Easter 5 Sermon Year B - Singing the Blues for Easter

Psalm 22:24-30, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8, Blues Music

There is a temptation to think that if you have Jesus then you don’t need the blues.  Indeed, there is a certain guilty conscience that can develop among Christians, especially around Easter, that says, theologically, don’t worry, be happy.  Jesus died and rose again.  No more death, no more pain. 

But I think if you were painting the resurrection, you would paint it in hues of blue, rather than pink.  The Eucharist we celebrate, the happy meal of the church, is one that is predicated on aching sadness and suffering, born of oppression, betrayal and even police brutality.  Police brutality that got its orders from religious as much as civic leaders.

Tonight we have the blues coming to us when a world is steeped in wounds of earthquakes and riots; unimaginable suffering in Nepal and for me as a white woman, the hard to grasp fear, rage and powerlessness in Baltimore.  The blues, with its articulation of loss and despair, is definitely the right genre to sing here tonight.  It feels like it is being called from our lips with every bit of news we hear.

But does it really fit the scriptures?  Does blues really fit our Easter season?  Or are we just to think our happy thoughts about Christ risen from the grave and deny the world around us? 

Blues music tells a story with its mix of traditional African songs and spirituals, which allow people to name their daily struggles while sharing the hope that someday things will be different. The blues comes out of the churches.  It pours out of the hearts of people who were baptized into the death of Jesus Christ; that death of arrest, brutality and abandonment.

Through the gate of suffering and solidarity comes a new relationship with our own life – with God – with each other. 

Baptism does not end suffering, but it does sow the seeds of its redemption.  Baptism is all about the blues.  “Wade in the water”, “let my people go”, those strains of spirituals, gospel and blues are what made rock and roll come alive and cross over into white music from the Beatles and Buddy Holly and back into Motown and hip hop.  There is a branch and vine relationship in music that historians can point to easily.  And there is a branch and vine relationship that we should be able to point to in our Christian life.  Not only the communion of saints, but the communion of you and me. 

And not just you and me, but us and the other.  Us and our neighbors.  Our neighbors in Baltimore, our neighbors in Lancaster, our neighbors in Katmandu. 

We can do this by listening to the gospel and hearing the voice of Jesus speaking to us in the blues.  Not in happy clappy tunes that make us feel better, but in music that allows us to pour out our hearts in lament. 

To lament in disappointment and in rage at the state of the world around us. 

If Christ died and rose again, if death has lost its sting, why does my redemption still feel so far away?   Why does it always feel en route but never arriving at the station where I am standing?  This tension between the constant experience of suffering and persistent trust in faith, hope, and love, is what makes the blues happen.  It is what makes the authenticity of the gospel, communion, and baptism happen. 

Jesus is the vine and we are the branches.  He abides in us and we in him.  We abide in him when we sing the blues.  And he abides in us because we know that he has sung them too. 

The slow train is indeed coming. Our American history is built on oppression and on dreams. It is built on a hope for a better life and the sins of the past. In Baltimore, Ferguson, the LA riots of the 90s, and even the civil rights movement of the 1960s we see people who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. They are raising their voices. The people of Baltimore are singing the blues in their fear, in their anger, in their peaceful actions, in their riots. They are calling out to the vine that connects us all.

And we must hear them.

            Even when their stories are hard to hear, even when their experience is not our experience, even when it is too much to take in. We need to listen to the struggles of others. Listen and really hear the stories of people who may or may not be so different from us. We are sisters and brothers walking alongside one another. Like a vine and its branches, we all share in the suffering of each other. And we all share in the promise of new life in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.