To Turn, Turn, Twill Be Our Delight
The Shaker song of the 18th century is in our hymnal, (# 554) but is also in our memory. When we hear the tune, called Simple Gifts it is familiar to us. The first six measures hold out to us the words, ‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, ‘tis the gift to come down where we ought to be. It is so very counter-cultural because our conditioning is that we ought to be out front: “A” - number one; Top of the list; Head of the heap; King of the Hill. Those lyrics might be even more recognizable.
But back to the first song; it suggests that when simplicity is gained, shame will disappear. It suggests that bowing and bending, and turning from our aggrandizing ways, will cause us to come round right. It will allow us to “make it”, not there in old New York, New York, but instead, bring us to the valley of love and delight. We see two paths. One path of scratching, climbing, and clawing our way to the top has its usefulness in the normal course of this competitive world. In school, we never said to ourselves, “A grade of ‘C’ is okay; it gives room for others up at the top.” There is a place for giving all we have to tasks, certainly, even competitively. But there is a spiritual path: a course recommending a paradoxical way of climbing.
The Shaker song has us climbing by bowing, by discovering simplicity, humility, the bending of the knee. Yes, this is the way of turning toward the One who truly is worthy. I heard once that “worship” is a word contracted from “worth-ship”. It is to place one’s self before the One who alone is worthy of praise. Kneeling before God, humility is not emotionally humiliating, rather, it is freeing, delightful, energizing. I cannot stop thinking about the example Fr. Stuart gave in the sermon on the First Sunday in Lent. He quoted 7th-century monk, St. John Climacus, a learned figure from the monastery on Mount Sinai. His great spiritual classic, read by Christians through the centuries, is The Ladder of Divine Ascent. He promotes a special kind of climbing and asserts the process of humble repentance is joyful, affirming, and strengthening. Fr. Bates gave the following authentic spirit of repentance from St. John Climacus (also known as St. John of the Ladder):
Repentance is the daughter of hope and the denial of despair. It is not despondency but eager expectation; it is not to feel that one has reached an impasse but to take the way out. It is not self-hatred but the affirmation of my true self as made in God’s image. To repent is to look, not downward at my own shortcomings, but upward at God’s love; not backward with self-reproach, but forward with trustfulness. It is to see, not what I have failed to be, but what by the grace of Christ I can yet become.
That is a real progression toward the “valley of love and delight.” You see, Lent is properly not a season of doleful self-rejection, but a wonderful movement into true fulfillment in God. We take our rightful place before God and find joy. This is the covenant we are in when we align with God’s promises. These are the promises offered to all people, as the psalms say, to all nations. Look at the following verses of Psalm 22, to which we give voice within the liturgy this Sunday:
27 For kingship belongs to the Lord; *
he rules over the nations.
28 To him alone all who sleep in the earth bow down in worship; *
all who go down to the dust fall before him.
29 My soul shall live for him;
my descendants shall serve him; *
they shall be known as the Lord's for ever.
There is a real paradoxical movement relayed here; to bow down is to find ourselves raised; to fall to the dust before God is to come transfixed into the bright and rarified air of worship. We begin the season remembering that “we are dust and to dust, we shall return” and in doing so, we are lifted into a relationship with the One who scooped us from the clay and breathed life into us. Let us, then, not be ashamed to bow and to bend, for this action makes us strongly present to the Lord. In covenant with God, let us not hesitate, to turn, turn, and come round right, for to do so we will find ourselves divinely immersed in true delight.