A New Song

Beloved in Christ,

There’s an old quip about church music that goes something like, “no one ever leaves the service humming the sermon.” Indeed, music forms us in deep, lasting, and embodied ways that words on their own cannot do. Music stays with us. It works on us and in us long after its literal sound has stopped.

In the reading from Revelation 5 appointed in the Daily Office lectionary for today, John’s vision is of the heavenly throne room. There’s a scroll containing God’s program of justice, a sacrificial lamb who alone can unlock it, and a choir of elders who, once the scroll is opened, sing a new song. Their song is a chorus of exultant praise and thanksgiving for the deep love God has shown for those pushed furthest to the margins. It’s an earworm of praise for the sure and certain victory of love and healing God has accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

The Book of Revelation was written as a source of comfort and care for a community living through hard, uncertain and fearful times. It invited the community to whom it was written, as it invites us today, to be a people who stand in the midst of such a world, and in such times, singing a new song.

The song around us is one of bitter division. We are called to sing a song of God’s healing love. 

The song around us is one of endlessly escalating outrage. We are called to sing a song of peace.

The song around us is one lifting up the powerful and pushing aside the lowly. We are called to sing Mary’s song of lifting up the lowly. 

We sing a new song, we tell a new story, and we live as new people. Not out of some naive and saccharine wishful thinking, but because we know that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the victory of life and love has already been won. And we don’t just know it in our brains, we know it like a song, deep in our bones. When we steep ourselves in the scriptures, and when we pray our lives together in community, we begin to hear the song of God’s living power and love everywhere we go. We don’t have to write it. We just have to sing it. 

May our lives together join John’s heavenly chorus of praise, singing of love, justice, and joy, until earth and heaven are fully, finally, and gloriously joined in a perfect vision of healing forever.

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Rev. Craig Loya