Transformed

Psalm 23
From Chapter 11, The Gospel of John


Rockville United Church
Rev. Dr. Duncan D. Newcomer

October 14, 2007

There is an Aboriginal tribe who traditionally map their home territory with songs. Not unlike animals that mark their territory with scent, these good wild folk walk an area singing, and where their song lines are sung that is where their home is. More than talking the talk, walking the walk, they walk the song.

This is a remarkable practice – finding your home on the range by singing “Home on the Range.” Now, when I say that we, we here, live in the spiritual slums, I mean to contrast, for example, our sense of property, boundary, and home, with such a whimsical, poetic, and spiritual practice as these song line people.

Think about it. When the Rockville City inspector came to our rented townhouse to see if we had a right to be there and that all was regulation-right about the property, what if I just said, well, I’ve walked around the perimeter and sung my song, so all is well, and please don’t cross my song line with your inspector-list: my soul and my song are at peace here, what more could be asked of life?!

Who, really, is off their rocker here? – the man or woman who can sing their way home, or the state-power beaurocratic checking to see if the paper trail adds up? At least from the place of spirit, who has the richer, fuller human spirit – much less divine inspiration, the song-line singer or the county inspector?

If the sound of our song could give us a legal right to have our home land secure – wouldn’t that be a holy law? Of course this is hopelessly romantic spiritualism. But the idea of song lines establishing sacred space is a stunning baseline by which to measure the spiritual quality of our way of life. Just go to a Cary Creed concert and find yourself at home! Song-lines for home are not such a far fetched baseline. Note. Ask yourself this the next time you are sitting at a traffic light in our area and the car next to you is throbbing with sound system-volume meant for a stadium. Note your anger. Why is that person’s music so loud?! Note your fear. As outraged as you are, you don’t often risk looking over with entitled contempt, nor do you say or shout, “What’s the matter with you, turn it down?!” Why? Because you have made a series of social, economic, ethnic calculations and you are afraid to challenge this person’s temporary declaration of space. Just as rhetoric is the power of the powerless, so the song-line of this guy’s bursting car sound system is his way of saying, “I am here, this space is my space. You can’t come in and I can push you back with my sound waves.” The people at the top of our social totem pole don’t have to blast and blare their music, because we have our space, our place, and law and order and money and Miss Manner’s politeness insure and protect our boundaries, and with the change of the light, we can drive away.

It is ironic, if not tragic, that the spiritual beauty of song line space can be relegated in our society to its disturbed expression by the disposed, the angry poor, the frightened male, the insecure stranger. Once upon a time, when I was a seminary student in New York City, working with gangs on the lower East Side, guys walked streets with boom-boxes called Ghetto Blasters. Now they have four wheels and a front and back seat to call their own.

Now I know it’s not fair to compare our civilization’s spiritual health with that of singing semi-naked aboriginals whose mapquest is fulfilled by song. I know it’s not rational to compare our real estate law to their melodies. I know it’s not realistic to long for homeland peace to be secured by music when the military industrial technological complex is doing its best to make our homeland safe. I know that a lullaby won’t capture Osama Bin Laden. I mean I’ve read some political science and Christian ethics and I learned that you can’t spiritually evaluate a culture just based on its spirit! There’s reality to factor in! Only the simple-minded say thing like “what would Jesus do?” W.W.J.D. Like what would Jesus do about 9/11? I know that.

But then, here in our own little surround-sound song-lined place, here among our hymns and anthems and choral responses and musical offerings, here in our teepee of high-ceilinged acoustics, we do long for spiritual life in the parched earth of our spiritually-disadvantaged way of life. We create a sanctuary experience of rich sound and a dash of silence and word, to nourish what we might be brave enough to call our souls.

Here we might take a peak at what Jesus would do. Just as a kind of exotic plumb line to see how tilted and off-kilter we might be. And what did Jesus do in today’s scripture? W.D.J.D. What did Jesus do? Well he just turned death into life. He went into the death-dark cave of his bound-up best friend and called him out and back to life.

Now that is some story. And I want us to keep it a story and to deal with it as a story. For now, it’s just a story. If it’s more, that’s for another day. A story. Just something some people said. Just a story people told, and then written down in a book of a lot of stories, ending in a story not unlike this one of Jesus pulling out Lazarus, ending in a story of God pulling out Jesus.

Lazarus may have become nothing more than a dead man walking. In other words, coming back from the dead, resuscitation, is not entirely the same story as Jesus’ resurrection. But there is a core similarity to these two stories: Out of a dark cave of dead-life comes a new life, by some spiritual power.

So what’s your story? Just on the level of story? What’s the three-act play you are in? What’s the story-line that shapes your life the way song lines defined that land we talked about? In other words, the preacher’s challenging question is not: is the story of Lazarus true? Is not: is the story of Jesus true? Is not: can song-lines define private property? But is: what’s the spirit of your story? Of our story? You may not know the story you are living – but you can find out. You may not believe there is a spirit to your life’s story. There could be.

The territory I’m defining for you and for me in this sermon is important for two reasons. One. Story is our way to find our value in our lives. And we need to find our value and our values. Two. Shared stories build community, and we are building a new community, in this church – where a new story is starting, and in our country and world, where history is crossing a big road. New lines.

But more importantly, our stories can change. That is the Christian Faith; that there is a spiritual power that can change our story and bring light out of darkness. Life out of death. What is basic to the Christian story, like Lazarus, like Jesus, is that our life story changes when we go into the dark cave.

That is the genius of the Christian story. Our story becomes a song line when we walk out into the unknown dark and reach out to take hold of lost love, lost life, and it returns to us in the light, full of spirit, full of new life. Amen.