The Beauty of Music

Last night I heard some of the most beautiful music of my life. I stood in the Cathedral surrounded by candlelight, and the choir stood around me, singing songs of longing for God. It was the annual service of Advent Procession. At the end of the service, the choir surrounded me behind the altar and I thought that I must be on the edge of heaven.

I have always thought that heaven must consist of pure music. Music transcends all spoken language in its ability to convey meaning. It lifts our hearts in ways that defy explanation. It expresses desires that we could never convey in any other way. Something about the nature of the interraction between the notes seems to defy time and touch the eternal. It is a great mystery, how music is created and heard, but there is no denying that it draws us to open our hearts to God.

It is no wonder that the Psalmist invited us to sing to the Lord. And scholars believe that the first part of Holy Scripture to have actually been written down, as opposed to orally transmitted, was the Song of Miriam. After Miriam's brother, Moses, parted the Red Sea by the hand of God, and they reached the other side safely, Miriam sang,

Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously! Horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea!
From the Book of Exodus

How amazing that the very first written word of Scripture was really a song! In fact, the Scripture both begins and ends with music. In a vision of the kingdom of heaven, Scripture depicts angels singing at the throne of God. They don't yell, or speak, they SING.

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of Your Glory!
Hosanna in the Highest!
The Book of Revelation

C.S. Lewis, in The Chronicles of Narnia, depicts Christ as a Lion who sings the world into being. The creation literally seems to spring forth from the notes that He sings. Life itself emanates from his voice. This depiction of the creation captures the significance of music, which not only conveys emotion, but creates it inside of us. It is like God is speaking to us and resonating the sound of eternity into our hearts.

So today, I give thanks for music. For it is a window into the Almighty.

The Unfundamentalist Church

The Episcopal Church is in the media a lot. We have a gay bishop. We ordain women. The highest ranking Bishop in the United States of America is a woman, and an oceanographer and she runs for exercise and wears dangly earrings.

If you only read the papers, you might think that we were sort of leftist Unitarians with liturgy. The media seems to cover the hot topics while missing the biggest part of the picture.

Episcopalians are not all liberal nor are they all conservative. We are not the church of the gay bishop or the woman bishop or the millennium development goals. We are the church of the thinking devout.

An essential element of the Episcopal Church is missing in all this coverage. We are not a fundamentalist left, we just believe in discourse. We believe that God gave us brains and we are called to use them, in the reading of Scripture, in contemplating ethical issues, even in prayer. We are not supposed to check our minds at the door when we enter a church. We believe in thinking as an essential part of the devotional life.

If you allow people to think for themselves in church, you inevitably end up with a mess. Because people will disagree. And they will pray, and they will agree, and they will pray. And then they will disagree again.

Right now, across the world, the Anglican Communion is praying, discussing and wondering if it is possible to stay in communion with churches when you disagree over ethical and spiritual issues particularly the issue of human sexuality. No one is debating about Jesus. We all believe in Jesus as the Son of God, but it’s how we interpret how best to follow Him--that is what is at stake.

I feel blessed to be part of a church that embraces the mind and reason itself. I just wish that we could agree to disagree with out leaving one another out in the cold. After all, isn’t disagreement one of the greatest gifts that our church has to offer? Isn't true diversity about living with those who are different from ourselves, who may even think differently? Let us pray for the Anglican Communion to stick it out even in the midst of painful disagreement. Our unity would speak much more eloquently than our schism. If we are to answer God's call to be the unfundamentalist church, then we must be able to disagree and remain in relationship.

The Birth Pangs

As the light gets dim and the days grow short, the Scripture turns to the end of days. Daniel speaks of the end of the world as we know it, when the righteous will be separated from those who do not love God. And Jesus answers questions from his disciples about the end of time. They want to know when it will happen, and how can they guess the date.

We human being always want to guess the date. The Mayan calendar has us all hyped up these days. The new date is Dec 21 or 23 of 2012. Nothing much has changed. We too, like the disciples, want to know when we will end.

Jesus does not give the disciples a direct answer. Instead, he talks about wars, famine and earthquakes. "But these," Jesus says, "Are just the beginning of the birth pangs."

The birth pangs. It sounds like he was talking about a beginning, not an end.

Think about birth with me for a moment. All of us were content in a warm, dark world. Our every need was provided for. We did not ask for change or disruption. Probably if anyone could have communicated with us, they would have found out that we liked our little warm existence just the way it was, thank you very much. Life was pretty good in our mothers bellies, pretty comfortable, probably beautiful and gentle. Why would we have ever wanted to leave?

But then, out of nowhere, our world began to collapse. No one consulted us. We could not have predicted the date or the event for that matter, it was all beyond our fathoming. The warmness went away, there was constriction and pain. We might have thought we were dying, if we could have known what it was to die. And then there was cold and light and noise and chaos. Shapes that we could not distinguish. There was feeling and sight and sounds and light. We were born.

What we once thought was pain and death ended up being life itself.

So who is to say the the "end" of this world will not be a beginning, the beginning of something infinately greater? Something that we cannot even begin to imagine? Isn't that God's way, the way of this incredible creation?

In fact, wasn't Jesus trying to tell us just that, that we are waiting to be born? What we do not realize is that we are not yet fully alive. This life is what C.S. Lewis called The Shadowlands. We are not yet fully awake. We run around with our constant business, like tiny ants on the surface of this planet. We are not fully aware of what it is to be alive in God. There is more to come. Somewhere deep down inside, don't you believe that?

At the end, there will be birth pangs. And we will be born in God.

Clara's at the Cathedral

Every Friday, the Cathedral hosts a lunch. We call this endeavor Clara’s at the Cathedral. Clara’s Kitchen is a non profit agency that teaches culinary arts to people who are struggling with poverty or released from prison. In addition to providing a formal luncheon at the Cathedral each Friday, they cater events. Sixty percent of their graduates are now employed.
I entered the Cathedral fellowship hall last Friday and was overwhelmed. A violinist played as the patrons were professionally served. White table clothes and beautiful utensils made for an elegant presentation. And the food was superb.

A young woman served as our waitor. She was friendly, solicious, polite. She did not hover but seemed to appear exactly when my iced tea needed refilling. I was impressed.

This is it, I thought. This is the best kind of restaurant, serving hope along with a delicious meal. And all for a mere $10.I left full of good food and good will. Thanks be to God.

The Miracle Move

Yesterday was my first Sunday at St. John's Cathedral in Jacksonville, Florida. It was incredible! The church was built in the early 1900's after a second devastating fire wiped out most of the city. Rennovated in the 80's, the altar is far out with the choir behind. The pulpit is stone and beautiful. Stained glass windows frame the beautiful sanctuary where I preached my very first sermon fifteen years ago. People came from all over to celebrate All Saints Sunday and the 175th anniversary of this place. They had to bring in chairs to accomodate the crowd. And once the choir began to sing the Introit, I knew that I was in heaven.

I felt God's peace once I saw the faces of the people. They were so kind and attentive. We baptized three babies, one of who screamed almost the entire time! We read aloud the names of our loved ones who died, giving thanks for their continued presence in our lives as saints. And I distributed communion to many incredible folks.

One of the most beautiful parts of the Cathedral is its diversity. A homeless man will kneel down next to a wealthy woman and together they will hold out their hands for the Body of Christ. The disabled come in wheelchairs, the old and the young, African-American, Indian, Asian and Caucasion-all together glorify God.

I was overcome with gratefulness. It was a wonderful day.

I arrived home that afternoon, tired but happy. As the boys played in the front yard, I met my new neighbors and learned that another miracle had occurred.

We live next to Ken and Barbara. They have one grandchild, Ryan, whose mother is battling stage four lung cancer. Because of her rigorous treatment and the exhaustion that it produces, Kim often lets Ryan stay with his grandparents.

Ryan's grandmother, Barbara, said a very specific prayer to God a few months ago, when she saw that her next-door neighbor was going to rent his house. Barbara asked God to find a five-year-old boy to move in next door, for Ryan is an only child and he needs a friend.

And what does God give Ryan? Not one but three boys! A loud and active pile of boys! And Max just turned five. He is two months younger than Ryan.

How great are the works of the Lord! As if it were not enough to welcome us to this beautiful Cathedral, God even called Max here for a reason.