The Canticle of 'The Office'

A sermon on Malachi 4.1-6 preached @EmmanuelBakerSt.


“My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the God of my heart is great and my spirit sings of the wondrous things that you bring to the ones who wait…My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of your justice burn. Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn.”

These words from “The Canticle of the Turning” were the words we sang every week during the summer I worked as a chaplain at a camp in the mountains of northwestern Virginia. The curriculum and theme for each week of that summer’s camp was God’s justice. So beginning with the weeks before campers arrived, I trained the staff in the bible studies and songs we would use over and over again, for the entire summer, all focused on exploring what God’s justice looks like in the world. This song was the center piece of camp life during those quick three months. Over the course of a few days the campers would quickly come to embrace and learn this song by heart and by our closing campfire they would all belt out a rousing rendition of ‘The Canticle of the Turning.’

On one hand it was a pretty amazing spectacle to behold. The campers truly embraced this song which powerfully demonstrates how God is turning and shaping the world. Its lyrics proclaim that:

•          Though I am small, my god my all, you work great things in me.
•          The hungry poor shall weep no more for the food they can never earn.
•          There are tables spread, every mouth be fed, for the world is about to turn.

I am certain that singing this song week over week, helped to ground both our counselors’ and campers’ understanding of what God is doing in the world in the rich soil of God’s justice. It was rewarding each week to hear the campers grow from meekly murmuring the words of the song and stumbling through bible studies to passionately belting out a justice filled song by the week’s end.

But I must also admit that it was kind of weird. Because there are some other verses to the song as well:

•          From the halls of power to the fortress tower not a stone will be left on stone.
•          Let the king beware as your justice tears every tyrant from his throne.
•          My heart shall sing of the day you bring let the fires of your justice burn.

Taken out of the context of its place within our worship, I see images of a large group of children cheerily singing about taking out heads of state aired as grainy images from some sort of anarchist  camp for kids on a investigative news program like ‘60 Minutes’ or ‘Dateline.’ There is definitely an eeriness to a large group of kids singing about taking down kings and leaders, tearing every stone from stone. Typically we are okay with this excitement and these powerful lyrics with a little context, like when we know that we are talking about feeding the hungry poor or singing of God’s love and work through the weak and small, and as we sing for joy over and against sadness. Likewise, in today’s reading from Luke, when Jesus says that no stone will be left on stone, this is the kind of change we can quickly get behind, if we are called to tear down the stones that those others (those old faceless and oppressive tyrants like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget) have built up to keep the poor, the weak, and the mourning out.

But around the edges, perhaps we sing with a little less gusto. A worship professor in seminary continually pointed to “The Canticle of the Turning” and asked us how spirited our song would be if the stones Jesus talks about tearing down are not just the stones of oppression built by some foreign conqueror, but rather are the stones we have worked and sweated to build our temples with, stone by stone. How boldly might we sing if we considered the possibility that Jesus might be talking about our stones?

As we entertain this possibility, I am reminded of a recent episode of the NBC show, the office. Pam & Jim, two of the main character, were having their child baptized at a local mainline and liturgical church. Michael, their boss, surprises them by inviting everyone in the office to attend the baptismal service.

Pam and Jim fit easily into the picture of a mainline protestant church, as they have a new born child and a newly bought minivan. But the rest of the cast don’t exactly fit. They are a collection of people each with their own idiosyncrasies and dysfunction who don’t do so well in group settings with structured social expectations. This is part of what makes the show and this episode funny, but it also makes this cast of characters particularly real and human. This dysfunctional cast of characters don’t’ fit in this prim and proper church setting. In fact, one character spends the entire episode pacing up and down the stairs outside, deciding whether or not he can enter the church doors.

But my favorite part of the episode came when the pastor of the church made a joke in the opening announcements. She said that the congregations had many things to be thankful for that Sunday and not just that the Eagles had won. The joke drew a smattering of laughs in the congregation, just as it did here. But then the camera pans over to the group from the office, and with only one exception, the group from the office sits unammused with arms crossed and continues to make cynical remarks and endure the rest of the service unmoved and unengaged.

The baptism itself was relatively unremarkable. The service seemed nice enough, well put together. The organ music wasn’t too loud, the hymns (which everyone knew) were sung at the appropriate tempo.  The service was absolutely inoffensive. It was a baptismal service which I’m sure my mother and grandparents and most people in the church would give a dignified and doilied stamp of approval.

But this week I think God is calling us to consider the stones we have erected and built into the temples that surround us. Jesus proclaims to us the promise that God will tear down all things the stones and fine linens and inoffensive songs which do not proclaim the good news of Christ. And while it is disconcerting to hear these words, perhaps we can hear God’s words to us this week even more powerfully as God’s promise to reach out and embrace those who sit outside of our walls of stone. God promises to tear stone from stone until the day in which the Son of righteousness will come to all people, and particularly to those like Toby (the former seminarian with God issues), Ryan (the most passionate skeptic), Stanley (the unengaged), Dwight (the crazy), Angela (again, the plain crazy), and Oscar (one historically marginalized by the church). People like these characters from the office who feel isolated and are pushed further away from God by some of the stones we have erected, our ineffective attempts to proclaim the relevance and reality of God’s good news which engages all people in the midst of their lives where they are lived. Jesus promises the reality of God’s good news coming to the people who are pushed away by the things we hold dear, whose numbers it seems are growing day by day.

So, what do we do know? Which stones should we take the hammer to first?

Perhaps we should begin by taking a look at our reading from Malachi. There God’s promise of the coming of a new day is accompanied by the promise of the coming of Elijah. I must admit that I love Elijah and the role he plays in the bible. Elijah was only around for a couple of chapters in kings before he ascended into the heavens, but after that people can’t stop talking about him. Throughout the Old Testament the prophets speak of the day when Elijah will come back. And even throughout the gospels, as people are trying to figure out who this Jesus character is, they hope that he might be Elijah come back. So what does it mean for us, that in the day when our temples have been torn down that God will give us words and wisdom for testimony? What does it mean that God promises to send us Elijah in these times?

In the story which defines Elijah’s prophetic career, God commands Elijah to leave Israel and the land of Yahweh and go out to a foreign country, to Zarephath. God tells Elijah to take no food because there a widow will feed him.  Elijah goes and finds the widow. And he asks for a piece of bread. But the widow says she has just a handful of meal and a little oil. Elijah instructs her to go ahead and get that last bit of meal and make a couple of piles out of it. But as she does so the piles keep multiplying and the jar of meal and the jar of oil do not fail. Elijah is able to eat, but also the widow and her family are able to eat for many days.

Like in this story of Elijah, God calls us to strange places and strange lands where we will be uncomfortable, where we will have to give up some of the customs which we hold dear. But God’s promise to turn the world is accompanied by God’s promises of new life and wholeness in the places of death and brokenness. We are assured that as the stones come crashing down, God is bringing life and vitality in ways in which our stones cannot. Like with Elijah, God promises to continue to sustain and feed us in the strange lands where God leads us. But also like the widow of Zarephath, God promises that when we are sent to the places without doilies or nice post-baptismal teas that in doing so God is also filling the rest of the world with life, filling the widows and the hungry poor but also the Oscars, the Ryans, and the Dwights of the world, all those who seem to stand on the outside. So as we move forward let them hear us joyfully sing that indeed the dawn draws near and the world is about to turn. AMEN.