“We are all human beings. We
are all feeling this emotion together at the same time. And this is uniting us.
We are not separate.” Alice Parker
I pray your list of favorite
hymns is getting longer and longer. I
also pray you will know that what sings to your soul may leave another soul
feeling, “Meh”. This is where music can
often cause tension. You may want to
defend singing of the “The Old Rugged Cross,” because when you sing that, it
isn’t just the voices around you that you hear but your grandmother’s voice in
that country church with the hard wooden pews and pastor who droned on and on. It may not be the words that warm your heart,
but the memory of the melody. You may
want to be insistent that we sing the hymn in a certain way because we all want
to draw near to the afterglow of what is etched in our souls, even when the
embers start to fade. We may put our
foot down on a new hymn because the words or melody or rhythm can feel like
nails on the chalkboard of our souls.
Art, all art, has emotion (that is energy in motion) as an
undercurrent. You look at a painting you
can still feel the vibration of the brush stroke, you look at a photograph and
you can sense the wind touching your skin, you hear a poem that can cause
confusion and connection at the same time; or you listen to a melody that for
some reason doesn’t get it for you. Humans
are meaning-making machines, so we want to know why? And once we find a satisfactory explanation
for why we should never, ever sing, “Washed in the Blood” ever again, we have
taken our stand. On the one hand, our
hymnal is a theology textbook. Our
hymnal has sermons and prayers that evoke a vast array of emotions. On the other hand, most of us don’t ever want
to be told what to feel. Our inner
five-year old still sings out defiantly, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want
to!” Don’t tell me what to feel about
this list of hymns I’ve carefully cultivated and curated, we stomp our foot and
shout.
While music is the language of
our shy soul made audible, that doesn't mean the emotion you feel is the same
as someone else. Today, I invite you to
flip the coin, what is a hymn that you would prefer we never,
ever, under any circumstances sing or you will storm out of the church!! Then, go read the words to the hymn trying to
put your finger on what is it about that hymn that provokes such
passion? Often it is because a value
about language or theology or a past scar or wound from the church has been
violated. The more we can be curious
about response, we can take a deep breath.
As Viktor Frankl said, “Between the stimulus and response there is a
space. In that space is our power to
choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
I am asking you today to live
in that space between what is provoked and before you start to preach the
sermon. Be in that moment that hymns can
evoke to see where each of us can grow in grace, caring, love, faithfulness,
and justice.
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