Shall We Gather at the River
Shall We Gather at the River by Rev. L. John Gable
February 2, 2020
Music has always been central to the life of faith. Every worshiping community in every time and place and culture has used music to celebrate, enrich and express its experience of God. One of the many things I love about Tab is both the quality and the richness and diversity of the ways we express our faith musically. We seem to be able to transition from the classics to contemporary to jazz to country without missing a beat (did you notice that was a musical reference?) often all on the same Sunday morning, sometimes in the same service. I commend and applaud our wonderful musicians for the varieties, as well as for the quality, of the music they produce, and each of you for so gladly receiving it with the appreciation it deserves as an expression of our shared faith together.
This month, being Black History month, we decided to focus on one particular musical genre, the spirituals. “Spirituals are a genre of American folk music that articulate the suffering, longing and religious passion of African Americans during slavery and its aftermath. Religious hymns, work songs, along with traditional African rhythms and chanting styles all contributed to the development of the spirituals.” Each week this month the choir will be singing from the songbook of the American spirituals as Oscar, Terri and I will be preaching on the themes reflected in them. This morning we begin with Shall We Gather At the River, which was written during the time of slavery, 1864, but curiously not by an African American at all, rather by a white Baptist minister in Brooklyn, New York named Robert Lowry. In this chorus he captures the longing for release as well as the hope of renewal indicative of an enslaved people, which is the essence of the spiritual movement.
The song begins with a question, an invitation, “Shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feel have trod; with its crystal tide forever flowing by the throne of God?”
I will confess that I was drawn to this particular spiritual from the list of options Matt gave us several months ago, not only because I was familiar with this beautiful chorus but because I have always had an affinity for water, particularly rivers. I grew up in a suburb of St. Louis about equidistant from the Mighty Mississippi to the east and one of its tributaries, the Meramac, to the west where on Saturday mornings my dad would take us to go exploring. It was there I learned to skip stones and hunt for crawdads. Our family vacationed every summer at a little cabin that my great grandfather built in the 20’s on the Wapsipinicon River in SE Iowa, a place dear to my heart where my family, including my 95 year old mother, still gathers for a mini-family reunion over a weekend each fall. I went to school at Hanover College with its beautifully majestic view of the Ohio. Seminary in New Jersey put us in proximity to the Atlantic; my second call to ministry was in Waterloo IA and every day I crossed the Cedar River which bisects that city coming and going from home to work. Our church in Milwaukee was situated about a mile from a “pretty good” lake, no make that a “Great” Lake called Michigan; and until our recent move I crossed over the White every day, several times a day, and every time I did I found myself taking a glance just to see how it was doing.
I have an affinity for rivers, so I resonate with the invitation this spiritual offers us to “Gather at the River”, both physically and spiritually. The metaphor Lowry draws on comes from the passage we read in Revelation 22 where the angel of God is revealing the new heaven and the new earth, the New Jerusalem, to John who describes “the river of the water of life, bright as a crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” The imagery is as powerful as it is beautiful. The river flows right through the middle of the street of the city giving life and nourishment to the trees which line both sides of the river bearing fruit in season and out and having leaves which bring healing to the nations. What John envisions is idyllic, and of course it is, because his vision draws on the description we are given of the garden in the opening chapters of Genesis. We read, “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there He put the man whom He had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of good and evil. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden and from there it divides and becomes four branches: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates”(Gen 2:8-9). Of course the garden is beautiful, it is surrounded and nourished by the river of the water of life, and so will be the New Jerusalem in the new and restored heaven and the earth, what we often refer to as the coming Kingdom of God.
Friends, this is the hope and fulfillment of our faith, a time and place where there is peace and harmony, restoration and reconciliation; where all people have equal and ready access to the life-giving, life-transforming waters of the river of life and the bounty of food and nourishment it provides. At the center of this “peaceable Kingdom” is the throne of God and of His Lamb, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, with the river flowing out from it, from them. Just imagine that, and as wonderful as that may sound to us, try to imagine how wonderful it would sound to an enslaved people whose perhaps only hope lies beyond their present reality of suffering and bondage.
Of course this is the idyllic hope of our faith, but unfortunately this is not the present reality in which any of us live, is it? Lest we think our faith only speaks naively of “the great by and by, pie in the sky when we die”, it also speaks of the harsh realities of life as we know it now using the same metaphor of the river.
Turning to Psalm 46, the psalm Martin Luther used as the basis for one of the truly great hymns of our faith, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, the Psalmist describes a world which looks very much like the world we live in, a world which is far from idyllic. One of the most powerful aspects of the Psalms, and so of the spirituals, is that they use language which is descriptive enough that we can get a sense of the struggles or circumstances the writer is facing, even without knowing the particulars, which then enables us to use their language as we face our own suffering and struggles.
We know what it feels like for “the earth to change beneath us, for the mountains to shake and the waters to roar and foam”, either physically as we too experience natural disasters, or more likely in the changing circumstances of our lives. What he is describing here is not only natural and geological; it is also part of the human experience. We have felt the ground beneath us shake at the news of a death, a divorce, a diagnosis. The waters of our lives have been turned to chaos by the loss of a job or an ability, by the strain of a relationship or a shameful humiliation. Individually and collectively we have experienced, perhaps we are experiencing now, nations, our nation, in an uproar and kingdoms which are tottering. The Psalms and the spirituals both give us language to express our feelings and fears. So what advice and encouragement do they give? They invite us to “come to the river of life which flows from the throne of God.”
Twice I have had the opportunity to raft down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon; another of my favorite “river” stories. I vividly remember the instructions our guide gave us on the first day of the trip in case, when going through a rapid, we fell out of the raft. She said, “Keep your head up above water so we can see you, position your body so that you are going down river feet first, then just go with the flow!” Then she said something I will never forget because it sounded so “counter intuitive”. She said, “No matter what, don’t grab on to a rock, or a limb or anything else sticking up out of the water! If you do the water will wash over you and take you under. Just let the river take you where it will and we’ll pick you up.” That which I would have thought to be most stable, most secure, most able to save me, a rock, was in fact most dangerous! It was the river itself that offered the promise of safety and deliverance, and the hymn writers suggest the same.
In times of trouble, in what shall we put our trust? In things physical and material, things social, things political, things which boast of earthly powers – all of which seem most stable, unmovable and able to save us? No! We are invited to turn instead to the “God who is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble.” Counter intuitive though it may sound, rather than thrashing about with fear and anxiety, rather than grabbing at straws and trying to calculate our own means of escape, we are invited simply to immerse ourselves and rest in the “river of life and go with the flow” trusting that the river itself will lead us to safety. When we are thrown overboard and life overwhelms us we are invited to listen to the words of the Psalmist. “Come and behold the works of the Lord” and, counter-intuitive as it may sound, to “Be still, and know that I am God.” This is the invitation to the “inactivity” which precedes any other “activity” we may so choose; an “inactivity” born of the central conviction and confidence of our faith: that God is God and we are not; that God is still God even when mountains shake and oceans roar and kingdoms totter and fall; the conviction and confidence that trusting the river of life will lead us to safety.
If we listen carefully, we discover that the invitation the spiritual offers actually becomes the affirmation of our faith; the question it poses : “Shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feet have trod; with its crystal tide forever flowing from the throne of God?” leads us to the answer it gives, “Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river; Gather with the saints at the river, that flows by the throne of God.”
This is what we do every time we gather for worship and we do it together, not alone; we “gather” together as a community of faith. In worship together we enter in to the presence of the living God to drink deeply of the life-giving, life-transforming water of the river of life.
Shall we gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river? Shall we gather with the saints at the river that flows by the throne of God? By God’s good grace and invitation, we may and so we shall. Amen.