Monday, August 22, 2016

Hospitality--The Strangers Among Us

Who is a stranger?  Are they the people around us that we do not know?  Yes, that is one kind of stranger.  Many of us are surrounded by people we do not know daily as we conduct our business and travel here and there.  We may seldom even pay attention to others around us as we do what is needful daily.  So, strangers are everywhere, it would seem, and we pass by them and may not even recognize their presence.

What if a stranger comes into our personal space?  What if someone we do not know asks something of us?  It may be simply asking the time of day or directions to an unfamiliar place but many times we encounter others whom we do not know and we form an opinion of them based upon our interaction with them.  We may have even been a stranger to others if we have traveled and have needed assistance.  We may have asked others to perform tasks for us as we tried to negotiate unfamiliar territory.

My wife and I love to travel and we have been to Europe several times.  We have driven in the United Kingdom where they drive on the other side of the road as opposed to how we do it.  It always seems odd to drive on the left instead of the right and I have had times when I have nearly gotten involved in accidents because of my ignorance of their system.  They have those traffic circles which they call "roundabouts" which cause no end to terror or distress when one is trying to negotiate them.  How does one know where to get out of the circle once you enter it?  That was a question that plagued me as we traveled so I asked a woman we knew who lived there how to successfully negotiate the circle without getting into an accident.  She laughed and explained how the circle works and told me to think of each road leading away from it as an exit.  She said to determine which exit to take and then to steer in that direction.  Her advice was "right on" and the next time I entered a roundabout I thought about the exits and was able to drive onto the road that would take me to the place where I wanted to go.  How easy it was to understand what to do when it was simply explained.

Interacting with others is easy when one understands that each of us on this planet are in relationship with everyone else.  We all exist to be involved in the lives of everyone else around us.  Our involvement may be on a surface level or we may just be "on call" to others as we all try to negotiate the world around us.  When someone else asks something of us, then we determine if we can be of assistance to them or if we need to direct them to others who may be able to help them more then we can.  Extending hospitality to others may involve being creative in our world so as to not put ourselves in harm's way or to become so involved that we cannot reasonably meet our own needs.

Hospitality to strangers often happens as others visit our homes or churches where we worship.  In our homes we offer strangers the necessities of life (food, water, rest) and in our churches we offer the same things but in spiritual ways as well as material ways.  We invite strangers to feel at home as they rest in our worship spaces, to participate in worship as they feel they are able, and to join us in fellowship after our worship to share a drink and a conversation.  We attempt to be inclusive so that all feel welcome despite the differences that may exist between strangers.  Hospitality crosses the divisions that are apparent as we welcome others into our space and venture into theirs.

"Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."  (Hebrews 13:1-2)

Monday, August 15, 2016

Was Blind But Now I See

We have been studying the lives of the composers of hymns this month in order to gain a new appreciation both for their lives and for the music they left with humanity as a legacy.  Isaac Watts was our first hymn composer, dating back to the first of the 18th century.  Then, Charles Wesley was next, about fifty years after Watts.  Next Sunday, we will jump a century ahead to sing and talk about the hymns written by Fanny Crosby.  She was a remarkable woman, writing around 5000 hymns but doing so while being totally blind.

Fanny Crosby composed the words to many hymns that have become favorites to Christians over the years.  "Blessed Assurance,"  "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,"  "I Am Thine, O Lord," and many others have been sung for well over a hundred years now by Christians in many denominations.

Crosby was celebrated in her own day for her gospel hymns, but she was also very publicly involved with New York City's rescue mission and other benevolent efforts.  She rubbed shoulders with Grover Cleveland, Dwight Moody, Jenny Lind, and P.T. Barnum.  She was praised as a gifted Protestant woman, beloved and treasured by those who knew her.

Her hymns reflect the mood of the era in which she lived and her concern for social issues which plagued industrial America.  We will think about her life and the legacy she provided through the music she shared during worship the next Sunday.  

Monday, August 1, 2016

Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs

The hymn as we know it in our usual style of Christian worship dates only to the eighteenth century in England when a man named Isaac Watts decided that the chanting or singing of psalms only was causing great boredom and much sleeping during worship services in England.  Watts was a member of a dissenter church, following after the lead of his father, who refused to become an Anglican minister and was persecuted for it until finally freedom of religion was granted to all in English churches.

Isaac Watts as a young man often sat in the worship services in the dissenter church (Congregationalist) where his father was a minister and observed the worshipers present either sleeping during worship or looking so bored that they would rather be any place except where they were.  Isaac complained about the rote chanting or singing of psalms and how he could think up better music to be sung and his father challenged him to do so.  So, that very day, Isaac Watts composed his first hymn (Behold the Glories) and it was sung during worship the following Sunday.

After that experience, Watts composed a new hymn for each Sunday, most based upon one of the 150 psalms or another scripture passage.  The hymn would not be known by the worshipers in the service so Watts would try to teach them to sing it using "line-singing" which was common in worship in that era.  The leader would sing a line and the congregants would sing the same line.  Each line would be repeated until finally they had sung the entire hymn.  It was still not as lively as in the future when Watts' hymns would be published and played by organists and sung by worshipers during worship services but it was a step ahead of the rote psalm singing they had been experiencing up to that time.

Isaac Watts was the first person to compose and publish hymns written in English for worshipers in England.  He lived between 1674 and 1748 and wrote several hundreds of hymns.  We will sing a few of his hymns this Sunday in worship as we consider his life and his impact on Christian worship.  Did you know that he wrote "Joy to the World" which we sing at Christmas?  What if we sung it this Sunday on the first Sunday in August?  How would that make you feel?  What if you knew that this Christmas hymn is based on Psalm 98?  Would Christmas feel different to you?

We begin a 4 part sermon series this Sunday based on hymn writers who have influenced the church over the centuries and whose hymns we have come to love.  This Sunday we will sing the songs of Isaac Watts and think about his life and influence and give thanks for how these songs help us offer praise to God during worship.