Monday Morning Music Ministry

2-21-22

I realize the invitation of this blog is to “start your week with a spiritual song in your heart.” And I further realize that it carries the implication of Uplift; a bright message to commence a positive week.

When we are inspired to be a latter-day Jeremiah – that is, reflecting on troubling signs in contemporary life, or addressing the many crises our culture faces – a realistic message is also a useful, even necessary, way to start our days and weeks, even if “dark.” We should not continuously be “Debbie Downers,” but neither should we be spiritual Pollyannas, thinking everything is rosy, or will be cheery when things soon straighten themselves out.

Jeremiah, as I said, was a prophet whose message was dark and threatening to those who needed to hear it: the whole nation that had gone morally wayward. Noah too. Moses too. Jonah too. In fact… Jesus, too, in many of His sermons.

The sweep of humankind’s history has been marked by the rebellion of individuals, for instance “those to whom much had been given” and much was expected; these notable figures, too often, squandered their gifts and blessings. No less frequently in the world’s history and Biblical accounts we learn of entire peoples – tribes, societies, nations – who strayed.

“Strayed” from what? Generally from the things that had made them great, or successful, or productive – Forgetting their foundational principles. Betraying their inheritance. Losing sight of what was unique to them. Falling out of love with the ideals they once cherished.

Ancient Rome comes to mind. And so does… contemporary America.

This critique is not novel – at least I hope most of you feel the same angst. Recent events brought these thoughts to me. No, not crime nor the drug epidemic nor the runaway economy nor the health scares nor “wars and rumors of war,” despite these news items screaming at us every day.

Sometimes a larger circumstance can be more indicative of our moral crises and spiritual challenges than are passing headlines and statistics. This clarity was apparent when I watched the recent Super Bowl. I don’t mean the game itself – well, yes, I do. Not the brutish contest with strange new rules and blown calls and gladiator-like ferocity, but the “game” behind the game. We now have the nation’s favorite sport (we can still include baseball under this umbrella) where drugs and politics play important roles, in the news and in careers of the players. Fans have come to know as much about salaries and pensions as they do about on-the-field stats.

Salaries spiral ever upward, and… that’s America, right? “Get what you can while you can.” But players increasingly receive contracts worth significant portions of a billion dollars. OK, “if the owners didn’t make it, they couldn’t pay it.” So the owners simply charge more for tickets (multiple thousands of bucks for a seat at the Super Bowl… when the fans in the stands probably watch the action on Jumbotron screens anyway) and charge more for commercial time. ($6-million per minute?) Advertisers pay so much by charging more and more for their products. All of which means the fan gets socked from every angle. Um, for guys playing football and baseball.

We think of Ancient Rome with its “bread and circuses.”

But more troubling to me was the halftime “entertainment,” this year entirely given over to hip hop and rap, which is listened to by only a sliver of the population. An array of performers rolled out their hits, and paid vague homage to Los Angeles, common home to some of the noise and to this year’s Super Bowl. Kendrick Lamar performed “Alright,” famous for its anti-police message… and by the way, that misspelling was his intention; I realize that many performers and song titles and the genre itself is one big typographical error. The one white star, Eminem, took a knee in evident homage to Kaepernick; and the one major female, Mary K Blige, strutted around the stage in the costume of L.A.’s many street-walkers.

An observer, attempting to understand the lyrics, made a list of words and phrases during the halftime show. The unofficial tally: The “N” word, 16 times. The “F-Bomb,” 13 times. The “M-F” phrase, four times. The “B” word (in these days of the Me Too movement), 24 times. Likewise there were obscene gyrations including groping and grabbing of breasts and crotches.

America’s favorite sport. Broadcast in early evening… partly so kids could enjoy the sport. (“Grandma, what’s an igger?”) Overpaid illiterates parading filth, the crowd noise cheering lustily, praised by NBC announcers, paid for by Pepsi. (And you, ultimately.)

Our culture, if such wildly endorsed events are barometers (and they are), is in a Stage Four level of decadence. Among many comparisons I could offer, and really none are necessary as proof, we have arrived at a point where parents are not supposed to have a say in children’s school curricula; where Bible passages are being censored as “hate speech”; but a spectacle like the Super Bowl halftime show is force-fed to 100-million viewers as appropriate.

We have entered a Pentecost of Calamity, and extrication by traditional families and Christian patriots seems daunting. Without God’s help… and a true grassroots revival… and a severe rejection of this Spirit of the Age…

Well… have a nice week.

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I was reminded of the great Gram Parsons song. Written in the late ‘60s by the late enigmatic musical pioneer, Sin City is widely assumed to be not about Las Vegas; not New Orleans; but (appropriately this week) Los Angeles. Or… America and the West as a whole.

Click: Sin City

2-13-17

I heard about one of those Management Consultants who conduct weekend seminars, telling a story about his advice to a trainee.

“There are two… essential… things… never to forget…” and he paused some more – “when you set out… to navigate your… career.”

Annoyed by the strangely lugubrious rollout, the trainee insisted, “Yes? YES? Well???”

The instructor replied, “Patience.”

Point taken. But the trainee pressed on. “What’s the other thing???”

Before he could finish the question, the instructor interrupted: “Timing.”

Good advice, if we think about it. (By the way, you just saved two whole days, and a $300 registration fee, for the seminar!) (You’re welcome.) Like most good advice, the best source is not a Management guru, or even Life’s Experiences, but the Bible.

The famous verse – so famous that even irreligious people often quote it during their marriage ceremony – from I Corinthians 13, offers “patience” as the first of the words that define Love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” Wow. “Patience” leads the list.

A verse we all should remember when things are wrong, or insecure, or bleak, or threatening, or dangerous… and we fret – “Be still and know that I am God.” How much simpler can an assurance of God be? My daughter Heather meditates on Psalm 46:10 by parsing its words individually: each phrase brimming with meaning.

“Be.” “Be still.” “Be still and know.” “Be still and know that I am.” “Be still and know that I am God.” Thus comes spiritual patience.

Then there is the closely related virtue, a sense of timing. Many of the Israelites’ woes, and their leaders’ mistakes, came from disobeying God’s directions, being impulsive, jumping the gun, so to speak.

Many Christians do this from mistaken confidence that they have God’s Will; are full of the Spirit; when often it is old-fashioned Pride.

Peter walked on water as his Savior did and instructed him to do… until he looked down. Impulsive.

Of all the Apostles, I identify the most with Peter, I must admit. Impulsive, sometimes too eager to please God, when all He asks is obedience. The “other side of that coin” concerns Peter, again, and those who were told to “wait” for the Disciple to replace Judas. They were impatient… they substituted THEIR timing for God’s… and drew straws. A guy named Matthias was chosen.

I describe him that way because we never hear of him again in the Bible. He was chosen by 11 men holding an election. But the Holy Spirit, in God’s timing, would APPOINT the successor: Paul.

Peter was an impulsive, bumbling, flawed follower of Jesus. After swearing he would never do so, he denied Jesus three times, leading to the crucifixion. But in God’s timing, Peter soon became a wise, inspirational, strong leader. A great Manager, in fact, of the early church, it could be said. On his confession of Jesus as Lord, the church had its foundation.

What changed? Obedience to God’s timing. In that timing, baptism played a role in the step-by-step timing we are to obey, ourselves. When Peter and the Disciples had been baptized in the Spirit – and as other converts were to experience in a tidal wave of belief after Pentecost – the promise of Zechariah 4:6 was confirmed: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, said the Lord of hosts…”

Jesus Himself had no earthly ministry we are told about, for the first 30 years of His life. Then he was baptized in the River Jordan, according to God’s timing. The Holy Spirit came upon Him, and His heavenly ministry commenced.

Patience is a virtue. And timing? Always remember to set your clocks and watches to God-Standard Time.

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Click: Waiting On the Lord

By Leah C. Morgan

He’s only 10. He’s not a threat. He’s rather ordinary, but the girls in eighth grade who ride his bus target him as the object of their ridicule. Day after day, they humiliate and torment him, and there’s no one to care. The school is contacted but nothing changes. The boy cries, inside and out, his agony overtaking him.

Then one day, right about the time people out there are celebrating God’s love come down, talking about Advent, and the visit of an advocate from heaven, a new ninth-grade girl moves to the area and starts riding his bus. She sees the cruelty of her peers. She doesn’t care much about impressing them. But she becomes outraged, incensed with their behavior.

She is moved with compassion for him and comes to sit with him in his misery, right beside him, on his seat on the bus. She associates with him, the outcast. She smiles at him and identifies with his suffering. At Christmas time, the greatest gift appears in the most unlikely forms, the shape of his tormentors.

And the unthinkable happens.

The girls who had picked on him begin to ridicule the new girl and punish her for showing him kindness. They tell her she’s ugly. This one, who is beautiful like an angel. But she is unflinching, unmoving. She stays by his side taking his pain, absorbing the blows. And the faces of the tormentors contort with rage, their mouths spewing out hatred. The angel girl, the one surely sent down, begins to laugh.

She looks on at the ridiculous, outrageous scenario, the mean girls angry at kindness, and she laughs. She laughs and laughs, inflaming the bullies even more until one of the girls grabs the heaven-sent one by her long beautiful hair, and bangs her head against the bus window. Over and over they hurt her for loving him and he is as helpless to save her as he was to help himself. Is there a God anywhere to stop the injustice? Even his savior is subject to this evil?

At this very moment, the principal of the school walks by the school bus window. She sees the abuse and rushes to help.

Finally, the boy is heard. After months of humiliation and scorn, someone listens. In fact, it really does seem that God has listened, as though He heard his cries and sent a representative of Himself to hurt alongside him and bring a rescue. It sounds a great deal like the Christmas story itself.

This encounter happened yesterday in our neighborhood, and is the greatest Advent experience of the season for me. It is the most picturesque. My niece, Eden, is the one putting on the Christmas robe, playing the role of the suffering, humble Savior, loving the outcast, defending the weak. Her example of love has brought Christmas down to me.

UPDATE: 12.23.14 – Christmas keeps coming down, falling like love. The mother of the angel-girl lives with her daughter, and knows too well that she is very human. Mom cheers her compassion for the boy, but is concerned for the hostile relationship between her daughter and the angry girls. She pleads with her daughter to consider their struggles, to see them as needing love every bit as much as the boy.

The daughter considers this as she enters her home after school. She reaches for the door, and hears the taunting girls behind her: “You’d better go home! You better run!” She whirls around to face them. They throw down their backpacks, readying for a fight.

She looks into their angry faces and says, “I want to apologize.”

The girls’ jaws drop so low, they nearly make contact with the backpacks on the sidewalk. “What?”! They demand an explanation.

“I was really mad at what you were doing to that boy on the bus, but that didn’t give me any right to call you animals. You’re people with feelings too,” said the very human, heaven-sent one.

The girls answered, talking together at once. “It’s okay. We’re sorry too. Maybe we could be friends? You seem like a really cool girl.”

And today, the one “giving” Christmas, received a Christmas present from an apparent former enemy, because she “looks like a princess.” Pink lipstick.

This is what Jesus living in us is meant to do. Love the unlovable. Pierce the darkness of hatred with the blinding light of love.

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This tender but powerful guest essay, a true story just days old – no: actually 2000 years old – was written by our friend Leah C. Morgan. She writes about beauty, laughter, and life here and after as witnessed from her home in Western Maryland. Your comments can be directed toleahcharlenemorgan@gmail.com. The music video is by Joy Williams.

Click: Here With Us