I filed that away, and occasionally, when grace offered a hint, I’d do further reflection. In the Coping with Cancer group, one moment, someone would be saying some of the most difficult and intimate things I had ever heard, and in the next, the group would be in uproarious laughter. (I can only imagine what folks walking by would think.) In some rooms where I would sit with families who had just lost someone, the weight of sad grief was heavy, but if you stayed long enough, the group would soon be laughing amidst the tears. Here is part of what I discovered. There is a longing in all of us for a deep gladness, and my years at this church have only confirmed that to me.

 

But someone might reasonably ask, “Jimmy, are you saying that if we laugh, we’ll be okay? To be sure, humor is one of the more highly evolved defenses. It was Norman Cousins who said that to counter the painful chronic illness that he had, he would set up a movie projector and watch Marx Brothers movies. He said that ten minutes of belly laughter would produce two hours of pain-free sleep. I also know that some things are too devastatingly painful to simply say, “Cheer up. Laugh it off.” No, I am saying that at the heart of it, delight and gladness aren’t intended to divert us from the difficult. It is only through them that we discover delight and gladness.

 

I think that the Psalm we read today embodies this creative tension. Long years ago, a German Biblical Scholar named Herman Gunkel classified all of the Psalms in the Hebrew Bible by form, and other scholars have taken up the work. Psalm 92 is classified by most of them as a Todah, a psalm of personal thanksgiving. Some suggest this for a liturgical context of such psalms: On a given day, a pilgrim, a singer, would come to the worship of the temple, and surrounded by other worshippers, would sing their song of deliverance, telling of the good works that God had done, work that had brought gladness to the heart. But in the singing, the singer would speak frankly about the opponents and the struggles, for if the singer couldn’t do that, they could not reach the depths of soul they needed to reach. This psalmist says, “You, O Lord, have made me glad.”

 

As I prepared for today with Psalm 92, I thought about just including the affirming verses and leaving out those verses that spoke of the enemy. Jesus, after all, teaches us to love the enemy, but in no place does Jesus say that we will no longer experience travail and opposition. The singer knows all to well what stood in the way, hindering the path to grace and blessing. In Psalm 92, the psalmist exuberantly relates what it is like to share the good works of God, those very works have made the singer glad in soul. This gladness can only be known in the real world where ache is known. I have valued that in this church, and in the Wesleyan tradition, that door is open to tell your truth with all of its doubts and embarrassments. The call of Christ is heard in its fullness, inviting us to sing the dark lamentation of all that opposes justice and dignity, and to live bravely in the light of a better song.

 

I believe the path to gladness and to delight is to live in the light of a better song. It is no accident, then, that the psalmist singsthat the Lord brings gladness to us, for deep in the heart of music, in its soul restoring capacity, is the grace of reverie. You know reverie. It is to be caught up, to be lost, to be not so mentally vigilant, and to be soulfully attentive. It is the moment when music is playing, and you can hear that your favorite part is coming up, others are talking, and you say, “Wait....listen to this....and you allow it to wash over you.” This is reverie. It is in this reverie, I believe, that we find our gladness. It is in this music that we are schooled in this spiritual art of reverie. When in our music God is glorified and we are open, we are on the path of reverie.

I want to say something to this choir. When I first came to this church, it was obvious that we had wonderful music. There are those in the room today who are here less because of what we preachers say and more because of what the music says to their souls....what you sing, what Charles plays, and what we sing together. We pastors aren’t offended by that. We happily join in that, but there have been occasions when after a particular stirring anthem or masterwork, one of us has told you how moving that has been. Then, at times, some of you have responded that you, or some section, weren’t at their best. (Likely the tenors.)   I have a heresy to utter about that to you from those who have found our reverie. We don’t care. With God’s help, you have helped us find our path to the Spirit. For that, there are not words for us to thank you. Your music helps us find our gladness and teaches us how to find it when we leave here. Worship, when it works, does that.

 

For the reverie isn’t just about music. The word is used for all the arts, but “reverie” is also the word that the psychoanalystsuse to describe the intense relationship that exists between mother and infant. The mother has a sacred preoccupation with the baby that both can internalize, and it becomes part of the healthy soul experience of both. Reverie is what Mary Oliver leaned into when she wrote her poem “Invitation,” about hearing the early morning song of the goldfinches. She writes,

 

 

Reverie is what William Stafford referred to when he wrote, “Kids. They dance before they learn that there is anything that isn’t music.” Every time I do a wedding and attend the reception, I can count on a little child, usually a little girl, who before the dancing has started, with music or without, is swaying and twirling on the dance floor. Reverie. As Augustine said, "Sing with the voice, sing with the heart, sing with the mouth, but [most of all] sing with your whole life.”  In the spiritual life, it is all music, and we hear it well by being in reverie. That is what you helped me learn, and sometimes, I remember.

 

As part of my own transition work, I’ve been looking at Barbara Brown Taylor’s Leaving Church in which she recounts her own move away from pastoral ministry to the life of a professor. At one point, she notes that she took to her own reverie, and writes of the weddings, funerals, baptisms, counseling, questions, struggles, and children wrestling and playing with us. She notes that when one four-year-old rode by the church with a friend new to town, the child tapped on the car window, pointing toward the church and said, “That is where we get the bread.” Here, together, in our musical life of faith, we have found nourishment together. That is where the gladness happens. This is where we enter our reverie.

 

That happens, I’ll contend, even when the days turn difficult, when we do what we are called to do, and enter the places in the world where some might imagine there is no music. Dorothy Day, the great Catholic relief worker who followed her calling to the poor and hungry said this when speaking of the creative instinct within women, “There are three meals to get, the family to care for, ‘the duty of delight’ that Ruskin spoke of, for the sake of others around us who are on the verge of despair. Who can say there is no delight, even in a city slum, especially in an Italian neighborhood where there is a pot of basil on the window sill and the smell of good cooking in the air, and pigeons wheeling over the roof tops and the tiny feathers found occasionally on the sidewalk, the fresh smell of the sea from the dock of the Staten Island ferry boat (five cents a ride)?“

 

You have helped me find delight in your standing at Annual Conference seeking inclusion for everyone, in your service with the poor, and in bravely facing the questions of faith. You have found your reverie, and it has made you glad. 

 

In his book, Maybe, Maybe Not, Robert Fulghum tells about his long-standing fantasy of leading Beethoven’s famous choral work, “Ode to Joy.” He told about this in his well-known book, Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It seems that in the first year after the book was published, he got an astonishing offer from the Minneapolis Chamber Symphony. They offered him the chance to conduct the “Ode to Joy.” He could fulfill his dream, and they could get some needed public attention. Assuming this would be as easy as it had been when he conducted it in his living room, he accepted. What he did not know was that the organization and its board were in chaos. The founding conductor had been fired, key musicians had resigned in protest, and no new conductor had been hired. By the time the new conductor had been hired and the season was beginning, he and the orchestra were appalled to learn of the arrangement with Fulghum. In meeting with him, the conductor told Robert that while he may be really great conducting in his living room, Beethoven’s Ninth was a very complicated piece of music with as many as thirty-one times where the conductor must stop and start the orchestra with tempo changes. They decided that things were dire, but they would work together for six months.   If things looked as bad as the conductor feared, then Robert would develop a catastrophic illness during the week of the performance. Robert said that they met intensively the week of the performance, and he suspected that the well-trained conductor knew there was no way he could pull this off and perhaps just wanted a seat for the comedic show of the century.

 

What he found, however, was that the wounds in the orchestra had not healed. Leadership and personnel changes and contract disputes had the group in dire straits, and to top it off, a rank amateur was going to lead them in the key movement of Beethoven’s ninth. They didn’t need a conductor; they needed a minister, and Robert knew how to do that. In the core group of the orchestra, a couple of divorces were in progress, a family was in financial crisis, someone was battling a huge drinking problem, and a rivalrous contention between the regular orchestra members and the newly hired extras all threatened to undo the group. So when this amateur showed up and said, “Help me,” and “Give me your best and I’ll give you mine,” the disgruntlement turned to amused distraction. Rehearsal went surprisingly well, and the night of the performance, he was sky high and feeling his oats. But when the tempo changes approached, his adrenaline spiked, and he just got faster. He was thinking “OmiGod,” and he looked down and the first violin, playing for all she was worth, was mouthing, “Omigod!” They struggled through the first two performances, but he was worn out by the time they got to the final performance. He stood and told the black tie crowd of his fantasy, and said, “I can’t dishonor this man or this music, or this spirit.” He asked the real conductor to come do it justice and asked the musicians to give it their all. The entire crowd stood, the maestro lifted the baton, and in Fulghum’s words, “Beethoven carried us away.” Ah...reverie.

 

For twelve years, I’ve been honored to partially share in grasping that baton, and now, it is time for me to fully relinquish it, first to this very capable pastoral team, two of whom I know well.   I am grateful to have worked with them and so many others. Second, to you good people who make such beautiful music and live with such grace, and third, indeed, to the God who leads us in the song of life. Good people of God, the God in you has made me glad with your love, your faith, and your integrity. I pray that you will know great joy and gladness as you continue your good work in this place. Thanks be to God. Amen.