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.  

Not Even Fools

This past Sunday evening was the 33rd (or 34th, depending on who you ask) Annual Festival of Lessons and Carols at St. John's Church. It was marvelous! A packed congregation heard delightful music from a joint choir of Good Shepherd Church and St. John's, with superb stringed accompaniment, a masterful director (Lauren Cantrell Salerno), and even an average sounding organist (I kid Foster Bailey). This service was a rarity for me, as my only responsibility was to read the first lesson, which meant I was able to sit in the congregation with my wife enjoying the festivities from there.

Right before the service I was sitting on the aisle, doing my best to look pious, and waiting on my wife to arrive when all of a sudden there arose such a clatter. Okay, it was not that clattery, but one of the acolyte servers went to get the processional cross and in the process the flowers attached to the front of it fell askew. The server looked around in distress, and I went up to help him repair the disheveled looking ornamentation. As I left my seat, I put my bulletin down to reserve my place.

After a few minutes of three sets of hands holding the cross, steadying the arrangement, and twisting some pipe cleaners into place the cross' decoration looked as good as new! I walked back around to where I had been sitting only to discover that not only was my seat missing, but there were no longer any aisle seats to be found in the whole church. No good deed goes unpunished! The apologetic parishioner who had accidentally sat down where I had been had not seen my bulletin and this kind person offered to get up, but there was not room enough for both my wife and myself there as the rest of the pew had been filled.

Usually I am a pretty well balanced person, but in this moment I kind of lost my cool. I went to the very back of the church and sat fuming for a few moments until my wife arrived. When she did I expressed what had happened, and I found myself getting more upset, not at anyone in particular, but irrationally I huffed and puffed over the situation. How foolish I can be!

Fortunately, the service started and the opening anthem drew me ever so slightly away from my frustration. Then, when the appointed time came I walked all the way up the side aisle to read Isaiah 35:1-10, which was not only the first reading at Lessons and Carols, but is the first lesson for this coming Sunday. This beautiful passage with vivid images of a crocus blooming, deer leaping, and springs of water bubbling up depicts how God will make even the deserts lush, even the fearful strong, and even the blind sighted! And yet, what convicted me this past Sunday night causing me to question my own silly behavior jumped off the page when the prophet described the Holy Highway.

"A highway shall be there, 

and it shall be called the Holy Way;
the unclean shall not travel on it,

but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray." 

(emboldened for emphasis)

As the service continued my own foolishness kept on nagging at my soul. Isaiah's passage describes not only when Christ came in the person of Jesus bringing healing to the deaf, lame, and blind, but also how Christ will come in the future to fulfill all things. On Sunday evening, as the beauty of the service unfurled and the words of the hymns kept sticking in my throat as the loveliness of the music struck me mute, I saw Christ coming in the present. Mostly telling me to let go of my foolish ways!

Advent is a season when God may just slow us down enough to remind us of how foolish we are, and yet even as fools we shall not go astray! Jesus came to claim not only the deaf, lame, blind, fearful, and poor, but also all of us fools who think that somehow we are better than those with different needs than our own. As you prepare your heart for the coming of Christ enjoy the music and celebrations that are planned and executed so well, but even if or when everything falls apart know that Christ is still there guiding all us foolish travelers on the Holy Way that leads us home to God!

Keep Me Burning

You can find the audio for this sermon here, or by copying the following into your web browser: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3199407/VN810273.MP3.

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine with me the most beautiful wedding you have ever witnessed. The church adorned with fragrant flowers, candles enlightening the space with such warmth, the groomsmen dressed to the nines, the groom anxiously waiting at the front of the church, the bridesmaids reflecting the bright radiance of young love, and if you listen closely you can almost hear the music of this special moment. [Foster plays a few notes of bridal entry music]

I truly appreciate Foster for helping me out with that one. You can obviously open your eyes now. In that time of thinking about the most beautiful wedding you’ve ever attended did the thought at all cross your mind of some mishap, misstep, or mistake in the ceremony? Probably not! Yet, every wedding I’ve ever attended had a moment in which something went wrong. These moments though seem to add some tenderness to the nuptials: The groomsmen almost forgetting their tuxedos. The bride’s hair falling down from the humidity. A rain shower forcing the reception into a cramped space. Or even the bridesmaids forgetting the oil for their lamps. Wait, what?

Jesus uses the tender moment of a wedding ceremony in today’s gospel to help us understand something about the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet, from our vantage point his message of what heaven is like comes off as harsh, scary, and hellacious. To better understand what Jesus means we need to know more about wedding customs of Jewish people two thousand years ago.

Just like today, marriages back then were fraught with emotion. Two families coming together to form a new family tends to expose the underlying tensions, strengths, and weaknesses of both the bride’s and the groom’s upbringings. Yet, unlike today, the ceremony would have begun at the home of the bride. As the bridegroom approached, the guests including the bridesmaids, would have lit torches, which we are reminded of in today’s ceremony when the bride and groom leave their reception accompanied by guests lighting sparklers. The festive occasion back then would continue with all the guests processing to the groom’s home where his parents would have been preparing a feast for the ages!

In today’s gospel lesson though something goes horribly wrong. The groom does not show up. Often the ceremony would have begun at sunset, but in this story dusk quickly fades to dark and the groom is nowhere to be found. Ha, you thought the best man forgetting the ring was bad, think about the groom being delayed for six hours. So instead of the festive occasion of heading towards the groom’s estate, the guests and the bridesmaids wait and wait and wait. Finally though they all feel drowsy and every one of them falls asleep.

“Look, here is the bridegroom,” someone shouts, “Come out to meet him!” To make it from the bride’s house to the groom’s house one would need a lantern at midnight, as there were no street lights or cell phones with flashlights built into them. To be prepared for such a situation would be wise certainly, but I am unsure if it would have been normal. It seems that these wise women would have been the girl scouts of their day, always being prepared.

So we know what happens next the foolish ones ask their wiser companions if they might borrow some oil, but the journey being long and requiring an abundance of fuel the wise ones say no. Desperately the foolish maids go seeking oil from a merchant. The likelihood of someone coming to the door at midnight for such a request seems more foolish than forgetting oil. In their hurrying around these women miss the procession and arrive once the doors to the party have long been shut. Even after knocking and crying out, “Lord, lord, open to us,” the opportunity has been lost. The master does not recognize them, saying, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.” Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the hour nor the day.

We might have heard someone on the street corner yelling this last statement out, so that we might repent and turn away from our sinful ways. Many people believe the end of days, the rapture, will be scary. So they take keep awake to mean become paranoid, but interpreting Jesus’ parable in this way seems to miss the point and overlook the truth of Christ’s return.

The groom who represents the returning Christ comes late. Actually later than even any polite person could have been expected to wait, except those five wise women who packed the extra oil. We’ll come back to the oil in a minute. The foolish five ran off when they realized their sisters would not give them any oil. I wonder though why these fools did not just stay put. Even if they could not borrow oil, they could have borrowed the light of those who had the oil to keep on burning. Certainly the groom would have allowed them to enter if they were walking together arm in arm!

Still that is not how the story goes. The five fools go off in pursuit of oil to rekindle their lamps from some other source. Yet, I wonder if these women could have asked the groom for some oil to keep their fires lit. Again, this is not how the story goes.

We might hear keep awake and believe that we are to live a paranoid life looking for Jesus to pop out from behind every corner we walk around like a sort of holy jack-in-the-box. Yet, that is not what this parable indicates to us. The maids, all of them the foolish and the wise, fall asleep. The difference between them is preparing for the coming of the bridegroom, that and oil.

We need oil in our lamps to keep them burning. Give me oil in my lamp keep me burning, as the old song goes. We cannot get that oil, it seems, at the last minute from our fellow banquet-goers. However, I look around this church and I see oil everywhere I look. Not kerosene, nor something else flammable, not even olive or palm oil, but rather the oil of hope, the oil of peace, and the oil of love.

If you need oil for your lamp I believe that God has drenched us in it here at St. John’s. Whether it’s in practices of piety, prayer, study, outreach, spirituality, or some other Christian action this is a great place to fill up your lantern. Yet, no one can do it for you. Each of us must spend time daily replenishing our stores of oil.

So keep awake, or rather be aware of the light of Christ that shines within you. And take care so that you have enough oil to make it through the dark nights ahead, for we all have been invited to a heavenly banquet, but we know neither the hour, nor the day. Amen.