February 8, 2009 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Name that Tune

Linda C. Loving
Minister for Evangelism, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 40:1–10
Isaiah 40:21–31
Mark 1:29–39

In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,
there is a deafening alleluia
raising from the souls
of those who weep,
and of those who weep with those who weep.
If you watch, you will see
the hand of God
putting stars back in their skies
one by one.

Ann Weems
Psalms of Lament

Do let me begin by saying that I am grateful for your warm welcome and am delighted and honored to again be part of the ministry of this wonderful church and staff and congregation.

I am mindful that it was fourteen years ago this month that I headed west to California and said goodbye forever. (Gives new meaning to the saying “Never put a period where God has placed a comma”!)

I recently reminded John Buchanan that in that same departure I swore off wearing collars, tabs and pantyhose. He advised me that if I came back I’d be wearing collar and tabs. He didn’t care to take the discussion beyond that—as you might well imagine.

As I considered such weighty fashion matters about returning to full-time church work, I came across a story that Fourth Church member Bob Rassmussen had sent to me last fall—I think it periodically makes the email rounds—about a mother who on a Sunday morning went in to wake her son and tell him it was time to get ready for church. To which the son replied, “I’m not going.” “Why not?” she asked. “I’ll give you two good reasons,” he said. “One, they don’t like me, and two, I don’t like them.”

His mother replied, “And I’ll give you two good reasons why you should go to church: One, you’re fifty-nine years old, and two, you’re the pastor!”

Well, no one had to boot me out of bed this morning. I’m eager to be here and to discern God’s leading as we labor and laugh and love together. Since the past few months have held profound transitions for this congregation and for our country and for our economy and worldview, I have chosen to reflect this morning on our Psalter reading, the first ten verses of Psalm 40, with its song of highs and lows and overarching hope. John Calvin called the psalms the anatomy of the soul, and I think the poetry speaks to the tangle of events and feelings we have experienced lately—personally and corporately. Listen again to these verses:

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the desolate pit,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.

Such constrasts. Desolate pit, miry bog. Feet upon a rock. New song. The roller-coaster ride of faith and life. These verses always remind me of a doll my terrific niece Megan had when she was about three years old. I was in seminary at the time, and Meagan was the theologian I valued above all others. I discovered her one day playing quietly with a cloth doll someone had made for her. On one side of the doll was a bright smiling face, and on the other side was a great frown with tears carefully stitched into pale cheeks. Megan was sitting there flipping the doll back and forth, saying, “Happpppiiiieee,” “Saaaaaad,” Happpppiiiieee,” “Saaaaaad,” changing her entire facial expression and vocal pitch each time. (I had not had enough seminary training at that time to wonder whether this model was too dualistic!)

Saaaaad. Happpiiiieeee. Desolate pit, miry bog. New song, feet upon a rock. We gather weekly to “name that tune,” a kind of holy quiz show that we all can win by grace. Even if we are tone deaf, we believe God gives us a new song. Both our Old and New Testament lessons offer that encouragement as well this morning; they speak of a similar “lifting up.” In the beautiful imagery from Isaiah,

He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the weary.
Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

Such an uplifting descant to counter any dirge of weariness you or I may carry. Such a new song promised for those who wait for the Lord.

And from the Gospel lesson, the healing touch of Jesus literally “lifted up” Simon’s mother-in-law. Not only did the critical fever leave her, but she turned around and made lunch for everyone! (Well, the text says “served them,” but I’m just wired to believe that’s gotta mean food!)

Jesus heals us, lifts us up, so that we may serve his loving truth, adding yet another verse to the timeless song of hope underscoring the psalmist’s proclamation that God puts a new song in our mouth.

Songlines are part of the sacred belief of the Australian Aborigines. (I have found in my recent years I’m less likely to limit my sermon sources to John Calvin and the Book of Order; sometimes other traditions open up our own creativity and faithfulness.) The Australian Aborigines believe that the wisdom and knowledge of their ancestors are like invisible footprints, sacred tracks through their land, And they call those “invisible tracks in the land” songlines. By finding the right songline, they can connect with their ancestors.

John Buchanan has been preaching from Genesis in recent weeks, so it is interesting to note that the Aborigines’ tradition is that in the beginning the great ancestors sang the world into existence. (Isn’t that a wonderful image: sang the world into existence?) Thus these people believe that part of their task in life is to help keep the world created. All of their songs, their works of art, their tending of creation is the Aborgines’ way of making real what is already present! Their lifework is to continue “singing up the country” (Bruce Chatwin, Songlines). Beautiful.

Songlines. Invisble tracks of the wisdom and knowledge of ancestors. Not unlike our own songline of baptismal liturgy. Not unlike the psalms, which are so precious to our faith tradition and which were originally sung. The psalms help us sing our faith into being, provide sacred tracks for the terrain of our souls and, like the songlines, help make real what is already present: a God who sets our feet upon a rock, making our steps secure, giving us a new song to sing.

Megan McKenna writes about the ancient songlines of the Aborigines, saying that “once you know the son, you can never get lost” (Keepers of the Story, p. 38). As Christians we know such a song. We can’t get it out of our heads. The words heard at the baptismal font this morning begin the hopeful humming, the deep knowing that we are never lost.

Our song of salvation through the Christ is at once ancient and new, and in church communities we commit ourselves to discerning the right songline for discipleship, even in the midst of widely differing experiences and beliefs, even in the midst of ups and downs of personal transition and national crisis and confusion of worry and war and waste. After all is said and done, if we are humble and merciful and dependent upon God, we are singing from the same page of the hymnal! Our ancient songline is the same even as we are different. And “once you know the song, you can never be lost.”

On Thursday, Luis Rivera spoke to the trustees of McCormick Theological Seminary as he accepted his new role as Dean of the Seminary. He spoke about current challenges globally, economically, socially. We all know the headlines. His comments were reminiscent of the psalmist’s desolate pit, miry bog. Then, interestingly, Rivera spoke about “looking for a new song,” saying “crisis situations are times when pessimists retract, realists advance, and utopians are easily dismissed. Each one has its own prayer and song. The pessimist laments; the realist recites words of wisdom and prudence, and the utopians rehearse prophecies of new exodus and lands.” Rivera concluded, “The new song for our time will come from a remix of realist and utopian melodies, because while in the midst of crisis, we now live between the times” (Luis Rivera, McCormick Theological Seminary Board of Trustees Meeting, 5 February 2009).

When Rivera speaks of living “between the times,” I think of a whole note in the songline as we patiently wait, faithfully wait, for the God who actively draws us up from the pit and sets our feet upon a rock, making our steps secure, who puts a new song in our mouth.

And the new song God puts in our mouth is not a Pollyanna song of praise; it is praise sung because we have indeed known the pits and bogs.

We know ultimately God will lift us up, that we are never lost. This is the kind of profound hope that allowed my medieval soul sister Julian of Norwich to proclaim in the midst of the Black Plague and Peasants’ Revolt and total economic upheaval that “all shall be well,” words sung so beautifully this morning. It’s a song of deep praise known from deep pain.

When the psalmist wrote centuries ago of the desolate pit and miry bog, what was he describing then? I mean, being “in the pits” seems like a fairly modern expression, à la Erma Bombeck’s theological question, “If life is just a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?”

In Hebrew scripture, the pit referred to the Underground, to Sheol. One scholar describes the pit as “a place where dust is their nourishment and clay their food.” Some speculate that the psalmist is describing rescue from death or a serious illness or personal despair or a string of bad luck or community calamity or natural disaster. The point is things weren’t good!

The pit holds different things at different times for different people. But this is key: it is often in the desolate pit or the miry bog that we truly face our souls and face the ambiguity and chaos of our world, both inner world and outer. And in so doing we are often lifted up, individually, corporately. We witnessed such a “lifting up” when we saw the hopeful throngs on inauguration day last month, gathered to sing a new song.

Honestly facing chaos and ambiguity takes great courage. It’s very tempting for individuals and institutions and nations to avoid the lessons of the pit, the bog. Yet as people of faith, God grants us the strength and humility and patience to face whatever we must in order to continue to sing ourselves and creation into being.

A character in Arthur Miller’s play After the Fall describes beautifully this need to face things, to fully and honestly embrace who we are and who we have been, the bog time we’ve experienced and the bog time we’ve created for other people.

Listen to this excerpt from Miller’s play:

I dreamed I had a child, and even in the dream, I saw it was an idiot and I ran away. But it always crept on to my lap again, clutched at my clothes until I thought if I could kiss it, whatever in it was my own, perhaps I could sleep. And I bent to its broken face, and it was horrible. . . . But I kissed it. I think one must finally take one’s life in one’s arms.

I think one must finally take one’s life in one’s arms. Maybe that’s what we are trying to do as a nation right now. Maybe that’s what we are trying to do as a congregation right now after the tragic loss of a beloved pastor and a shift in the dreams for a new building. “Taking one’s life in one’s arms” describes the fullness of the faith pilgrimage. And “taking one’s life in one’s arms” often happens in the pit or in the waiting or in times of transition or trauma, “the in-between times.” But then—row remarkable it is when at last you feel the rock underfoot and can sing again, realizing you’ve survived the quicksand of terror or despair or loss or failure.

And perhaps more importantly “taking one’s life in one’s arms”—gracefully embracing the good, the bad, the ugly—then means we have our life in our arms to give to others with a deep knowing that we are always in God’s arms, with a deep knowing that we know the song and can never be lost till the end of time. God is singing us into being till the end of time.

A songline is different from a party line or denominational distinctions or dogma or duty. A songline provides an unspeakable mystery of continuity and grace when we live “between the times” and when we courageously face what it is God wants to do with us for this verse that is only ours to sing.

I have always been inspired by the sacred tracks left by the great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who during World War II faithfully and fearlessly broke from the “party line” required of him in Germany and consequently experienced the miry bog of imprisonment and eventual execution. Bonhoeffer’s reflections echo the rhythms of Psalm 40.

“This is what I mean by worldliness,” Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison cell. “Taking life in one’s stride with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness. It is in such a life that we throw ourselves utterly into the arms of God and participate in God’s sufferings in the world.”

Even as Bonhoeffer endured the pit and bog of prison cell and impending death, he knew the songline; he had confidence in God’s ultimate deliverance, God’s active deliverance. Bonhoeffer took his life in his arms and then threw himself utterly into the arms of God. These things take courage, whether you are sitting in a prison cell or a church pew.

This sanctuary and the world are filled with living, breathing examples of those who cry out to be drawn up from the pit. We as disciples of Christ, we who know the songline of justice, compassion, forgiveness, extend hands whenever, wherever possible to lift up those near and far to find the footing they need. God sets our feet upon a rock so that in graced moments that find us high and dry and hopeful we may help others negotiate the currents and quicksand. It’s a roller-coaster ride of faithfulness, with hope as our seatbelt.

Sometimes we have trouble singing from the miry bog, but the melody still haunts us, and others hum it for us. Sometimes it is the waiting that stretches tunelessly before us. Sometimes we’re not always sure of the next note, but sing we will and sing we must, because God gives us a new song when we least expect it, an ancient songline made new for us each day, by grace.

Once you know the song, you can never be lost.

Thanks be to God.