Easter 3C, 1 May 2022. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20). Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen.
Revelation 5:11-14. And the four living creatures said, “Amen!”
John 21:1-19. Come and have breakfast.
O God of resurrection, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
Many of you know that Emmanuel Church is between parish administrators in these weeks after Easter, so I am getting an eye-opening and humbling opportunity to serve as both your rector and your interim parish administrator. I’ coordinating and supporting the generous offerings of volunteers and learning about the endless and perplexing challenges of the ministry of the front office, which I’d only heretofore imagined or knew second hand. I have always appreciated the ministrations of administrators, and my admiration is surging at the moment! Administration, at Emmanuel anyway, is jammed full of details and procedures that are always in service to our mission of radical hospitality, advocacy and alliance, spirituality and the arts, and good stewardship of resources entrusted to our care.
Earlier this week, my friend reminded me of a prayer from Walter Brueggemann’s beautiful book entitled, Prayers for a Privileged People. It spoke to me in my time of deeper and wider administration, and perhaps it will speak to you, too. It’s called, “Practitioners of Memos.” The you being addressed in this prayer is the Holy One. The prayer goes like this: [1]
Here we are, practitioners of memos:
We send e-mail and we receive it,
We copy it and forward it and save it and delete it.
We write to move the data, and
organize the program
and keep people informed—
and know and control and manage.
We write and receive one-dimensional memos,
that are, at best, clear and unambiguous.
And then—in breathtaking ways—you summon us to song.
You, by your very presence, call us to lyrical voice;
You, by your book, give us cadences of praise
that we sing and say, “allelu, allelu.”
You, by your hymnal, give us many voices
toward thanks and gratitude and amazement.
You, by your betraying absence,
call us to lament and protest and complaint.
All our songs are toward you
in praise, in thanks and in need.
We sing figure and image and parallel and metaphor.
We sing thickness according to our coded community.
We sing and draw close to each other, and to you.
We sing. Things become fresh. But then the moment breaks
and we sink back into memo:
“How many pages?”
“When is it due?”
“Do you need footnotes?”
We are hopelessly memo kinds of people.
So we pray, by the power of your spirit,
give us some song-infused days,
deliver us from memo-dominated nights.
Give us a different rhythm,
of dismay and promise,
of candor and hope,
of trusting and obeying.
Give us the courage to withstand the world of memo
and to draw near to your craft of life
given in the wind.
We pray back to you the Word made flesh;
We pray, “Come soon.”
We say, “Amen.”
What this prayer highlights for me is that memos and emails, while often necessary, are rightly not the boss of us. When rightly ordered, they are in service to songs, songs of gratitude and amazement; of lament, protest, and complaint; of praise, thanks, need, joy, and hope. Songs expand and deepen our life of “reflection, yielding, and glad obedience”. [2] Remember that the word obedience in the Biblical sense means deep listening. Simon (as in Simon Peter) is a Hellenized version of the Hebrew Shimon, which means one who hears. The Deuteronomy lesson I would choose for this week if I were the queen of the lectionary would be Chapter 6, verses 4-9, the Sh’ma (Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai elohenu, Adonai echad: listen deeply, you god-strugglers, the Holy is our God. The Holy alone.).
Thinking of the power of songs, though, led me to wish for a soundtrack to go with our beautiful epilogue of the Gospel of John, which begins and ends with love songs. After running through the extensive disk catalogue in my wife Joy’s head, I chose three songs by American folk singer, Patty Griffin. If you know her, you probably already love her. If you don’t know her, I invite you to stretch; they are going to be assigned as your homework this week. [3] Those of you who are with us via livestream can see the link right away but I highly recommend waiting to click on it until after the postlude.
They are resurrection songs. As I said last week, resurrection is an experience. Resurrection hope is not all about some distant future. It’s about love stronger than death, about no-matter-what kind of love in the face of devastation and evil. Resurrection is better described in story and poetry than in non-fiction and, best of all when set to music, so we can “sing, pray, and walk in God’s ways,” as our cantata chorale puts it.
The first Patty Griffin song is called, “When It Don’t Come Easy.” [4] For me it goes with the beginning of our Gospel story, when Peter decides to go fishing, back on the Sea of Galilee; and the others say, “I’m going with you.” They were out all night and caught nothing. Although, according to the Gospel of John, they have had two encounters with the Risen Lord, they do not recognize the person on the beach to be Jesus. The song begins: “I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home tonight.…Your best intentions may not be enough.” The response to the worry is in the first part of the refrain: “If you break down, I’ll drive out and find you. If you forget my love, I’ll try to remind you. [I’ll] stay by you when it don’t come easy…stay by you when it don’t come easy. It’s a resurrection song.
The second Patty Griffin song is called, “Little Fire.” [5] It goes, “My friend, come stand beside me, lately I’m feeling so lost.…You’ve seen us wandering through these times. You’ve seen us in weakness and in power. You’ve seen us forgetful and unkind,” and the voice that calls above the howling wind says, “Come rest beside my little fire.” The refrain is, “All that I want is one who knows me, a kind hand on my face when I weep, and I’d give back these things I know are meaningless for a little fire beside me when I sleep.” It’s a resurrection song.
In the scene on the beach by the little fire, Jesus is standing with Simon Peter and asks him three times (perhaps one for each denial prior to the crucifixion), “Simon, son of John, do you love me?… do you love me?… do you love me?” When Peter replies, “Yes,” Jesus’ response is: “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep….Follow me, even and especially to those places you do not wish to go.” This call is not just for Simon, son of John, of course.
The third Patty Griffin song is called, “Love Throw a Line.” [6] It’s about running out of luck, running out of days. “There’s a war and a plague, smoke and disaster, lions in the coliseum…a witness and a Bible….Just before it all blows to pieces, love throws a line to you and me.” And the song ends with a plea for love to pick up the pace, to pull Loveself out from behind if we’re gonna win this race. It’s a resurrection song.
I wonder what your resurrection songs are. Add them to the play list. I daresay, we haven’t gathered here today, in person or via livestream out of some curiosity about an event that happened two thousand years ago. We are gathered because, consciously or not, we are looking for the resurrection in our own time. We are looking for love to stand by us when it don’t come easy, for a little warmth and kindness, for love to throw a line. In every age, at every age, there are resurrection songs to sing, to call us, guide us, to inspire us to live more justly and more lovingly in song-infused days.
- Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008), pp. 31-2.
- Ibid., a phrase from his book dedication.
- Patty Griffin, Youtube playlist.
- —— “When It Don’t Come Easy” lyrics.
- —— “Little Fire” lyrics.
- —— “Love Throw a Line” lyrics.