A Church That Sings the Same Old Song

I was one of the 70% who were first-timers at the most recent Mockingbird Conference last week in New York. Because my route to Mockingbird was via its lectionary podcast, “Same Old Song,” I was eager to stick around an extra day after the Conference ended, to worship at Calvary-St. Georges where one of the Same Old Song hosts, Jacob Smith, is the head pastor.

I started listening to Smith and his pal, Aaron Zimmerman, during the pandemic, finding it a reliable source of nurture and insight amid the season of shutdowns. I was surprised — “shocked” wouldn’t be too strong — to hear two youngish Episcopalians so solid on the Biblical texts, so committed to the saving work of Jesus, and having such a good time doing it. Now, I wanted to see how it played out in the life of a real congregation.

Admittedly, one Sunday in the life of any church is a small sample, but I wasn’t disappointed. You enter the lovely old sanctuary of Saint George’s, located on Manhattan’s lower east side, through the traditional red doors — red for the blood of Christ — to join a congregation that is wonderfully diverse in all respects: race, age, style of dress and social class.

Such delightful diversity finds its unity in the traditional liturgy and in word of the cross proclaimed from the pulpit. It was the Fourth Sunday after Easter, so called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” with the texts focused on that theme and its related images. Smith preached on the day’s gospel lesson, John 10: 1-10, with a bit of the Psalm for the day, the 23rd, thrown in for good measure.

As listeners to Same Old Song know, Smith doesn’t mind being polemical. Nor, at least in John 10, does Jesus, who says, “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate, but climbs in another way, is a thief and a bandit.” Jesus does not there have in view other world religions, so much as the false shepherds of his own day and faith.

So Smith went after those in today’s church who ignore or deny the substitutionary atonement as false teachers. He also challenged a culture that calls on people to rely on their own smarts, savvy and autonomous self. To those who dismiss religion as a “crutch,” Smith said our faith isn’t merely a crutch, it’s a total “life-support system.” We who follow Jesus are wholly and absolutely reliant on him for our lives and salvation. Any who say otherwise are “false shepherds.” The gospel without apology.

While Smith didn’t use these precise words he was saying of our culture’s creed, and of the high point of Abraham Maslow’s famous pyramid of human development, “self-actualization,” — good luck with that!

Our need isn’t so much self-actualization as self-transcendence, losing ourselves that we may be truly and surely found. We learn to rely upon a good shepherd who lays himself down as the gate to and from the sheepfold, the pen where we not very bright and seldom successfully self-actualizing creatures, find the one who gives himself to us and for us, and doesn’t take off when the wolves show up.

The music backed the message. Though traditional, it was well and enthusiastically done. During communion, as perhaps 300 of us surged forward, “There is a Fountain Full of Blood” was banged out on the piano, with accompanying drums and maybe a violin in a sort of jazzy, upbeat rendition. Hymnist William Cowper’s words include,

Redeeming love has been my theme
And shall be till I die.
Wash all my sins away.
Wash all my sins away.
Redeeming love has been my theme
And shall be till I die.

While these words are sometimes sung mournfully, or worse, indifferently, we sang them joyfully — no holding back at St. George’s. It was great. The final recessional hymn, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” this time accompanied by organ, was again rocking and came to a choir-led crescendo of God’s promised faithfulness.

So it was indeed “the same old song,” of the good news of God’s redeeming love which has “washed all my sins away.” Old, yet always new, and always needed.

Where worship in much of the old mainline often lays upon us heavy, even crushing, burdens of to-do’s, we had experienced something else altogether that made us ready to re-enter a broken world with assurance and hope. Walking out of the church with a spring in my step, I passed a sign posted by the door, that read “Enjoy Your Forgiveness.” And we did.