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So here’s the question. If you
were hit by a truck and lying out in a gutter, dying, and
had time to sing just one song—one song people would
remember before you’re dirt, one song that would let God
know what we felt about our time on earth, one song that
would sum it all up—what song would it be?
What would we say with our life
on the line and five minutes to sum it all up? I want to
know. What would you do? What would you paint? What would
you write or sing? If we knew we were about to die, and if
we could for a moment get past the fear about what was
happening or what comes next, and if we could open up a vein
and let the truth flow out of us, what kind of wings would
it have, what color would it be, what sound would it make?
So what is it going to be? No
more time to decide. Can we answer? Can we give an account
of our lives? It’s perhaps the most important question. When
all is stripped away, when there’s nothing left to do but
die, what will we have to say for ourselves? If we don’t
know the answer, we need to.
Like Methodist preachers of old
who were told they should be able to preach, pray, sing or
die at a moment’s notice, each of us should be able to speak
our truth, tell our story and account for what is most
important if ever we are asked.
Let me tell you why I think it
absolutely necessary that we be able to sing the song of our
lives at a moment’s notice. First, the moment can be upon us
in an instant. We get one life to live, and the truth of the
matter is that we have no idea when it will be over. So if
you are going to have a song to sing at all, it will have to
be in this life.
Second, if we don’t know what
tune our life is supposed to sing, then we will probably end
up singing a song chosen by someone (or something) else. I
tend to agree with author Stephen Covey when he suggests
that the core of our lives is written either by design or by
default. We either play a significant role in shaping our
life’s song or we turn the melody of our lives over to our
parents, our job, our church, our nation or our culture.
Whose song are we singing, and is it by design or by
default?
Third, I think it is so crucial
that we know what we hold most central and important in our
lives, because how we answer today’s question reveals how we
want to live our lives right now. Let me submit that the
song we choose to sing, the truth we are able to speak, the
answer to the question of who we are and what our lives are
about—that answer shapes everything else about us. It shapes
how we spend our time and money. It shapes how and where we
live. It shapes how we pray and play, work and worship,
spend and save, give and take. You see, once we have become
clear on what we would say, we can live like that today! I
think it’s true that once we know how to die, we know how to
live. Once we determine what it is we are willing to die
for, only then do we understand what we are living for. So
let me ask you again: if you were hit by a truck and were
lying out in a gutter, dying, and just had time to sing one
song—one song people would remember before you’re dirt, one
song that would let God know what you felt about your time
on earth, one song that would sum it all up—what song would
it be?
To help us answer, let’s reflect
on the moment in the video clip that we just saw. Here we
see a young Johnny Cash trying to convince a record producer
to sign him. The song they are singing is the one with all
the right words, all the right sentiments, all the right
beliefs. It’s a gospel song talking about the saving power
of Jesus, the lifting of the burden of sin, and the divine
peace that comes with salvation. What’s wrong with that? If
you needed a song to state your life philosophy, what would
be so wrong with this one? It is the religious answer,
right? Jesus saves. After all, that’s what we were taught in
Sunday school. Jesus loves me, this I know.
So what happens in the clip? The
record producer says he doesn’t believe him. He doesn’t
think young Johnny actually believes what he is singing.
Right words—perhaps. Right sentiment—perhaps. Right
intention—absolutely not. The song falls flat if the singer
doesn’t believe in what the song is saying.
I wonder if folks ever look at
the church like this—like we are a bunch of people trying to
say the right things, pray the right prayers, recite the
creeds and make sure everyone behaves in the proper manner.
And when they look at our lives they wonder if we
even believe all that stuff we say we believe. Does the
emotion within us match the words that come out of us? Can
they see anything different about us because of who we claim
lives within us? Simply put, do our deeds match our creeds?
So that is why Cash was asked
the question, and out of the depths of his heart came a song
so different from the lofty, other-worldly gospel song he
was singing at first. From his mouth came a song deeply
rooted in the human experiences of suffering and brokenness,
alienation and longing. This song would become known as “The
Folsom Prison Blues,” and it is indicative of the kind of
gritty realism that marked Cash’s remarkable music career.
I don’t know, but what if people
encountered a church that was willing to sing “The Folsom
Prison Blues”? I mean, a church that was willing to match
its piety with nitty gritty details of life. A place where
we really freed people to share the hard places in their
life without judgment.
This question of what song you
would sing was also put to Jesus, and it’s right here in the
25th chapter of Matthew’s gospel. This is Jesus’ last song.
His last will and testament, if you will. Because if you
read ahead, by the end of the 26th chapter he will have been
betrayed and arrested, and by the end of the 27th chapter he
will be dead. So here we have Jesus with a gun to his head,
the cross and certain death in front of him, and this is
what he has to say about the truth of life, the truth of the
universe and the nature of salvation.
Forget about all the sacrifice
stuff and keeping strict religious customs about what’s
right to wear and eat and pray and where to worship and who
to break bread with. Forget it. You want the truth? Here it
is. Whatever part of you reached out and took care of the
weak, the sick, the lost, and the hungry will live. These
parts of our lives are like the sheep, full of love and
mercy and justice and compassion. Those parts of us will
live on and on. Whereas neglect, hate, nationalism, greed
and apathy will die. Whatever parts of us neglected, passed
by or stood silent, took care of only those you knew, like
the goats, those parts of you will need to die.
Jesus’ last song. A song about
the last word on everything: “Whatever you have done to the
least of my brothers and sisters, you have done unto me.”
So let me ask: are there any
parts of us left to inherit eternal life? Are there any
parts of us that must die? How much of us is sheep? How much
of us is goat? Is the song we are choosing to sing one that
leads to life or one that leads to death?
Perhaps what is as remarkable
about what Jesus has to say in this, his final summation, is
what he doesn’t say. What is missing from his final song?
The goats and sheep aren’t quizzed on what they purported to
believe. They aren’t asked whether or not they’d ever prayed
the sinner’s prayer. They aren’t even questioned about their
church attendance. In this final analysis, in his last
chance to say what he needs to say, there is none of the
religious stuff we might expect. No, with five minutes
before he is to die, the song Jesus has to offer is a song
about the hopeless, the hungry and the homeless. It is a
song about the broken, the bound and the beaten. This last
song is a song about those behind bars and sitting on death
row. It is a song about the lost and the least, the
forgotten and forgettable, and our relationship to them.
Jesus’ last song sounds a whole lot more like “The Folsom
Prison Blues” than any “other worldly” religious song we
might have expected.
One other thing we know for
sure. Jesus didn’t just sing this song about the least and
lost, he embodied it. He lived it with every last fiber of
his being. He lived it up until the moment he took his last
breath.
Today is Mother’s Day, an
important day set aside in our culture to recognize and
thank the women in our lives who have helped shape and mold
us into the people we have become. I wonder how many of us
know that Mother’s Day actually had its origins in the same
radical vision as Jesus’ last message to his disciples. Far
removed from the gift giving, card writing and flower
sending day it has become, the very first Mother’s Day was
created for the healing and transforming of the world.
It was in 1870 and Julia Ward
Howe, famed writer and poet, most famous today as the woman
who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was nearing the
end of her life. She was deeply saddened by the huge loss of
human life caused by the Civil War and the Franco Prussian
War. She wanted women to come together across national
lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what
divides us, and to commit to finding peaceful resolutions to
conflicts. She issued a declaration hoping to gather
together women in a congress of action. These are some of
the words from that first Mother’s Day, words that would be
hard to find on a card we can buy today. Howe declares:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have
hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water
or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have
questions answered by irrelevant agencies, our husbands will
not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and
applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all
that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and
patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender
of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained
to injure theirs.”
From the voice of a devastated earth a voice goes up with
our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!”
… In the name of womanhood and
humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women
without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at
some place deemed most convenient and the earliest period
consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the
different nationalities, the amicable settlement of
international questions, and the great and general interests
of peace.
Julia Ward Howe, nearing the end
of her life, had one song left to sing and it was to be a
song of peace. Her dream, celebrated in part today, was a
Mother’s Day rooted in the cause of peace. A song of peace,
the kind of song we might want to sing again, this year in
particular.
So the question still hangs. One
song to sing before we die—what’s it going to be? It is the
question we all will need to answer sooner or later.
So what’s my answer? It’s not
fair to put us on the spot here, preacher, without putting
yourself on it as well. What’s it going to be? One song. One
truth. One sermon left to preach. What’s it going to be?
Here it is. The central truth
that I strive to have at the very center of my entire being,
the song I hope that I am singing and living up until the
moment I take my very last breath, is this: There is no one
and nothing that is God-forsaken.
There is no person—no matter
their race, country, color, class, creed, age, marital
status, physical ability, intellect or sexual orientation
that God has not created, does not love, will not heal,
cannot redeem and will not use for ministry to the world.
There is no one and nothing that is God-forsaken. There is
no sin that God won’t forgive. No hurt God cannot heal. No
wound God will not touch. No shame God will not look at. No
suffering God will not transform. No tear God will not wipe
away. No injustice God will not notice. There is no one, and
nothing, that is God-forsaken.
If God is sought, and even when
God is not, God is as active in this life as God is in the
life to come. Our faith has much more to do with life before
death than it does with life after death. And because God is
here and active in our world and in our lives, and there
isn’t anyone or anything that is off limits to this God,
then our God will show up in the most surprising of places.
In the homeless man pushing his cart down the street. In the
sunset and star-filled night. In the abandoned streets of
our inner cities and in the homes of our well-groomed
suburbs. God is present in the immigrant who mows your lawn
and in the mothers of the soldiers on both sides of the
line. We know now that God is powerfully present in a single
penny. And perhaps the most surprising place our God shows
up is in us, in you and me. In the midst of broken and
complex lives, the very spirit of God is alive.
And I believe that we get the
clearest glimpse of the character of this radically loving,
radically inclusive, uncontainable, always surprising God in
the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Does that
mean we Christians have a unique claim on this God?
Absolutely not. Does that mean that God is only active in
Christianity and in the lives Christians? I don’t think so.
But I do think that it means we Christians might have a
unique way of understanding how God is at work in the world,
the privilege of living our lives in manner that reflects
it, and the great opportunity to point others toward the way
that leads to life and truth.
That’s my song and I’m sticking
to it. So what is yours? Quick, you’ve only got a few
minutes. The clock is ticking. Spill it out.
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