How Shall We Live With The Blues

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

How Shall We Live With The Blues

Easter is such a joyous, colorful, and vibrant celebration! Now in Eastertide, this second Sunday after Easter this third Sunday of Eastertide, Christ is still risen! The Creation is still waking up! This Sunday provides us with opportunities to continue the flow of hopeful beauty through the banners, pots of lilies and tulips and hyacinths, cloth weavings, or bare branches now covered in ribbons.

But that is not where the psalmist is this morning.

He has gotten to the point where he is at wits end with people. talking about him and his ministry. The author of this song indicates that should be sung with string instruments playing.

This particular selection could be played on violin or harp or maybe even played on a big Base Guitar. For Song 4 is what I would frame as a Blues Sonnet.

We must wrestle with the Blues. In his song “Call It Stormy Monday,” T-Bone Walker laments how bad and sad each day of the week is, but “Sunday I go to church, then I kneel down and pray.” He says

They call it stormy Monday but Tuesday's just as bad

They call it stormy Monday but Tuesday's just as bad

Wednesday's worse and Thursday's also sad

T-Bone Walker’s song unintentionally lifted up the challenge that the Blues placed before the church and that Black religiosity still seeks to solve.

“Stormy Monday” forces the listener to reject traditional notions of sacred and secular. The pain of the week is connected to the sacred service of Sunday. Many in the church are longing for Sunday to Find Freedom again.

There is no strict line of demarcation between the existential weariness of a disenfranchised person of color and the sacred disciplines of prayer, worship, and service to humanity.

This Blue of ministry is a challenge to The Psalmist and to Wesley Chapel today. What happens when the church; When the leadership; and yes when the pastor gets the Blues.

Can we really recover from the Blues and dare speak with authority in the midst of tragedy, when as the psalm writer is saying the world, America is living stormy Monday, and Lake City is experiencing the flooded streets and the broken pipes of the American under belly. But many of the pastors and churches are preaching happy Sunday.

While the world is experiencing the Blues, and pulpiteers are dispensing excessive doses of non-prescribed opioid sermons with severe spiritual and theological side effects.

The Real Blues have faded from the Afro-Christian tradition, and the tradition is now lost in the clamor of Name it and Clam it, success without work, prayer without public concern, and preaching without burdens.

The Blues sensibility, not just in preaching, but inherent in American culture, must be recovered. As Reverend Otis Moss Points out.

We must regain the literary blues sensibility of Flannery O’Connor, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, and James Baldwin; the prophetic speech of Martin Luther King Jr., William Sloane Coffin, and Ella Baker; along with the powerful cultural critique of Jarena Lee and Dorothee Solle.

The Blues, one of America’s unique and enduring art forms, created by people kissed by nature’s sun and rooted in the religious and cultural motifs of west Africa, must be recovered.

The roots are African, but the compositions were forged in the humid Southern landscape of cypress and magnolia trees mingling with Spanish moss. It is more than music. The Blues is a cultural legacy that dares to see the American landscape from the viewpoint of the underside. The blues sang a sad song of heartbreak and lost and don’t fix the broken heart, lost job or empty pockets. The blues almost celebrate the existence of the Tragedies and keep going forward.

And I tell you this morning when I read the words of the mouth of the psalmist my heart breaks because of these blues. Listen

”When I call, give me answers. God, take my side! Once, in a tight place, you gave me room; Now I’m in trouble again: grace me! hear me! You rabble—how long do I put up with your scorn? How long will you lust after lies? How long will you live crazed by illusion?“

??Psalms? ?4?:?1?-?2? ?MSG??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

https://bible.com/bible/97/psa.4.1-2.MSG

”Answer me when I cry out, my righteous God! Set me free from my troubles! Have mercy on me! Listen to my prayer! How long, you people, will my reputation be insulted? How long will you continue to love what is worthless and go after lies? Selah“

??Psalms? ?4?:?1?-?2? ?CEB??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

https://bible.com/bible/37/psa.4.1-2.CEB

”Answer me when I call, O God of my right! You gave me room when I was in distress. Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer. How long, you people, shall my honor suffer shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Selah“