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by Ken Sehested

I have a vivid memory of the exact moment. I was in seminary, having fled my native South to New York City to finish college and then seminary, embarrassed at being a Baptist, at being a white Southerner, and not entirely sure if I was a believer. But the God question wouldn’t go away.

A mighty wrestling match was underway in my soul, trying to come to terms with my adolescent “youth revival” preacher days. Neither the Civil Rights nor the anti-Vietnam War movements had disturbed my piously-furrowed brow.

One Saturday during high school, starting a Saturday 12-hour shift pumping gas, washing cars, and changing oil, I was transferring product displays and stacks of new tires outside as we prepared to open shortly before dawn. I overheard the radio saying something about Martin Luther King Jr.

“That Martin Luther King, he ain’t no Christian,” the station owner growled toward the radio. “Ever’where he go they’s trouble.”

It would be years before it occurred to me the same was likely said about Jesus.

Entering seminary, I became a voracious reader of Civil Rights Movement history, the gritty details and the many figures, making a timeline and a map in my mind.

Then came that vivid moment. I had purchased one of those over-sized books of photos of Dr. King and other civil rights moments and luminaries. Flipping through, I turned to a photo showing Dr. King and his wife Coretta sitting at a piano, their infant daughter Yolanda perched on Martin’s lap as he and Coretta sang from an open hymnal.

The cover title was clear. It was the Broadman Hymnal! The hymnal I grew up with. Published by the Southern Baptist Convention (the same body whose Executive Committee voted down a resolution of sympathy to members of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, one day after the terrorist bombing in 1963 that killed four young children).

At one time I could quote from memory the page number of dozens of titles in that hymnal. As I came to discover, a good many Black churches that hosted Civil Rights Movement mass meetings—churches that were threatened by cross-burning Klan torches—did their singing from the Broadman. And I also learned that terrorism on American soil has a long history.

That moment—that photo—stands among my life’s greatest epiphanies. I came to realize that the language of faith can have many different, even competing meanings, just as any chemical compound, minus even one element, turns into something else altogether.

I had long since comes to despise the refrain from that popular hymn, “What a Fellowship.” Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarm. Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.” By this time the sound of that song felt in my ears something like someone raking their fingernails across a chalk board!

Until I saw the first episode of that special Public Broadcasting Service series, “Eyes On the Prize,” and learn that the first song sung at the first mass meeting called to considered continuing their one-day bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., on 5 December 1955 at Holt Street Baptist Church was “What a Fellowship”! The meaning of that music was suddenly transformed in my mind.

Of course! When you can’t depend on the police, or the court system, the government or the business community—not even the white churches (including the liberal ones)!—leaning on Jesus was an audacious, even revolutionary act.

Faith has a way of being clarified in the midst of turmoil, in the face of threat.

The annual commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday provides a perennial occasion to remember the dream that still beckons both church and civil society. And not just in the US.

I’ve listened to children in Baghdad sing “We Shall Overcome” in Arabic, and read similar accounts of its being sung during the collapse of the Berlin Wall in Germany, and demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing , and in protest marches in South Africa’s Soweto Township. A comic book style telling of the Montgomery bus boycott, first published in 1958, was translated into Arabic in 2008 and circulated widely during the “Arab Spring” democracy movement in North Africa.

Yet Dr. King was not assassinated because he was a dreamer, or a promoter of “race relations Sundays.” The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) strategically focused on integration. Though the MIA’s first demand from the bus company did not include full integration. Black riders would still have to sit at the back, whites at the front. Only no Black person would have to give up their seat to a white person. It was an incremental goal that would soon lead to more substantial demands.

Over time the Movement would recognize that integrated seating at lunch counters and water fountains and bus terminals was not nearly—not nearly—enough. In time they would become clear that to achieve  changes in fundamental economic systems, equitable pay, and housing policies, voter registration in the Black community would need to change, too.

Remember, the 1963 March on Washington was name “The Jobs and Freedom March.”

Since the legislation making Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday—approved by Congress in ’86, first commemorated in ’88 (as a day of service to communities, not picnics), national holiday-makers, in concert with commercial interests, have gradually domesticated and smoothed over the threat he represented. (“The most dangerous negro in the country,” according to the FBI’s assessment.) During my years in Atlanta, several Black civil rights groups seriously discussed, but then chose not to protest that city’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday parade because of its corporate sponsorship and military presence.

We forget that by the time King was assassinated, his favorable public opinion polling had plummeted to 33%. We forget that his last major speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” when he openly condemned the U.S. war in Vietnam, he charged that our nation was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

After prophets die, we mold their memory to suit our purposes. We ladle praise on them and put them on pedestals—as a way to distance ourselves from them. There is some truth in that old canard: A conservative is someone who admires a dead radical—because they could not climb down from their pedestals to challenge us.

Admiring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is not the same as being captured by it. It is not only possible but common to respect the man but relinquish the mission, to revere the dreamer but renege on the dream . . . such that it turns into something else entirely. As with the Christian community, admiring Jesus substitutes for following him.

The biggest mistake we make is using the King Birthday observance as the occasion to heap accolades on his memory. Diane Nash, one of the many unheralded leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, says it well:

“If people think that it was Martin Luther King’s movement, then today they—young people—are more likely to say, ‘gosh, I wish we had a Martin Luther King here today to lead us.’ If people knew how that movement started, then the question they would ask themselves is, “What can I do?’”

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Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Take Us Home by Another Way.” —Christopher Grundy 

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In the US, 6 January 2025 is the fifth anniversary of the attempted coup to overturn Congress’ formal confirmation of the previous November’s presidential election results. It remains an open wound in our body politic. Its felonious instigator has thus far escaped conviction, has returned to power, and has pardoned all the coup’s agents.

In the Christian liturgical calendar, 6 January (Epiphany) is commonly observed as the arrival of the Eastern Magi to Bethlehem’s animal feed trough serving as a crib for baby Jesus. In other traditions, the date is marked as the occasion of Jesus’ baptism. In some Eastern Orthodox traditions, 7 January (according to the older Julian calendar) is celebrated as Jesus’ birth—though, in Judaic calculation, a “day” begins on sunset the night before, as in the Genesis account of Creation: “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5).

In all these cases, a coup d’état is underway, though only the despots experience it as violent, as in Mary’s hymn of praise, where the powerful are tossed from their thrones and the rich are sent away empty.

(Art at right: John August Swanson)

In all Christians traditions, the common element is the inauguration of a confrontation between God’s Only Begotten and those in seats of power. Divine table-turning is underway. Epiphany, as the manifestation of God’s Intent, will disrupt the world as we know it. Those for whom this “world” is “home”—who profit from current arrangements, from orthodoxies of every sort—will take offense at this swaddling-wrapped revolt.

The bias of heaven is clear: Epiphany’s insurrection announcement confronts every settlement anchored in repression and domination. The announcement of the Kinship of God provokes terror in the imagination of those who believe that death remains the determinant of earthly affairs, that might makes right, that spoils belong to the victors.

Epiphany is provocative. A new Victor has been declared, beyond history’s fated presumption, though its sovereignty awaits its anointed, appointed time.

How, then, are we to live in between appearance and conclusion, between the given and the promised, between Earth’s misery and Heaven’s revelry. What are the pastoral guidelines flowing from this prophetic disclosure?

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Hymn of intercession. “My heart / Be wise / Your enemies have surrounded you / Rising against you / Wait and pray / Don’t stop fighting / Ask every day / The Lord is powerful / Do not lose / Your armour / In death you will finish / Your work.” —English translation of “Inkosi Namandla” (“Lord of Strength”), a reimagining of the traditional Tshwane church song “Ke na le modisa,” arranged by Michael Barrett, performed by the University of Pretoria Camerata 

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We, of the majority caste, are largely innocents. By innocent I mean clueless about the way history has privileged some and impoverished others. If we are to move toward a future beyond the fatal consequence of our transgressions, we must lose our innocence. We have hard work to do, patient work, risky work, but worthy, inspiring, hopeful work.

Take a hand. Make your vow. Gird your loins. Declare an allegiance beyond the tip of your nose. Step over your contented threshold and out of your comfort zone. Prepare for turbulence, maybe threat. Make alliances across racial, class, cultural and national boundaries. Cultivate the kind of imagination needed to resist cultural conformity and nationalist fervor.

Nurture a faith rooted deeply enough to withstand inevitable seasons of drought and tempest. Brace yourself for Epiphany’s provocation, confounding the coronation of mammon protected by praetorian guards and backed by courts of infamy. Refuse seating at the tables Jesus flipped.

Be a conscientious objector to the rule of the market. Set your eyes on a horizon beyond every prognosticating fate. Never forget that history belongs to the interceding intercessors. Between the hammer of hope and the anvil of conviction the Spirit’s fire forges impossibility into re-possibility.

These are our disciplines, and sometimes they are arduous. But they are not imposed by a divine taskmaster. They are the overflow of joy, the product of ecstatic vision capable of tracing Creation’s promise, to Resurrection’s assurance, recollecting the Prophet’s assertion that wolf and lamb will lie shorn of threat and the Revelator’s conclusion that, one day, death will be no more.

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Benediction. “I woke up this mornin’ and none of the news was good / And death machines were rumblin’ ‘cross the ground where Jesus stood / And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way / And there was nothin’ anyone could do or say / And I almost listened to him / Yeah, I almost lost my mind / Then I regained my senses again / And looked into my heart to find / That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham / Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem. . . . / But I believe there’ll come a day when the lion and the lamb / Will lie down in peace together in Jerusalem.” —Steve Earle, “Jerusalem”

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(Art below: Kathy Manis Findley)

 

Commendations for sustaining
impervious resistance to imperial dominance

 

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Sometimes I get so sad / Sometimes you just make me mad / It’s a sad and beautiful world / It’s a sad and beautiful world.” —“Sad and Beautiful World,” Mavis Staples 

Call to worship. Over and over again, the psalmist and the prophets exclaimed grief, sometimes with fury, with some version of: “How long, O Lord, how long will the wicked prosper?” —Psalm 6:3; 13:1-2; 35:17; 74:10; 82:2; 89:46; 94:3; 119:84; Job 19:2; Hosea 8:5; Isaiah 6:11; Jeremiah 12:4; 47:6; Habakkuk 1:2; Zechariah 1:12; Revelation 6:10

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An internet meme summarizes my conclusion: “If 2025 were a drink, it would be a colonoscopy prep.”

And another: “I am going to stay up on New Year’s Eve this year. Not to welcome the new year or anything. I just want to make sure this one leaves.”

It’s been a pants-on-fire kind of year. The kind that makes even the most happy-go-lucky soul develop a quaver in their otherwise cheery voice. Every time I think we hit bottom, a basement appears. And again.

It’s true: there are some hints that the maga-fever might be breaking. We need to note those cracks; but who knows how long cracks survive before a dam’s rupture begins. Even if it does—to switch metaphors—the momentum of a runaway train makes it difficult to halt; plus, the stopping could come as a massively destructive derailment.

You don’t have to be an alarmist to think the future of our republic is in danger. Which is why people of faith and conscience should occupy ourselves with disciplined patterns of storm-resistant spiritual fortification.

It’s a sad world. The Bible frequently and furiously expresses these emotions and impulses. I dare say, Scripture encourages us to hurl our insults, to shout our helplessness, to confess our own violent imaginations—at the world, and even at God.

But it is required that we process these vile emotions with each other, with God as our witness, with the permission of the Holy Spirit, mimicking even the speech of Jesus, as when he said, on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

It is a sad world. A distressful world. A sometimes wretched and rancorous world. But it is also, simultaneously—most certainly, just as surely—a beautiful world.

How do we hold these two things together, allowing neither to cancel out the other, making space both for the brutality of the world and the bounty of the world? Attending both to Earth’s agony and Heaven’s jubilation?

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Hymn of intercession. “Emmanuel.” —Public School 22 Chorus, Staten Island, NY, arrangement inspired by Tori Amos, directed by Gregg Breinberg 

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I have seven commendations for your consideration. No doubt you can add others.

 

First commendation. Avoid practicing magical thinking, claims of unicorn sightings, cushioned parlor games of fantastical daydreaming, delusional reverie rising from hot tub bemusement.

We all have the tendency to shelter in place during socially-severe weather; to shut out the shouting; to shield our eyes and cover our ears to the misery just beyond our front gates. But if we are to discover what is truly beautiful in the world, we begin by being attentive to where beauty has been suppressed; to where humanity has been dehumanized; to where earth’s beauty has been contaminated; to where children’s playful voices have been silenced.

Doing so requires being vulnerable in ways that seem risky. That doesn’t mean being foolhardy. It does mean critically examining our risk-avoidance habits. Faith in the Way of Jesus is inherently risky.

Second commendation. It is incumbent upon us to acknowledge that our complaints reveal how privileged we are, in relation to the unnumbered, both within our nation and elsewhere, who have lived in despondence and disposition long before now.

For those of us who do not fret about where tomorrow’s food will come, despair is a form of narcissism resulting in a self-imposed debility. Truth is, we have more resilience than we know, and we cannot know our limits until they are tested. Be willing to be tested.

 

Third commendation. It’s time to get a grip, cast off the easy comfort of optimism, and welcome being roughly tutored by the Spirit as to the true and wasted places where hope emerges, where water flows from rock and manna appears in drought-impaired landscapes; where impossibilities are reversed, valleys of despair are raised, and heights of arrogance are humbled and brought low.

To quote Mary Oliver, the challenge for us is to “keep some room in our hearts for the unimaginable.”

Fourth commendation. It is our duty to be informed. But not consumed. Doomscrolling is a kind of self-mutilation which serves the interests of those who want us distracted, agitated, and frantic, unable to apply the modest weight of our convictions in campaigns of mass resistance AND reconstruction.

As John Paul Lederach writes, “Pessimism born of cynicism is a luxurious avoidance of engagement.” The commitment to be attentive to godforsaken people and places does not mean self-traumatizing. God is not a sadist, and we are not masochists.

Fifth commendation. It is essential that we be grounded in real world events, cognizant of the brute facts of seemingly incorrigible and corrupt patterns of power. But we are also called to practice what John Paul Lederach, in his book The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace, calls “moral imagination” which is “the capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenge of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist. . . . creativity requires moving beyond the parameters of what is visible, what currently exists, or what is taken as given.”

Imperial powers always limit what is possible to what is available. As the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy says, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Sixth commendation. As Wendell Berry counsels, it is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. We need communities of conviction, starting with one that is locally grounded; but also with others to which we are connected at a distance.

To keep our eyes on the prize, we need each other, such that when our spirits flag, we are carried by others. All of our communities should facilitate boundary-crossing connections with those not of our caste, class, ethno-nationalities, etc.

James Baldwin said, “The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love . . . is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.” You don’t have to be a priest or a preacher to do this. You can be a truck driver, a ballet dancer, a beautician, or a heart surgeon.

Seventh commendation. More than anything else, the Little Flock of Jesus’ vision and mission must sustain impervious resistance to imperial dominance.

In these days, here and now—at historic levels—the community of faith in the Way of Jesus is threatened by the corruption of its purpose, its promise, its provision. A current, prominent name for this corruption is White/Christian Nationalism.

Maybe the most distinctive calling we have in this season is to undermine the corruption of Christian speech, to intelligently and passionately confront the theme of so-called manifest destiny, as if the opulence and orgy of our national piety have the power to manipulate God’s special favor, as if colonialism is virtue.

This is heresy and must be loudly denounced as such, not just with our words but with the very shape of our lives, livelihoods shaped and animated by the Beloved’s passion for the fate of those left behind, left out, left over.

Kindred, it is a sad and a beautiful world. We live in a colicky world, and in a history that appears to be predicated on violence.

We must speak to each other of our sadness, of our own violent impulses, and testify publicly and grievously, of Earth’s agony; but also testify, resoundingly, to Creation’s beauty, of her inconspicuous heroes, of the stories of kindness and compassion and sheer gladness.

As we do, I assure you, in most uncertain terms, that the Creator of Heaven and Earth hovers near, unseen but fully present, weeping with us in our grievous sorrows, rejoicing in our exultant joys.

World without end. Amen. And amen.

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Benediction. “Blessed One, whose name we dare not speak, but of whose Presence we dare not remain silent, we stand before you with hearts in shreds and hands frozen. We know that we creatures were made for praise and thanksgiving. We recognize that gratitude is our natural home.

“But these are unnatural days. Instead of Heaven’s jubilation at Creation’s unfolding, most of what we hear are the arias of agony and the cornet’s sounding of retreat. . . . Remind us again, O Holy Spirit, of that design by whose pattern we were made. Call back to memory, Sweet Jesus, at whose table we eat and drink, of whose feet we are to wash. Call us back to our right mind, for clarity over the source and aim of our commission.” —KLS

Recessional. “What a Wonderful World.” —Louis Armstrong 

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A version of this article first appeared in Baptist News Global.

Ken Sehested

“Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.”
—Cormac McCarthy, “All the Pretty Horses”

Invocation. “Keep your lamps trimmed and burning . . . / the day is drawing nigh. / Darker midnight lies before us . . . / the day is drawing nigh. / For the morning soon is breaking . . . / the day is drawing nigh. / Children, don’t get weary / till your work is done.” —“Keep Your Lamps,” arr. André Thomas, combined choirs of Florida State University 

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The photo below is not an award-winner, like those of the Natural History Museum’s annual wildlife winners. Or those on the “Religious Feeling Photo Contest Winners” site. Or the comedy wildlife photo awards. Or the Smithsonian magazine’s “Breathtaking Space Images.”

 

But it will from this day forward shape my Advent imagination.

This picture below features Wanda Hernández Murga, coordination of the Kairos Center, a ministry of Primera Iglesia Bautista in Matanzas, Cuba. She is standing, arms raised in the posture of jubilation, exultant smile, standing in the midst of a gutted building. The atmosphere appears dank, architecture of wreckage, in a building razed back to its decrepit walls and load bearing arch.

The scene instinctively makes you want to gasp and whisper, oh, that’s not a safe place to stand.

Ah, but you would be wrong. What you’re looking at is a long-held dream in an early stage of being materialized, in the midst of what seems to be rubble, of a building about to be rehabbed to house a music school, liturgical arts laboratory, and social services center on the edge of one of Matanzas’ poorer neighborhoods.

The rubble I witnessed there on a trip last fall has been removed (except for the stack of rescued bricks and slate ready to be recycled). I marveled at the architect’s sketches depicting the building’s resurrection. I had previously seen the constant flow of children and youth (regardless of religious affiliation) pouring into Primera Iglesia’s building, next door to this new site, arriving for music lessons, along with the influx of pensioners coming for freely-offered communal meals.

I’ve seen photos of the Center’s orchestras in holiday marches throughout the city streets. The creative liturgy workshops, incorporating all manner of drama, dance, readings and music, flow directly into the congregation’s worship and influencing liturgical practice in churches across the nation.

As it is, the Center’s activities share cramped space with the congregation’s programs. The dream of having its own dedicated space has persevered over a decade. Locating options—and the funds to purchase such a site—has required much patience. Last year, solicitation here in the US raised the funds to purchase the building. (Real estate is surprisingly cheap in Cuba.) And now acquiring the funds to renovate the building is underway. (Building materials are scarce, and expensive.)

The patient perseverance, the waiting and longing, of these friends in Matanzas is an Advent parable. The patience is not nonchalance. Waiting is not inertia. Longing is not wistfulness. This kind of waiting is the on-the-edge-of-your-seat, ever ready, hands readied for the labor to come. Not resignation, but a long deferred dream which will allow the Center’s creative craft to be expanded—all in the context of a community of faith which affirms that, in Mary’s words, the day approaches when the Spirit will “scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts.”

We cannot engineer miracles; but we can prepare for them.

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Hymn of petition. “Now we who mystically represent the Cherubim, / And chant the Thrice-Holy Hymn to the Life-giving Trinity, / Let us lay aside all worldly cares, / That we may receive the King of all, / Who comes invisibly escorted by the Divine Hosts. / Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!” —English translation of the first verse of “The Cherubic Hymn” by G. Lvovsky, performed by the Choir of the Sretensky Monastery 

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I doubt novelist Cormac McCarthy ever pondered Advent, but he provides a succinct sentence pointing to the heart of the matter.

“Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.”

You may already know that McCarthy’s novels contain a great deal of violent conflict. In a 1992 interview with the New York Times, he commented, “There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea.”

As if history is utterly fixed, the universe irreparably fated in its endless spinning, not progress but degress, a de-Creation, if you will, from its original delight to a spiral of entropy, random fracturing, no Center to hold, oriented only to exhaustion and utter ruination, no world-without-end-amen, only a terminus ad quem without rhyme or reason, absent transcendent verity or moral apogee.

The Nativity story in first century Palestine was just such a dangerous idea. As a child in Nazareth, Jesus most certainly heard of the butchery in nearby Sepphorus, four miles north, when an estimated 2,000 Jews were crucified, hung along the streets and highways in that area, following a failed rebellion against Roman rule after Herod’s death in 4 CE. It’s a historical fact that needs to be processed in our Nativity recollection.

Advent’s announcement of incarnation is not an invasion, nor merely an accretion to Creation’s original blessing, an added element to repossess a terminally incorrigible world. Rather, it is a dessoterramento, a Portuguese word that signifies an uncovering of what has been buried or repressed. It is not Creation that is sanitized and sucked up into Heaven; it is the announcement that the Most High has pitched a tent among mortals (cf. John 1:14 & Revelation 21:3) whose minds have been righted to reverential posture.

As William Sloan Coffin Jr. noted, only reverence can restrain violence: because it, and it alone, can constrain self-centered living.

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Hymn of consolation. “Away from the manger they ran for their lives / The crying boy Jesus, a son they must hide / A dream came to Joseph, they fled in the night / And they ran and they ran and they ran / Ooh / No stars in the sky but the Spirit of God / Led down into Egypt from Herod to hide / No place/  for his parents no country or tribe / And they ran and they ran and they ran / Ooh / Stay near me LORD Jesus when danger is nigh / And keep us from herods and all of their lies / I love the LORD Jesus, the Refugee King / And we sing and we sing and we sing / Alleluja.” —“Refugee King,” Liz Vice 

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Advent’s call to patient perseverance, what my seminary professor Dorothee Sölle called “revolutionary patience,” is penitential in nature: penitential not in feeling bad about ourselves, but in reawakening, of being recalled, resituated and recentered from the cacophony of life lived outside covenant vows; rescued from the omnipresent governing values that assure the strong take what they can and the weak endure what they must; generosity not-for-gain but due to the simple facts that blessed people bless people. It’s who we are (or, more precisely, who we are becoming, season by season, occasionally falling back into self-centered stupor) being born again (and again and again) into our high calling in Christ Jesus.

It is the Holy Spirit slapping our face, saying “SNAP OUT of it!”

Some years ago I attended a service where the bulletin cover depicted a gentle-flowing stream, over which were imposed the “Peace, be still” refrain which shows up in various forms throughout the biblical narrative. I kept it as a reminder that the original “be still” phrase was spoken by Moses to the Hebrew people when their backs were against the sea with Pharaoh’s ruthless army bearing down on them (Exodus 14:13-14).

Peace . . . fear not . . . be still. These are admonishments in the context of conflagration–and not on a nice, sunny-day picnic on warm, green grass, champagne flute in hand, with the gurgling mountain stream in the background and butterflies all around.

Rather than a recommendation to leisure (much less, passivity), “be still” is actually a war-cry, only the terms of engagement are nothing like what we usually associate with soldierly action. The psalmist’s image of standing “beside still waters” is in the context of “the valley of the shadow of death,” where the Lord’s table is spread “in the presence of my enemies.” The issues are those of life and death.

This is what Dr. Sölle (blessed be her memory) meant by practicing “revolutionary patience”—an utterly impatient posture which nonetheless refuses the idolatrous resort to violence, even emotional violence, because of an abiding confidence, that despite much evidence, death itself will be undone. We are but participants and witnesses, not engineers, to this promised new world order, to God’s Kinship which first gathers up “the alien, the widow, and the orphan,” not because of their moral worth but simply because they have been left behind, left out, leftover—surplus in the world’s ordering of power.

To be sure, calluses can grow on fretful rubbed hands. Disappointments are not uncommon. Sometimes, in prayer, we need to stomp our feet and issue curses into the ether. Like our friends in Cuba, we plan, and we wait; we intercess, and we wait; we dream, and we wait; we plead, and we wait; we engage, across the spectrum from random acts of kindness to public acts of civil disobedience, and we wait—because even when we “win,” the winning is always incremental.

Nevertheless, we confess, with Mother Pollard, resident of Montgomery, Alabama, who walked to work during the year long bus boycott, my feets is tired but my soul is rested.

Unfortunately, few if any can experience this stillness, can generate this peaceful still point amidst the storm, on our own. It’s almost always mediated by the fleshly presence of others and the vibrant memory of saints gone before. Which is why pastoral ministry–fostering communities oriented to this vision–is so crucial in cultivating the seedbed’s soil from which prophetic action blooms.

Which is why memory is essential. Which is why I stay in touch with people like my friend Wanda, who can look past dilapidated history to a farther horizon where joy emerges. They help me keep my lamps trimmed and burning.

“Tribulation” is the normal circumstance for Still Ones in a fractious world whose currency is the power to exclude and dominate. But “be of good cheer . . . take heart . . . have courage,” for this “world” is being dismantled (cf. John 16:33), a new heaven and new earth are on their way (cf. Revelation 21:1ff).

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Benediction. “My body groans for Your redemption / My spirit waits for Your day / My heart longs for consolation / On You we wait, for You we wait . . . / Do not tarry, Lord / On You we wait, for You we wait.” —“Do Not Tarry,” Rachel Colman 

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A meditation in praise of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life
in light of Holy Week’s threat yet to come

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “Dr. King received a message / As he sat there in his cell / In Birmingham Alabama / He had gone there to repel / The troubles in that city / For which it was well known / Though his message spoke of peace / Into the prison he was thrown / Pastors sent that message / Urging King to wait / They didn’t want his protest He wasn’t welcome in their state / History has taught us The Reverend understood / The bad get their power / From the silence of the good.” —Eric Mcfadden, “The Silence of the Good” 

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The principal strength from which the forces of despotism operate comes not from their accomplices in infamy but from the silence of those who turn a blind eye, who have been cowed into silence, saved (they think) by means of “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

They are neither hot nor cold, which, according to the Ancient of Days speaking through John the Revelator, “I will spew you out of my mouth (3:16). These are the ones, like Pilate in the Gospels, who simply conspire to wash their hands of complicity.

As Dr. King complained, in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” addressed to the more liberal pastors in Montgomery, Alabama, who urged civil rights activists to be “patient”: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

And later: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”

“In times of war, the law falls silent,” warned the ancient Roman philosopher Cicero. For true lovers of God, and followers of The Way, there is another warrant—another commandment, another horizon to which we are to be oriented—upstaging entrenched tainted statutes, market’s rule, and judicial duplicity.

Verily, verily, ours is the mandate to conjoin the One who promises to make all things new, to the jubilee theme linking spiritual transformation to the very material cancellation of debts, land redistribution, sustainable agricultural practices, and manumission of slaves.

Yet adherence without advocacy is to be (in the words of the ancient bard) “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” It is “holding the form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). The Lord Sabaoth rails against such vacuous piety: “these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13).

Careful what you long for in hoping for the Day of the Lord. For if you come across neighbors, “dressed in rags and half-starved,” and you say to them “Blessings! be warmed and filled” but do not offer needed attire or a sufficient meal, “What good is that!” The One who shall separate the goats from the sheep keeps account. “Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense!” And you say you believe in God?” Well, even the demons believe—and shudder when they do so” (James 2:14-19 The Message).

Of course, there is a silence which God honors and acknowledges: The sheer awe we experience in the face of the Almighty, when we proclaim “let all the earth keep silence before the Blessed One!” (Habbakuk 2:20) Such awe, such adoration, such exaltation is a confession of our interdependence, in a repentance, a turning away from self-centered living.

Other forms of silence choke the truth, resign the poor to bondage, countenances bribery and corruption in high places. Such silence stinks in the nostrils of the Advocate. Indeed, “Our God comes and does not keep silence” (Psalm 50). This One, whose Name is beyond all names, indicts all who collaborate with thieves; who slander the everlasting covenant; who cavort with philanderers; who practice deceit and whose smiling eyes tell lies.

But be of good cheer. It will be accounted to you as tzedek (righteousness) and mishpat (justice, advocacy for the vulnerable), as chesed (loving-kindness, mercy, generosity, and steadfast loyalty) should you embody metanoia (spiritual conversion, reorienting one’s life). Though the world’s insurrection act be provoked against you, Resurrection’s invocation shall steady your voice, strengthen your weak knees, shoe you with the wreath of peace, and guard your heart from the Deceiver.

The silence you render in being enraptured by God’s beatific vision will empower you to practice silencio, as practiced by rescuers digging through earthquake rubble in Mexico City, assisting them in hearing the sounds of those trapped alive. (See photo.)

Such silencio—simultaneously practiced as reverence for God’s holiness and pursuing wholeness on the earth—is animated amid history’s rubble, as we listen for the faint cry of survivors from earth’s trauma and human atrocity.

This listening posture aligns us with God’s hearing, for the groans of the enslaved above the clamor of imperial pursuit and the remembrance of covenant ties. Heaven’s attention, like water, always travels to lowliness. The Beloved’s radar is oriented toward those left in every tyrant’s dust, those consigned to every empire’s ash heap.

“Isn’t there anything you understand? It’s from the ash heap God is seen. Always! Always from the ashes.”*

Kindred, do not confuse peace with quiet; tranquility with integrity; legality with equality; wealth with virtue. Lay bare the veil that quells the ache, that gags the wail. Let your life be a lighthouse to the fog-bound, weary mariners seeking a safe harbor. Declare the Beloved’s delight in the least, the last, and the lost. And count it all joy, even in calamity, for the grave’s dominion has been seized. And silenced forever.

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Benediction. “I’ve got a mind to do right, everyday / Since Jesus saved me, and the Holy Ghost filled me / I’ve got a mind to do right, everyday / I’ve got a mind to pray right, everyday / I’ve got a mind to sing right, everyday / I’ve got a mind to shout right, everyday.” —”Got a Mind To Do Right,” Morehouse College and Cornell University Glee Clubs

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*Sarah, in Archibald MacLeish’s “J.B.”, a play on the Book of Job written in free verse.

Published 2025/12/15 at 10:05 pm

Ken Sehested

Invocation. “O Holy Night.” —a minor-keyed version of the traditional Christmas carol by Ben Caplan

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In early adulthood I developed a strong affinity for the plaintive, minor-keyed Advent hymns—and was quickly moving away from traditional Christmas carols through Advent’s stretch leading up to Christmas Eve.

Because plaintive music fit the mood of a plaintive people of Jewish communities in first-century Palestine, living as they did under Roman military occupation and corrupt, exploitive practices by Temple authorities controlled by the 1%. The Romans squeezed tribute from the Judeans, disproportionately poor farmers and small merchants. The Temple’s Sanhedrin, the judicial system which Rome permitted to rule over civil affairs, often sided with large landholders over subsistent farmers in disputes over land and commerce and debt. And the temple treasury itself held a monopoly on selling animals for sacrifice, and its money changers charged exorbitant rates of currency exchange to those on pilgrimage from afar.

The popular Advent hymn tune “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is adapted from the “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel” song, composed by an anonymous 15^th century French composer as a Requiem Mass chant. But in 1851 English composer Thomas Helmore published his adapted tune as we now know it and paired it with a modern translation by Mason Neale now commonly used in Protestant Churches.

With darkness vs light as a binary choice, modern North American culture inevitably prefers a chirpy, jingle-belling, cornea-shrinking Halogen light to Advent’s shadowy, foreboding context. We want our angels to be cherubim, chubby infants with harmless allure. We don’t want scary interruptions.

We don’t want smelly, uncouth shepherds stinking up our Nativity creches. We cringe at the thought of pagan sages being the model of pilgrimages to honor the Christ child, or of astrological phenomenon guiding their way.

We don’t want Jesus to be a refugee: first, in utero, sheltered in Mary’s womb as she and Joseph, in compliance with Roman decree, traveled to Bethlehem for census registration, Caesar’s means of calculating tax liabilities and compiling military conscription lists. Then again fleeing as an infant to hated Egypt, memories of Hebrew slavery still fresh, in order to escape Herod’s henchmen in their bloody campaign to snuff out potential kingly rivals by means of gruesome executions of male babies in Bethlehem.

We have not yet learned, as Valerie Keur suggests, that Advent’s darkness might be a womb rather than a tomb.

As filtered through Western intellectual and cultural traditions, the Bible—Christian Scripture—appears to have a pronounced bias favoring “light” and opposing “darkness.” Surely there is plenty of evidence to justify that assumption. But another reading is also possible, a minority report, one more pronounced in Christian mystical traditions, where the Holy One is encountered in darkness.

“Then the people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.” (Exodus 20:21) (For more on this theme, see “Carpe Noctem—Seize the Night.”)

We greatly prefer the certainty of creedal conformity, which is in fact a way of taming God’s purpose and presence, to apophatic theology, whereby we can positively say what God is not but cannot, in the end, make a copyright claim on God’s promise or build a wall restricting the Holy Spirit’s movements.

Yet, consider these things: according to the psalmist, fearlessness comes to those who trek “the valley of the shadow of death” (23:4); the goodness Gospel news comes “to those who sat in darkness” (Isaiah. 9:2; Matthew 4:16). To these faithful ones “the treasures of darkness” are promised (Isaiah 45:3).

Hope is not hope outside the context of threat. The labor of spiritual formation comes by way of entering shuddersome occasions with the confidence (despite our trembling voices and shaky knees) that God is not yet done, that death has lost its sting, that nothing can separate us from the love of the One who takes delight in us; and, in the end, is able to save simply because we are delectable, despite our flaws, in Heaven’s reckoning.

Paying attention—up close and personal—to the plaintive voices, the melodies of lament and arias of agony, of those left behind, the left out and leftover, those considered surplus and disposable by existing principalities and economies and social consensus. Their destination is our proper journey into the pathos of God, the One who dares to reside in the heart of human violation and despair, in the depth of every apocalyptic season, determined to shine healing light on every abscess, to humble the heights and lift the arroyos, to flip the script on every damnable, arrogant narrative, to announce dawn’s joy to all whose nights have marinated in tears.

If the beatific consummation seems to tarry, be patient. (See Habakkuk 2:15.) Its arrival is assured, for those with ears to hear and eyes to see, those with readied, empty hands and hearts made supple by mercy’s sway.

For on that day “all flesh shall see the glory . . . the salvation, of our God” (Isaiah 40:5, Luke 3:6).

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Benediction. “Before the ending of the day, / Creator of the world, we pray / That with Thy wonted favour Thou / Wouldst be our guard and keeper now.” —English translation of the first verse of “Te Lucis Ante Terminum,” performed by St. Martin’s Chamber Choir 

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“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”
New lyrics, old hymn

O Come, thou fount of Mercy, come
And light the path of journey home
From Pharaoh’s chains grant liberty
From Herod’s rage, confirm thy guarantee
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

O Come, thou Watchful Keeper, bestow
Glad heart, warm home to creatures below
Give cloud by day and fire by night
Guide feet in peace with heaven’s delight
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

Secure the lamb, the wolf no longer preys
Secure the child, no fear displays
The vow of vengeance bound evermore
God’s holy mountain safe and adored
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

Arise, you fear-confounded, attest
With Insurrection’s voice confess
Though death’s confine and terror’s darkest threat
Now govern earth’s refrain . . . and yet
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

O spring, from Jesse’s root, the ransom flower
From Mary’s womb, annunciating power
Bend low you hills, arise you prostrate plain
All flesh shall see, all lips join in refrain:
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

O Come, announce the Blessed Manger’s reach
All Herod-hearted, murd’rous plans impeach
Abolish every proud and cruel throne
Fill hungry hearts, guide every exile home.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel!

—Ken Sehested

Ken Sehested

Hymn of invocation. “Creator of the Stars of Night.” —9^th century hymn performed here by the St. John’s Compline Choir 

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I don’t remember when I picked up this handy mental trick. Sixth grade, maybe seventh?

My first recollection of using it came during a world geography class. The teacher asked us to memorize the names of European countries’ capitals, many of which I’d never heard before. So I worked at creating a mental image using two different words or facts.

To this day, I recall the capital of Bulgaria as Sophia. Because I imagined a bull lying on a sofa.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned the proper words for this exercise: mnemonic device.

Neuroscientists have dozens of theories and countless technical words to describe how the mind works, particularly how memories are shaped, stored, altered, and retrieved. But the basic insight goes back to ancient Rome’s first century statesman-lawyer-orator, Cicero, who wrote “the eyes of the mind are more easily directed to those objects which we have seen, than to those which we have only heard.”

Some of my mental pairings are humorous, like the status of Sophia. But most are not. I recall more than a few Scripture verses because my “mind’s eye” has paired them with specific visual representations. Like the names and/or faces of specific people or historic moments.

For years I’ve had two such key associations with Advent. Last Sunday night I gained a third.

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Hymn of confession. “It’s been a long dark night / And I’ve been a waitin’ for the morning / It’s been a long hard fight / But I see a brand new day a dawning / I’ve been looking for the sunshine / You know I ain’t seen it in so long / But everything’s gonna work out just fine / And everything’s gonna be all right / That’s been all wrong.” —“Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” Wailin’ Jennies 

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Every Advent, my first association has been with what would become the historic first week of December 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white man on a segregated bus. Her frustration boiled over into a risky act of defiance on Monday of that week.

E.D. Nixon, key leader in the city’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, began urging the city’s Black pastors to respond.  The next day they gathered and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). One of the city’s newest pastors, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (who was still at work on his Boston University School of Theology doctoral dissertation), was elected as its president.

The group voted to call a city-wide bus boycott for Friday 5 December. The Women’s Political Action took on the task of publicizing the event. (Illustrating a long history of men deciding to do something, the women actually making it happen.)

On Friday evening, 5 December, thousands jammed into Holt Street Baptist Church, filling the sanctuary, the basement auditorium, others spilling out into the street. Under the banner of the MIA, the assembled group voted to continue the boycott until the city met its demands.

Little did they know it would take 381 herculean days to accomplish the task.

Why this particular moment sparked a movement is unclear, for a half dozen other African American citizens had previously been arrested for violating the city’s bus segregation policies, including Dr. Vernon Johns, Dr. King’s predecessor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

That week in Montgomery, during Advent’s risky remembrance, an array of historical factors conjoined with Holy Spirit mischief to crystalize what would become a world-reshaping movement.

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Hymn of petition. “Lord I’m Tired of Trying To Be Okay.” —Jelly Roll & Lady Gaga

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My second Advent reminder comes from the martyrdom of four Catholic missioners, three of them religious sisters, one a lay Catholic: Srs. Dorothy Kazel, Ita Ford, and Maura Clarke, plus Jean Donovan.

On 2 December 1980, the four were carjacked by Salvadoran soldiers on an isolated road, tortured, raped, and executed. Their hastily buried bodies would not be found until two days later.

Their crime? Working with and advocating for the poor in El Salvador

US Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White was fired by the Reagan administration for refusing to manufacture a cover up of the Salvadoran military’s role in the massacre.

It took years of pressure from the US, which was funding Salvador’s dictatorial military government, to convict five low-ranking members of the military. But not those responsible for ordering the assassinations, including two generals who were later found living in retirement in Florida.

I encourage you to view a 12+ minute film about the four churchwomen, created in 2014 by the New York Times.

For more background, see “The four churchwomen murdered in El Salvador,” Tracy L. Barnett, Global Sisters Report

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Hymn of lament. “When you’re broken open.” —First of five movements in Anna Clyne’s cello concerto. Each of the movements is named for a five-line poem by 13^th century poet Rumi.

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This past Sunday, I got a new Advent memory prompt.

At the close of our worship service, one of our folk—a member of an immigrant rights advocacy group in our congregation—passed out small whistles used to alert neighborhoods when someone spots agents from the infamous Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Each whistle was attached to a metal ring, making it possible to use this as a key ring, conveniently available. Also offered were small brochures, in English and in Spanish, which provide practical advice on when, how, and why to use the whistles.

Probably like you, I have been gobsmacked by the uprising of homegrown actions, nationwide, challenging ICE agents’ campaign of terror, purportedly against violent immigrants, but in fact mostly those whose criminal rate is lower than natural born citizens.

For an excellent (and free, online) collection of articles by Christian leaders on the MAGA campaign against migrants, see the current issue of Christian Ethics Today.

If you want to dive deep into the details of the financial bonanza which undocumented workers provide the US economy via the taxes they pay (and to whom few federal resources are available), see “Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants.”

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Hymn of exultation. “Ring Them Bells.” —The Spirituals Choir 

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You may think me overly somber to list these three trepidatious narratives as memory prompts for the blessed Nativity story. But consider the terror-filled context of a population occupied by ruthless Roman occupation and corrupt temple authorities.

The Gospel lections for this year’s Advent readings are filled with dangerous confrontation:

• The apocalyptic prospect of the “coming of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:36-44).
• John the Baptizer’s verbal assault on the temple bouncers: “You brood of vipers!” and his warning that “even now the ax is laid at the root of the trees” which, if they fail to bear fruit, “will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:1-12).
• Mother Mary’s threatened “public disgrace” which could have merited stoning to death under Jewish law (Matthew 1:18-25).
• The “terrified” shepherds to whom the angels brought the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:1-14).
• The state-sponsored terror of Herod’s ordering the slaughter of male babies in Bethlehem, and the Holy Family’s frantic escape into Egypt as refugees (Matthew 2:13-23).

Most prefer Advent to be enchanting rather than contentious. We read the Nativity story by way of jingle bells, roasted chestnuts, and jolly St. Nick. (Who, 17 centuries ago, was a Middle Eastern bishop known for making anonymous gifts to the poor, without first checking whether they had been naughty or nice.)

Advent is no “sleep in Heavenly peace,” but a troublesome rereading of Creation’s covenant. What was previously presumed to be “law and order” is exposed for the façade of injustice it really is. There is turbulence in Nativity’s wake. Every Herod-heart is laid bare and flails, enraged by the manger’s insurgent proclamation.

Every Pharaoh, every Caesar, is put is put on notice. And they will not go down without a fight.

Advent’s affidavit warns of trouble at hand. Christmas morn is the inauguration of Mary’s previous declaration of praise—the scattering of the proud, the toppling of the mighty, the ascent of the lowly—signaling a divine beachhead on the shorelines of enmity.

Yet through this fog of war and wanton circumstance, the child of God’s promised re-creation breaks into history’s bleak midwinter. The season’s lections from Isaiah concerning the coming Rule of the Beloved are as jubilant as they are breathtaking:

The boots of trampling warriors will be burned as fuel for the fire. Swords will be beaten into plowshares; neither shall they learn war any more. The rod of oppression will be broken. Exultation will be multiplied. Deserts will rejoice and blossom. The lame, leap like deer; jackals, removed; grain and wine, plentiful; ruins, rebuilt. (Excerpted from chapters 2, 11, 35, 7, 9, 62.)

“And all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (52:10).

Note, though, that these promises are made to people “who sit in darkness” and “in the shadow of death” (Isaiah 42:7, Luke 1:79). The risk-averse will not hear Mary’s Magnificat, will not notice the star’s ascendance, the shepherds’ awe, the Magi’s arrival. Nor the slaughter of the innocents.

Kindred, do not fear Advent’s tumult amid history’s turbulence. Improvise your own Advent mnemonic signals. Wait patiently, with open hands, hearts in repose—but on the edge of your seat. For unto us a child. . . .

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Benediction. “Let Love Melt Into Memory.” —National Lutheran Choir 

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Published 2025/12/04 at 10:28 pm

Ken Sehested

The major holidays can be sad occasions for some who have lost a loved one: “Blue Christmas” services of sorrowful remembrance, Easter when resurrection day did not return your beloved, Thanksgiving when there is a painfully empty seat at the table of bounty.

Not to mention the fact that the Nativity story’s context included a state-sponsored terror campaign (cf. Matthew 2:16). And in the US, 27 November is a “National Day of Mourning” commemorated by Indigenous peoples of the ongoing struggle to recognize the historical atrocities committed by European undocumented immigrants in the colonial era and its aftermath.

To mark such occasions, I’ve made a (somewhat random and totally subjective) collection of blues music—not only from that musical genre, but songs of sorrow and lament from many different styles.

Sample the selections below as needed and desired.

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¶ “Sometimes I get so sad / Sometimes you just make me mad / It’s a sad and beautiful world / It’s a sad and beautiful world.” —“Sad and Beautiful World,” Mavis Staples 

¶ “Psalm 23 in Blues.” —1950s Gospel Soul Version 

¶ “When it thunders and lightnin’ and when the wind begins to blow / There’s thousands of people ain’t got no place to go.” —Bessie Smith, “Back Water Blues” 

¶ “I am a pilgrim, a pilgrim of sorrow / I’m left in this wide world, this wide world alone! / Ain’t got no hope, got no hope for tomorrow / trying to make heaven my home.” —Liberty High School Chamber Singers, “City Called Heaven” 

¶ I’ve been in the storm / Too long / Lord, too long / Ooh-ooh-ooh / I’ve been in the storm / Too long / Lord, too long / Lord, please heal me / I need a little more time / I need a little more time to pray (a little time to pray) / Ooh-ooh-ooh.” —“I’ve Been In the Storm Too Long,” Mighty Clouds of Joy. 

¶ “I got no big name and I ain’t no big star / I play the blues for you on my guitar / All your loneliness I’ll try to soothe / I ‘ll play the blues for you.” —“I’ll Play the Blues for You,” Joe Bonamassa

¶ “Lead oh Father / Lead me my savior / in all the sorrows of this world Father . . . / for you still protect me.” —English translation of “Ndikhokhele” (Lead me), Mzansi Youth Choir of South Africa (singing in Xhosa)

¶ “Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger / or discipline me in Your wrath. / My guilt has overwhelmed me / like a burden too heavy to bear.” —“Psalm 38–Lord, Do Not Rebuke Me,” Brotherhood of the Hallelujah 

¶ “How Blue Can You Get.” —B.B. King 

¶ “Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears / While we all sup sorrow with the poor / There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears / Oh Hard times come again no more / Tis the song, the sigh of the weary / Hard times, hard times, come again no more / Many days you have lingered around my cabin door / Oh hard times come again no more.” —“Hard Times Come Again No More,” Mavis Staples 

¶ “In the midst of pain, I choose love. / In the midst of pain, sorrow falling down like rain, / I await the sun again, I choose love.” —“I Choose Love,” Lindy Thompson & Mark Miller, performed by Voces Aged. The song was written in response to the 17 June 2015 mass murder at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC.

¶ “Tooth for tooth, eye for an eye / Sell your soul just to buy, buy, buy / Begging a dollar, stealing a dime / Come on, can’t you see that I / I’m stranded / Caught in the crossfire.” —“Crossfire,” Stevie Ray Vaughan 

¶ “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart.” —“Joy,” Latifah Phillips, performing the well-known praise song, but in a sober mood and minor key, adding a new refrain, and splices “It Is Well With My Soul” as a coda. 

¶ “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the / world, have mercy on us, who takes away the / sins of the world, grant us peace.” —Translated lyrics to “Lament for the Valley,” one song in Karl Jenkins’ “For the Children” cantata, written to mark the 50^th anniversary of the 1966 Aberfan disaster in Wales, where a mountainside coal slurry damn broke sending the sludge down the mountain into Aberfan, crushing a school and nearby houses. One hundred sixteen children were killed, along with 26 adults.

¶ “Long Way Home.”

¶ “Give me a mighty oak to hold my confusion / Give me a desert to hold my fears / Give me a sunset to hold my wonder / Give me an ocean to hold my tears.” —Holly Near, “I Am Willing”

¶ “Forsaken.” —The Many: Lament for Black Lives Lost

¶ • “O troubled dust concealing / An undivided love / The Heart beneath is teaching / To the broken Heart above.” —“Come Healing,” Leonard Cohen

¶ “Dear Refuge of my weary soul, / On Thee, when sorrows rise, / On Thee, when waves of trouble roll, / My fainting hope relies.” —18^th century hymn by Anne Steele, performed by Sandra McCracken 

¶ “I hoped I’d never ever have to know / What it’s like to let you go / And I can’t turn back but it’s hard to forget / Getting over you is the hardest thing / I haven’t done yet / Why does the wind cry the blues / Every time I think of you / How do I face another day / How will I find a way?” —“Wind Cries the Blues,” Teresa James

¶ “God don’t hate the Muslims / God don’t hate the Jews / God don’t hate the Christians / But we all give God the blues / God don’t hate the atheists / The Buddhists or the Hindus / God loves everybody / But we all give God the blues.” —Shawn Mullins, “Mercyland: Give God the Blues” 

¶ “Wayfaring Stranger.” —Johnny Cash 

¶ “In every life / There’s heartache and pain / Some live with sorrow / Some live with shame / Regret and worry / Forever can last / So lay down your burdens / Put them in the past / And rise and shine.” —Balsam Range, “Rise and Shine” 

¶ “This Is to Mother You.” —Sinead O’Connor 

¶ “Every face is in you / every voice, every sorrow, in you / every pity, every love / Every memory woven into fire.” —Stephen Paulus, “Hymn to the Eternal Flame,” performed by the Kantorei Summer Choral Institute 

¶ “Stand By Me.” —traditional hymn by Charles Albert Tindley, performed by Darrell Adams with new lyrics by Ken Sehested 

¶ “I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow / Cast out in this wide world to roam / My brothers and sisters won’t own me / They say that I’m weak and I’m poor / But Jesus father the almighty / Has bade me to enter the door.” —“Stand By Me Father,” Lou Rawls & The Pilgrim Travelers 

¶ “Walk Me Home Lord.” —by Thomas A. Dorsey 

¶ “Stand By Me.” —Bruce Springstein & Friends

¶ “I got stones in my passway / And my road seem dark as night . . .  / I have pains in my hearts / They have taken my appetite / I have a bird to whistle.” —Eric Clapton, “Stones In My Passway” 

¶ “Merciful Jesus . . . / Father, who takes away the sins of the world / Grant them rest. . . / Merciful Jesus. . .  / Father, who takes away the sins of the world / Grant them rest . . .  / Lamb of God . . .  / Father, who takes away the sins of the world / Grant them rest . . .  / everlasting . . .  / Rest.” —English translation of “Pie Jesu” (“Merciful Jesus”), Andrew Loyd Webber, performed by Sarah Brightman, Paul Miles-Kingston. The music accompanies actual film footage from World War I’s “Battle of The Somme” where more than 1 million men were wounded or killed. 

¶ “When a man has got the blues and feels discouraged / And has nothing else but trouble all his life / But he’s just an honest man like any other / Living in a world that’s tearing at his mind / If he’s sick and tired of life and takes to drinking / Do not pass him by don’t greet him with a frown / Do not fail to lend your hand and try to help him / Always lift him up and never knock him down.” —Old Crow Medicine Show, “Lift Him Up” 

¶ “Blessed Is the One (Psalm 1).” —Brotherhood of the Hallelujah

¶ “Listen, smith [artisan] of the heavens, / what the poet asks. / May softly come unto me / your mercy. / So I call on thee, / for you have created me. / Most we need thee. Drive out, O king of suns, generous and great, every human sorrow from the city of the heart.” —English translation of “Heyr himna smiður” (“Hear, Heavenly Creator”), 12th century Icelandic poem, put to music by Thorkell Sigurbjornsson, performed by Eivør Pálsdóttir (click the “show more” button to see all the lyrics)

¶ “Heaven Knows — Deep Gospel Blues Testimony.”

¶ “David, the king, was grieved and moved, / He went to his chamber, his chamber, and wept; / And as he went he wept, and said, / “O my son! O my son! / Would to God I had died, / Would to God I had died, / For thee, O Absalom, my son, my son.” —“David’s Lamentation,” Second Ireland Sacred Harp Convention 2012 

¶ “Ain’t No Storm Wild Enough to Break Me.” —Bertha Mae Lightning

¶ “No more, my Lord, / No more, my Lord, / Lord, I’ll never turn back no more. / I found in / Him a resting place, / And He have made me glad. / Jesus, the Man I am looking for, / Can you tell me where He’s gone? / Go down, go down, among flower yard, / And perhaps you may find Him there.” —“No More, My Lawd,” Negro Prison Blues and Songs 

¶ “Feelin’ Bad Blues.” —Ry Cooder, covered by Resonator93

¶ “How many times / Have I stood / By the river / And could not see / To the other side / Hoping like moses / The clouds / Would be lifted / Stretch out my hand / The waters divide / Lay back the darkness / Let in the light / Take all the wrongs / Make them all right / And if I could / Lay down these blues / For good.” —Kate Campbell, “Lay Back the Darkness” 

¶ “Your labor is not in vain.” —The Porter’s Gate feat. Paul Zach & Madison Cunningham 

¶ “Nobody out here / at a point of no return / I’m just a desolated man / my poor heart burned / Seem that everybody left me / but a devil by my side / Never felt so broken down / ain’t got no place to hide.” —Bill Will & The Bluesmen, “Hard Times”

¶ “Jesus’ blood never failed me yet . . . / This one thing I know, that he loves me so.” —Gavin Bryars & Tom Waits 

And, as an encore, close with this one:

¶ “Lento e Largo.” —from Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony, Opus 36 (“Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”), second movement

“No, Mother, do not weep, / Most chaste Queen of Heaven / Support me always.” This is the opening line to the Polish prayer to the Virgin Mary. The prayer was inscribed on wall 3 of cell no. 3 in the basement of “Palace,” the Nazi German Gestapo’s headquarters in Zadopane, Poland. Beneath is the signature of Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna, and the words “18 years old, imprisoned since 26 September 1944.”

You can listen to the entire symphony here. (56:13) 

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Ken Sehested

 

The 7^th of November is the anniversary of Leonard Cohen’s passing. He was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist who explored themes like faith, mortality, and social conflict. He started writing and releasing folk-rock and pop music in the 1960s, and is best known for his 1984 song “Hallelujah.”

If any recall only one Leonard Cohen song, it’s probably “Hallelujah,” now considered iconic, and covered by some 300 artists in multiple languages. But the history of the song’s reception is bewildering and circuitous.

His record company refused to release the song in 1983. When an independent label released it the next year, no one noticed. It would be 20 years before the song was widely circulated—in another artist’s cover. Cohen is said to have written 150 verses. Remarkably, the song didn’t make it to the Billboard charts until shortly before Cohen’s death.

The lyrics most often heard (many covering artists have picked different verses in different order) are somewhat enigmatic, sometimes frankly sensual, often thoroughly devotional.

The fascinating narrative of the song’s unfolding history is detailed in Alan Light’s 2012 book, “The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley & the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah.”

What follows is a short list of my favorites.

• “Hallelujah,” Leonard Cohen
• “Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” —“Anthem”
  
• “O troubled dust concealing / An undivided love / The Heart beneath is teaching / To the broken Heart above.” —“Come Healing” This song contains my favorite Cohen lyrics. It is on the rotation of worship music we sing in our congregation.
• “Dance me to the children / who are asking to be born / Dance me through the curtains / that our kisses have outworn / Raise a tent of shelter now / though every thread is torn / And dance me to the end of love.” —“Dance Me to the End of Love”
  
• Many of Cohen’s songs are vocal prayers. He expressly named this one as such. “If It Be Your Will,” performed with the Webb Sisters (with lyrics).
• Here’s a sharply prophetic word from him: “. . . from the staggering account / of the Sermon on the Mount / which I don’t pretend to understand at all. / It’s coming from the silence / on the dock of the bay, / from the brave, the bold, the battered / heart of Chevrolet: / Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.” —Leonard Cohen, “Democracy” (Click the “show more” button to see the lyrics.)
• It’s been reported that k.d. lang’s cover of Hallelujah, performed at the 2010 Olympics was the one he found most moving.
• On 7 November 2017, the first anniversary of Cohen’s passing, Cantor Azi Schwartz sings the “Hallelujah” tune, substituting the Hebrew text of Psalm 150 which is recited daily in Jewish prayer.
• Here’s my lyrics rewrite, excerpting from Psalm 23, to Cohen’s “Hallelujah” tune, performed by Ken Medema

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by Ken Sehested

Invocation. “When the Saints Go Marching In.” —Louis Armstrong 

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Like most, my early memories of holiday festivities are varied and (mostly) pleasant. But Halloween stands out, with the most distinct memories, since it involved an evening of roaming (without adult supervision) in homemade costumes throughout the small town where I lived, collecting sweet treats in decorated paper bags.

Then came the much-anticipated sorting of the evening’s haul: the keepers (the really good stuff), the giveaways (won’t eat even though it’s free), then everything else for trading with friends, which could go on for a week or more.

In Southern-flavored baptistic territory, All Saints Day—following “All Hallows Eve” (part of the origins of Halloween)—was never mentioned, much less observed. We didn’t believe in saints. Though we did have Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon, namesakes of bi-annual mission offerings—a surprisingly feminine pantheon for a body with severely circumscribed leadership roles for women.

I now believe there is no observance in the liturgical year in greater need of recovery than All Saints Day. In turbulent times and turgid circumstances, we need the sustenance of resilient memory.

Remembrance of those gone before us provides the buoyancy to continue the struggle despite bleak prospects. Such stories perform vivid reminders that (a) we are not the first to encounter hard times and (b) the assurance that sustenance (beyond our own ingenuity) will be provided.

Even more: Telling stories of faithful witness—with faces and names and details—is far and away the most effective means of catching courage and transmitting hope. We need a horizon beyond market reports, electoral predictions, and the cacophony of broken-hearted headlines.

The work of imperial powers over a conquered people always begins with the suppression of indigenous language and, thereby, the people’s ancestral stories.

Jesus’ primary mode of communication was stories—not because he was pre-modern or philosophically illiterate, but because he knew stories have an animating power that propositions and apologetics lack. It’s still true.

Resilient communities are storied communities who do the work of hallowing, of naming and memorializing its redemptive moments and characters—filled with faces and names and details—and connecting such memory with that of the Beloved’s Name and Presence.

The preamble to the Ten Commandments required the injunction to memory: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). Jesus’ model prayer began with the hallowing of God’s name, thereby unleashing the consecrating power to invoke the Blessed One’s reign over creation: “your will be done on earth” (Matthew 6:10).

Hallowing is declaring allegiance to what we revere and honor and stake our lives and fortunes on. Its practice is the harbinger of death’s demise amid joy’s full embrace. Hallowing is the asset that sustains us, wounded but poised and resolute, in the face of history’s brutal affront.

Memory renewal is among our most important spiritual disciplines.

May the poise of the saints—however famous or inconspicuous—be yours. Such poise, such aplomb, is the seedbed of insurgent faith: faith that is not cowed by ominous circumstances, does not buckle in the face of intimidation, is not impressed by parades of vanity and pomp and sheer brawn.

For the saintly practice of insurgent faith knows a secret: that there is a power made perfect in the very thing the world considers weak. And nothing threatens imperial power more than fearless subjects, who live as if death were not.

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Benediction. “For all the saints: New lyrics for an old hymn”

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast*
We praise the Name alone in which we boast
Seal our unity around Thy Host
Alleluia! Alleluia!

We stand amid the wonderment and woe
Caressing each other, as You our hearts console
Break forth in song, all creatures here below!
Alleluia! Alleluia!

Ringed by this cloud of witnesses divine
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine
Yet in your love our faithful lives entwine
Alleluia! Alleluia!

This mercy circle longs to shine your Light
Attend our yearning, restore to us our sight
By your grace, our hearts with hope incite
Alleluia! Alleluia!

O love the Lord, with all your heart and mind
And welcome neighbors, make them kin and kind
Then to our Christ we’ll ever be resigned
Alleluia! Alleluia!

Hasten the day, when tears no longer stain
All then shall rise to sing that great refrain!
Enliven our lungs to shout Hosanna’s Reign!
Alleluia! Alleluia!

The saints are living still, their voices heard
Speaking, reminding, of Heaven’s dream deferred
Hasten to hear, that earth’s woe may be cured
Alleluia! Alleluia!

No greater love hath any than to yield
Privilege and pow’r to welcome and to shield
The least, the lost, the whole creation healed
Alleluia! Alleluia!

—Ken Sehested
*first line from William W. How

Recessional. “O strength of Wisdom / who, circling, circled, / enclosing all / in one lifegiving path, / three wings you have: / one soars to the heights, / one distils its essence upon the earth, / and the third is everywhere. / Praise to you, as is fitting, / O Wisdom.” —English translation of “O Virtus Sapientiae (O Strength of Wisdom),” St. Hildegard Von Bingen, 12^th century German Benediction abbess, performed by St. Stanislav Girls’ Choir of the Diocesan Classical Gymnasium   

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For more see:

• “Halloween 2025”, a fascinating account of the ancient history of Halloween and All Saints Day
• “Quotes and notes about saints”
• Want to expand your personal All Saints Day imagination? Visit Dan Buttry’s “Global Peace Warriors” blog for brief profiles of peace-wagers and justice-seekers from every age, every part of the world, and of every religious tradition.

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