Pacific Currents - October/November 2008

SACRED CONVERSATION: Songs of freedom

by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, October-November, 2008

The chronological roadway that we travel from October through November is slippery, the site of major collisions.  Election Day and Thanksgiving, Advent and pre-Christmas hype crash into each other and send our sensibilities sprawling. We hurtle with limited visibility toward hazardous junctions of the secular and the liturgical.
 
Making our way from elections to Epiphany, we who are Christians in the United States as 2008 rumbles into 2009 will have our global positioning systems fixed on good government.  How do we get there?  What route do we take?  How does the way of the Spirit intersect with the course of the human?  What can we expect, what must we demand of earthly leaders?  What can we find only in God? 

Psalm 80, for the 1st  Sunday in Advent, gives voice to the cries of a people in disarray:

“Give ear, O Shepherd of the people,
You who lead the divided people like a single flock!
You who are enthroned above all creation,
Shine forth, before the scattered tribes.
Awaken Your might, and come to save us!
Restore us, O God, to Your goodwill;
Let Your face shine upon us, that we may live.

O Holy One, God Almighty,
How long will You fume against Your people’s prayers?
You have fed them with the bread of  sorrow,
And given them bitter tears to drink.
You make us a source of discord to our neighbors;
Our enemies deride us.
Restore us, O God Almighty;
Let Your face shine upon us, that we may live.”

The Psalm for Epiphany states, “The just ruler rescues the needy when they cry out, liberates the poor and those who have no helper.  With compassion, the lives of the weak and the needy are restored, their lives delivered from oppression and violence, their blood deemed too precious to be shed.” [Ps. 72: 12-14]

These Psalms, these songs of freedom, redemption songs, cry out for all who contend with the shades of doubt and the phantoms of remorse that they may be embraced by the swift brightness of joy.

These Psalms resound for all who slam into the unyielding walls of illness and fatigue that they may be assured that those barriers eventually dissolve in the constant mist of love; that hope is the doorway through pain.

These Psalms empower all who yearn for an end to killing and brutality, slow starvation and incessant exploitation, that they may dispel the traffic jams, and open the roadways, fill up the valleys; level the hills; straighten out the crooked paths, and smooth out the rough passages so that all may run eagerly toward the Savior, toward the One who is rushing toward us in holy exuberance to “gather the outcast….and bring you home.”  [Zeph. 3:20]

May our journey be graced.

                                                                                                        ~ Mary Susan