Sermon of the Week:
No Insignificant Question-Significant Hymns: I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry
A sermon preached for The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on October 10, 2021.
Part seven of a eight-week sermon series inspired by questions submitted by the Kirk community.
Special Music: Take My Life and Let it Be
Hymns: God of Grace and God of Glory
I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry.
Keywords: Similarities and Uniqueness, Known, Baptism, Borning Cry #pcusa
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Isaiah 46:3-4
and Psalm 139:1-18
Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469.
All rights reserved.
There’s been a lot of concern,
rightly so, about Facebook lately,
but I had reason this week to be thankful for Facebook even so.
This week Facebook showed me
pictures from at least four different friends
Who were in different parts of the world,
Either because they live there or because they were travelling:
A pastor who relocated to France
A high school friend who now lives in England
A mission co-worker in Ghana
and some other friends vacationing in the Caribbean.
And I love that I could see those pictures
And their various locations all around the world.
Most of them were selfies of a sort
But you can see people and community and context behind their faces
People sitting at a Parisian café enjoying a cup of coffee on a fall afternoon,
the nurses in the birthing unit in a London Hospital
making sure everything is just right
for my high school friend and her partner and their newborn daughter…
various people walking and talking on a sidewalk in downtown Accra.
Facebook and Instagram are indeed under the microscope right now
For the corrosive effects of their algorithm
How they are driving us further and further apart
how they are damaging the self-image and self-respect of their users,
Particular teen instagrammers,
And these are worrisome things, for sure.
I don’t know if they can be fixed or not.
I hope they can be,
or we shouldn’t be using them the way that we are, uncritically.
I’m glad we’re looking into it.
But one thing I do appreciate about Facebook
Is that it gives me a way to connect
with these friends of mine,
all around the world.
And it was because of social media
that I was thinking this week about them,
about the specific places they were at,
what was happening there,
the life that was happening in those pictures…
It had me reflecting more deeply
about all those different places and people and locations,
in this instance, on three different continents.
Here’s one take away:
There’s so much that we share, you and I.
Human beings are remarkably similar.
We’re 99.9% genetically identical.
We’re all complicated mixtures of thoughts and emotions
And we are all wired to experience them one way or another:
Love, hunger, anxiety, hope, curiosity.
We all need water and food
and shelter and interpersonal connection,
among other things,
to thrive.
We are all gifted with some form
of memory and imagination,
of past and future
And so we develop a conscience and
Weigh delayed gratification over immediate needs.
And there’s so many similarities in how we do most things
All over the world.
We share meals together.
We protect and raise children, we build homes,
We go to work and put energy into creativity and games and hobbies.
And all that is true whether you live in KC or South Korea
Uruguay or Botswana.
And while human beings have certainly developed and changed
over time and space
This is also broadly true for our species
for as far back in time as we can look.
There is so much that we human beings share with one another.
This was evident in all of those Facebook pictures.
But there’s also, at the same time,
so much that makes each of us unique,
Individually, or groups of us, culturally.
Experiences, languages, opportunities, interests
Vary dramatically, right, from person to person.
The context in London isn’t the same as Ghana
Or Paris or the Caribbean.
There’s only one place to get Kansas City Barbeque
Or French wine for that matter
Or Ghanian Kokonte.
Music. Art. Clothing. All the things that make culture culture,
That mark particular places, people, communities.
I look around this room,
I imagine those of you who are watching along online
And each one of us is an individual.
You have a name, and a history.
You speak a distinct language, with a dialect,
You come from a particular family,
Prefer certain kinds of food,
Have personality traits that impact how you move in the world.
You have made choices, this and not that,
that have influenced who you are today.
You have acquired or cultivated certain skills,
And you have been shaped by your parents and your childhood.
Interestingly, some of you call soda pop or coke or some such thing.
Some of you laugh at the jokes and humor in my sermons,
Others of you are annoyed by them.
Here’s the point:
All of us, each and every one of you,
are indeed unique.
You are different, individual.
There is only one you,
Even as you are connected to every other person
By all the things that you share with them.
We are unique, all of us,
And we are all part of one human family,
Indeed one cosmos, one creation.
///
There are times when I am struck
by the enormity of existence,
And thinking about all of this
is one of those moments.
It is similar to when I’ve taken in
a meteor shower
Or stood at the edge of the grand canyon.
There is so much vastness,
so much beauty,
so much possibility.
It isn’t easy for our finite brains to grasp all of it.
Actually, we necessarily temper it, compartmentalize all of it
Because that’s the only way we can get a handle on all of it.
There are definitely a finite number of people, of course.
Currently there are about 7.75 billion of us right now,
and maybe about 105 billion people who have ever lived,
according to some studies,
but that’s a big enough number
for me to have trouble getting my head around it.
It is easy to feel lost in it all.
Which is one reason we lean on our uniqueness,
Our particular communities,
Our family, our clan, our nation, our religion, our tribe,
To help us nurture our identities and our sense of self.
We hold all of this in tension, all the time,
The vastness of existence, and my own little world,
The things that I share with everyone, and the things that set me apart:
My own self, my own understanding of things,
While respecting that you have your own perspective too.
///
One of the things that we all share is a desire to belong,
To be valued, and respected, and even loved.
Maybe not by everyone, of course,
but by some.
To be seen, in all that vastness,
To be known.
To have someone listen to us with genuine interest
To have someone want to talk with us too.
We are social, rational creatures, as Aristotle once said,
And we need to be in relationship with other people.
This is one of the reasons why quarantine and isolation is so hard.
But beyond that, why maintaining at least a few core relationships
Is so important
For our mental and physical health.
And why loneliness is a significant spiritual challenge.
We all want to belong, to be seen, to be known, to be loved.
And when we have parents and siblings that care for us
And people who get to know us
Some of whom we might partner, perhaps,
Or others who check in with us from time to time
These can be just as universally important
As food and clothing and rest.
///
It strikes me that one of the more powerful assertions of our faith
Is that however all that goes for us,
God also is there,
Telling us that we matter, that we belong, that we are loved.
Not as a drop in the ocean. Not as one of billions.
But by name. In our beautiful uniqueness.
Somehow, in a world of so many people,
Each one of us matters to God.
God sees you.
God loves you.
God wants what is best for you.
God wants you to be a good person, to care for others,
Knowing that you don’t have to worry about whether you matter,
Because you do.
And there ain’t nothing you can do to change all of that.
This is an ancient and fundamental teaching of our faith.
The Psalms ascribe this reading before us today to King David.
Maybe so. Maybe not.
But the ideas here go back at least that far:
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
…
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works, that I know very well.
…
In your book were written
All the days that were formed for me,
When none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God.
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand.
I come to the end—
I am still with you.
That’s a beautiful way to articulate this tension
Between the vastness of God’s creation
And the intimacy that God engages us with,
That we are each, in our uniqueness, known, seen, engaged, loved.
That I am fearfully, wonderfully made,
Just as you are,
The things that make us the same, and the things that make us different.
I confess, I don’t get how God can do all of that.
It is too vast for me to understand how God can know everyone that way,
But I do believe it.
I do believe that I am valued, because God loves me.
I do believe that I am cared for.
And that you are too.
And that this makes all the difference.
It helps strengthen my sense of self,
That who I am matters.
And it teaches me to respect everyone else, because who they are, matters too.
It helps me weather tough times, when I feel alone, or not good enough
Because I believe that I am not ever ultimately alone
And because God helps me try to be ever better.
It helps me stand up for the rights of others
To work for justice and peace in the world
Because the God who cares for me cares for all others,
Particularly the things they need to survive.
We’re all in this together.
///
When James recommended the hymn
I Was There to Hear your Borning Cry
I was so happy,
Because this is a delightful song
That captures all of this beautifully.
It was written in 1985 by the prolific Lutheran composer John Ylvisaker.
John died in 2017, and at least one newspaper called him
the “Bob Dylan of Lutheranism”
Which I thought was a pretty cool epitaph.
Music took him across Minnesota,
Where he taught at schools and worked in churches.
He would eventually be asked by his denomination
to work on a song about baptism,
which he did, but, as you’ll hear when we sing it in a few minutes,
it was about more than about just baptism,
or, maybe more accurately,
it recognizes that baptism is mainly a sign, an act
that signifies the importance God’s love for us
for our whole life,
from our first day to our final day.
This hymn is written in the first person, God’s perspective,
With almost a lullaby or an intimate quality to it,
Sung from God to the person who hears it, without exception:
I was there to hear your borning cry
I’ll be there when you are old.
I rejoiced the day you were baptized
To see your life unfold.
I was there when you were but a child
With a faith to suit you well
In a blaze of light you wandered off
To find where demons dwell…
As the hymn continues,
God is said to accompany us
As we engage life through the lens of faith:
From teenage years to middle age to our final weeks, our final moments
I was there….says God.
I’ll be there.
You are loved.
You are not alone.
You matter.
///
We are, each one of us, tied to each other by a common humanity.
We are, at the same time, unique and distinct,
With gifts and experiences and interests and abilities that set us apart.
God marvels at each one of us,
Engages each one of us,
Tells you that you matter,
That you are not just a drop in a vast sea of humanity
But that you have a name,
Have a favorite food
A particular way you part your hair
That you have so much potential, and so much already accomplished.
When you think about it,
That’s a profoundly important and powerful thing for us to affirm,
And it helps us live lives of purpose and meaning
As we seek to build communities of care and compassion
As we work to promote justice and reconciliation
As we take the time to get to know other people, to listen to them,
To care for them,
To affirm that they matter, just because they are who they are.
May we give thanks that God knows us
Loves us
Welcomes us.
Every day of our lives, and beyond.
And may we respond to God’s care
With joy and with compassion for all.
May it be so.
Amen.
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