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Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent – December 23, 2007
1965, Saturday night, I’m standing in the gym of Oscar W. Huth Junior High in Matteson, Illinois, a school that was old even then and has, as far as I can tell, met the wrecking ball. If I ever knew, I have certainly forgotten who Oscar W.
I well remember that first school dance, though; the boys lined up on one side and the girls seemingly miles away along the other. As Beatles and Herman’s Hermits songs play loudly and distortedly over the even then antiquated loudspeaker system, some few girls dance with each other, imitating the moves they saw on American Bandstand. Across the wooden floor each side eyes the other warily, waiting for someone to make the first move.
And then we hear it, straight from its number one position on the WLS Silver Dollar Survey; a song Rolling Stone Magazine named number 34 of the 500 greatest of all time; a song which remains the most played in the history of American radio. Years later, I still experience it all whenever I hear it - the tumultuous emotions that accompany the roller coaster ride that is adolescence.
As our hearts picked up their pace in anticipation, our stomachs did a little twist of anxiety. Oh, God, it’s the Righteous Brothers singing “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’,” the only slow dance number in the limited repertoire of whoever was spinning the 45s. On the boy’s side, once those first notes echoed off the brick walls our fledgling manhood was at stake; we could no longer stand around talking about how much we wished we could dance close; we had to act. Time to go over the top.
It was a long, lonely journey across that polished floor through no man’s land, finally reaching the other side, asking a girl you saw every day but suddenly no longer recognized to pretend along with you to be a grownup.
I don’t recall who had to endure shuffling around the floor with me to what remained of that 3 minute 45 second song – it sure seemed a lot longer than that – but whoever it was, I’m only grateful she did not send me a dry cleaning bill to remove the sweaty hand print from the back of her dress. Funny the memories one song can evoke, isn’t it? And isn’t amazing how you can still remember so many old bands and old lyrics when you can’t remember what you were supposed to pick up at the store?
Anybody remember the Righteous Brothers?
Beginning their existence in Orange County, California as lead singers of a five piece group called the Paramours; the duet of Bill Medley – he was the one with the deep voice – and Bobby Hatfield – who died in 2003 - changed its name when, following one performance in a local bar, a black marine in the audience shouted out “That was righteous, brothers.” Eventually the two men went out on their own as the Righteous Brothers, defining what came to be known as “blue eyed soul.” Abandoning the name “Paramours,” a term used to describe lovers in an adulterous relationship, they made the wise choice to adopt the name “righteous,” which, as the marine understood it at the time, meant authentic, similar to the biblical understanding of “pure” and “holy.”
To this day, whenever I hear any of their music I must confess that purity and holiness are not always on my mind, and my palms get a little damp as I recall all the steps in the slow dance from adolescent awkwardness and innocence to – what? - a blend of adult sophistication and general weariness, a kind of suave “weltschmertz?” Literally “world pain,” “weltschmertz” is a German philosophical term for “one’s sadness over the evils of the world.” It was big in the 60s, kind of like the Righteous Brothers were.
As for the suave part, ask my wife who well remembers the last wedding reception we attended; Fred Astaire I’m not. I might as well be back in the eighth grade when a slow dance comes on, although my hands don’t sweat nearly as much as they used to. As for being weary, how can anyone not be after a certain number of years? The world does have a way of chipping away at one’s youthful expectations and idealism. Heartbreaks and disappointments; obligations and commitments, they begin to add up after a while, the accumulations of adulthood, the marks of maturity.
And who doesn’t experience sadness over the evils of the world? But the world has always known evil and sadness hardly seems like a viable option for me when I revisit some of the words of a 13 year old girl who said that she maintained her ideals“because in spite of everything I still believe that people are good at heart.” “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news,” Anne Frank wrote in her diary. “The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be,” she went on with heart breaking adolescent enthusiasm. “How much you can love! And what your potential is!”
Righteousness, my friends, I believe that’s our potential. And if we want to commit to heart the lyrics to its song; if we want to master its dance, we have as our instructor an unlikely source, someone who never utters a word through the course of the wondrous events which are about to unfold; someone without whose righteous steps the one born to be the Lord of the Dance would never have reached adulthood.
Unlike Mary, who tells Gabriel, “Let it be with me according to your word” when she receives the news of the child she is carrying, and who later bursts into song in front of her cousin Elizabeth, Joseph, when told in a dream “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,” lets his silence shape his song and simply crosses the floor tojoin in the dance. “He did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife.”
As to what goes through his mind when an angel tells him that his seemingly adulterous adolescent bride to be is favored in God’s sight, we can only guess; the scriptures never say. It’s up to the poets to try.
In his Christmas oratorio “For the Time Being,” W.H. Auden describes the scene, calling it “The Temptation of St. Joseph,” in which Joseph says to Gabriel: “All I ask is one important and elegant proof that what my love had done was really at your will and that your will is love.” Gabriel replies, “No, you must believe; be silent and be still…To choose what is difficult all one’s days as if it were easy, that is faith. Joseph praise.”
Joseph believes and while he is silent he is anything but still; his praise is in his movement. After the birth, he receives another vision and takes the child and his mother to Egypt to avoid Herod’s murderous intentions. After yet a third dream, he returns the family to Nazareth. “Together with Mary,” wrote Pope John Paul II, “Joseph is the first guardian of the mystery of the Word made flesh.” For that reason, he is regarded as the patron of the universal church, one who watches over and protects Christ’s mystical body.
Quite a way to go for someone who started out as a simple carpenter faced with a complex decision. Already a righteous man, Matthew says, as evident by his desire to divorce Mary quietly instead of subjecting her to public humiliation, which he could have done and been within the law, Joseph only grew in righteousness as he heard and obeyed the divine voice teaching him a new song, leading him in some new steps along a new path.
For it was on a righteous path that Joseph walked with his family in response to God’s call, not unlike the path Abraham took centuries earlier. In fact, the Hebrew word for “righteous,” “zadak” originally meant, some say, to be “even,” and “straight;” a word said of roads for instance. Others maintain that the main idea conveyed is that a thing or a person is what it, or he, should be. In biblical terms, weights and measures are called “zedek,” or righteous, when they are just and true. Paths are called “zedek” or righteous, when they are easy to travel. “He leads me in right pathways for his name’s sake,” says the psalm.
In the Bible, people are called righteous when they are just and true; when they follow the right pathways and thereby become holy. People are called righteous who not only refrain from doing wrong; they also seek to establish the right. People are called righteous – and this is the most important point of all- when they put their trust in God, often despite the evidence.
Noah was a righteous man, although there is considerable rabbinical discussion as to why he was spared while the wicked perished. None the less, he did as God said and built the ark even though there was not a cloud in the sky.
All agree that Abraham is the exemplar of righteousness. “The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision,” says Genesis. “Do not be afraid Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” (Does this have a familiar ring to it?) “But Abram said, ‘O Lord God, what will you giveme, for I continue childless?’ God takes Abram outside in the desert night and says, “Look toward heaven and count the stars…so shall your descendants be.” And he “believed the Lord and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteous.”
Twice Paul cites this passage as an example of the importance of faith. It is not faith without evidence, he insists; the evidence is God’s word, God’s promise. That is sufficient to free us from whatever keeps us trapped by doubt, enchained by worldly weariness. The promise is sufficient, if you will allow me, to leave the security of the wall and walk across the gym floor, not knowing for sure what will happen on the other side; knowing that once you’ve gone, nothing will ever again be the same.
That trust was good enough for Noah, good enough for Abraham and now, joining this band of righteous brothers, it’s good enough for Joseph. It’s nothing but old time religion. Is that trust good enough for us to begin to grow in righteousness, or do we need more proof that what God wills for us is love?
What more proof do we need than that haunting melody which calls to us, often from far away, guiding us on a path we know is right and true and holy? The song that plays as the familiar story unfolds, a song and a story which continues to reach that part of us that has yet to become weary; the part that is eager to carry out a dream of righteousness.
1944, Saturday night; instead of being at a dance a girl sits in hiding and writes, “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so…impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because…I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.”
That time did not come for Anne Frank, but each day it has a chance to come to us. Each day, brothers and sisters, in our speech, in our silence, in our simple, difficult acts of grown up selflessness; we join in the righteous unchained melody of love.