What is the world like when God’s will is done?
Mustard seeds grow more than we can conceive:
Roots thread the soil; branches reach for the sun.
This is how God moves us each to believe.
- Adam M.L. Tice

One of the things I love about Adam Tice’s hymn texts is that they are so carefully crafted as to seem very simple at first but have much deeper meaning at multiple levels. I love the way he phrases this line: Mustard seeds grow more than we can conceive. How often is it the limitations of what we can conceive that impedes the growth that God intends? Trusting God with things beyond what we can conceive is tough. It often involves moving us out of our comfort zone because discomfort is a part of growth. That mustard seed of a new idea (or even an old idea presented in a new way) may not be comfortable, but it may be essential to our collective growth. Our consumer culture advertises to our conception of comfort. It is concerned with whether we like or don’t like a product. God calls us to look beyond the limitations of our conceptions. Instead of being concerned with whether we like something or don’t like it, the question becomes -- how do we grow from this? How does it keep us rooted in good soil but continuing to reach for the sun -- stretching beyond our limited conception of what is possible?

This week, the choir will be singing a simple arrangement I concocted of this hymn “What Is the World Like” as a way of introducing it for the congregation as we may sing it when we encounter one of the other parables Mr. Tice references. This week we will also use a different doxology that happens to be one of the musical responses from the setting of the Lutheran liturgy I composed in 2008. The melody is very stepwise in order to be a little easier for a congregation to follow, but the surprising harmonic twists and turns of the accompaniment remind us to dream bigger than limitations of our own conception and trust that God will “fill to the brim our cup of blessing” while still reminding us of that growth that has to happen to get there -- “gather the harvest from seeds that were sown.” Beyond the connection to the growth of seeds with the parable of the mustard seed that we will hear this week, these words for this musical response connect with several other readings we will have over the next several weeks while still giving thanks to God for the blessings we have been given as well as the ones we don’t yet see.

Marshall

Faith begins by letting go,
Giving up what had seemed sure,
Taking risks and pressing on,
Though the way feels less secure:
Pilgrimage both right and odd,
Trusting all our life to God.
- Carl P. Daw, Jr.

So often in many of the various cooking shows that make good background noise for me, you hear someone talk about making a certain protein 3 ways. They use that protein in three very different ways in the same dish, but each part of the dish still contains that protein. It usually is something that a chef is trying to grow in their culinary skills and in a sense helps them to understand that ingredient and the ways it can be used better.

It is good for us to look at a hymn text the same way. Even our favorite hymns have evolved over time---words have been altered, the text has been paired with a different tune, and so there is no “right” tune or “right” wording. The wording might be changed to better reflect the needs of our time or place in the world. Each different tune highlights a different aspect of the words. And thus, in looking at it through the lens of our time, now, not a rose-colored look at the past through the lens of nostalgia, as well as hearing it in the new wineskin of a different tune, we come to understand that text more than if we simply sang it the way grew up singing it.

The text “Take My Life and Let It Be” was written by the English hymnwriter Frances H. Havergal just five years before her death at the age of 42. She was one in a family full of writers and musicians in the late 1800s. This Sunday we will be singing and hearing this text three ways in worship. The choir will sing this text with harmonies that could be pulled straight out of light rock of the 1970s and 1980s in Craig Courtney’s choral setting. Around the sermon, we will sing an altered version of this text paired with the stately classical hymn tune VIENNA. And during communion, we will sing the version where the text most closely resembles the original but is paired with the tune TOMA MI VOLUNTAD written by William Dexheimer Pharris during his work as a pastor in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1990s. Chew on this text and think about the different flavors that are revealed in the different forms in which this text is served.
 
Marshall

But still, women struggle for lives free and fair
And children are hungry and loved ones despair.
Still, those long-oppressed or in prisons of fear
Are longing to call this their jubilee year.
- Carolyn Winfrey Gilette

These words were written in 1998, but yet we still see all of this in our world. It draws me back to Isaiah 58. I particularly like the way it is translated in the New Century Version:

6 “I will tell you the kind of fast I want:
Free the people you have put in prison unfairly
    and undo their chains.
Free those to whom you are unfair
    and stop their hard labor.
7 Share your food with the hungry
    and bring poor, homeless people into your own homes.
When you see someone who has no clothes, give him yours,
    and don’t refuse to help your own relatives.
8 Then your light will shine like the dawn,
    and your wounds will quickly heal.
Your God will walk before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind.
9 Then you will call out, and the Lord will answer.
    You will cry out, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

The way this passage is stated here is much more of a call to action, and indicts us at the same time for the ways we have contributed to the plights of those for whom God gives hope through Isaiah. May God give hope to others through what we proclaim in our singing.  

Marshall

Classrooms and labs! Loud boiling test tubes!
Sing to the Lord a new song!
Athlete and band! Loud cheering people!
Sing to the Lord a new song!
God has done marvelous things!
I too sing praises with a new song!
- Herbert F. Brokering

How often have you thought about boiling test tubes and athletes as vehicles through which God is still creating our world?

God calls us often to sing a new song and doesn’t call us in Scripture to sing our old favorites. But is essential as God continues to create us (think about Romans 12:2 and Philippians 1:6) and through us both individually and in community -- through scientists, musicians, construction workers, athletes, etc. as Herb Brokering points out in this hymn, “Earth and All Stars.”

Because this is not always easy, I often will look for a hymn that we can learn over a month’s time so that we can grow into it. Early in the month it will be in a less prominent place within the service, so that people can generally listen first and then join in the song as they grow into it. "Earth and All Stars" is a hymn that does connect the scriptures we have over the next few weeks emphasizing God’s creation and the community that we are called to be. If you are ready, I hope you will join in as we sing this during communion. If you still need to grow into it, that’s great too. Listen to the words and reflect on how community and our roles in community reflect God’s creation.

We also have a chance to create together in community in worship this Sunday through improvisation. When I improvise, I generally think in terms of musical gestures. So what you hear may not fit the common practice period (Baroque through Romantic) concept of music you might have in mind. Pay attention to how the musical gestures at the piano reflect what the artist is doing and how you can add in even the simplest way as we continue to build this creation together in community. Let’s see what new thing God creates through us.

I think David Bjorlin sums it up well in his hymn “Ask the Complicated Questions”: