“We are all here, struggling to live up to the values we share, so join the crowd. Join the band of everyday folks falling down and getting up again failing, trying, often shining with compassion and kindness, sometimes backsliding into pettiness and fear. Welcome to being human. Do your best, right where you are, to love someone into healing.”

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis

Have any of you ever been to a science fair and seen someone do a project on the question “Does music help plants grow?” Have any of you ever been that kid? Does it?

I googled that question last week while I was working on this sermon, and at the top of the page I found a clip from a 2004 episode of MythBusters where they put this myth the test.[1] They exposed pea plants to classical music, to heavy metal, to talking in an encouraging voice, and to screaming at them. The pea plants that were exposed to music, both classical and heavy metal were healthier, taller, and had bigger pea pods than all the rest. Both kinds of music had a better result than those without music. Their opinion was that this is plausible, and it seems like the internet mostly agrees with them. I even found playlists for your plants, and 12-hour Youtube videos that you can leave on for them. Maybe this explains why my plants seem so happy in the worship space.

Music helps things grow, and that includes us! We teach our children through songs because they stick in our brains. We use music not only for teaching, but also for soothing, for celebrating, and for fun.   Music is a huge part of human culture. Songs contain memories, stories, and lessons from our ancestors. They connect the past to the present through soundwaves. Music has a powerful effect on us. Various studies have shown how it impacts mood, sleep, anxiety, and blood pressure. Music therapy is even used in healthcare to help patients with things like pain management and memory issues. When we sing together in choirs, or as congregations, our breathing and our heart rate naturally synchronize with each other.[2] It connects us in body and soul just to sing the same song at the same time.  Music can help us focus or unwind. It can bring us to tears or make us laugh. The right song can even help us understand a human experience that we’ve never had. Music helps us to grieve, and express rage, and to be enlightened.  Music can connect us with our humanity and with the divine. Music is powerful stuff.

All of this makes it so exciting for me, to see the spiritual nature of music lifted up by early Christians in the letter to the Colossians. Now, this letter claims to be written by Paul, but many scholars don’t think it’s authentically him. It’s what we call a deutero-Pauline letter, or basically we think it was written by someone who studied Paul. That may sound shocking to us, but this practice wasn’t unheard of in the ancient world, it happened to plenty of notable figures from this time period when authorship was hard to prove, and frankly, proving it was just not as important to them. Scholars say that this isn’t Paul because the writer of Colossians does not have the same radical and apocalyptic worldview that Paul had. One example of this is that in Galatians Paul says there is neither male nor female in Christ, but in Colossians 3 the author gives us some gender-based rules for the household. What this may mean, is that it came from the second generation of Christians. After the temple was destroyed by Rome, and the end still didn’t come, they’re the generation who realized they would have to learn to live as Christians in a Roman world.

Whoever the writer was expands on Paul’s concept of the body of Christ, by saying here’s what we need to clothe this body with. We need to clothe ourselves and thereby the body of Christ with compassion, and humility, and patience. Bear with each other they say and sing songs to God. Find endurance through practicing your faith in community. This letter is evidence that their communities were musical, like ours. In fact, one really cool thing about Colossians is that it preserves a hymn about Jesus that is thought to be older than the letter itself. It’s located in chapter one verses 15-20, depending on your translation it may or may not stand out, but textual critics say that its writing style does. It seems like the author of the letter is using this hymn as a starting place to expand on their understanding of who Christ is. It may or may not be Paul talking, but it’s still the voice of Christians from long ago, who sang and learned about Jesus through song. They were humans, and music shaped them just as it shapes us.

Today’s step towards fierce love is: “Think Inclusively. They’re your people too.” In this chapter, Rev. Lewis tells the story of how she deconstructed her childhood faith and reconstructed a deeper relationship with God as an adult. A big part of her struggle was perfectionism. It was hard for her to believe that she was good enough for God, because of all the different expectations of perfection that were placed on her as a young woman. All it took was someone encouraging her to let that stuff go, and she did it. Like a spark lighting a pile of brush, she says she felt that weight lifted. On the other side of the fire, she emerged with a faith that was stronger, and more human, and that had room for all her questions and doubts in it. She no longer thought of the bible as literal but as a book full of wisdom, stories, and songs that keep pointing human beings back towards love and justice time and time again. She was also getting better at being herself.  She embraced her humanity, and her imperfections, no longer seeing them as glaring and unacceptable faults, but as the things that make her Jackie, that make her human.

Here’s what she says she realized: “There is nothing so special about the work of fierce love that I had to be perfect to do it. I was equipped when my faith was strong and when it wavered, and I was still equipped after my divorce. I was ready and able in my ordinariness to be a revolutionary lover, not because I was shiny but because I was loved. The ability to love fiercely and with compassion is all that is required.” Seeing herself this way changed how she felt about other people too. None of us are going to nail it, because we are all human. Being human isn’t easy. Everyone has a story. Embracing our humanity is an important step towards our own growth and towards including others. I think it may essentially be what it means for us to be humble and meek. Everyone is in the middle of their own growing process, which we don’t know all the details of, but that is not our job. Our job is to wake up in the morning and put on compassion, kindness, and patience to the best of our ability, which is easier on same days than others. You won’t always nail it, but neither will anyone else.

If you’re not perfect you’re in good company. You are not exceptionally broken or a massive failure. You’re just human like everyone else. You know what’s really helped me to accept this? Music! Songs about how hard we try to measure up, and how none of us do. I love artists who sing about their imperfections, they help me to accept myself too. Give your all to simply being the kindest and most authentic human you can be right here and right now, and you are already doing the work of God. Listen for how God is speaking to you through your life and don’t assume that you’re a better listener than everyone else. Don’t assume that what God has to say to you and through you isn’t important either. Maybe God is calling you to something, not in spite of who you are, but because of who you are. God doesn’t need you to be perfect, God needs you to be you, to be human.

We’re all a part of the human race, a story that has been unfolding from the beginning of time. We each know such a small part of it, but we know more when we share. There is more harmony when we have each other’s backs. We must be partners with each other if we’re going to make this world a just place for all. Throughout her book, she talks about the spirit of ubuntu, a concept from Zulu philosophy that means “I am who I am because we are who we are.” Each human life has been shaped by every human life that came before and is being shaped by the humans we live among now. As music has evolved throughout time using the building blocks of the songs of the past, so we are evolving using the building blocks handed to us. As we build bigger and better, it’s on us to make sure that no one gets left behind. I think striving to be all-knowing, shiny and polished, and holier-than-thou just alienates us from one another. What we need are communities where we can be multifaceted and messy together, acknowledging that we are all shaped by our own special concoction of misconceptions and circumstances on this thing called Earth. Forgiveness doesn’t mean we don’t hold each other accountable if we do harm. We must do that in order to protect the vulnerable. It does mean that love is the guiding light in how we do so. I am because we are. How we treat each other matters.

So, clothe yourselves with love and as Rev. Lewis writes, “Join the band of everyday folks falling down and getting up again failing, trying, often shining with compassion and kindness, sometimes backsliding into pettiness and fear. Welcome to being human. Do your best, right where you are, to love someone into healing.” The more comfortable we are with being human, the better we can embody the values found in Colossians. Compassion for our humanity. Kindness for our neighbors. Humility in what we do not know. Meekness in how we compare ourselves to each other. Patience to build a community that leaves no one behind.

What if we wore these things like our favorite sweaters? What if we put them on each morning like we put on our shoes? What if they are the human song we sing in so many styles, languages, and instruments? Our differences can be like different instruments making sweeter harmonies together. Different melodies that make us feel different things and teach us many lessons. I don’t want just one kind of music, I want multitudes, because all the different music helps us grow, and we grow together through it. Think inclusively. They’re your people too. We’re all human.  We’ve all got brains that are shaped by soundwaves and are constantly searching for meaning. May the word of Christ dwell in us richly as we sing songs of wisdom and gratitude, doing our human best, and trusting that we are already exactly the humans that God needs, and we’re loved.  Amen.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5dNhNfGyWQ

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/07/09/200390454/when-choirs-sing-many-hearts-beat-as-one