To just listen to the audio for this week’s sermon, on Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130 and John 11:1-45, scroll to the bottom of this post. For the full Tiny Desk Worship experience, this week featuring the Mizelles, check out Shepherd of the Mountains’ facebook page!
- You do not need to have a Facebook account to see the Facebook video
- Facebook is a business so it will keep asking you to sign up. You do not need to sign up–ever.
- Just keep clicking things like “Not Now.”
- Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/shepherdofthemountainsjh/
- Scroll down to the area that says “Posts” and look for the Tiny Desk Worship – Lent 5 video.
- You can also search the video sections.
I am also trying to attach a google drive link here.
A note on our song for reflection.
One of my favorite devotions by UCC Pastor Quinn Caldwell reminds us that
“Humans are the only singing species with a precise and shared sense of rhythm, which is what allows us to sing together. Two birds might sing the same song, but they can’t coordinate it. They can sing next to each other but not together.”
That shared sense of rhythm is what helped us record these voices in separate sessions but at the same tempo, so that I could overlap them in editing. Please forgive any errors in that overlap; my rhythm precision might not be quite as sharp the rest of the species.
It’s a meditative chant, so it repeats over and over again as cantors sing the verses over the ostinato. I invite you to listen and join in as soon as you feel comfortable.
But join in, even if it feels silly. Because when we sing at the same time, Caldwell continues, [we] start to breath at the same time as well. And not only that, but studies have also shown that when people sing together, their hearts start beating together too. And if we’re singing together and breathing together and our hearts are beating together, then it’s like we’re one body – no matter that we have to gather virtually. That one body experience is nice “when you’re at a stadium concert or whatever and all the fans are singing along with an artist you love. But in the church, we make a bigger claim than just that we’re fans vibing together; we claim that we actually become the body of the One to whom we’re singing.”
“Most other animals stop singing when danger approaches. But humans, [at least humans in Lent, or humans in the face of a pandemic,] can sing louder the closer the danger gets. We know what stalks us, and we won’t let it shut us up. We sing together and we become large and we become a Body that does not back down.” (adapted from Caldwell’s “All I Really Want” Advent devotional)
May this song assure you of that connection and togetherness.
One of the verses will repeat a variation on Ezekiel’s invocation: “Come, from the four winds, O Spirit, come, breath of God.”
May this song help you feel God’s breath even if your own lungs feel tight,
and may it assure you of God’s presence with you and all around you.
Thanks for your patience and grace as we try to be church together in new ways.
In Christ,
Pastor Inger