he is from God and at the same time I get to see how fragile life is. I am reminded both of our feeble nature and the fire of God’s Spirit that always burns within each of us. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return and for you the universe was made. Hold both of these truths within you. Today is special, and it is just another day.

The Widow Wins: Luke 18:1-8

This blog post is in response to the Rev. Evan D. Garner's (a long way from home) blog post entitled, "I Don't Get the Unjust Judge", which deals with this coming Sunday's gospel.

The Rev. Dr. Jane Patterson told my Luke class one day that the words “parable” and “parabola” share a root word, which she interpreted to mean that for us to understand the deeper implications of Jesus’ story we have to move. Like the Rev. Evan D. Garner, I do not like the method that Jesus employs in this coming Sunday’s gospel. If I could I would like to just extract a message, something like keep the faith, keep praying, the Son of Man is coming, but to throw away the method Jesus uses is to the throw away a gift from God. While my sinful heart sometimes leads me astray, I believe willfully throwing away God’s gift is problematic at best and at worst leads to a life of sin, vice, and nothingness. So, what are we to do?

As I see it, we cannot just extract the message (keep the faith, keep praying, the Son of Man is coming!), as the characters (the unjust judge and the faithful widow) help to employ that message, and without them we lose a message altogether. We only get a glimpse of the importance of prayer by exploring who these two characters are within the culture of Jesus’ day. The unjust judge, one who would ignore the plight of a widow, certainly “neither feared God, nor had respect for people,” and in fact, ignored also the commandments of God, which were so important to the people of Israel and made them different from the Romans who would just throw beggars to the wolves. In brief, this judge is one unrighteous dude. 

In contrast, our other character, a benevolent widow, is the poster-woman of the Faith. She, along with orphaned children, are the persons that God's chosen people are bound to take care of no matter what. And yet...no one is taking care of her. She cannot even get a judge to rule in her favor. In a society where a judge is not able to rule in favor of an innocent widow who has nothing something is going wrong. Unfortunately, this inequality hits too close to home, as I think of all the unjust ways that the poor and outcast are misrepresented within our judicial system. The bright spot in all of this, is that the widow keeps at it. She stays true to her conviction. She fights the good fight, she fights the system and you know what?… SHE WINS! If that doesn’t get us fired up about our Faith, it’s hard to see something that will.

And, for the last few chapters in Luke, Jesus has been building this whole strange argument about Faith and what it really looks like to be faithful (Luke 15 was about God’s faithfulness, Luke 16 was about the shrewdness of faith and the lessons of Dives and Lazarus, Luke 17 was about being open to the miraculous power of Faith), and this is the culmination of his Faith argument. It's weird for sure, but maybe Jesus is not saying, “Wow, look at this unjust judge, boy our God is just like him,” as he has already shown us clearly what God’s faithfulness looks like (the Good Shepherd, the Seeking Widow, the Accepting Father). Instead, Jesus perhaps says, look at this woman who is so determined in getting what she wants that it consumes her every fiber. Jesus is saying, "This is what I’ve been trying to say about our Faith. It is persistent. So now you be persistent." Now, I am certain that I, Seth Olson, am not God, nor will any of us ever be God, so we cannot strive for becoming a judge, whether just or unjust. Instead, our focus is on what we do have, the power of prayer and the power of Faith. God is faithful to us always, now reciprocate that gift, don’t just throw it away.