Meditations with Pastor Tom (7/10/20)

"How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? - Psalm 137:4

            In Psalm 137 we hear from the Israelites in exile. The anguish in their words is striking. To make matters worse, their captors ask them to sing happy songs. Can you imagine being told to sing a joyous song after being stripped of your home and everything you own? And then to have to sing it to your mocking conquerors seems cruel.  Still, the psalmist finds a way to sing, even in this wretched exile.

            Here, I am reminded of Talitha Arnold's UCC devotional A Song in a Weary Throat.  Arnold tells the story of Rev. Pauli Murray.  Murray had plenty of reason to feel as outcast and downtrodden as the Israelites of Psalm 137.  Born in 1910, she was the granddaughter of slaves.  Her mother died when she was five and her father was committed to a segregated mental institution for a mental illness brought on by Typhoid. He was later killed by a white guard.

            The University of North Carolina rejected her because she was black, and later Harvard Law school rejected her because she was female.  But, she persevered.  She graduated from Howard University and got her law degree from Yale.  She became the first the first black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest, and she also went on to become a fierce activist and a brilliant legal writer, earning high praise from the likes of Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall.  She was also a poet who wrote these words:

            Give me a song of hope

               And a world where I can sing it...

            Give me a song of hope and love

               And a brown girl's heart to hear it.

            In those words, Murray was doing for her people what the Psalmist was doing for his - giving them a song of hope in a strange and hard land.  Today, as we live in a world strained by racial unrest, political division, and an invisible enemy called Coronavirus, we all need Pauli Murray's words.  We all need a song of hope.

            I find that song of hope all around me, and I pray that you can, too.  While the media (both right and left) bombards us with the bad news, I still witness so many acts of kindness.  I still see so much love and generosity.  I still bask in the warmth and welcome of our church gathering. 

            There is new hope for racial reconciliation and there are still people who refuse to demonize people on the other side of the aisle.  We have brilliant scientists working feverishly against the insidious virus.

            There is still a church proclaiming the Good News, and there is still the presence of the Christ in this troubled world.  Please hear this and take it to heart: there is still good reason to sing a song of hope.  God always has the last word.

The Sermon this Sunday:

A fresh look at the Parable of the Sower