This week we will consider four aspects of the practice of hope...hope from the God of life, hope toward the neighbor - as Walter Brueggemann says it. Today is the fouth and final part.
The singers generated songs. The songs become text. And the text was to be read and reread, heard and reheard, interpreted and reinterpreted. It is a community of equilibrium that can confine texts to one meaning. By contrast a community of hope has texts that always "mean" afresh; hopers engaged inescapably in the juggling act of interpretation that defiantly moves between acquiescence to present arrangements and risk that open through many layers of imagination and polyvalence. Such layered interpretation refuses closure, for the closure of the text would only bespeak the closure of the empire and, before that, the closure of the brickyards.
Within the community of hope we sing old songs in new days. In doing that, we bring up the stories of our God who has done great things among God's people. But today, those song are sung and from the singing of those songs, new things come to life. We do not simple reenact - like Christmas and Good Friday "reenactments" - we reinterpret the song for the living of these days. I remember singing a wonderful protest song in the late 70s and early 80s as part of protests against nuclear arms. "We shall not, we shall not be moved. We shall not, we shall not be moved. Just like a tree planted by the river, we shall not be moved." The images reach back into scripture and back to a specific community. But the song was now moving a new community into a place of resistance in this new day. I then used it in a sermon one day and an old union worker told me that they would sing that at strike sites. The song seems to be something that helps us keep in mind the vision of more that what is. It has the power to rally and resist and redefine how we will enter the day.
Connection: When we sing we risk everything because as we sing, our hearts are not left in one place. We are lifted up to imagine how the God of our past becomes the songs of our emerging present and future. So...let yourself sing a bit today.
Loving Lord, you present us with so many ways to remember how you abide with us and move us into your new life as times come and go. By your Spirit, enliven our singing and our vision and keep us ever hopeful as we continue to imagine your life expanding among us. Amen.
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