don't eat alone

One of the traditions in church I don’t take easily is that of changing the lyrics of hymns — for whatever reasons. Down the years, however, those who have served on the committees who have collected and compiled the hymns have felt free to alter the texts (as they call them) and move on by simply adding an “alt.” next to the composer’s name. I understand that they may have their reasons, but as one who has written lyrics for songs and hymns, it leaves me a bit unnerved not only for personal reasons, but also because there’s no particular standard by which the changes are made. In our hymnal, for instance, the second verse of “Come,Thou Fount of Every Blessing” has gone from “here I raise mine Ebenezer” to “here I am on my sojourning,” which doesn’t feel like much of an improvement. If Ebenezer needs explaining, then explain it; don’t just dumb down the lyric. That said, as we sang in church Sunday I found myself wanting to change the words.

The song we were singing is embedded deep in my spiritual DNA going back to my days in youth groups: “I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river in my soul . . . .” As we sang I could see faces from both past and present and my hands wished for a guitar. We continued through the other verses:

I’ve got joy like a fountain . . .
I’ve got love like an ocean . . .

and then we sang, “I’ve got faith like an anchor” and I thought, “These words are wrong.” I don’t mean they were printed wrong. I’ve heard and sang them before. I mean they missed the mark, mixed the metaphor. They needed to be changed — and I knew the change to make:

I’ve got faith like a row boat. The first three verses are all about water — river, fountain, and then ocean — each one building a bit until we are singing of the great expanse of God’s love in much the same way that Paul talked about it in Ephesians 3:15-19:

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

In the middle of the ocean, an anchor won’t do a thing. The point of an anchor is to hold you safe in the harbor, to keep you in place, and there are ways of looking at like where faith is an anchor, in much the same way that we can talk about God’s love as a rock and a refuge, but if love is an ocean, then faith is what keeps us afloat. And by faith I mean trust. The ocean that is God’s love calls us out of the harbor, out into the open sea, out beyond our comfort zones, and we set out in the frailest of vessels — the row boat of faith — trusting we will not ever reach a place where we will run out of love.

As I sat in church writing as fast as I could think (while other stuff was going on), another song came to mind: “Rowing Song,” from Patty Griffin (my favorite hymn writer), which still astounds me with its profound simplicity.

as I row row row
going so slow slow slow
just down below me is the old sea
just down below me is the old sea
nobody knows knows knows
so many things things so
so out of range sometimes so strange
sometimes so sweet sometimes so lonely
the further I go more letters from home never arrive
and I’m alone all of the way all of the way alone and alive

Faith like a row boat. Faith: the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith: trust that love will not let us go, that there’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea, that the deep deep love of Jesus is underneath and around us. Whatever these days may hold, whatever might have been, whatever has yet to happen, I’ve got love like an ocean — deeper and wider than any circumstance or loneliness — and that is what will keep me afloat in my little boat of faith.

Since my father’s death, the heaviest hour of the week for me has been Sunday morning worship. The thin place that is grief hits me hardest there, and the music plays a big part in both the weight and the comfort. Perhaps that’s what sent me searching for options when the anchor dropped in the fourth verse last Sunday. I’m not looking to sink anymore; I want to know what will keep us afloat. This is not a period of safe harbor in my life. I am not looking to stay put. I am at sea, far away from much of what I have known for sure, following those who have charted this course ahead of me, wondering what will happen next. In the midst of it all, I was reminded by my singing congregation that we’ve got Love like an ocean.

If that’s true, then I’ve got faith like a row boat.

Peace
Milton

Many years ago, my friend Billy Crockett and I read an article about a ship captain who, with his crew, abandoned ship when it began to sink, leaving the passengers on board. The story led us to the song title, “Down With the Ship,” which ended up being a song about Martin Luther King. When I first posted this, I had put images to the song, thanks to iMovie, but I couldn’t get the video to move over here. I have spent too much time this morning trying to figure out how to insert that video into this post, so I offer the lyrics as my way of giving thanks for Martin’s life and legacy, and a link to the video (and the older posting) here.

down with the ship

martin was ahead of his time
and time was so far behind
he had no eye for an eye
in his point of view
but what he could see
it was a beautiful dream
the trouble with dreaming things
is seeing them come true

when you set out on the high sea
when you set out on a hope trip
sometimes you get to your bright tomorrow
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship

martin had the fight of his life
stared right into the enemies’ eyes
tried to wake them from their comfortable lie
that’s how ships go down
he wasn’t ready for a long white robe
he prayed for brave hearts and hands to hold
and people right here to sing and know
that we shall overcome

when you set out on the high sea
when you set out on a hope trip
sometimes you get to your bright tomorrow
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship

the truth won’t die just because your heroes fall
someday all flesh will stand to see it all
see the mountains laid low
and the rough made plain . . .

and we’ll go sailing on the high sea
oh we’ll set out on a hope trip
set our eyes on a new horizon
and don’t look back
and we’ll go sailing on the high sea
believing love has got a firm grip
set our eyes on a new tomorrow
set our hearts to go down with the ship
set our hearts to go down with the ship
set our hearts to go down with the ship
sometimes you’ve got to go down with the ship

Peace,

Milton

One afternoon, when I was in fifth grade, my father bent down to pick up an ice cream freezer in the carport of our home in Lusaka, Zambia. The freezer was well-used and I have fond memories of sitting on a towel folded across the top of the gears as Dad cranked the handle to make homemade ice cream. That afternoon, however, the freezer was empty and he was simply moving it. When he picked it up, something snapped in the small of his back — a bone deformed from birth, we would later find out — that left him in a great deal of pain. The doctors in Zambia discussed surgery, but the consensus was the operation was best done stateside. In 1966, however, getting across the Atlantic was no easy feat. Our next scheduled leave from the mission field was about eight months away, so my father had to learn to live with the pain until the days could be accomplished for him to get help and relief.

And he did. They fashioned a brace that held his back rather rigidly so he could on about life; he put a piece of three-quarter inch plywood under his mattress so he could sleep. I don’t remember him talking about it much beyond the matter of factness required to get things done. He just lived with the pain and didn’t complain.

One of the consequences of his stroke a few weeks ago was he was unable to swallow thin liquids. He could chew steak or swallow thick liquids — he kept asking for ice cream — but he couldn’t drink water without choking. One of the nurses explained to me that one of the things the voice box does is to move over the windpipe when we swallow liquids. Larger heavier things move it over with simple gravity, but the liquids require it to move on its own. However the circuits blew in the stroke, one of the results was the voice box quit moving over, so he could no longer swallow a simple sip of water.

The two stories connect for me in these days because of the ways in which my grief has found physical expression. I went with a group of folks from our church to Washington DC on Friday and Saturday as our pilgrimage to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington. Two of the folks in our group were there fifty years ago. The drive home took almost twice as long as it should have because of inexplicably heavy traffic on I-95. By the time I got home, my back was in a knot. And it has stayed that way. I feel a deep abiding pain just about the place where my father’s bone broke just a couple of summers after Martin spoke from the Lincoln Memorial. Then last night, as I was watching baseball with Ella, our remaining Schnauzer curled up next to me, I felt a catch in my throat and then pain, as if someone had punched me in the voice box. It was Sunday evening, and Sunday has been the hardest day for me. Worship pulls me into a deep sadness for reasons I cannot completely articulate other than to say grief is a thin place and the air is heavy there.

I’ve spent the last couple of days doing what I need to keep going. Tomorrow is my first day back at work and a return to a regular schedule follows. I will need to get back to keeping my promises, even if that means carrying my pain with me. No. Of course it means carrying my pain with me. We all do that in some sense everyday of our lives. This is just a new kind of pain for me, and it is one that feels as though it colors everything. As I think about my dad learning to live with his back pain, I am aware that it is my turn to do the same. Not to be Stoic and act as if there is no pain and just soldier on. No. I mean to learn to live with the pain, to weave it into the story, to figure out what it means and how it might shape me for the days to come. Long after my back settles down and my throat relaxes, he will still not be here. I have to learn to live with that, as my wife, Ginger, did when her father died almost two years ago, and countless others have done as well. Grief is a primary color in the art that is our lives.

And so is grace.

Peace
Milton

I spent the morning working on this slideshow. The music is from the “True Grit” soundtrack.

Peace,

Milton

I spent another Monday in Raleigh this week — my third one. The North Carolina Chapter of the NAACP has sponsored the events, which have become known as Moral Mondays, as a response to the damaging laws being passed down by our state legislature during this session which include cutting unemployment benefits to 170,000 of our citizens and opting out of Medicaid coverage, which will leave many without health insurance. They have proposed other bills to do heavily restrict early voting in our state and to restructure the tax code so that corporations would pay nothing but there would be a sales tax on food. My list of laws is by no means exhaustive.

Each week, a certain number of the protesters have chosen to participate in an act of civil disobedience by entering the NC Legislative Assembly building and staying beyond the legal time limit. (Who knew it was against the law to stay too long?) And they have been arrested. As of yesterday, over 700 people have been taken to jail for doing nothing more than standing and speaking and singing together in solidarity about the injustice being done. The protests have been intentionally kind and nonviolent. And they have been powerful, even though mostly disregarded by those who were elected to listen to the people of the state.

Yesterday, I went in with those who were going to be arrested as a supporter, which means I stayed until they told us if we stayed longer we would be taken to jail. The scene inside was thoughtful and determined. “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ‘round,” we sang, as we stood in two circles, one floor above the other. Then one young man began to chant, “This is what democracy looks like,” and I thought, “Indeed it does.”

When I was in high school, Ray Charles recorded a version of “America, the Beautiful” that remains my favorite version of the song. What I love most about it is he intentionally sang the verses out of traditional order. He began,

O beautiful for heroes proved
in liberating strife,
who more than self their country loved,
and mercy more than life.

America! America!
May God thy gold refine
till all success be nobleness,
and every gain divine.

Then he said, “When I was in school, we used it sing it something like this,” and then he began with what we all know as the first line: “O beautiful, for spacious skies . . . .” Before any  purple mountain’s majesty or any fruited plain, the beautiful part of our story tells of those who valued community over self-promotion and, just like the song says, mercy more than life.

Mercy — that’s what’s missing most from the life our legislators are seeking to fashion for us. Their idea of success carries little or no nobility, and the gains they envision reek of power and conquest, not of compassion and hope. What is beautiful about America is not our wealth nor our power. It is our people — every last one of us. I trust that our Monday meetings are more than flailing at windmills or venting our anger. We are working to move beyond anger, to build something, to believe that we are doing more than bailing water out of a sinking ship; we are banding together to make things better  , to do our best to love justice, do kindness, and walk humbly with our God and with one another.

On Thursday, I will stand on our front porch and read the Declaration of Independence, leaning back into all the years we stood in front of the Old State House in Boston where they have read it every Fourth since the very first. Much of the document talks about the right of the people to do away with a government when it is unjust and unfit to rule. I must say I smiled when I read it again tonight in preparation for my delivery in a couple of days, and as I recalled what it has felt like to stand and sing and shout in the shadow of the Legislature these past few weeks. I smiled because I trust that the arc of history bends towards justice and love. I smiled because, even though these new laws are painful and damaging, they will not be the last word. I smiled because I know our country is not best defined by the richest who get the attention, but by the millions who work day after day for far less than they deserve. I smiled because God is on the side of the poor and the broken and the downhearted.

All the money in the world won’t change that.

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw;
confirm thy soul in self-control,
thy liberty in law.

Everybody sing . . .

Peace,
Milton

I preached at our church yesterday. I went a little “off book” during the sermon, so the manuscript is the best recreation I could do.

_________________________________

Luke 7:36-50
“Forgive Us Our Debts”
A Sermon for Pilgrim United Church of Christ, Durham NC
June 16, 2013

The listserv in our old neighborhood was active Friday afternoon.

The instigating email concerned a man who was crossing Club Boulevard right at Oval Park — over and over again. The woman who was writing said she stopped to let him cross as she was going to pick up her kids and then found he was still trying to get to the other side on her return trip. This time the car in front of her did not stop, and was greeted by the flashing lights of a police cruiser parked nearby. The man in the crosswalk was no random walker; he was seeing who was obeying the law.

One of those who replied to the letter said, “I think this is entrapment and you might not have to pay the ticket.” The next reply, which came quickly, began, “It’s only entrapment when you get caught.” So goes the law: when we break it, we have to deal with the consequences. We have to pay the ticket.

In the scene from Jesus’ life before us this morning, he is at the home of Simon, a Pharisee — one was all about the law, who found his identity in it, and who had also invited Jesus to dinner. Based on the murmuring that comes a bit later, they were not alone. There were others  — all men — who were part of the gathering. The woman who showed up, however, was not on the guest list. She just showed up, came in the house with an alabaster jar of ointment and used it to anoint Jesus’ feet, weeping in the process. She then washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. In the middle of this keep-everyone-at-arm’s-length dinner party, she incarnated vulnerability. And she is never named. All we know was she was a sinner — a woman from the city, Luke says. Her sin is unnamed as well, though commentators over the years have almost unanimously assumed she was a prostitute — “a harlot,” “a woman of ill repute” — as though the only sin a woman could commit in first century Palestine was a sexual one. But if we widen our view beyond the designated lectionary passage for today, we can hear Jesus as he responded to those who questioned his choice of companions in the verses just before ours.

For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”

When we hear the label given the woman in light of what Jesus just said,  Luke labels her rather deftly: “You know those people Jesus keeps hanging out with? She’s one of them. A sinner.” In the first part of the chapter, Jesus had been on a bit of a healing spree. Perhaps she had seen how he had treated other people in their distress, had been a part of the crowd that had followed him, and knew she could find help and hope if she could get to him. And so she did what she needed to do to get to him. Whatever she had done and whoever she was, she was overwhelmed with gratitude for the love that exuded from him and demonstrated it extravagantly. And Jesus received her offering in grace and love.

Our first clue that Simon and his pals aren’t dealing fairly is they didn’t respond directly to either the woman or to Jesus. They muttered. Simon questioned Jesus’ identity as a prophet because a prophet would have known “what kind of woman was touching him.” Jesus responded by calling him into direct conversation — “Simon, I have something to say to you” — and then he tells a parable about the two debtors — one with a large debt and one with a small debt — who are both forgiven by a banker. “Which one would be more grateful?” asks Jesus.

Simon responds sheepishly: “I suppose the one with the greater debt.” His tone implied that he was quite sure the woman would be the larger debtor in their scenario. I think it’s safe to say Simon would not have seen himself as the sinner in most any story.

Jesus agreed with his answer, but then turned the focus of the conversation from the parable to a rather pointed and personal contrast between the woman’s extravagant gratitude and Simon’s half-hearted hospitality. Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”

David Lose writes:

Why this change of focus? Because the truth Jesus points to cuts both ways. It’s not only that one who has been forgiven much loves much from gratitude, it’s that the one who is forgiven little loves little.

Jesus’ analogy between debts and sins in the passage made me think of the Lord’s Prayer. If you have had the chance to worship in other congregations where they say the prayer each week, you know one of the decisions any church has to make is which word to use: trespasses, sins, or debts. When I was a kid, our church in Zambia said trespasses, which always sounded really cool with a British accent, yet it made it sound like we had jumped a fence or crossed a border and ended up somewhere we were not supposed to be. Sins is a good theological word — one that pretty much only gets used in church — and speaks to the things we do that do damage and separate us from God. When we say debts, we talk about what we owe, what we don’t have to give, what we can’t even up.

Forgive us our debts.

Debts create obligations. When we create a formal debt like a mortgage, we have a repayment plan and everything works well until we get behind on our payments. Then the law kicks in as it were. If we don’t pay our debts, we can lose everything. Carry the analogy back to the Lord’s Prayer and we are offered the chance to realize we are up to our necks in relational IOUs, in damage done and repairs unpaid, and we can’t keep up with the payments. David Lose, again:

Forgiveness cancels relational debt and opens up the future. Which is why it’s so important, so valuable. Consider: forgiveness at heart is the restoration of relationship. It is releasing any claim on someone else for some past injury or offense. That’s why the analogy to a debt works so well.

But it’s also something more. Forgiveness also gives you back yourself. You see, after a while, being indebted, owing others, knowing yourself first and foremost as a sinner — these realities come to dominate and define you. You are no more and no less than what you’ve done, the mistakes you’ve made, the debt you owe. When you are forgiven, all those limitations disappear and you are restored, renewed, set free. So, yes, forgiveness is everything.

The woman came in a broken mess and Jesus gave her back herself in love: “Go in peace,” he said. Simon acted all put together and was left standing as an observer of both the love and forgiveness.

Forgive us our debts, we pray, as we forgive our debtors.

It strikes me that our debts are full stops to the stories of our lives. They bring us to a screeching halt. Forgiveness lets the story continue. It pulls life into the present tense. We aren’t talking about last week or last year, or debts rung up long ago; we are living now by the grace of God. When we hold grudges, we trap ourselves in the moment when the damage was done and can’t move forward. When we forgive, we pour ourselves out in love and grace and the story rolls on.

The second hymn we sang this morning, “O Love, That Will Not Let Me Go,” was written by a man named George Murchison, who was a minister. He was engaged and found out he was losing his sight. When he told his fiancee, she broke off the engagement because she didn’t want to spend her life with a blind man. It was then he sat down and wrote:

O Love, that will not let me go
I rest my weary soul in thee
I give thee back the life I owe
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be

Forgiveness. He knew, whatever life held for him, the rest of the story lay beyond the damage done by her leaving; it lay in trusting that what we have been reading over and over in these days of grief in our church: “Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is ours in Christ Jesus.”
As our story rolls on — the story of forgiveness and redemption and love, we are called time and time again to choose which character we will play. Sometimes, we are Simon: too trapped by all we are holding to move forward. Sometimes, we are the woman: heartbroken, grateful, and set free. Sometimes, we are like Jesus: we get to be forgiver, the one who gets to incarnate grace and love to someone who has lost sight of themselves.

May we be people who forgive even as we are forgiven. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

These past few days have been filled with grief in the lives of some of those closest to Ginger and me. Though their stories are not mine to tell, I have been touched as well and reminded again of how much death and grief are a part of life for all of us. In the midst of it all, I had a chance to hear Patty Griffin sing last Saturday night at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw NC, which is a little town about twenty miles from Durham with an awesome music hall. She is touring her newest record, American Kid

, which is a collection of songs she wrote as her father was dying.

“You can go wherever you want to go,” begins the first song — an offer of permission for a departure over which she has no control; as she continues, the permission becomes a blessing:

you don’t ever have to pay the bills no more
break a sweat or walk a worried floor now
working like a dog ain’t what you’re for now
you don ‘t ever have to pay the bills no more

As I listened to the third track, “Ohio,” I couldn’t help but hear trickles of Jordan-like imagery as she and Robert Plant sang about the river I crossed a couple of weeks ago, crossing over between Ohio and Kentucky.

if the hounds are howling and you cannot hide
my friend I will meet you on the other side
no lines, no lines the river is a river not a line
my love is the water and it’s stronger and deeper than time

About three songs into most any Patty Griffin record and I wish I could sit down and talk to her about how the streams of faith and hope run through her life. I make no assumptions about whom or what she trusts, and I find my faith is strengthened by her questions and honesty and her incisive choices of words. The most challenging and, I must say, beautiful, theological image on the whole record comes in the fourth song, “Wild Old Dog.”

God is a wild old dog
someone left out on the highway
I seen him running by me
he don’t belong to no one now

In concert, she talked about finding inspiration in seeing a pit bull running in the waving grass along the highway somewhere in Arkansas; at first, she was struck by his beauty and then realized someone had dumped him and, as she said, “he was done for.” What I hear in her song and the haunting image is the story of how God often gets left aside or behind in our darkest times, or even how some choose to see faith as something whose usefulness we outgrow, making this one of the saddest songs in the whole collection.

The palpable ache that comes with the absence of those we love is beautifully articulated in “That Kind of Lonely.”

every strand has come unwound
every heart is all worn down
everyone in the room wanted
to be somewhere else
so tonight I’ll find a key
and drive away a little early
It’s the last time I wanna be that kind of lonely

Truly, she writes as one acquainted with grief. Well acquainted. And from her sadness, then, she tells stories, as one would do at a wake or the meal following a funeral: “Irish Boy,” “Faithful Son,”  and “Not a Bad Man” sing of the man she learned her father was as he told her stories she had not heard before. “Mom and Dad’s Waltz” and “Get Ready Marie” give melody to a marriage, the latter with quite a bit of humor. Here is a gifted songwriter a the top of her craft, using her gifts to articulate both pain and hope, telling her story as a way of telling the story of our lives and deaths, which is a journey of both grief and grace, offering us healing in the hearing and the singing along.

The last song, “Gonna Miss You When You’re Gone,” brings the collection to a close with a strong and intentional goodbye. She doesn’t wait for him to die to tell him how she feels; she is singing to a man who was still here, though we are hearing the record months after her father’s death. It’s been over a year and a half since my father-in-law died and hardly a day goes by that we don’t speak of him, or catch a glimpse of him in some irrepressible memory. Part of what helps in those moments mixed with sadness and gratitude is the sense that we said what we wanted to say to one another before he died. We do our best work when we stay current with one another, even when life doesn’t appear to be on the line.

American Kid is record filled with songs that take sadness seriously but not ultimately, which makes it a gospel record, as far as I’m concerned — hymns for disconsolate hearts, melodies that lead us into memories. These are songs to take to heart.

Peace
Milton