Music is Love
I John 4: 7-12
Matthew 25: 34-40
A Meditation by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
On the occasion of Jerry Asheim’s 20th Anniversary at Epworth

Several weeks ago I responded to a late afternoon phone call at the church.  It was from a woman who needed a song.  Her father had died the week before.  The funeral was to be the next day.  He had a favorite hymn.  She was trying to find it.  He had been Methodist.  She grew up in the Methodist Church in Central America. They could not find it.  She searched on the internet and finally found the words, but she could not find the music.  I told her that we had a variety of hymnals, that I would look for it, and that we were about to have a staff meeting, so I would also ask our church musician, Jerry Asheim, and would call her back that evening.  

I hung up the telephone and then I thought... Donna Hamilton! Donna is a faithful member of Epworth’s choir, and a scholar of hymnody.  She is very active in the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, in fact, she and Jerry led a workshop at the Hymn Society’s conference in Minnesota this year.  I called Donna and told her I had an urgent pastoral hymn situation.  I sensed the thrill of a challenge crackling through the phone wires. I explained the situation, gave her the woman’s name and number, and asked Donna to call me either way before it got too late so I could follow-up.

Ten minutes later, Donna called back. She realized that the hymn was in a British Methodist Hymnal, and, by coincidence she had checked out that hymnal from the library and it was due back that very day.  She already called the woman back and arranged a rendez-vous to transfer the hymnal in front of the library. Magnificent.  And this is not the end of the story.  That next Sunday this woman worshipped at Epworth at Donna’s invitation.  We learned she was a missionary with the Presbyterian Church USA in Southern Sudan, and this same woman, Ingrid Renaud, led our adult study class last Sunday on her work and her understanding of Sudan and its peoples.

I share this story – because it speaks to me of the power of music to express love. A favorite hymn -- shaping a life, holding meaning and memory, expressing love.  Connections  -- between generations, between Belize, Britain, the U.S., and the Sudan.  

Ingrid found music and we found ministry in southern Sudan.

What is your favorite hymn, or psalm or spiritual song? What kinds of music express God’s love and your love for God? What is the song of your soul? I invite you to find a prayer request card in the pew rack before you.  Write down these songs and hymns and place them in the offering, that they might help shape our worship together in seasons to come.

Whether we sing at a ball game, at a birthday party, at work, at an inauguration, on a play yard in Nicaragua, a teen center in Richmond, a prison in Dublin, a nursing home in Oakland, or a Fellowship Hall in Berkeley, music has power to connect and to express love. Music has power to evoke memories, people, moments in history, feelings, dance, story, peace, prayer, vibration, laughter, tears, rhythm, movements, pleasure, vision, culture, grief, comfort, play, worship. Worship.

My sister-in-law, Barbara, Jim’s sister, is a pianist and choir director.  Some years ago, not long after the death of her dear son, our nephew Ron, in a car accident, Barbara spoke these words to her home church:

“As you know, my son was recently killed in an automobile accident.  The support from this congregation and from other friends has been a strong anchor in a terrible time.  But one phrase that Lowell and I hear over and over is ”There are no words to express our feelings, “ or “no words are adequate to tell you how sorry we are.”  And that is right. There are no words, which fully express how I feel either.  Sometimes there is a very real gap between what we feel and what we can express in words.  Music can bridge that gap; it can do the whole job.  According the scripture, it was David’s playing on his lyre, not anything he said, that eased the spiritual agony of King Saul.”

St. Augustine defined a hymn as a song with praise addressed to God.  He also said, whoever sings, prays twice.

This morning, as we celebrate 20 years of music ministry with Jerry Asheim, his choices of music, hymns, texts, instruments and voices lead us in worship.  In his notes on selected music, Jerry includes a Sunday morning I remember well.  The spiritual that Charles Lynch, Jerry’s beloved partner, will sing this morning as an offertory, was the first song Charles sang in worship after nearly dying of a brain infection.  Charles wanted to live, but was ready to die. Witnessing Charles’ testimony to trust and joy “Ain’t Got Time to Die” that first Sunday was a holy moment many of us will remember forever.

First John chapter four proclaims that the central nature of God is knowable.  God is love.  We love because God first loved us.  We may be loved imperfectly and we may love imperfectly, but as we live in God’s love we are transformed b perfect love.  

Number 68 in the United Methodist Hymnal begins, When in our music God is glorified, and adoration leaves no room for pride, it is as though the whole creation cried, Alleluia!

As we sing our lives and sing our faith we are shaped into community.  The final verse of this hymn begins, “Let every instrument be tuned for praise.  Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise.”

Jerry Asheim is a musician and a nurse and a minister of the Gospel. When Jerry decided to come to California in 1989 it was to care for family members and friends facing grave illnesses. He applied to be organist at Epworth.  Before he arrived he received a gracious letter from Epworth’s administrator, Phillip Derf who became the first person Jerry met in California, and a good friend.  Jerry didn’t get the job.  Then, in August, on a Tuesday, he got a call. The person hired had not worked out.  Could he start with choir rehearsal the next day, and then that Sunday? Yes he could and did.

First John Four proclaims who God is.  And it begins, “BELOVED, let us LOVE ONE ANOTHER...”  If we want to know God, we love one another.  And we can love one another because God first loved us. Matthew 25 proclaims how we know God, “I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.  I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Jerry Asheim....helps us sing, creates inspiring music, nurtures orchids, rescues greyhounds, embarrasses us by his extravagant anonymous generosity, feeds the hungry, welcomes, takes care, visits, loves, testifies to the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thanks be to God.