 Dr. William A. Ritter Senior Minister |
On Singing a Baccalaureate Song
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The year, 1998. The month, May. The university, Syracuse. The occasion, graduation. The speaker, Robert Fulghum (author of All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten). So, what did he say? At first, he didn’t say anything. He just stood there….dressed in academic regalia….making silly motions with his hands and fingers. But then the motions became recognizable. For there wasn’t a person in the audience (including me) who hadn’t seen or made them. Once the initial motions were complete, Fulghum repeated them. Only this time he burst into song. Whereupon everybody in his audience began to sing with him. And, to whatever degree the spirit moves you, I invite you to sing with me now.
With apologies to “Jesus Loves Me,” “The Eensy-Weensy Spider” is probably the first song we learned as children. But there is more to it than meets the eye. Let’s dissect it for a closer look. The eensy-weensy spider climbed up the water spout. What do we learn? We learn that a very small-in-stature spider commenced to climb. I suppose it is in the nature of spiders to be small. And also to climb. As to this thing about water spouts, I can’t rightly say. I’m not all that “into” spiders. Why a water spout? Because it was there, I suppose. All things considered, most of you are bigger than spiders. So why have you been climbing like them? Several reasons, I suppose.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Rains will come…which won’t all be “showers of blessing.” And all the Doppler Radar in the world won’t alert you to their arrival. But when they come, they will interrupt your “king of the hill” game, big time….even as they slow your “climb, climb up Sunshine Mountain.” Such rains will come in the form of:
As concerns such rains, the issue is not “if,” but “when.” The author of Ecclesiastes is right. “Time and chance really do happen to us all.” A tough kid once approached me and said: “Ritter, do you know what a swirly is?” Upon learning that I didn’t, he said: “A swirly is when I put your head in the toilet and flush.” Fortunately, I talked him out of his intention. But life often accomplishes what he didn’t…. grabbing our heads and flushing all over us. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain. Which means that good things will also happen in your life.
And (as with the adversities) you won’t be able to explain the “good stuff,” either. “Why me?” is not only something we cry in the rain. “Why me?” is also something we cry in the sun. And most of you have already been kissed by sunshine. I mean, do you think you got this far by your own efforts?
Well, if that’s what you are thinking, I suggest you cut the self-made (“I did it my way”) crap long enough to acknowledge that you got this far….and did this much….because a whole lot of wonderful people got in your way. I mean, literally, got in your way. Perhaps, because they were placed in your way. They didn’t all get there by accident, did they? How is it they showed up exactly where you needed them…and exactly when you needed them? When I take a long view of history, I see my life as having been laced with people who showed up at just the right time, and doors that opened when I didn’t have anyplace else to go. And the eensy-weensy spider climbed up the spout again. The spider was not easily deterred. Which is why this song is the quintessential American anthem. And which is why there wasn’t anybody in this sanctuary, a few moments ago, who couldn’t remember it….or wouldn’t sing it. In addition to being in our brains, I would contend that the “eensy-weensy spider” is also in our blood. But I want to push you toward a second song. This one has no motions. Although it does have a tune. Which I will hum. And when it becomes sufficiently familiar so as to permit you to hum along, I invite you to join me. I see you all know this one, too. We sing it under the title “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” But it wasn’t written with that text in mind….which is why I had us hum it. In its own way, it is something of an onward-and-upward song, composed by an onward-and-upward man (who, in his earthly life, got rained on plenty). I’m talking about Ludwig van Beethoven. Born in 1770, he was raised in the home of a poor musician (are there any other kind?). More to the point, his father was described by one biographer as a “drunken tenor.” Beethoven was gifted, but troubled. Something of a loner, he was multiply disappointed in love. Given to unseemly behavior and deplorable manners, he often played practical jokes which backfired, depriving him of the camaraderie he craved. He accepted responsibility for a nephew who brought him great disappointment. At age 30 he began to experience a hearing loss. By age 49 he was totally deaf. And for the last eight years of his life, he couldn’t carry on an audible conversation. A portrait of Beethoven at his piano, painted during his deaf period, depicts the piano as something of a wreck. Apparently, he pounded it into submission in an effort to play it loud enough to hear the notes. Yet, four years before he died, he composed his ninth (and final) symphony, closing with the memorable melody we now refer to as the “Ode to Joy.” Soaring and passionate, it almost begs for a religious interpretation. And while Beethoven was not institutionally religious, he once penned in a journal: “Every tree seems to say holy, holy.” In 1911, a Presbyterian Princetonian named Henry Van Dyke wrote lyrics to it, fleshing out its religious potential. Every so many Sundays, we sing Van Dyke’s lyric:
Ah, the beginnings of an answer. It is God who causes the spirit to soar. It is God who responds to the rains….without and within. And it is God who inspires (and rewards) the upward climb. Consider Van Dyke’s fourth verse:
And here comes the good part.
What do we have here? What we have is the “eensy-weensy spider” all dressed up for church. What we have is a reminder that this “upward climb” is both God-inspired and well-nigh universal. People have done it before us. People will do it after us. We encourage it from generation to generation. Forty-two years ago, at an Albion College baccalaureate, I heard Henry Hitt Crane say:
* * * * * I could stop here. And I probably should stop here. But I want to say one more thing, even as I introduce one more musician. Sticking with this idea of “the upward climb,” let me ask: “Might your climb be undertaken in response to a call? And might that call originate outside you, rather than inside you?” The year, 1998. The month, May. The college, Haverford. The occasion, graduation. The speaker, Wynton Marsalis. Who came to the podium holding a trumpet. But before he put his lips to the mouthpiece, he talked about his middle school band teacher. He described the first day of the semester when the teacher passed out instruments to various members of the class. To a skinny kid with thick glasses, the teacher gave a clarinet. To a fat kid with big lips, the teacher gave a tuba. “Then,” said Wynton Marsalis, “for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, he handed a trumpet to me. Then he told us to play. We were terrible. Anybody would have said we were terrible. But he told us we were good. Apparently he could see something in us that we couldn’t see in ourselves. And that was the day I was called to play the trumpet.” Could God have a call for you? Could God see something in you that you aren’t able to see in yourself? And might God be calling you to a work you never considered (like this work)….in a place you never considered working (like a church)? I worry about the ministry. Not because God has stopped calling people….but because some of us are not doing enough to amplify that call, so that people like yourselves no longer turn deaf ears to it. Rest assured, God will never call you to something you are unequipped to do. And God will never call you to something the world doesn’t desperately need to have done. But if you’re waiting to be struck by lightning or hit by a holy hammer, you could wait all night. Because it probably won’t happen that way. God never inserted himself into one of my dreams or pounded my stubborn will into submission during a period of heavy prayer. Like I said earlier, God “got in my way”….with some of the most unlikely people you could ever imagine. There were a couple of young preachers who never said much about the ministry, but portrayed it appealingly. And there were a handful of silver-haired old ladies who, because they couldn’t fathom why a teenager would hang around a church as much as I hung around mine, began to say things like: “I bet you’re going to be a minister.” Little did they know that the reason I hung around church so much was because it provided a well-ordered oasis from some of the turmoil that was going on in my home. And then there was a tired old English Lit teacher who told me the only thing he would remember about the semester was listening to me read Shakespeare. These were they who called me into ministry. And I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to figure out if they were right. But most days, I wake up, knowing that I am:
And I have never….even once….wondered about the worthwhileness of what I am doing. I see people from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the valley. I see them sad. I see them happy. I see them needy. I see them seedy. I see them screwing up. I see them straightening up. I see them struggling. I see them soaring. I’ve seen God do some pretty extraordinary things….to some pretty ordinary people….through some less-than-ordinary people. And while I have never seen Jesus turn water into wine, I have (as Orville McKay used to say) seen Jesus turn beer into furniture. And you could, too. Your mother used to say to you: “What in God’s name are you doing?” Well….what in God’s name are you doing?
Note: This was one of three separate sermons I preached on the morning of June 12. I had preached all three before. This particular message was delivered in June of 1998. Yes, the congregation really did sing “The Eensie-Weensie Spider” song. Better still, the congregation hummed Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” I was not physically present to hear either Robert Fulghum or Wynton Marsalis deliver their addresses at Syracuse University and Haverford College. But C-SPAN televised two days’ worth of gradation speeches, non-stop. And while I didn’t watch all of them….after all, I have a life….I watched enough of them to know that these two were something special. As concerns Henry Hitt Crane’s poem, I’ve never seen a title. Wanting to quote it in the late sixties, I called his home and had him recite it to me line by line. That was our last conversation prior to his death. Earlier in his illustrious career, he served as the senior minister at Central United Methodist Church in Detroit.
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