Thank God for poets who take God's word seriously enough to be playful...

I give thanks to the Lord this day for poets who take God's word seriously enough to be playful: there are artists and musicians, dancers and painters, sculptors, photographers and word smiths who ALL know how to help us go below the surface into the realm of soul work.  As M. Craig Barnes puts it: "they have been blessed with a vision that allows them to explore and express the truth behind the reality. Poets see the despair and heartaches as well as the beauty and miracle that lie just beneath the thin veneer of the ordinary ~ and they describe this in ways that recognized not only in the mind, but more profoundly in the soul."

One of the poets who accomplishes such work every week in my Music Director, Carlton Maaia II: he knows how to make the piano and organ sing, he helps those of us bred in white New England sound soulful and he empowers the cautious among us to be bold in making joy filled music. He is brilliant, humble and a ton of fun ~ and I rejoice that he has cast his lot with us as we rebuild this community of faith. 

Another is my jazz mentor, Andy Kelly, who is the personification of hope:  he is a killer musician and a gentle warrior for peace who knows how to welcome and include everyone in the beauty of making music.  My band mates at church ~ Between the Banks ~ (Dianne, Brian, Eva, Sue, Jon and David) are another group of poets who bring light into the darkness.  And ALL of them were active in worship today giving birth to something I have prayed about for almost five years:  the blending of our traditional choir with the rock and jazz band!  It happened this morning ~ the integration of styles, theologies, ages and sounds into one chorus of hope and praise ~ that brought blessing upon blessing and gave shape and form to a vision of what it means to be God's people. 

I know that there are those who speak of growing the church by appealing to musical genres and other forms of segregation. In fact, I've been there and done that ~ and it works (to a degree.) It IS easier appealing to the lowest common denominator. But at this stage in my life I want something that feels closer to a community where MANY people gather together ~ old and young, rich and poor, male and female, gay and straight, classical musicians alongside jazz and rock hipsters ~ and all the rest.  Because, as that old rascal, Clarence Jordan, used to tell the segregationist of his generation:  "You know, you better get used to singing next to different kind of people now.. because as it says in the Bible, when you get to heaven ~ and I'm talking about eternity ~ there will be "a great multitude that no one can count from every nation and all the tribes and peoples and languages will be standing before the throne of the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches... all singing together:  Salvation belongs to our God!"  So why not integrate now?!"  (Revelation 7: 9-10)

It is good and right that it happened on a day when we honored Dr. King.  He was the poet par excellence of my generation.  Barnes offers these words that I think are spot on:

The civil rights legislation of the 1960s was largely led by President Lyndon Johnson, who often battled a hesitant Congress to secure the passage of more just laws. He was a political realist and he did what it took to get the votes he needed. Whatever one may think of President Johnson or the other policies of his administration, clearly history has already awarded him the tribute of being a leader through this significant time.

But it fell to someone else, a poet, to inspire the nation to accept the dream of a color-blind society. Without the dream, the legislation would never have passed. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the country into that dream only by taking us into a painful discovery of the injustice that lurked in the corners of our hearts. That was the truth behind the reality. But the white majority culture didn't accept this dream easily. The African-American community, whom Dr. King had empowered with one biblical image of freedom after another, led the rest of of to it.  They began by marching in the streets, and after the nation watched them mercilessly attacked by police dogs, fire hoses and angry mobs, they marched into our hearts.  But it took a realist and a truth-teller ~ a politician and a poet ~ to make it real.

Barnes concludes his introduction with words that I take to heart ~ and will drive home to my congregation next Sunday:  "Pastors are not the only ones working on the Kingdom of God. But they don't help by abandoning their specific call to be poets and taking on the work of the realists and the engineers.  Someone, you see, has to teach the people how to dream."

So thanks be to God for the poets among us: may they teach us how to dream!