Growing up, when it came to music, there was one rule in our house: you shall listen to good music.
To my father, whose musical tastes ruled the radio, phonograph, and eventual CD player, that meant we listened to a lot of classical music and a lot of music from the 50s, 60s and 70s. We children called it oldies, he called it the only kind of good music that ever existed. What we’re to call it today, when music from the 80s, 90s and 2000s are now being called oldies, I don’t know.
But as I sat with the text this week, one of those songs from my childhood – which just so happens to also legitimately be from some of your childhoods too – rang through my ears.
It’s a song about wishing and hoping:
Wishin and hopin and thinkin and prayin,
Plannin and dreamin each night of his charms,
That won’t get you into his arms.
Dusty Springfield sang it in the early 60s, and while a song about a woman intent on landing a man will not remain the theme of this morning’s sermon, I do think Springfield was onto something when she kept singing those lines about wishing and hoping.
We, of course, are a people of hope.
As followers of Jesus, we don’t so much claim to be wishers as much as hopers, instead pitching our tents in the land of hope because Hope (with a capital H) is sometimes all we’ve got.
But take this passage from John 1 and think about the season of Epiphany that we find ourselves in now.
John 1 is a set-up scene: John the Baptist is setting up his cousin, Jesus. He’s pointing others toward him. He’s paving the way. He’s shouting, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Jesus, after all, is the one they’d been wishin’ and hopin’ for.
John talks about the Spirit comes down from heaven like a dove and lands on Jesus, staying on him and sticking to him and not leaving him anytime soon. The Spirit doesn’t seem to want anything to do with John, at least not in a sticky, stay-on-him, prophetic sort of way, but John is told that “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit,” so he doesn’t doubt those ancient words for a second.
Instead, he just keeps on pointing to the God-man: “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” Because of John’s words, Andrew and Simon Peter become disciples of Jesus. Soon thereafter, Jesus utters the words, “Come and see” for the very first time.
The season of Epiphany is also a come-and-see kind of season. Epiphany means to reveal or to bring to light. After all, that which we’ve been hoping for is finally here. But as writer Stephanie Smith of
points out, with illumination also comes discomfort. It takes time to adjust and accept that which has been revealed.To Stephanie, who is also a mother, she notices how Epiphany began in Mary’s postpartum: “Her body was healing, her sleep was disrupted, her hormones were surging, her sense of self no doubt shaken, her system surely in overload,” Stephanie writes. Just as Mary “had never had a baby before, God had never been born before … New beginnings are so beautiful but there is so much tenderness in them.”1
I love Stephanie’s words, perhaps because they make even more real this passage in John 1. Again, imagine that set-up scene: it’s like John the Baptist is shouting, “Hey! People! That which we’ve waited for is here now. Look, everyone, look: the one we’ve been wishing and hoping and waiting for all along!
The people see. They respond. But with this newness also comes discomfort. It takes time to adjust and accept and believe his arrival.
It’s here that I am also brought back to the first three verses of today’s Psalm. Bono, from U2, sang those same verses from Psalm 40 this way:
I waited patiently for the Lord,
He inclined and heard my cry.
You lift me up out of the pits,
Out of the miry clay.
I will sing, sing a new song,
I will sing, sing a new song.
We don’t necessarily know what was happening in David’s life that made him wait patiently before the Lord. How did God draw him up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog? What did it look like for God to set David’s feet upon a rock and make his steps secure?
We don’t necessarily know the answers to these questions, but we do know that by the third verse of the Psalm, David gives props to God: God put a new song in his mouth, a song, no doubt, that’s of praise. Surely, because of this praise, “Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord,” David sings and goes on to continue praising God for another nine verses.
But Bono, curiously enough, adds a new line in there: How long to sing this song?
Some song critics conclude that him singing How long, how long, how long, is him wondering how long this joy (that came from the longed-for hope) will last.
And that I think is also what brings us full circle back to this interaction between Jesus, John the Baptist, and the people who are beginning to take notice of the one called Messiah.
Something has been revealed. Someone has been brought to light. And this something, this newness happening among God’s people, this illumination that is before them, brings great joy. The Israelites, after all, have long been waiting for the one who is to come, for Emmanuel.
God-With-Us, here now. The spirit has come down upon Jesus like a dove; there’s just something different about him, something about this particular man. Come and see, he eventually says, and so they do, and so we do too. But even in this invitation, an unknown exists. Discomfort is real in that place, for it takes time to adjust to and accept this reality.
I wonder if this is where many of us find ourselves too: in the new year and in this season of Epiphany, new realizations and thoughts emerge, perhaps about ourselves or about the people around us. Perhaps about our bodies or about the one we sometimes call God.
Maybe there’s an unhealthy relationship with alcohol; maybe a bitterness in our hearts, a deep-down hurt that keeps niggling at our souls. Maybe movement needs to happen in our bodies, maybe a time of quiet meditation keeps knocking at our insides. Maybe we realize the injustice still present for Black Americans, this in light of a holiday that honors a radical Black man who changed the world, and this, less than two weeks after a young Black male teacher was killed by police following a traffic collision.2
These realizations tend to hop off the page and bury into our hearts. They’re made real to us through Holy Spirit-whispers and song lyrics and conversations with neighbors alike. Whatever it is, might we say yes to that which has been revealed, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it takes time to adjust and accept.
Might we relish in the joy of these present epiphanies. Might we continue to sing, sing a new song.
Amen.