Mary's song of encouragement and the blues...

Today's worship for Advent 3 was gentle and sweet - sad and bluesy, too. We used three songs - two from U2 and one from Sarah McLachlan - and talked about how the blues help us express the hard times. I shared a few thoughts including how:

+ Churches are historically unprepared for helping us express our laments - that's why God gave us the blues - which is a good thing given the fact that so many people feel blue during this season. There are tons of reasons why - death, war, unemployment, fear, disease, emotional loss, loneliness and so much more - and they are all real.

+ I also noted that while singing the blues doesn't change any of our externals, they are curiously cathartic - and that is healing in a counter-intuitive way. In this, Mary's Song - the Magnificat - is much like a cathartic blues song that also nourishes encouragement within and among us. Funny how in the gospel text for today, Matthew 11, Jesus and John are parsing words about the consequences of ministry while in the middle of it all the liturgy also asks us to consider Mary's song. Sometimes, it would seem, we don't have the right words... so all we can do is sing the blues.

At the end of worship there were a lot of tears: I guess we really needed to have a time to weep with one another for one another. Mary's song encouraged that, too. I know that I was frazzled before worship started - LOTS of little details to accomplish and time seemed to be racing - but my bandmates encouraged me to chill and congregation sang like angels - and when it was done it was clear that Jesus had been in the house.