Minister’s Musings
One of my favorite TV shows is Lark Rise to Candleford which is on PBS. OK, so it’s a fairly sophisticated soap opera in which we follow the lives of the people in the village (or Market town as they would prefer to call themselves) of Candleford where Miss Dorcas Lane presides over the Post Office, and the hamlet of Lark Rise, home to poor tenant farmers and day laborers. Alf lives in Lark Rise and is a talented musician and composer. One day he writes a song about a squire’s daughter who falls in love and elopes with a vagabond gypsy. The song ends with the words, “she never returned no more.”
People love the song. The tune is catchy and the story is romantic. They dance to it. Everyone begins humming it. They can’t get it out of their heads. But soon, it seems, the spirit of the song begins to haunt both Lark Rise and Candleford and it’s not the romance of the young woman and her gypsy, but the broken relationship between the woman and her father. The two sisters who run the dress shop have a major argument and Ruby threatens to leave. Robert and Emma (of Lark Rise) fight and Robert and his son Edmund fight as well. The postman, Thomas has a fight with his new bride Margaret over how one sniffles with a cold. It seems like the whole community is falling apart. The song has affected the whole community and relationships are being broken left and right.
Something has to be done. The song, while enjoyable, has caused great dissension. So old Twister comes to Alf with a solution. The solution is a ritual. Alf and Twister gather the people of Lark Rise and of Candleford and Alf sings the song again, only now he has changed the ending. There are new verses to the song. The young woman has a child and brings the child to her father. The relationship is mended; the father accepts the child, his daughter and her husband. The new song becomes the song of the people and we see that relationships in the hamlet and the village begin to mend as well. Ruby makes up with her sister, Robert, Emma and Edmund become family once more and Thomas and Margaret make up.
This, to me, is a lot like worship. Worship can be thought of as a ritual of healing. The song the secular world sings to us is one that tends to put a strain on, if not destroy relationships. The old song told us that we are sinful and selfish. The old song also tells us that we can do as we please. As we sing the old song (whose tune is catchy and begins to live in our heads), we begin to act accordingly. We begin to believe that the world should revolve around our wants and desires - that things should go our way. And relationships get mangled in the process.
So we come to worship for healing and transformation. Through the words of scripture and the words of the hymns, through the words of liturgy and sermon, and through the healing power of Holy Communion, the song of the world is transformed. The new song reminds us that we are people who have been healed and redeemed by none other than God Himself. God has accepted us where we are, and made us a new creation. These new verses begin the healing process within us and in our relationships. We find that new life is possible. We can now go into the broken world with the new verses of the song to give others the gift of healing and hope and invite them to learn the new song and join in the ritual dance.
In Christ,
Pastor Betty
