Geneva Presbyterian Church

Weekly Sermon

December 31, 2000 - "Singing With the Angels"

Reverend Anne Benefield
Geneva Presbyterian Church, December 31, 2000

 

Years ago when I was working at a church in New York City, a group of us went to sing Christmas carols to children and other patients at Belview Hospital. We weren’t a very large group—just five of us to start—and I was worried that we might sound pretty pathetic, but a friend name James Rosenow said not to worry; he was bringing his sister and her husband. When his sister and her husband began to sing, we knew why James wasn’t worried about the quality of our singing. His sister and her husband were professional, operatic singers. To sound wonderful, all the rest of us had to do was to stand close to them and not sing too loud. For years afterward we kidded about how wonderful we sounded when we sang in the halls of Belview Hospital. That experience reminded me of something I learned in business not in school. In school, we are generally encouraged to be competitive and work alone, but in business very little is achieved by individual efforts. Almost every successful venture is the result of a team effort. In business if you want to learn to do something well, you find someone who is an expert and stick close to them. You watch what they do, ask them to coach you, listen to them, ask questions of them. That is how you learn to do things well. Book learning gives you a foundation, but experience is generally the better teacher. In Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris talks about the difference between book knowledge and life knowledge in faith. She writes, "I have a spotty education but am an incurable reader. Acutely aware of my ignorance, I read widely in theology, church history, monastic, liturgical, and biblical studies. All of it has informed both my poems and the preaching that I’ve been asked to do in recent years. But at the first Bible study I attended with the women of Spencer Memorial Presbyterian Church, it was the sight of the well-worn Bibles carried by the mostly gray-haired women—contrasting sharply with my nearly new one, the Oxford Annotated, that my husband had given me for Christmas—that stunned me into silence…These women knew things about the Christian religion that I did not, the kind of things that are learned not through study but through a lifetime of faith, and the steady practice of both charity and prayer." [Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, (Riverhead Books: New York, 1998), p. 243] Today is December 31st. We have gathered to hear again the story of the birth of Jesus and to sing the carols proclaiming the good news. We have heard stories of how those carols were written—of the inspiration and faith behind the words. It seems to me wonderful that we are reading the gospel story on New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year. How appropriate to close the year focused on faith. Many people will make resolutions today. I would encourage you to make some resolutions, too, but not the ones about losing weight or sticking to a budget. Those are fine, but they aren’t as important as resolutions about faith. Nothing is as important as our faith. The world doesn’t give faith much value, but faith is central to of a life worth living. Here are the kinds of resolutions I hope you will consider: 1. Make a resolution to pray more regularly. In order to get started, look around at your friends here. Who has a rich prayer life? Go to them and ask for their help. It is a lot easier to get started if you have someone who knows what they are doing showing the way. 2. Make a resolution to study the Bible more. We have some people in this church who are marvelous biblical scholars. Plus there are a variety of Bible studies, including the Sunday morning study at 10:00 in the Fireside Room, the study at the manse on Sunday evenings at 7:00 p.m., and the Geneva Presbyterian Women’s study on Monday mornings at 10:00 a.m. Another way to study the Bible is to sign up to teach church school. It may be that you need a one-on-one study. Find a friend and set a time and a schedule of readings. 3. Make a resolution to give more of yourself to the work of God. Is there someone who inspires you with the mission work they do? Talk to them about what you might do to help. There are so many ways to strengthen our faith. Let this be the year when we grow in the Lord for he has provided friends among us who can be partners in faith. "When a fanatic dealt several damaging blows to Michelangelo’s Pieta, the world was horrified…The world’s best artists assembled to refashion the disfigured masterpiece. "When sculptors arrived in Italy, they didn’t begin repairing the marred face immediately. Rather they spent months looking at the Pieta, touching the flowing lines, appreciating the way each part expressed suffering yet ecstasy. Some spent months studying a single part such as the hand until finally the sculptors began to see more and more with the eyes of Michelangelo and to touch and feel as the master artist would have done. When the sculptors finally began repairing the face, the strokes belonged almost as much to Michelangelo as to themselves." [Dennis and Matthew Linn, Healing of Memories: Prayer and Confession Steps to Inner Healing, (Paulist Press: New York, 1974), p. 15] Look around you today. Who is here who has skill in praying or studying or caring? All the sculptors who gathered to try to restore the Pieta were skilled artists in their own right, yet each took the time to learn from Michelangelo. We are all trying to be faithful people, and there is much we can learn. Let us be wise enough to be humble enough to learn from each other.