Genesis 21:8-21 & Matthew 10:16-39
06/21/2020
I’m fairly certain that the first time I had ever heard of the album, A Love Supreme, or the artist, John Coltrane, was sitting in the office of my advisor and mentor, Stephen Ray at Louisville Seminary somewhere in the middle of my first year there. And I’m sure that he came up in conversation after I had read something by Martin King or James Cone or Cornel West because I had asked some kind of ridiculous question like, “How can I better understand the black experience?” Looking back there are any number of ways that I could have better phrased that query. But without batting an eye he said to me, “Listen to John Coltrane’s album, A Love Supreme, and try to hear it.” I should stop and say, I wasn’t a jazz fan by any stretch at that moment in time. I could not have told you the difference between John Coltrane and Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker. I truly had no idea how to even listen to jazz to hear anything. But there I went, driving over to the record store over on Bardstown Rd. and purchasing the album on CD, because this is what you did in 2001 before Spotify or Apple Music. And if I am being completely honest, the first few times that I listened to it, I didn’t get it. Again, I had never spent any time listening to jazz and if you haven’t middle period Coltrane is not really the easiest place to get started. The album itself is challenging. It has really weird chord progressions that deviated substantially from the standard fare of jazz that made even playing with him a challenge. And really it wasn’t really until I read the liner notes that had been included with the album that I really began to get it. Coltrane, in the years previous had had spiritual awakening. He saw and perceived God as the source of love and in turn he felt a deep sense of awe, reverence, and gratitude. These feelings began to permeate the whole of his being and music and he would commence composing and recording a series of albums about various aspects of the faith-filled life—the pinnacle of which comes with the recording in 1964 of A Love Supreme. Thus the record is first and foremost, an extended offering to God—love, devotion, faith, and pain over the course of 4 parts. And, at the risk of trying to describe music, I want to walk us through those movements.
In the first, “Acknowledgement,” the saxophonist introduces the progression and melody that will, in large measure, undergird the entirety of the album. It concludes with the deep voice of Coltrane intoning over and over again, “A love supreme,” evidence that wherever else the album goes, it will rest on the unshakable foundation of God as the source and exemplar of all love in the universe.
“Resolution,” the second part of the suite, calls the listener to settle into the flow of the album just as we seek to settle into the flow of our lives. From our earliest days of life, we seek to ground ourselves into the safety and security that comes with the knowledge of the love of God. Any hint of trouble is buried in the rollicking movement of the music and the time signature.
The third part, “Pursuance,” is, in many ways, where the train comes off the tracks in a way that so often happens in our lives. It starts with a chaotic minute and a half long drum solo that bursts into a quick as lightning saxophone lick that is a 1000 notes long running up and down chromatic scales until it feels like it couldn’t possibly move any faster at which point Coltrane hands it off to McCoy Tyner, the jazz pianist, who picks up where he left off and begins to fly up and down the keyboard all of which is building to a crescendo until you feel like it could not get any more frenetic and the bottom drops out and all that is left is a lone slow baseline that brings the movement to a denouement.
The album concludes with part 4, “Psalm” and in contrast to “Pursuance,” “Psalm,” is slow, methodical, poignant, exacting every bit of emotion possible out of the singular saxophone that is wailing over everything else. Scholars have concluded that there are five types of writings in the Book of Psalms: Praise, Wisdom, Royal, Thanksgiving, and Lament. And in the case of longer psalms, they can have elements of multiple themes. What we encounter is Coltrane’s “Psalm” is both a declaration of Thanksgiving, of gratitude, of praise, and underlying assurance in the providence of God in his life and in the world. But as you listen to the track, the written in a dark G minor, you also see that within that hymn of gratitude and praise, is a deep-seated lament. At times, the saxophone ceases to sound like a saxophone and instead sounds like someone wailing out a song of sadness, of anguish, of pain and both the last movement and the end of that movement are never resolved—either tonally or musically. The movements ends with a reedy last note that fades in and out as Coltrane uses all the air in his lungs to sit on the same dissonant note until he doesn’t have the strength to push it out anymore and the sound collapses. Like I said, I didn’t hear it the first few times I listened to it, though I very much wanted to return to my dear professor and tell him all I had heard and learned but, somewhere along the way, I did and as is so often the case with art of any kind, gained a glimpse into a world and an experience that was theretofore unknown to me to a far greater extent than any history book, or theological treatise, or speech, or sermon could possibly offer. That experience, that faith in a God of love, that moment when life just seems to fall away into a chaotic mess, that return to God in both gratitude and anguish has largely undergirded the history of African Americans in this country and continues to arise again and again in the story of a people.
In both our biblical accounts for this morning, we encounter stories in which strong faith is brought together with a deep and abiding anguish. In the first, we see the results of Abraham fearing that Sarah could not bear a child for him and so Abraham goes to one of his servants, a woman named Hagar, and impregnates her. And this, of course, worked ok, at first. It was, after all, Sarah’s idea. And Abraham had a son, Ishmael, upon whom he could begin the work of building his mighty nation and everything was going just fine until Sarah, though the work of God also comes to bear Abraham a son and all of a sudden, Sarah is not so sure about having another woman’s son walking around the campgrounds, another woman’s son potentially challenging the son of laughter that she had borne for Abraham, another woman’s son potentially grabbing the blessing that is normally reserved for a firstborn son, and so she comes to Abraham one day and asks that he dismiss both Ishmael and Hagar out into the wilderness. And we are told that this distresses both Abraham and Hagar greatly. And just as Abraham is starting to have second thoughts about the whole thing, God comes to his and reassures him both that Ishmael will not be progenitor of the nation that Abraham will create, but also that Ishmael will be ok and in fact will have an entire nation formed from him, as well. And this satisfies Abraham and he sends the mother and her child on their way with bread and water to take. Though Hagar, lets be clear, is not comforted by this parting gift from Abraham and soon after departing, she gets to a place where she puts Ishmael down under a tree and walks away, well aware that she does not want to watch her only child die in the heat of the Hebrew sun. And we see Hagar in her anguish, her sadness, her pain, finally breaks down an arrow’s shot away and just as before, God comes to Hagar and reassures her of God’s love, and presence, and providence. Moreover, God tells her that just as with Isaac, a new nation will arise from Ishmael, even as God leads the mother and her child to a well where they can both drink their fill. And we are told that God was with the boy even as he grew into a man and a nation did indeed spring up from his progeny.
In our second reading for this morning, we encounter Jesus in the middle of a longer section of dialogue in which he is telling his earliest followers how it is really going to be if they choose to follow him, to hear the call of God and Spirit on their lives. If you are to be like me, Jesus says, you will likely have no home whereby you might rest your head. You will forever and always be a stranger in a strange land—an exile from your true home. Your familial connections will likely be shattered as your lives will likely move to a different rhythm from the rest of the world—you will hear a song on the breeze that no one else can hear. You will be harassed and beaten, cast out of your former religious home, a sheep in the midst of wolves. And only once he feels like he has conveyed how stony the road they will trod, how much of a challenge they will represent to the status quo, the earthly powers and principalities, the imperial forces and the religious elite and how all of them will try to bring their lives to an early conclusion, only then does he begin the task of reassuring his disciples that even in the midst of this hardship, even in the midst of the struggle, even in the face of death that will see, and in seeing believe, and in believing know that in the end, this earthly life is not the end, that they are forever held in the hands of a loving God and in their living and in their dying they are forever and always God’s. They will know that that are valuable in the sight of God, that they need not fear anything in this life. But having offered these words of comfort to his followers, he returns once again to the challenges of the cruciform life. And here Jesus’s words sound odd for a great many of us. Jesus, the prince of peace, the one who ushers in the dawn of redeeming grace, the one who loves us, this we know, tells his disciples, tells us, that he has not come to bring peace to the earth but rather a sword. That he has come to lead his followers to be disruptors of the old order of the world. To be challengers of apathy and avarice. To be the ones who will stand and be counted even when it feels as if they are standing before the gates of hell. And this arrival with the sword is not easy. For it will invariably turn father against son, and daughter against mother, daughters-in-law against mothers-in-law, even as it makes foes out of members of one’s own household. It will at times make them pariahs in towns who quickly seek to run them out and they will never feel completely at ease. And he concludes his words to his followers by reminding them that to follow him, to follow the call of God and the movement of the spirit is to live into their devotion in a manner that potentially rejects the loving connections that we share amongst our families in favor of a deeper faith and love in Christ. And the only way that we will ever know if we are worthy to be called follower of Jesus is to see his cross, his struggle, his death, and make it our own just as you ever truly find your life is to run the risk of losing it.
Today, there are many fissures and division within both the body politic and the Church. But there exists perhaps no greater division, no greater fissure than the challenges that are presented by racial distinction within our nation. From long before the founding of our nation, there has been, woven into the fabric of our western world, a racial hierarchy that has, for too long, determined some to be fully human while leaving the other with a designation of less than human. And this is not to say that we haven’t come a long way as nation, for certainly we have. King is correct when he reminds us that the moral arc of the universe is long but that it does, indeed, bend towards justice. And we find ourselves somewhere in the midst of that curve today. Not fully there yet because that sort of a reality isn’t available to us on this side of the Jordan and yet, further along than we were yesterday. And yet. And yet, at the same time, for much of the past month, we as a nation have seen with our own eyes, a whole community of people who are in pain. And frustrated. And angry. We have seen, with our own eyes, a whole community who has been testifying to their lived experience of the world around them. We have heard with our own ears their words, their chants, their slogans, their pleas. And we have all felt some degree of discomfort at the things that we have heard, the things that we have seen. And, of course, even the actions of those who have found themselves on street corners and before municipal spaces have been less than ideal at various moments over the last few weeks. Destruction for destruction sake is problematic. Violence for violence sake is wrong. Anger that descends into burning cars and property should never be seen as the answer. And yet, if we dismiss everything we hear, everything we see, the cries, the pleas, the demands, simply because of an imperfect methodology of deliverance, if we are satisfied with letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, than nothing lasting will come of this and we will simply return back to the old order of the world, the broken order of the world and that’s not ever what we are called to do.
In the parable of the good Samaritan, two folks from different religious orders cross over to the other side of the road when they encounter a man broken, bleeding, and in pain. It is only when a member of a despised people stops to help, casts all division, all disunity, all disdain to the wind and allows the child of God in him to reach out to the child of God in his midst that Jesus tells his followers that neighbor has met neighbor and that mercy has been given and shown. In Jesus’s words for this morning we see the struggle that was encountered by the earliest disciples. Tradition tells us that each met their demise as a martyr in painful and gruesome ways. History tells us that the earliest follower of the way stared down imperials spears, lions in the coliseum, persecution, and pain to remain faithful followers of the risen Christ. In every era of the Christian story there have been those who risked life and limb to be faithful and true to their understanding of the call of God on their lives and we only stand on the shoulders of the giants who marched with Martin, the shoulder of those who withstood dogs and fire hoses, the shoulders of those who even in the midst of church bombing after church bombing stayed faithful to the God who offered up a love supreme, a presence, a power, a faith. That’s what inspired John Coltrane. That’s what continues to inspire us today. To challenge what is broken in our society and our and be about the work of putting it back together. To challenge what is broken in ourselves and be about the work of putting it back together. To stop whatever we are doing and listen, and really hear, the cries of pain and anguish arising from our brothers and sisters know and believe that they, too, are children of God, and they matter to God, and so their lives must matter to us, as well.
Jesus gathered his disciples and told them that this faith, this religion, this devotion would not be easy. It’s not easy to stand with those who struggle. It’s not easy to call on governments and institutions to be better tomorrow than they were today. It’s not easy to stare into that part of us that we just as soon ignore but it is the call, it is the path, it is the way. May we never turn away from those who hurt in our midst and may we continue to live into the love of God that first birthed creation and continues to flow through each of us today and everyday until that day when all of God’s children may sit at table with one another at the great feast of heaven and are, once and for all, called home. Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace, amongst all God’s children. Alleluia, amen.