Rhythm

Tomorrow I preach for All Saints, officially transferred to this Sunday.  Four services.  One time the sermon will be translated into Spanish.  I have never done that dance before.  Unlike my times as a solo pastor, during which I most often preached every week, it has been a long time now since I have put together a sermon.  There is a rhythm to sermons.  The first sermon I ever gave was during field education in 1981.  It was on All Saints.  Today, as so many times before, I put the sermon together on a Saturday morning, this time after weeks of thoughts and possibilities.  There is a rhythm to such things, as there is a rhythm to all things.

There is a rhythm

To sermons:

The preparation

The giving.

There is a rhythm

Not unlike the poem

But still

Not exactly the same.

There is a rhythm

To everything we do

Whatever we do

Wherever we are.

There is a rhythm

To all that we do

And say,

Even,

Dare I say it,

A heartbeat

Underneath it all.

The glorious company

Of saints

Living and dead

Stand with us

And sway

In time.

More music

Home to the table, home to the feast

Where the last are the first and the greatest are the least

Where the rich will envy what the poor have got

Everybody's got enough, 'though we ain't got a lot

No one is forgotten, no one is alone

When we're calling all the children home

                                                -John McCutcheon

                               

Today I walk around humming All Saints music.  I have acquired quite a repertoire over 58 years in the church and beyond.  Because I am preaching All Saints Sunday, I am already in Saturday sermon mode, even though the sermon will most probably gel by the Friday before, so I can get the text to the person who will be translating it into Spanish as I preach for the 1:00 PM service.  I wonder how critters translates into Spanish.  Right now I have no certain idea what will end up on the page, or, for that matter, what will emerge from my mouth.

All Saints music

Accompanies the Saturday chores,

Even though All Saints Day

Has yet to come.

I Sing a Song of the Saints of God

Merges into

Sine Nomine:

For all the saints,

Who from their labors rest.

Then

More faintly I hear

All God’s critters got a place in the choir

Some sing low

Some sing higher

Some sing out loud on the telephone wire

Some just clap their hands

Or paws

Or anything they got now.

Finally

Underneath it all

I hear

John McCutcheon sing

Calling all the children home

Supper’s on the table,

Everybody come in.

I know there will be

More music.

There is always

More music.

Loss is in the air

Today was the Sunday after All Saints.  I have rarely thought as much about this being the beginning of the end of the year.  The lessons wind down to Apocalypse, which is, of course, an ending which turns around to begin again with Advent.  Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, and  beginning again... with the end taken into account.

Loss is in the air.

Gray and gold and chilly,

I know I smelled snow

Yesterday,

Felt the waft of almost bittersweet

Loss

Down my back.

Today we sang a song

Of the saints of God,

Patient and brave and true.

We heard again

God makes all things new.

Loss is in the air.

It blows down my back.

This is the beginning of the end

Yet still:

Trustworthy and true

God brings all things new

Alpha and Omega

And finally

Back to Alpha

Again.

Trustworthy and true

All things new but still

I remember the wind

Down my back,

The scent of snow.