All the Earth Sings Out Your Name
The earth bows down and sings, but do we hear it? In a world filled with noise and distraction, how do we stretch our spiritual muscles to truly listen to God’s presence, not just in the extraordinary, but in every person and every moment?
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Transcript
HIn the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
I want to look first at this verse from the psalm for this morning. Verse three.
All the earth bows down before you
Sings to you
Sings out your name
All the earth bows down before you
Sings to you
Sings out your name
So we got back on Monday evening, Monday night late, from our time in New Mexico. There’s a friend of mine who has a conference center there tucked into the northern part of the state, really in the middle of nowhere. And it was a wonderful time in an interfaith dialog framework, where we’re going to be bringing a group, a circle back to this space and with a wider group of people to look at, how do we get to know each other underneath the shorthand and the catch phrases that we all carry with us when it comes to people who practice a different faith than we do.
So it was a five day deep dive with Jewish mystics, Sufi scholars and sheikhs, shamanistic practitioners, Quakers, animists, Buddhists, and three Episcopalians, who fit right in. It was a wonderful time to just be there and listen. Listen to the story of people who are different than we are.
I was on a walk with a young man who was 35 and an older lady who was 79. First time that we had ever met, and Austin turned and said, “I’ve never met an Episcopalian.” And I said, “well, lucky you, you have now.” And he said, “how would you describe your practice of faith to me?” So we’re all going to go around the room, and each one of us is going to answer that.
But isn’t that a wonderful challenge to ask ourselves when we meet someone and don’t take for granted that they know who we are and what we practice?
If they were to come up to us, a stranger, a new friend, and ask us, “how would you describe your practice of faith? What does your belief in Jesus, being a follower of Jesus? What does that mean to you?” How would we answer? We’re going to look at that this fall. It’s a big piece of what we’re going to do in our Sunday school forums, spaces.
But there was one night where we had all shared wine and sat around and told stories about where we came from and what shaped us and made us into the people that we are at this point. And we were up until about 10 or 10:30, and I was going to walk back to the guest house where we were going to stay by myself. And so it was pitch dark in that part of the state is in one of the dark zones, if that makes sense. There’s no light. So when I walked outside it was a perfectly clear night, and the stars, you could pick them like cherries out of a tree. They were that close. And for the first time in my life, I actually saw the Milky Way. The band going all the way across the sky. We never see that here in this part of the world
So I stood there for the longest time by myself, out on the dirt road, hoping that a coyote and a mountain lion did not come back as we had already seen some of those. The mountain lion would come up and just watch a friend of ours as she prayed. I don’t know what that was about.
But I stood there by myself and looking up at the stars, went back into my room and I took a shower, put on my PJs, and I said, “I have to go back. I’ve got to go back. I can’t go to sleep without going back and seeing the stars.” I went back out to see the stars.
The wind had picked up, and the juniper trees cover all of the land there, and the trees were blowing, and Meg McPeek and Mike, who I was there with, Meg had told me about this app, and I think I’ve told you all, called Sky View, and you can look through it and you can see all of the stars and see what their names are.
So I took out my Sky View app, looked up through it. I forgot that the Sky View app has soft music that plays in the background. So for a moment in time, I thought the trees were singing. And I was absolutely caught up in it. I stood there, it makes my hair stand up now. I stood there on the dirt road, absolutely caught up and watched all of the trees blow and they were singing.
And then I realized it was the app. Or was that? So I started laughing at that point, laughing alone out in the middle of the night on a gravel road. I went back and crawled into my bed and thought, what a wonderful way to fall to sleep. So that’s what came to me with this verse on the song.
All the earth bowed down before you, sings to you, sings out your name. But we don’t hear it. We don’t hear it. We get caught up so often. In the noise and the distractions that surround us. We wake up first thing in the morning and turn on the news. Turn on the noise, it’s a good reason those two words are very close with each other, and that fills the space that we live in.
The commentary, everyone telling us what to be afraid of, no matter which channel, even turn it to. That’s what gets soaked into us through our skin, what soaks into our souls. We don’t hear the trees singing. And they do. They do sing. All of the earth sings.
So our practice becomes what muscles do we need to stretch and use so that we can hear it. So that we can hear the trees singing and the birds, that we can perceive and see the presence of God in every person that we meet, no matter what their faith background is. As we said in our prayer, we’re going to keep this prayer in there at the first as long as we need to, that God will show God’s presence in those who seem to differ most from us. Those are the lessons that we need to learn.
The gospel, if you turn and look at it, plays this dynamic out for us in a wonderful and very convicting way. Jesus sends the seventy out in pairs, out into the towns where he knows he’s going to go, I guess to prime the pump, send them out into the towns and where they can listen and see who they will… who they will meet, who they will encounter.
And the gospel plays this story out, and he gives them strict instructions on what to do and what not to do. And I think some of them are really funny. He says don’t move around from house to house because we being who we are, we’ll just keep moving to a house until we find someone who really likes us. And he says, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Do something deeper. Settle. Find a house that welcomes you, but not on that superficial level of a house that will welcome you. Invite you in so that you can stretch and grow and share. Share the vision and the teaching that you may have. Share the good news. Share the love that is my life.
And it’s a fascinating dynamic where he plays out and says, “if you walk in a house and you say, peace be to this house and peace is there, it will come back on you and you will know.” But he says but if you don’t, if you go in this really dramatic moment, walk out into the road, shake off the dust from… how many of us have wanted to do that at the end of a Thanksgiving dinner gone bad? Just walk out from a relative’s house and shake off… “even the dust that clings to my shoes I shake off in protest against you” Jesus says.
And here’s a fascinating thing about that story: who do we identify with when we hear it? When we read it? If we were to do a straw poll and do what we did in school, close our eyes and bow our heads and raise our hands where no one can see, I suspect that most of us in the room, but identify with the ones who Jesus sent out. But what if we are the ones who are called to receive? What if that’s who we are in the story? What if we’re the ones waiting to receive and listen to the good news that comes to us from someone who seems very different from us, who has had a different life than we have? What if that’s who we are in the story?
That’s what got stirred up for me this time. So in real time, we see this played out and our practice becomes then to ask ourselves, “how do we strengthen those muscles to listen and hear?” What muscles do we need to use that maybe we haven’t used to actually receive the good news, maybe in a way that we haven’t heard it until this point.
That’s what our practice is, and those muscles are best strengthened in silence. Which is one of the most terrifying things to us. Those muscles are best strengthened in silence and a posture that allows us to settle and to listen on a deeper level than just the distraction and the noise that occupies so much of our time. So we’re going to try that together again this Sunday, to prime the pump.
So I invite you to sit in your pew. Put your feet on the floor. And this is a practice, as we’ve been doing, that you can take home and use at any point that you need it. We’ll start off just with 2 or 3 minutes. In two weeks, we’ll work up to 45. Nothing big. No big whoop. So close your eyes.
So much noise in the world. So much commotion. So much fear. So much anxiety. So much anger. So much confusion.
And see if you can feel the soles of your feet. On the ground. On the floor.
See if you can feel the weight of yourself in the pew.
Feel the earth push back against you, and hold you always there. We so seldom notice it.
Bring your attention to your breath.
See if you can notice where you’re breathing from. Is it your throat? Is it your chest?
And take a couple deep breaths and see if you can’t let yourself sink and breathe from your belly. Deeper down. Deep breaths.
Feel yourself settle.
The ancient said “let your mind sink into your heart. And let yourself settle into the earth.”
And this present, underneath the noise, the distractions… this is the house of the spirit. This is where the presence of Christ dwells in our hearts… this space we can trust. Not to neglect or ignore the pain of the world. But to ground ourselves so we can respond to it.
These are the muscles that we strengthen. So that we can listen and hear. So that we can receive the good news.
So that we can hear the trees as they sing.
The whole earth.
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful. And kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created. And you shall renew the face of the earth.
Amen.