Our Earth We Now Lament To See

 

    I found this hymn by Charles Wesley in our methodist hymnal (#449) today. I came home after church and quickly recorded my own little version of it. Wesley's words, my melody. 

    Our earth we now lament to see
    with floods of wickedness overflowed,
    with violence, wrong, and cruelty,
    one wide-extended field of blood,
    where men like fiends each other tear
    in all the hellish rage of war.

    As listed on Abaddon's side,
    they mangle their own flesh, and slay; 
    Tophet is moved, and opens wide
    its mouth for its enormous prey;
    and myriads sink beneath the grave,
    and plunge into the flaming wave. 

    O might the universal Friend
    this havoc of his creatures see!
    Bid our unnatural discord end,
    declare us reconciled in thee!
    Write kindness on our inward parts
    and chase the murderer from our hearts!

    Who now against each other rise,
    the nations of the earth constrain
    to follow after peace, and prize
    the blessings of thy righteous reign,
    the joys of unity to prove,
    the paradise of perfect love!
    

My Persistent (but Accidental) Blasphemy

It happens almost every time we sing that verse of that song.  Even though I know it’s coming, and I know that I’m prone to error – I’m anticipating it, trying to sing it correctly.  But, almost always, I don’t.

My persistent (but accidental, I swear!) blasphemy occurs whenever we sing the final verse of Charles Wesley’s hymn, “And Can It Be” and I sing:

"No condemnation now I dread;

Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;

Alive in Him, my living Head,

And clothed in righteousness divine,

Bold I approach th’eternal throne,

And claim the crown, of Christ, my own."

instead of "...through Christ my own…"

Perhaps this is the warning light that my super-ego is failing. 

They Are Gone, But Something Remains – A Graveside Committal Sermon

I am performing (Performing? Performing isn't the right verb, but the only other ones I can think of: "conducting," "leading,"..."officiating" are even worse...) a graveside committal service this morning.  G. died last week.  The ashes of he and and his wife, V. (who died a few years ago) are being interred together.

Funerals are for the living - and for that reason, the final song quoted in this sermon was one of the family's choosing. 

***

We are here this morning because they are gone, G. and V.  

While alive they shared our lives, and we theirs.  We shared their joys and triumphs.  We suffered their losses and miseries.  The highs and the lows.  The pains. The celebrations.  And all the daily routines and the extraordinary wonders that compose this life. We shared these together.

But they are gone from us.  Gone from this life.  And yet something of them remains, something more than their ashes which we commit to the elements, today. We have the memories of them formed within us, and the shape they gave to our lives. These things outlast our fragile bodies.  Call it spirit, call it soul; though the body is temporary, something remains.  And it is that something that we honor today. 

We are here because they have gone. In this life we will hear their voices no more.  We will never take their hand or clap their shoulder.  No more shared laughter over jokes and games.  No more shared tears for grief and wounds. For G. and for V. these things are past.  Yet something remains.  The past is gone, just as G. and V. are gone from us.  But something remains.  The future is wide, wider than we can know.

Jesus of Nazareth, our Savior and Lord, on the occasion of the death of his friend, Lazarus, said “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”[i]   There is life after this life, and in this we take great comfort.

Death is not the end.  This mortal life is not all there is for us.  In his famous play, Hamlet, William Shakespeare wrote the lines, “all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.”[ii]  All that lives must die.  Everything and everyone passes through this brief life and then is gone.  Yet, we insist that something remains.

“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”[iii] Faith remains, even when our friends and loved ones have passed, Faith remains.  Hope too, remains even after this flesh is gone.  And love.  The greatest of these, Love, remains.  Our love for G. and for V. does not cease when we commit their ashes to the elements.  Love remains. 

And it is God’s great love for us that gives us ground for our faith and our hope and our love.  It is his great love that nullifies the power and finality of death.  He breaks the power of cancelled sin and sets the prisoners free.[iv] It is his love that has swallowed up death in victory and gives us immortality,[v]  so that we might remain forever with him.

We are here because they are gone.  And their absence leaves us with grief and sorrow.  But we take comfort in what remains.  We have our faith that God is good.  We have our hope, the blessed hope of eternal life with God the Father.  And we have our love, our love for each other and our love for G. and V., despite their absence.  Our memories of them will keep that love alive within us, and in however many days and weeks and months and years we have left here ourselves, we will share those memories with others.   And in doing so we will share that love with others. Love not only remains but Love grows.

We may gather around the grave to grieve today for what we have lost, but we take comfort in all that remains.  We say farewell to G. and to V.  We entrust them to God’s great love, and place ourselves within that same love for peace and comfort in the days ahead.

So, go rest high on that mountain.
[G. and V.] your work on earth is done.
Go to heaven a shoutin’
love for the Father and the Son.[vi]

Amen.

---

[i] John 11:25 – 26 

[ii] Hamlet – Act 1 Scene 2

[iii] I Corinthians 13: 12 - 13

[iv] O For a Thousand Tongues To Sing – Charles Wesley

[v] I Corinthians 15: 54

[vi]Go, Rest High on that Mountain – Vince Gill

In Our Midst the King of Heaven

Every now and then I get it into my head to try to write a hymn - or at least new words for an old hymn tune.  This time I've written a hymn - based on part of this week's (Advent 3C)  lectionary reading from Zephaniah 3:14 - 20.  It's sung to the hymn tune Beecher by John Zundel.  He wrote this tune as a setting for Charles Wesley's popular hymn Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.

In Our Midst the King of Heaven

Sing aloud, O Zion’s daughter,
Shout for joy, O Israel.
Let us with the temple choir
sing for God, our King is here.
In our midst the King of Heaven
now proclaims that we are free.
And we shout in exultation,
God has turned our shame to praise.

God, with us, is now rejoicing
singing songs of festal joy.
God has loved us and restored us;
he has brought us safely home.
In our midst the King of Heaven
now proclaims that we are free.
And we’ll sing with him forever
Hallelujah and amen.

Looking for Joy and Peace at Christmas

Looking For Joy and Peace at Christmas



Christmas is a time of light – my wife appreciates driving through the various neighborhoods of our community and seeing the Christmas lights and decorations that people have put in their yards and on their houses. These lights bring her a special Christmas joy.

Christmas is a time of joy – “Joy to the world” we sing in Isaac Watts’ great hymn. “Joy to the world the Lord is come, let earth receive her king.”  (1)

Christmas is a time of laughter and a time for families.

Christmas is a time of joy and peace.

And yet, like Bono and the other members of the band U2, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…

“I believe in the kingdom come, when all the colors will bleed into one… but yes I’m still running… but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”  (2)

What it is that I’m looking for this Christmas?

I’m looking for joy and peace. Isn’t that what Christmas is about?

The announcement made to the shepherds on that Judean hillside declared, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”  (3)

Peace. We celebrate this season as the birthday of the Prince of Peace. And yet. We really haven’t seen a whole lot of peace in our time.

Just a few days ago on December 10, 2009, President Barak Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo Norway. And yet this award seems very ironic to me as it is given to the commander-in-chief of the largest standing army in the world – an army that is currently engaged in not one, but two wars.

In his 36-minute acceptance speech, President Obama recognized this irony and discussed the tensions between war and peace and the idea of a "just war."

… perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.


… we are at war, and I’m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict — filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.


…I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.


We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.


I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there’s nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.


But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.


…So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another — that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such. (4)

I am not ashamed to say that I cast my vote in the last election for Obama. I was (and continue to be) excited by the ‘hope’ and ‘change’ that his campaign promised. And I believe that he has been and will continue to be a good president for our country.

And yet, I don’t’ think that I’ve found what I’m looking for…Because – despite the hope and change that marked his campaign - his leadership in this respect has been more of the same hopelessness.

Obama quoted one of his heroes (and mine) in his speech – the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”

The history of the world has been marked by violent conflict from Cain and Able continuously through this morning’s newspaper. We fight. We fight. We hurt, and maim, and bomb, and kill, and destroy. Our human ingenuity and creativity and imagination have been harnessed to these ends and we have developed innumerable ways to hurt each other and kill each other – faster, and from further away, and in greater numbers.

But none of these weapons has ever made peace. There is no such thing as “peace through superior firepower.” Peace at the edge of the sword is not peace. Peace down the barrel of an M-16 is not peace.

President Obama says that he “face[s] the world as it is” with an acknowledgement that “Evil does exist in the world.” He is no hippy-dippy-utopian who believes that humans are basically good and that we can all learn to get along, holding hands as we sit around the campfire… He says that his use of force and violence and warfare can be justified as a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

And In one sense, I can and do agree with him there. Humanity is fallen. Humanity is broken. Our every imagination is bent towards evil. And if that were the final word on the subject, then President Obama’s justification would be valid.

But there is another word. There is something more than the imperfection of man; there is something that transcends the limit of human reason.

And that’s what we’re celebrating at Christmas.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining (5) . People lived in darkness and under the constant menace of the shadow of death. Warriors in heavy boots and blood smeared armor enforced a peace at the edge of a sword. The world was weary and burdened and oppressed.

But that choir of angels came bursting through the fabric of space and time to announce to the humble shepherds that Peace had come; they heralded the birth of the Messiah, the one Isaiah said would break that yoke of oppression, would consign the soldiers uniforms to the fire, who would snap the spear and shatter the bow. The one who would make wars cease to the ends of the earth. (6)

For unto us a child is born

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders

and he will be called

Wonderful

Counselor

Mighty God

Everlasting Father

Prince of Peace.  (7)

The weary world rejoices at this angelic announcement. Governments, Kings and Princes, and Commanders-in-Chief quake because it means that the old ways can no longer be tolerated. The birth of this child, this son is the thrill of Hope and Change that no elected official can create. This is the breaking of a new and glorious morning –the dawning of a great light over the land of darkness.

Truly his taught us to love one another
His law is love and his gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break, for the slave he is our brother
And in His name all oppression shall cease.

This is something more than the imperfection of man and the limit of reason. This is the eternal God stepping into human history. As the prophet Isaiah said, “The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.”

We cannot make peace with our armies. We never have. We never will.

We make peace by realizing that Christ was born, not just to save us from our personal and individual sins, but also to restore a fallen humanity to its intended glory. There is no glory in war. There is no honor or valor in tragedy that war promises and that war inevitably delivers. There is no glory in human slaughter.

We make peace by realizing that law of love and that gospel of peace. Peace between God and man and Peace between men.

We make peace by refusing to accept any longer the claim that war is regrettably necessary. We make peace by refusing to participate in a perpetual cycle of violence that never solves the problems facing our world, by refusing to participate in a cycle of violence that fosters more violence and creates more problems and more hatred.

We make peace when we truly honor the birth of that child, the son that was given to us. We make peace when we celebrate Christmas – not as an orgy of consumerism, or as a warm fuzzy feel good season – but as the birth of the Son of God and we Hail him as the heaven born Prince of Peace (8), and when we honor him by living lives of peace.


1  Joy to the World – Words by Isaac Watts, Music by George F. Handel

2  I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For Words by Bono, Music by U2
3  Luke 2: 14
4  President Barak Obama’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech -     http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/10/obama.transcript/index.html
5  O Holy Night (Cantique de Noel) Words by Placide Cappeau, Music by Adolph Adam,
      Translated by John S. Dwight
6  Psalm 46:9
7  Isaiah 9: 2 -7
8  Hark! The Herald Angels Sing Words by Charles Wesley, Music by Felix Mendelssohn