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New Every Morning - The Rev. James H. Littrell
Listen in to the sermon from the Rev. James H. Littrell for the Memorial of William Newbold, May 28, 2022.
Today's readings are:
Lamentations 3:22-26,31-33
Romans 8:14-19,34-35,37-39
John 14:1-6
New Every Morning
Fr. Jim Littrell
May 28, 2022
The writer of the Book of Lamentations, a little bit of which we just heard, says to us:
"The steadfast love of God never ceases. God's mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!"
And then Paul, writing to the first Christians in Rome, that great imperial capital, from jail, from his cell facing a terrible death, writes that nothing in all creation will be able to separate all those early Christians and himself from that same steadfast love of God. And John, in that Gospel I just read, assures us that God's domain, God's dominion, the space of God, is more spacious and open and welcoming than any of us can begin to imagine. Using the metaphor of a house, he speaks to us of its endless, endless capacity to take us in. It's endless capaciousness. The steadfast love of God is as vast and nurturing and loving and hugging and warm and safe as anything any of us can imagine, and then so much more than that.
So I am here to tell you this terrible morning, when every heart in this room is fractured, is in so much pain, that your son, your brother, your grandson, your cousin, your nephew, your friend William Connor Newbold is right now, in this very heartbroken time, saying to us, with Jesus, "do not let your hearts be troubled. I am fine. God is holding me close. And you would not believe how wonderful that is." But, he begs us with God, "please do believe it!"
Heartbreak is a real thing, Leslie mused to me in one of our conversations this week. It's a real thing. It actually hurts. And she's right. Hearts break, and hearts in this holy place this morning are broken. And I believe that into that fracture, that brokenness, God's steadfast love and God's infinite Light is pouring right now. I want to tell you two things about that.
First, heartbreak is like any other human fracture. It hurts. And it will heal, in time, and especially - and this is really important - especially if it is nurtured by your love and care for one another in the days and months and years ahead. And second, also like a broken bone, your broken hearts will heal, but they will never be the same. There will always be a space in them where William was.
What I want you to believe with me is that he is, right now, right here, in this room, working with God to mend your hearts. He and God want you to laugh again. They want you to play again. They want you to see the colors of the world bright again. And they want you to love and care for one another in this moment and in the time ahead.
And, also, they know you will weep. And weep. And weep. They know how sad you are, and will be. And they love you and all your tears so much. And they say, God and William, that even your pain cannot separate you from God's endless love. God loves you always and in every condition, and God will wipe away the tears from your eyes.
"And how do I know that?" William says to us. How do we know that William is now held in God's love? "Well, here's how," William says to you: "I know because all my tears and my sadness and my pain are gone. Gone. All my pain is gone."
The steadfast love of God never ceases. God's mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning! They are new this morning.
There is a hymn I like a lot and I want to share a little bit of it with you. It's by a composer of contemporary hymns named Brian Wren. It's a prayer hymn, of sorts, inviting us to bring the many names of God into our hearts: he invokes in the hymn the God of all the stories we tell,the parables we tell of our God, the God who is a mother to us, nurturing, ordering, and piloting and caring, the God who is a loving father to us, hugging every child, a God he calls (and I resonate with this a lot!), "old aching God, gray with endless care, glad of good surprises, wiser than despair." And then Wren names this God, who I think he means to be Jesus, but which brings me back to William: "Young, growing God, eager, on the move, saying no to falsehood and unkindness,...giving all you have." The hymn ends with a kind of summary of God's names: "Great loving God," Wren writes, "never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, everlasting home."
And that is exactly where William is: far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, he is right there in the everlasting home which is God's steadfast love, from which nothing, nothing in all creation can separate us. Nothing at all, not now, not ever.
Now how do I know that all those names, that William's very self, is wrapped up in all the names of God, in God's compassionate arms? Well, I guess my 79 years have taught me that. But, also, as Leslie likes to say, and as I heard this morning, there are signs.
I am, theologically, most of all a Christian mystic. And so yesterday, as I was getting ready to come up here to the church and meet with Leslie and Will, I was listening, as I often do, to the BBC's afternoon concert, which in the morning when I'm getting ready for the day is happening in the evening there, which is morning our time. And there I am brushing my teeth when I hear coming out of the speaker the most beautiful music I've heard in a really, really long time.
It was so amazing it made me stop brushing my teeth and just stop and listen to this music. It's some kind of organ music. I listen and I think, "What is this?" I think I hear in it a little Bach, but then the music moves into this kind of deep, powerful minor key, a kind of lament. It sounds to me like a kind of cry, almost. The chord just deepens and deepens in this minor key and then, gradually, that cry resolves in music that I can only describe as pure splendor. "What is this???" The music ends. I listen and an announcer tells me that what I have just heard is a transcription and augmentation for organ of a chorale, sure enough, by Bach, from his Easter Cantata. And this chorale, and this piece, is called: "Weigen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen," which means pretty much, Weeping, Lament, Worry, Fear. And this glorious music in which all of that is contained, all of what we are in the middle of right now, all of our Wagen and our Klagen and our Sorgen and our Zagen, all our weeping and all our lamenting and all our worrying and all our fear - all of that music was composed by Franz Lizst in 1862 right after the tragic death of his daughter. And that music is about the deepest sorrow a human being can experience, your sorrow, and it's based on and set smack in the middle of an Easter chorale, a cantada about the Resurrection.
Well. I did this thing, I stood there, struck, with a toothbrush in my hand. And then I took my finger and put it on the little red dot to push the stream back, and then I listened to this music all over again, and I thought this: that music came to me directly from the great God who lifts us out of death back into life, over and over and over and over again until we are healed, and who at the last, takes us into God's endless life and light. And that amazing music arrived in my life, kindness of a courier, a heavenly courier whose name is William Connor Newbold. I am certain of it.
He is joined with God's merciful love. He knows our weeping and lamentation and our worry and our fear in exactly the same way as God does, because they are joined together. And together, because they are joined, they are with Jesus, who is all compassion, and they say together to us,
"The steadfast love of God never ceases. God's mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!"
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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By St. Martin-in-the-FieldsListen in to the sermon from the Rev. James H. Littrell for the Memorial of William Newbold, May 28, 2022.
Today's readings are:
Lamentations 3:22-26,31-33
Romans 8:14-19,34-35,37-39
John 14:1-6
New Every Morning
Fr. Jim Littrell
May 28, 2022
The writer of the Book of Lamentations, a little bit of which we just heard, says to us:
"The steadfast love of God never ceases. God's mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!"
And then Paul, writing to the first Christians in Rome, that great imperial capital, from jail, from his cell facing a terrible death, writes that nothing in all creation will be able to separate all those early Christians and himself from that same steadfast love of God. And John, in that Gospel I just read, assures us that God's domain, God's dominion, the space of God, is more spacious and open and welcoming than any of us can begin to imagine. Using the metaphor of a house, he speaks to us of its endless, endless capacity to take us in. It's endless capaciousness. The steadfast love of God is as vast and nurturing and loving and hugging and warm and safe as anything any of us can imagine, and then so much more than that.
So I am here to tell you this terrible morning, when every heart in this room is fractured, is in so much pain, that your son, your brother, your grandson, your cousin, your nephew, your friend William Connor Newbold is right now, in this very heartbroken time, saying to us, with Jesus, "do not let your hearts be troubled. I am fine. God is holding me close. And you would not believe how wonderful that is." But, he begs us with God, "please do believe it!"
Heartbreak is a real thing, Leslie mused to me in one of our conversations this week. It's a real thing. It actually hurts. And she's right. Hearts break, and hearts in this holy place this morning are broken. And I believe that into that fracture, that brokenness, God's steadfast love and God's infinite Light is pouring right now. I want to tell you two things about that.
First, heartbreak is like any other human fracture. It hurts. And it will heal, in time, and especially - and this is really important - especially if it is nurtured by your love and care for one another in the days and months and years ahead. And second, also like a broken bone, your broken hearts will heal, but they will never be the same. There will always be a space in them where William was.
What I want you to believe with me is that he is, right now, right here, in this room, working with God to mend your hearts. He and God want you to laugh again. They want you to play again. They want you to see the colors of the world bright again. And they want you to love and care for one another in this moment and in the time ahead.
And, also, they know you will weep. And weep. And weep. They know how sad you are, and will be. And they love you and all your tears so much. And they say, God and William, that even your pain cannot separate you from God's endless love. God loves you always and in every condition, and God will wipe away the tears from your eyes.
"And how do I know that?" William says to us. How do we know that William is now held in God's love? "Well, here's how," William says to you: "I know because all my tears and my sadness and my pain are gone. Gone. All my pain is gone."
The steadfast love of God never ceases. God's mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning! They are new this morning.
There is a hymn I like a lot and I want to share a little bit of it with you. It's by a composer of contemporary hymns named Brian Wren. It's a prayer hymn, of sorts, inviting us to bring the many names of God into our hearts: he invokes in the hymn the God of all the stories we tell,the parables we tell of our God, the God who is a mother to us, nurturing, ordering, and piloting and caring, the God who is a loving father to us, hugging every child, a God he calls (and I resonate with this a lot!), "old aching God, gray with endless care, glad of good surprises, wiser than despair." And then Wren names this God, who I think he means to be Jesus, but which brings me back to William: "Young, growing God, eager, on the move, saying no to falsehood and unkindness,...giving all you have." The hymn ends with a kind of summary of God's names: "Great loving God," Wren writes, "never fully known, joyful darkness far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, everlasting home."
And that is exactly where William is: far beyond our seeing, closer yet than breathing, he is right there in the everlasting home which is God's steadfast love, from which nothing, nothing in all creation can separate us. Nothing at all, not now, not ever.
Now how do I know that all those names, that William's very self, is wrapped up in all the names of God, in God's compassionate arms? Well, I guess my 79 years have taught me that. But, also, as Leslie likes to say, and as I heard this morning, there are signs.
I am, theologically, most of all a Christian mystic. And so yesterday, as I was getting ready to come up here to the church and meet with Leslie and Will, I was listening, as I often do, to the BBC's afternoon concert, which in the morning when I'm getting ready for the day is happening in the evening there, which is morning our time. And there I am brushing my teeth when I hear coming out of the speaker the most beautiful music I've heard in a really, really long time.
It was so amazing it made me stop brushing my teeth and just stop and listen to this music. It's some kind of organ music. I listen and I think, "What is this?" I think I hear in it a little Bach, but then the music moves into this kind of deep, powerful minor key, a kind of lament. It sounds to me like a kind of cry, almost. The chord just deepens and deepens in this minor key and then, gradually, that cry resolves in music that I can only describe as pure splendor. "What is this???" The music ends. I listen and an announcer tells me that what I have just heard is a transcription and augmentation for organ of a chorale, sure enough, by Bach, from his Easter Cantata. And this chorale, and this piece, is called: "Weigen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen," which means pretty much, Weeping, Lament, Worry, Fear. And this glorious music in which all of that is contained, all of what we are in the middle of right now, all of our Wagen and our Klagen and our Sorgen and our Zagen, all our weeping and all our lamenting and all our worrying and all our fear - all of that music was composed by Franz Lizst in 1862 right after the tragic death of his daughter. And that music is about the deepest sorrow a human being can experience, your sorrow, and it's based on and set smack in the middle of an Easter chorale, a cantada about the Resurrection.
Well. I did this thing, I stood there, struck, with a toothbrush in my hand. And then I took my finger and put it on the little red dot to push the stream back, and then I listened to this music all over again, and I thought this: that music came to me directly from the great God who lifts us out of death back into life, over and over and over and over again until we are healed, and who at the last, takes us into God's endless life and light. And that amazing music arrived in my life, kindness of a courier, a heavenly courier whose name is William Connor Newbold. I am certain of it.
He is joined with God's merciful love. He knows our weeping and lamentation and our worry and our fear in exactly the same way as God does, because they are joined together. And together, because they are joined, they are with Jesus, who is all compassion, and they say together to us,
"The steadfast love of God never ceases. God's mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness!"
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org