nine::three

(A Sermon for Morning Eucharist)

What song are we singing? Whose songs do we listen to? These days when one steps outside it is as if the trees are singing, they being full of the chanting cicadas. Sadly, the roar we probably hear most often is not that of the sea, but some old truck or sports car, though we are currently only feet away from Buffalo Creek, mere miles away from some of the numerous falls of Appalachia. They too are singing. And weeping. What song do we sing? Whose cadence inspires our voices and animates our daily life?

Our lives are our song, our worship. We are the church, the embodiment of Christ on the earth, the people who hear the word's Christ spoke that that assembly in Nazareth and fell in our hearts that we are to speak the poem with Jesus:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon us,
because He has anointed us to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent us to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sign to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

This way of life, a life of proclamation and service, is our cicada chant; it is to fill the air we breath.

In great part, we receive the tempo of our song in this liturgy, in prayer, in the hearing of Scripture, through confession, in table fellowship. The Word made flesh consumes us in the Eucharist as we are brought together in unity as the Body of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Let us listen to the songs of creation, let us sing of love in service to the stranger and each other. All else is mere chatter, empty notes. But we have a beautiful song to sing, a song of hop, of truth, of love.

(1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Psalm 96, Luke 4:16-30)