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(singing)
Wade in the water…
Wade in the water children,
Wade in the water,
God’s gonna trouble the Water.

     The nation of Judah has been finally obliterated by the Babylonian army of King Nebuchadnezzar.  The walls surrounding the city of Jerusalem are standing no more and Solomon’s temple has been laid to waste.  A captured and displaced people find themselves in a foreign land, in service to an empire about which they know very little.  All of the Jewish elite, the teachers, business leaders, those who had owned and tended the land, have been carted off to Babylon and in Psalm 137 we find them, having hung their lyres upon the trees, wondering how in the world they will survive.

     As we read about this historic event in the lives of our Jewish brothers and sisters, we come to understand that the core values of Jewish life have been physically decimated and what we see is a glimpse of a covenant peoples utter anguish, ---we hear their lament, the voice of a captive people consumed by the grief and outrage that all that they have known, all that they have lived for, all that they have hoped for has been taken away.  And furthermore to add insult to injury, we see their captors taunting and teasing them by demanding that they sing a song--”Sing us A Song of Zion,” they demand—and as one might suspect, by our brief glimpse into the story, that the singing could have and would have caused only more grief.

     Babylon is saying “Where is your God now?” The Babylonian request for the captives to sing a song of Zion is to ask them to remember a time, a way of life that is seemingly gone forever, to remember those days when God was central in their lives.  To remember, as well, those seemingly broken promises of a covenant relationship gone terribly awry. So while the remembering indeed calls forth the excruciating pain that they experience, it serves as a blessing, if examined with a different lens…….in a different light?

     From 1991 until 2001, I served in a large Catholic parish church in Alexandria, Virginia.  Hearing God’s continued call in my life to the ordained ministry of the church, I concluded my tenure with the Catholic Church and “came home” if you will, to the United Methodist Church.  Having served in the church from a young age, it seemed fitting that I would someday, somehow find my way back into a denomination that I dearly loved, and one in which I knew I had a place.  And so, in 2001, I accepted a position at a local congregation of the United Methodist Church in Rockville, Maryland. I also began a four year journey through seminary and a concurrent journey along a track for ordination within the United Methodist Church.  Long story-very short, because of the continued decisions by the General Council of the church, which upheld earlier rulings prohibiting ordination for “self-avowed and practicing” homosexuals, I had two choices! The first, go back into the closet, deny a significant relationship in my life and serve the church from that dark place. Or, I could acknowledge that I could never live my life that way and withdraw from the process. I decided upon the later and began the long and painful journey of slow detachment from a calling that had captured my heart and soul for years. For the first time in my life, I found myself trying desperately to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.  I finally found out that I could not do it.  It sis not matter that the people of the congregation continued to affirm my gifts, it did not matter that I felt the support of family and friends, what matter is that God had called me to this point in my life and then seemingly slammed a door shut in my face.

     At least that is how I felt.

     I found myself in a very strange land indeed, and I wondered in the midst of my anger and hurt if I would ever be able to sing the Lord’s song again…and really mean it. Where are those places that you find yourselves trying to sing the Lord’s Song in a strange land? What does singing the Lord’s song today really mean for us as a community of faith gathered here today? Certainly for the group of exiles in the scripture passage today, metaphorically “singing the Lord’s song” was a way to describe their very identification and relationship to each other as chosen race, an homogenous culture, a way of living out a covenant reality, and finally a way of simply ordering their daily lives. “Singing the Lord’s song” was about knowing who they were in relationship to each other and in relationship with their God.

     In our Christian community, we know that singing the Lord’s song is intrinsically about those very same things. It is about being called together as the faithful, praising and giving thanks to God in our worship, remembering what has come before and saying yes to the dance that is ahead.  It is about remembering the past, it is about living with and loving each other in the diverse and challenging, and painful moments of our lives, many times it simply means that you tell me your story and I tell you mine,---and in the hearing we know that we are Children of the very same God.—it means that we can agree to disagree and still hold each other in an embrace---- it also means that the we share the radically transforming story of how we know the risen Christ in our midst and that we do so unabashedly and without fear or trepidation, even when, and especially when we find ourselves in those strange lands of our own lives.

Wade in the water…
Wade in the water children,
Wade in the water,
God’s gonna trouble the Water.

     As a nation and a denomination, where and when we continue to wrestle with who’s in and who’s out; as we are confronted with the issues of justice and equality, it is ever more difficult to sing the Lord’s Song in the midst of a chaotic world, a world that seems doomed and once again on the brink of nuclear destruction, a world that is heating up and melting away, a world fatigued with war, hunger genocide,  Can we keep on singing the Lord’s song knowing that? How do we as a Christian community of faith continue to sing the Lord’s Song in these “strange lands”, “strange lands” that are  no longer half a world away, “strange lands” that are no longer relegated to the ghettos of our cities and “strange lands” that can no longer be about us and them…but “strange lands” that  have come home to roost in “our own back yards” and importantly,  the “strange lands” that we have allowed to permeate our own hearts and minds as we encounter the living Christ in our world today. Our very souls are wearied by the “strange lands” that we find ourselves in.

     Let’s not fool ourselves. We live in a strange land when we pride ourselves on building up and taking care of our own political and economic temples while our neighbor goes hungry. We are living in a “strange land” when we are able to convince ourselves that it is alright to obliterate foreign nations in order to preserve our way of life. We are living in a “strange land” when we cannot see or hear our brothers and sisters in pain. We live in our “strange land” when we can tune into the glitz of network news while having steak and baked potato dinners and not even be affected by what we see anymore. We are living in a “strange land” when we encounter the homeless person in the middle of the median on any street corner do not see Jesus standing there!  “What you did for the least of these, you did for me.” And while we like to believe that we are so far removed from a group of exiles and their captors, two groups alternatively characterized in the psalm; one group by anger and grief and hostility and the other by selfishness, greed and power, if we take a moment in our faithful reading and soulful interpretation of the text we will recognize that we are just like them. Which “them”, you ask?  Both of them.

Wade in the water….
Wade in the water Children,
Wade in the water,
God’s gonna trouble the water.

     I realize that we have been confronted with bleak picture, a picture of exiles torn from a land centuries ago juxtaposed with the reality of finding ourselves living today as Christians in our very own “strange lands” which are a result of our own self-perpetuated greed and now totally out of our control. In this strange land, how is it that we will continue to live out our calling as the body of Christ in our time?

     In the New Testament reading, the Apostle Paul addresses the early church at Collosus, and he says: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were indeed called in the one body.  And be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your heart sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.  And whatever you do in, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God, the creator, through him.”

     On the night before Jesus died, he spoke to the disciples about a new covenant. A new covenant filled with the promise of a new way of living and of being the body of Christ….and it is in this very covenant that we search for our new song, a song of unremitting hope and compassion, a song not just spoken with our lips but carried forth in our daily lives as Christians. A new song of reconciliation and forgiveness. Reconciliation and forgiveness which causes us to examine every single motive and tradition in our individual lives, in our work, and in systems that continue to oppress and conquer.

     A new song that cultivates both personal and corporate humility; contrite hearts that are able to say, “I am sorry.” A new song which calls us to the exploration of the Holy Spirit in our midst---a quiet spirit present in communal prayer, a spirit urging stillness and solitude in daily lives that afford us time to discern the will of God in our faith community, and in our churches. A new song, a song which challenges us to further service in this community, in this country and in the world.  Not just a quick fix by “writing a check, licking an envelope” service---patting ourselves on the back and being done “service,” but service which puts us into the shoes of our marginalized brothers and sisters. Service which calls us to the trenches, service which says to another person who is desperately in need--- “I see you,”—“your tears are my tears and my hope will become your hope.”  Service which moves us to a greater understanding of the self-less love of a Savior than we have ever known. Then, we know we are singing a new song in a strange land.

BY WADING IN THE WATER….

OUR LIVES FLOW ON IN ENDLESS SONG….

HOW CAN WE KEEP FROM SINGING?

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