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Beloved
in Christ,
There’s
an old quip about church music that goes something like, “no one ever
leaves the service humming the sermon.” Indeed, music forms us in
deep, lasting, and embodied ways that words on their own cannot do.
Music stays with us. It works on us and in us long after its literal
sound has stopped.
In the
reading from Revelation 5 appointed in the Daily Office lectionary
for today, John’s vision is of the heavenly throne room. There’s a
scroll containing God’s program of justice, a sacrificial lamb who
alone can unlock it, and a choir of elders who, once the scroll is
opened, sing a new song. Their song is a chorus of exultant praise
and thanksgiving for the deep love God has shown for those pushed
furthest to the margins. It’s an earworm of praise for the sure and
certain victory of love and healing God has accomplished in the death
and resurrection of Jesus.
The Book
of Revelation was written as a source of comfort and care for a
community living through hard, uncertain and fearful times. It
invited the community to whom it was written, as it invites us today,
to be a people who stand in the midst of
such a world, and in such times, singing a new song.
The song
around us is one of bitter division. We are called to sing a song of
God’s healing love.
The song
around us is one of endlessly escalating
outrage. We are called to sing a song of peace.
The song
around us is one lifting up the powerful and
pushing aside the lowly. We are called to sing Mary’s song of lifting up the lowly.
We sing
a new song, we tell a new story, and we live as
new people. Not out of some naive and saccharine wishful thinking,
but because we know that in the life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus Christ, the victory of life and love has already been won. And
we don’t just know it in our brains, we know it like a song, deep in
our bones. When we steep ourselves in the scriptures, and when we
pray our lives together in community, we begin to hear the song of
God’s living power and love everywhere we go. We don’t have to write
it. We just have to sing it.
May our
lives together join John’s heavenly chorus of praise, singing of love,
justice, and joy, until earth and heaven are fully, finally, and
gloriously joined in a perfect vision of healing forever.
Grace
and Peace,
The
Right Reverend Craig Loya
Bishop X
Episcopal
Church in Minnesota
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