Day Seventeen
Fritz Wendt, Assistant Pastor
St. Paul's Bronx, New York and
Clinical Social Worker New York, New York
Psalm 146.5-10
1 Samuel 2.1-8
Luke 3.1-18
"The Lord impoverishes and makes wealthy; he humbles and he exalts. He lifts the weak from the dust; he raises the poor from the ash heap to seat them with princes and to bestow on them an honored position". (VV 7-8)
This psalm-like praise song, whether by Hannah or not, shows how God often completely reverses the fortunes of human beings, in accordance with their conduct. This "reversal of fortune" is a common theme in Scripture ... Today I am reminded of a movie from Sweden which I watched while visiting with my father. "As It Is in Heaven" tells the story of Daniel, a famous young conductor who, as he recovers from a heart attack, is told by his doctor that he has only a few months to live.
Intent on never returning to the concert world, Daniel travels to his hometown, a small village in Sweden, and decides to stay. After he agrees to fill the position of choir director in the small village church, he begins to revisit his childhood as a boy who was regularly teased, bullied and tortured. As he begins working with the choir to "listen and find the right sounds", Daniel encourages the sort of openness that might have saved his childhood self from violence.
Little by little, he lifts up the weak in town and confronts their oppressors -- the wife beaten by her husband, the autistic young man teased by town folk, the minister's wife feeling estranged from her pompous self-denying husband, the young woman who realizes that the whole town has hidden from her that her lover of two years was married. As these relationships begin to mend, the choir members convince their new director to take them to a choir contest in Austria. He reluctantly agrees but demands that the choir will need to sound "like none ever before" and that they go in order to communicate joy rather than to win.
The morning the choir gathers for the contest in Austria, the conductor is near death. True to the life-giving changes he has brought to his hometown, the choir's anthem is led in his stead by the autistic young man. As if infected by his joy, all the other choir members present for the contest join in and create beautiful harmonies. As he hears the many voices sing with great joy, he dies peacefully.
___We pray:
Soon and very soon,
We are going to see the King;
Soon and very soon,
We are going to see the King;
Soon and very soon,
We are going to see the King;
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
We’re going to see the King.
No more crying there,
We are going to see the King;
No more crying there,
We are going to see the King;
No more crying there,
We are going to see the King;
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
We’re going to see the King.
No more dying there,
We are going to see the King;
No more dying there,
We are going to see the King;
No more dying there,
We are going to see the King;
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
We’re going to see the King,
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