Till the Break of Day

Last updated on: November 8, 2020 at 9:17 am by Anne Kennedy

Till the Break of Day 2020-11-08T09:17:53-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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I’m over at Stand Firm today.

Apparently, Mr. Biden made a speech yesterday and in it quoted On Eagle’s Wings. I thought about going and trying to find it, but I have a policy of never listening to any speech any politician makes, and I don’t intend to begin now, even to hear something so fantabulous. Twitter, by turns, seemed enthralled and horrified depending not only on the feelings of affection or loathing for Mr. Biden, but also for the song. This seems to me to be peak 2020.

The lections for this morning include another kind of folksy verse that many people know about because it was once quoted by a famous person who, I believe, knew his Bible a tad better than any politician alive today. He used it to great effect long ago, and it became lodged in the emotional center of American life. This, and that verse from Micah 6, about doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly with God comprise the core of American religiosity, the straining notes of Eagle’s Wings wafting in the background.

Whereas, the Amos bit is quite the text, especially when paired, as it is in the lectionary this morning, with the one about the wise and foolish virgins (or bridesmaids as I like to call them in Sunday School when I’m not up for any lengthy explanation about the facts of life). You remember the one—there are ten of them with their lamps and their oil (this would be as good a moment as any to break out that other ghastly old song, ‘Give me Oil in my Lamp’) waiting around interminably for the bridegroom to show up so they can go into the feast. Five of them bring oil, and five of them forget and wander away to look for some, and when they wander back, the bridegroom has already come and gone and barred the door. When they bang on it, crying out to be let in, he says, “Truly I say to you, I never knew you.” In other words, the usual picture of a tolerant and forward-thinking God, the very one who loves popping in on funerals to hear On Eagle’s Wings just one more time.

Which is what the epistle is about—the bit about the trumpet sounding and everyone who loves Jesus being caught up in the air to meet him, the bridegroom if you will, while everyone else wanders around wondering what all the fuss is about. If you’re in for a full measure of nostalgia, you could go watch a Kirk Cameron movie and sing the You’ve Been Left Behind song as an extra treat. Goodness, gathering it all together in one place, a lot of the music and assumptions of American Christianity seems to be…what would you call it? Due for a tune-up?

Anyway, I recently, for reasons I can’t remember, looked at the whole chapter of Amos, all of the verses leading up to the justice rolling down like water one, and I found them rather discouraging if I’m honest. Here they are:

18 Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
Why would you have the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, and not light,
19 as if a man fled from a lion,
and a bear met him,
or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,
and a serpent bit him.
20 Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?

21 “I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
I will not look upon them.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

This darkness might remind you of two other times of darkness—the deep searching three days of darkness that fell over the land of Egypt before the final plague, the death of the first-born son. A darkness so deeply felt that…read the rest here!

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