Fill My Cup, Lord...with Praise Palm Sunday 04-05-09

But in the next two days, everything changed.  On Friday, the temperature dropped from near eighty to below freezing. As the temperature was dropping, in mid-afternoon there was a tremendous hail storm which caused great damage to many cars and roofs. By early evening a violent was pounding the entire community with snow! 

On Saturday, folks woke up to even more bad news.  Overnight, federal regulators had closed one of the two banks in town for insolvency. Half the people in this little community had checking and savings accounts as well as home loans in an institution that was no longer in existence. It was an eerie feeling not knowing were they stood financially. Throughout the day, people were assured that their money was insured to a certain point, but there were stories going around about how all loans were cancelled and subject to review and renegotiation.   People who had checks from that bank could not use them, so no matter how much money they had in the bank all they had that day was the money in their pocket.

On Thursday they experienced the best day of the month.  By Friday they were reeling from wind, hail and snow.  Then on Saturday one of the two financial institutions in that town of six thousand people went out of business. Sunday was Palm Sunday and as the people gathered for worship they were uneasy, unsettled, uncertain about what the future would bring. When the bells rang out and the children began to wave their palm branches, the gathered community began to sing "Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest!" with decidedly less joy and enthusiasm than usual. Yet, even so they continued to sing, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!" And in the singing they began to remember. And in the singing their hearts found a measure of peace.

I grew up with the sound of singing. As my mother went about her day the sounds of "What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear, what a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer..." or "O Lord, my God when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hand hath made, I see the stars I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed...". As I child, I thought she just liked to sing. But as I grew in my own faith and understanding, I came to realize that these songs helped my mother remember that every moment of every day -no matter what the day looked like, no matter how difficult the challenges seemed to be- she was held in the arms of a loving God. It has been fascinating to me, how often in my own life a hymn, a praise song, one of the Taize chants or some other song has unbidden begun to sing in my soul carrying the promise, the hope, the strength or the love I need in that moment; each song, in its own way carrying me into the ever-flowing stream of God's blessings and love.

In a way, I think that might have been part of the power of the singing on that day so long ago, "Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!" Times were hard, the people lived in fear. The power of the Roman Empire was absolute. And Jesus came to stir their hearts to remember and find again the hope that seemed like a dim echo, kept alive only through the singing of their faith. Yet even so as Jesus and his disciples prepared to go to the Holy City for the Passover celebration his disciples were uneasy, unsettled, uncertain about what the future would bring. Jesus had been saying all those crazy things about carrying a cross and losing one's life and they couldn't for the life of them make sense of what he was trying to say. So as they came down that hill from Bethany they began to sing, tentatively at first and then louder as God's joy and peace began to fill their hearts, "Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!"

The book of the Bible we call Psalms contains the songs of faith of ancient Israel. Time and time again, as in the portion of the psalm Lori read today, the people were called to sing with thanksgiving and joy and bless the Lord. Twenty-three times in twenty verses of the Psalms we hear things like:

(Psalms 103:1) Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

(Psalms 134:1) Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD, who stand by night in the house of the LORD!

And nineteen times in nineteen more verses we hear things like:

(Psalms 72:18 NRSV)  Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.

(Psalms 118:26 NRSV)  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. We bless you from the house of the LORD.

To sing these songs of praise even in the midst of suffering and pain, uncertainty and doubt was to remember, to acknowledge with thanksgiving and gratitude what God had already done and thereby to open their hearts to what God yet may do.

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their book The Last Week claim that as Jesus and his disciples rode into Jerusalem from the east there was another procession entering the city from the west. It was the procession of Pontius Pilate -the Roman Governor. It was a clash of two worlds; domination or justice; scarcity or abundance; fear or trust; war or peace? Could the songs of faith overcome the cadence of fear?

This week I met Patrick Henry Hughes. Patrick Henry is a young man who was born with no eyes and a rare disease that left him with severe physical deformities. Despite the grief his parents surely felt as they received one piece of bad news after another, they were able to see Patrick Henry not through what he didn't have but through what it soon became clear that he did have -an equally rare gift of music. When Patrick Henry was less than a year old, his mother for some unknown reason pulled Patrick's highchair to the piano and began to play some notes. Amazingly within one or two tries, he was able to hit the exact same note she hit. He seemed to love the piano and the sounds it made seemed to bring him great joy. By his second birthday, he could play many songs on request. Now a college student at the University of Louisville, Patrick Henry is an accomplished pianist, composer, singer, author and trumpeter in the University Marching Band. (That's right he's in the marching band -with the help of his father who pushes his wheelchair from formation to formation). When asked about his life Patrick Henry responds "God made me blind and unable to walk. BIG DEAL! He gave me the ability...the musical gifts I have...the great opportunity to meet new people."

After reading some of his story in the book Learning to Dance in the Rain, I Googled his name and found several different clips on youtube. I was moved to tears as I listened to him play and saw his vibrant spirit. But perhaps the most powerful of all the clips was from Extreme Home Makeover where Patrick Henry sang:

I raise my hands, I bow my head

I'm finding more and more truth

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   in the words written in red

They tell me that there's more to life

than just what I can see

Oh I believe

What are the songs that help you remember? What are the melodies of praise that renew your faith? What are the sounds of grace that stir your living and your loving? Whatever they are, they are gifts of love sent to remind you that no matter what the day looks like, no matter how difficult the challenges seem to be, every moment of every day you are held in the arms of a loving God.

Fill our cups, Lord, with Praise!