Singing Home
John 15: 1-8    I John 4: 7-21
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
 
Sung:  O, had I a golden thread, and needle so fine; I’d weave a magic strand of rainbow design, of rainbow design. In it I’d weave the bravery of women giving birth.  In it I’d weave the innocence of children over all the earth, children over all the earth.

I celebrate Mother’s Day as one who has never given birth, whose mother has died, and who at age 56 is just beginning to heal from childhood wounds, as I learn how to parent myself.

Yesterday in the Pastor’s Book Group we discussed Maya Angelou’s new book, Letter to My Daughter. Maya Angelou never gave birth to a daughter, nor raised one, but she writes, “I have thousands of daughters....”

In this ... letter to her ... daughter, Angelou writes,  

“The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labor. The human heart is so robust, so tough, that once encouraged it beats its rhythm with a loud unswerving insistency.  One thing that encourages the heart is music. Throughout the ages we have created songs to grow on and to live by.” (p. 85)

Music isn’t the only way we find strength and “tangible encouragement,” but is one of the soul’s most powerful allies in the search for wholeness.

Last week, 18,000 people gathered in Madison Square Garden to celebrate Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday. At the four hour concert/party Pete’s singing voice was faint (70 years of singing truth to power will do that).  The New York Times reported, “He mouthed the words to the songs, but what came out were the voices of the 18,000 people in the audience, singing out.” That’s Pete’s legacy ...” That’s Pete Seeger singing home.

Songs of the spirit ... sound in our hearts, and encourage and strengthen us for the living of our days. What are the songs that encourage your heart? What is the music that moves your soul?  What are the songs that you sing in the car? In gratitude? In struggle?  What are the songs that sing you home? Take a moment to listen....Take a moment to turn to the person near you and share some song titles...

At the inauguration of President Obama, Pete Seeger sang all the verses of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” including the usually deleted verses, such as this one: “A great high wall there tried to stop me, a great big sign ... said private property, but on the other side it didn’t say nothing.  That side was made for you and me.”

Bruce Springsteen said “That’s what Pete’s done his whole life: he sings all the verses all the time, especially the ones that we’d like to leave out of our history as a people.”

Our scripture reading from the first letter of John describes a circle of love: God is love.  God loves us.  Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. And we are to love everyone, including ourselves.  

The passage goes on to say that “perfect love casts out fear.”  The antithesis of love is not hate ... it is fear.  Fear binds us and blinds us, reduces us and makes us hateful.  Perfect love strips away fear’s power over our lives..

Commentator Ronald Cole-Turner writes of this text, “All things begin in love, flow from love, are perfected through love and return to love.”

The film “The Soloist” is based on a true story.  In it, LA Times reporter Steve Lopez, is drawn to the music and then into friendship with Nathaniel Ayres, a schizophrenic homeless man.  Lopez hears music, played on two strings of a violin, rises, and follows it to its source, Nathaniel.  That’s how they met. As he begins to know Nathaniel, he is changed.

Lopez struggles with the ambiguities of his friend’s complicated and conflicted life, and his own. He gets frustrated and fed-up with life and he declares to his friend and ex-wife, “I resign.  I resign from everything. It’s official.”   She says, “You can’t fix Los Angeles.  And you’re never going to cure Nathaniel.  Just be his friend and show up.”

Redemptive love is like that ... not having the answers, but showing up ... for each other.

As the film ends, Lopez describes the power of friendship and of beauty, the "dignity of being loyal to something you believe in, and holding on to it, believing—if nothing else—that it will carry you home."

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.”  Grace is love so powerful we can never fall outside of it.  Love so freely given we don’t have to do anything to earn it. The sound and song of grace holds us up and holds us tight and never lets us go.

Fourteen years ago Kate Munger visited her friend Larry, who was lying in a coma brought about by AIDS.  She knew she might not see her friend again, and there didn’t seem like much to actually say.  So she sang for him, all afternoon.

That personal and powerful experience set off something inside of her that became a unique and important ministry in the East Bay and Marin. There are now 60 active choirs across the country and three other countries who sing at the bedsides of those who are dying, those in comas, newborns, those in jail, and the midnight choir that sings for homeless people. The program is called THRESHOLD CHOIRS. One singer said, “We were singing at the bedside of a woman named Margie.  She was in a coma, but as we finished our first song, she mouthed the word “wonderful” it was the last thing her family heard from her lips.  “Singing at the Threshold of Life” by John Mabry

It is a tremendously radical act to sing to another person. In fact it is always a radical act to risk reaching out to another human being.   We may fail, we may be judged or rejected.  But each time we do, God’s love becomes tangible encouragement and we become strength for each other.

It’s Mother’s Day ... our celebration of home and love and nurture and grace.  Let us live this day with thanks for the love we have received, with thanks for the grace that sustained us when we did not receive love, and let us enter with joy that circle of love, grounded in God and extended through each of us into all the world.  Amen.