Advent 3: What songs bring you peace?

 12/4/16

Today we sing the second verse of Barbara Lundblad’s rewriting of  O Come Immanuel…as we light our candles…

O come, O come, Immanuel

And bless each place your people dwell.

Melt ev’ry weapon crafted for war,

Bring peace upon the earth forever more.

Rejoice, rejoice! Take heart and do not fear,

God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.

2. O come, green shoot of Jesse, free

Your people from despair and apathy;

Forge justice for the poor and the meek,

Grant safety for the young ones and the weak

Today’s theme is “peace”. And I am not feeling much peace. In fact, as I was preparing for leading my lectionary study group last Wednesday, I found myself getting annoyed. The passages seemed too familiar and predictable…the sense of apocalyptic, the very straight forward and obvious calls for justice and righteousness, the prophetic zeal of John the Baptist. The beautiful vision of Isaiah.  It’s so easy to take any one of these  and fly off in a righteous sounding way. But so what? or how to have a new insight? As I said, I am not feeling peace…

I still can’t come to terms with the election….The President-elect seems to confirm the theory that he really  didn’t believe he’d be elected.  And/or is not really interested in governing. 

#  He wants to “sleep in his own bed,” he wants to create west wing on 5th ave…(I did hear he wants to attend 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church…

# He is still holding rallies like he’s still campaigning….it’s what he enjoys best…and seems he wants to do so even after his inauguration

#  He is  appointing people who have the worst traits associated to the Republican party. 

There are daily reports of acts of xenophobia perpetrated in the name of “Trump”….the flood gates have been opened…and the mainstream media keeps trying to “normalize” things…

Beyond Trump, there’s the ongoing struggle at Standing Rock….this weekend some 2000 military veterans are going there to provide security and solidarity  (this one’s on Obama to do the right thing…while he’s still President…)

Voices are still crying out for justice for Eric Garner…while Officer Pantaleo believes that once our new president is inaugurated, he’ll have a better chance…

I could be going to protests/actions every day..there’s a march today to Gracie Mansion to demand action on officer Pantaleo…there’s a rally taking place to show solidarity for Standing Rock…there’s a black community tribute to Fidel Castro..

a community remembers...

I want to go out and protest but something holds me back….

We’re going to talk about songs today..and I’ll start with John the Baptists’s song…and yes, it is apocalyptic...

But as President OBAMA told us…IT’s NOT the APOCALYPSE.. We have to ask ourselves however, who are we in his prophesy? Are we among the brood of vipers? … John is completely  unuanced…he doesn’t care what people think…doesn’t soften his message so that people “can hear it” (thank you Jill Duffiield…who says, as a preacher, ..”he is everything I am not…”  BUT in this congregation, people keep coming to me not in repentance but in need of comfort…..we participated last week in the weekend of witness with MICAH and the Justice League….including the demand to fire Pantaleo…why does that make me anxious?  Maybe because of the two young men from this congregation who serve on the police force……Latino immigrants who truly signed to protect, defend and serve…..

Like in our understanding of why Hillary failed…my mentor, Philip Newell always said,  the  Liberals are the  true problem…they enjoy the benefits of privilege with no guilt because after all, they’re liberals…. and they don’t count the notes….During Occupy, in my talk at Yale I related that thought  and was taken to task by liberal funders…I am constantly reminded by the critique of my  kids, and grass root organizers like my friend  Jason,  my friends the Communists… I want a new radical community…one that is countercultural…we have to hear John’s words directed to us…individually and personally ….I wonder, OK, it's a story, but what if his father Zechariah, like it says in the Bible, truly was a temple priest, a tall steeple preacher…that makes John a child of privilege….that makes Jesus the po’boy cousin…and I have to wonder and what’s at work in his psychology?

What I learn from my migrant work….Stony point’s efforts at interfaith organizing …and Standing Rock…I DON’T FEEL LIKE PEACE….

The Truth be told….we are all BOTH wheat and chaff…..

It takes songs of HOPE to keep us going….

ISAIAH’s song…takes us back to the Peaceable Kingdom again…let’s start with the “root” that springs forth from the stump….you think life has been snuffed out, and a green shoot “springs forth”…(we’re now learning from the Hidden Life of Trees, about the social nature  of trees…about their  sending life to the stump..

The stump...

Author  Peter Wohlleben has delighted readers and talk-show audiences alike with the news — long known to biologists — that trees in the forest are social beings. They can count, learn and remember; nurse sick neighbors; warn each other of danger by sending electrical signals across a fungal network known as the “Wood Wide Web”; and, for reasons unknown, keep the ancient stumps of long-felled companions alive for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots.

Isaiah wants us to imagine that shoot…(.identical words in Isaiah and Micah…Micah saw “Jerusalem of blood..” he was grassroots prophet…Isaiah’s mood was that of a profound sadness…he prophesied from the inside…)both spoke of a true day of peace.such a full day of peace that the natural violence of creation is set aside…natural enemies lie down together(perhaps warily) and lions eat hay…we’ll be vegans…

The Peaceable Kingdom

Note that Isaiah celebrates something that is already under way…after a time of national devastation comes  HOPE…let us pay attention..                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

So the question is what songs bring us peace?

There is  an ongoing conversation in world of artists…about getting across messages of spirit or justice: didactic vs. intuitive

Nevertheless, we always need the sustaining power and value of a PETE SEEGER 

As for MY SONGS…after the conventions I began ending my performances with Dylan’s                                                                                               It's A Hard Rain…

Then Mary Gauthier’s Mercy Now…

….and new  “Anthem”

So……What songs bring you peace? Inspire?  For some at this time of year it is Christmas music with it’s  themes of Joy and Hope….for Jeremy it’s Toshi Reagon..we need to sing our song together to bring us peace…and inspire us to work of peace…

After our prayers, we break bread together and go out into the world…

Thank you Leila

Advent 2: Lobsters in the desert

12/8

It’s the second Sunday in Advent. I begin by playing a recording  of Lo How a Rose e’er Blooming. (Es is ein ros)Talk about how the old German song was the framing  device for Bread and Puppet’s Shatterer…This week as we light our candles, we sing  two verses of Barbara Lundblad’s new  version of O Come O come, emmanuel…

O come, o come Immanuel                                                                                                                                        

And bless each place your people dwell

Melt ev’ry weapon crafted for war

Bring peace upon the earth for evermore

Rejoice, rejoice! Take heart and do not fear,

God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.

O come green shoot of Jesse, free

Your people from despair and apathy

Forge justice for the poor and meek

Grant safety for the young ones and the weak.

Rejoice, rejoice! Take heart and do not fear,

God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.

And the theme for this week is hope….

Our first scripture is ISAIAH 11:1-10. We reflect on what’s being said. That the stump is like a cut off tree. A tree taken for dead. And a sprig of new life is bursting forth. (Like breaking through the concrete) I also pass around a copy of one  of Jonathan Hicks’ Peaceable Kingdom paintings. Remembering my cousin’s Pennsylvania Quaker meeting house with several of these. How I love the big, dumb, simple animals living in harmony. And beyond the Isaiahan vision imagery, in a Pennsylvania landscape, William Penn and friends meeting with Native Americans. I always wished I could enter into one of those paintings. A world to live in. Or into.

                                         The Peaceable Kingdom

(Although one of our members was particularly attracted to …with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked….5)

For me, it’s  ..They will not hurt or destroy 
on all my holy mountain 8 and that it is a universal vision not just for  a particular people.      

Romans picks up the theme of hope: ¹³May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we talk about how hope is not optimism. Optimism is believing that every day in every way everything is getting better and better. On the other hand, Hope, as Jim Wallis has said, is believing in spite of  the evidence and having the courage to work to make the evidence change.

And so, as it is his week, we end with MATTHEW 3:1-12 and John the Baptist. That child of privilege, who left the tall steeple if the temple and his establishment family for  the wilderness. And that what it was about, the baptizing, was a radical critique of the state of the religious establishment that had gone in to collaboration with the occupying colonial power. That even the temple’s purifying baths, built by Herod were modeled on Roman baths. So the only appropriate action was the act of conversion, re-conversion, by entering into the ever flowing  waters of the Jordan.

His clothing  and dress like an Elijah. And his diet, locusts and wild honey, the simplest. (Although as Arcadia and John R pointed out, the Spanish reads langostas, IE, lobsters…lobsters and wild honey. And we realize that lobsters and locusts are equally non-kosher.)

And that repentance means turning around, going in  a different direction.

So why does he attack the scribes and pharisees?

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance

Is that any way to build a congregation? Is he questioning why they are there? Are they sincere? Or on a reconnaissance mission out to gather evidence? Like  when Homeland Security told me that they had intel embedded in West-Park’s Occupy contingent?

He is clear that being children of Abraham is nothing to be proud of. (like those who say..I’m proud to be a real American…) and that

God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 

And then he gets seriously radical:

Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

¹¹“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹²His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

John’s expectation of the messiah is clear: It’s easy to see ourselves as the wheat and we know exactly who the chaff are and that they are about to get their just deserts. It’s the French Revolution. Frantz Fanon's  Wretched of the Earth. The Chinese Cultural Revolution.

But here is the truth: we all have wheat and chaff within us. The purpose of this season, this preparation is to find the chaff within ourselves and offer it up. Repentance. Turning around. Dealing with our own chaff.

We end with the canto de esperanza:

Dios de la esperanza danos gozo y paz! Al mundo en crisis habla tu verdad. Dios de la justicia mandanos tu luz,luz y esperanza en la oscuridad. Oremos por la paz, cantemos de tu amor, Luchemos por la paz, fieles a ti, Senor.

….fighting for the peace, faithful to you…

From Isaiah to John the Baptist to this Argentine folk song…fitting words for the Sunday following the death of Nelson Mandela. The work is still unfinished. But we sing a song of hope.