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Holy Week resources and reflections

Sing to the Lord

This sermon on Luke 4, Jesus' inaugural address in the synagogue at Nazareth, was preached at the Worship and Music Conference in Montreat, North Carolina, in the summer of 2005 by John L. Bell. 

I must remember to talk slowly and clearly because you have an accent. Oh, some people don't believe that, but I can testify to that being true, particularly in this place and at this conference to which I first came over 10 years ago.

I was teaching an afternoon elective on a song from the New Testament. It was a setting of the beatitudes in St Luke. It began:

Blessed are the poor,
the kingdom of God is theirs.

I was hardly into the first line when a woman interrupted me and said, "Excuse me, but in our church we talk about -- "and then she said something which sounded like "the pooah in speerit."

So I asked her to repeat herself. And again I heard, "the pooah in speerit."

I was totally puzzled. My mind went to Exodus chapter 1 where there is mention of two Hebrew midwives one of whom is Puah, but the other is Shiphrah not Speerit. As the lady noticed my consternation, she did what my grandfather once advised when dealing with foreigners: speak more loudly. "POOAH IN SPEERIT."

And then the penny dropped, and I realised that the dear lady was saying: "poor in spirit." At first I wondered whether she was denying that our Lord blessed the poor. But then I realised that she was in fact pointing to the alternative versions of the beatitudes. In Luke, Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor," while in Matthew, he says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

The stories we are reflecting on today, however, have no alternative. They speak of the raw physical realities with which God is involved: issues of life and death, oppression and liberation which cannot be spiritualised away.

This sermon on Luke 4, Jesus’ inaugural address in the synagogue at Nazareth, was preached at the Worship and Music Conference in Montreat, North Carolina, in the summer of 2005 by John L. Bell. 

I must remember to talk slowly and clearly because you have an accent. Oh, some people don’t believe that, but I can testify to that being true, particularly in this place and at this conference to which I first came over 10 years ago.

I was teaching an afternoon elective on a song from the New Testament. It was a setting of the beatitudes in St Luke. It began:

Blessed are the poor,
the kingdom of God is theirs.

I was hardly into the first line when a woman interrupted me and said, “Excuse me, but in our church we talk about — “and then she said something which sounded like “the pooah in speerit.”

So I asked her to repeat herself. And again I heard, “the pooah in speerit.”

I was totally puzzled. My mind went to Exodus chapter 1 where there is mention of two Hebrew midwives one of whom is Puah, but the other is Shiphrah not Speerit. As the lady noticed my consternation, she did what my grandfather once advised when dealing with foreigners: speak more loudly. “POOAH IN SPEERIT.”

And then the penny dropped, and I realised that the dear lady was saying: “poor in spirit.” At first I wondered whether she was denying that our Lord blessed the poor. But then I realised that she was in fact pointing to the alternative versions of the beatitudes. In Luke, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor,” while in Matthew, he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

The stories we are reflecting on today, however, have no alternative. They speak of the raw physical realities with which God is involved: issues of life and death, oppression and liberation which cannot be spiritualised away.

Yesterday, we looked at that great paean of praise in seven verses which opens the book of Genesis and has as its recurrent chorus: “God saw that it was good.” If the first song in the Bible is a praise song, then the second is a song of liberation recorded in Exodus Ch 15. It is first sung by Moses and later is repeated in a contracted form by his sister Miriam. It is a song of deliverance from slavery.

Its refrain is not, God saw that it was good but, “Sing to the Lord, for he has risen in triumph; horse and rider he has hurled into the sea.”

Now why is the song sung? Is it because someone has been converted and the community wants to shout Hallelujah?  No. Is it because there has been a profound experience of calm in the midst of which people have heard a still small voice? No. Is it because a poet has penned beautiful, emotionally stirring words and somebody has managed to come up with a schmaltzy tune? No.

The song is sung because a great deliverance has occurred. Real slaves have been given real freedom. Real oppressors have been killed. A situation of real political malevolence has been terminated.

The exodus is not a spiritual deliverance in the narrow, pious sense of that word. It is physical, existential, and political, in the true sense of those words.

It is physical because it involves bodies; it is existential because they are sentient beings; it is political because it involves a total change in their governance and national identity.

And this physical, existential, political deliverance happens because of one thing deep in the heart of God. This exodus is enabled because of one divine reality which we should never forget.

And it is simply that God loves the world.

The relationship that God has to this physical world and to the people who live on it is one of committed love. And when you see something which you love being defaced or defiled, you don’t stand back. You intervene.

God did not disregard the world and despise his people so much that he let them be slaves forever; God loved them and the world so much that he made a great deliverance: SING TO THE LORD FOR HE HAS RISEN IN TRIUMPH; HORSE AND RIDER HE HAS HURLED INTO THE SEA.

And centuries later, it is this same love, this same committed love for a world which has been created and named good, and for people who have been made in the divine image.

It is this same love, even for folk who have gone all wrong which will not let God stay away. God did not hate the world so much that he damned it to eternal dissolution; God loved the world so much that he became part of the fabric of creation. And the proof — if we need proof — that Jesus is the Son of God can be recognised in how Jesus, like God, is concerned about the physical, existential, political realities of this world and its people, not at the expense of their souls, but for the good of their souls. Jesus does not come as some opportunistic guru peddling saccharin spirituality. Jesus does not come as a paragon of piety whose primary concern is for church polity and conventional respectability. Jesus does not come from a religious publishing house with a book under one arm about low maintenance prayer life, and a book under the other about the crisis in Calvinism (though if he had published these books, you can be sure there would be a queue from Geneva to Louisville of people wanting to buy them).

When Jesus begins his earthly ministry, he comes as an ordinary man to his home synagogue. (And here – if I might be immodestly presumptuous, I have some sympathy with him.)

Last year I was invited to preach in my home church. I stood in the pulpit and saw the only boy with whom I had a public fight in the playground. And at the door, a woman grabbed me by the hand and said, “I used to bathe you.”

Jesus comes to his home synagogue.  People haven’t seen him for a while. So they talk as folks do: “he looks very like his mother, but he’s got his father’s eyes” (If only they knew!)

Then Jesus gets up to go to the reading desk and they comment perhaps on his height or his attire. And he is handed the scroll and begins to read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.” (Somebody says he has a lovely accent.) And Jesus continues, “He has sent me to announce good news to the poor.” (And somebody says ‘We talk about the pooah in speerit in our synagogue.”) “To proclaim release for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, and to let the broken victims go free.” 

(And somebody asks, “Is that really in the Bible?”) And then Jesus concludes the reading from Isaiah with the words: “To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” 

And by this time, every eye in the synagogue is fixed on him, because it’s not as if he has been reading these words; it is as if he is personifying these words.  And he began to address them, saying, “Today in your hearing, this text has come true.”

And some want to applaud because this sounds exciting; and some want to clap because this is the local boy and he’s made good; and some are wondering what he’s going to say next, or what he might do next because word has it that he can heal people. And somebody else asks, “Is this really Joseph’s boy?”

And then he reminds them of their history: not of the Exodus, because they know about the exodus. They rehearse it every Passover. And not of Moses the liberator. No, he tells them a story about another liberator: Elijah, the great Elijah who, during a drought, liberated people from thirst, from the physical existential dilemma of having no water.

But, Jesus points out that it wasn’t Jews he helped. God sent him to a foreigner, to a widow in Sidon. (And people don’t want to hear too much of that.)

And then he reminds them of another incident in their history, and it’s not the glories of King David. No, they celebrate that when they sing the psalms.  Instead he reminds them of another liberator, called Elisha, Elijah’s successor, who not only liberated someone from the physical scourge of leprosy but also from the social, existential and political stigma which went with it.

And the point of that illustration was that it wasn’t a Jewish king who had been liberated. It was a Syrian. Jesus seems to be claiming that God and God’s kingdom can’t be limited to the safe and often introverted concerns of the local church and synagogue obsessed with its own decency and self-preservation. (And people don’t like this. These are not words of solace.  These are not the fond nostrums which they expected.)

What he is saying is inflammatory, so inflammatory that they show him the door. They take him to the highest hill with the explicit intention of throwing him over the side. 

Why upset people in the synagogue?  Why not just say the usual profundities which will keep people happy and provide a solace in times of change. Why? Because God loves the world, and the deliverances, the liberations, which God desires for the world and its people are from obsession and compulsions, yes. From bogus theologies — absolutely. From guilt and anxiety, of course, and from spiritual wickedness in high places — without a doubt!

But also, as is evident in the encounter of Moses with Pharaoh and Elijah with the drought and Elisha with Naaman the leper, also deliverances from physical thirst and hunger, from systemic injustice, and from socially acceptable stigmatisation.  This is the will, the passion of God. This is the work of Christ.

But don’t say this too loudly in the churches, or people will accuse you of being subversive. And in a day of seductive spirituality which has no existential cost you may become unpopular.

If we say we believe in a Gospel of Grace which liberates people from sin, and then explain that primarily in terms of personal morality, and personal faith, we will get what Jesus got when he announced his text in the synagogue: general approval.

But if we say we believe in a Gospel of Grace which liberates people from sin, and then go on to relate that to the sin of avarice, there may be a murmur of discontent.  If we point out that there is something unbiblical and unchristian about living without a qualm of conscience in nations whose wealth is predicated and dependant upon the poverty of others; if we suggest that there is something morally suspect in importing manufactured goods from sweat shops in Asia to be sold at grossly inflated prices in the West; if we question whether it is morally and biblically justifiable that a Christian country such as Ghana (from which our drummer* comes) should be kept in poverty because the European Community and the USA exports to that country rice which is so heavily subsidised that it undercuts native Ghanaian farmers; if we question the legitimacy of our investments and profits when some of them come from banks who at the moment are whoring away in Equatorial New Guinea, granting favours and promising delights, because oil has been discovered there and our regular suppliers are becoming a bit less reliable — if we say that there is a gross naivety in believing that our standard of living should remain rigorously protected even though it not only requires others to be  impoverished, but also requires the earth to be raped of its natural resources to benefit for 13 percent of humanity.

And if we say as Jesus said, alluding to Elijah and Elisha, that the liberation God requires is not just spiritual, but also physical, existential and political, and requires the North to be delivered from avarice as well as the South delivered from poverty, then this might not be music to the ears of those whose understanding of salvation is based on the belief that God so loved ME that he sent Jesus, rather than that God so loved the world.

In a place where we delight to sing songs of faith, remember that the song which Moses and Miriam sang in Exodus is not an anaemic egocentric lullaby. It is a song of liberation. And the songs of David we call the psalms are not escapist schmaltz but ballads of existential angst and delivery. And the songs of shackled men and women exported across the Atlantic. “O Freedom over me, Befoe I’d be a slave I’d be buried in my grave,” are not songs of subservience but of defiance.

And the songs which the South African Church chanted in the face of apartheid: “Freedom is coming. We are marching in the light of God,” are not pious choruses, but songs of protest allied with praise.

And the song which people in this land gave to the world in the anthem, “We Shall Overcome,” is not a pious ditty, but a song in anticipation of a victory that happened.

Such songs proclaim the liberation of the fabric of this world so that it can resemble the shape of the coming kingdom of God and the liberation of the people of this world who are made, each of them, in the image of their Maker. And that image must never be demeaned or defaced.

Such songs of victory are worth singing. Such stories of liberation are worth rehearsing even, if like Jesus, we get shown the door.

John L. Bell is an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland and a member of the Iona Community. He develops resources in the areas of music and worship with the Wild Goose Resource Group. He is a past convenor of the Church of Scotland’s Panel on Worship, and presently convenes the Committee revising the Church Hymnal. John has produced many collections of original hymns and songs and two collections of songs of the world church.

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