Am I Ready?

October 23, 2020

Seattle, WA

It is hard to separate who I am as a person from who I am as a person in Christ’s Church. My earliest sense of myself is bound together with sensory memories of worship at Trinity Lutheran Church in Pekin, Illinois. The choir filing into the loft as they filed in from the side door. The swell of the organ. The mystery of what was behind the curtain at the altar (turns out…it was a brick wall.) The smell of extinguished candles. The way that I knew we were having communion (well, not me, technically) if the bulletin noted that liturgy began on page 15. I can sing the Nunc Dimittis by heart from Lutheran Hymnal. And remember, I left that version of the Church at age eleven.

Many years later, in a place that would become equally important to my spiritual formation, I found myself directing the choir at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Scottsboro, Alabama. What a magnificent gift in my formation and in my life’s journey. Perhaps no moments were as holy as when we would assemble outside of the church in the morning sunlight, waiting our turn to queue up for the procession, talking of football and homecoming and proms and health and general thankfulness for the sheer gift of being there to worship and being there together. This choir had a couple of songs we kept in our back pockets in the event the anthem planned for the day wasn’t quite ready….just yet….to make its debut. Two that I recall were “We Need the Rain” (most awkward lyrics EVER) and “Ready, Lord.”

In these days, as I prepare to answer this call from God to a new thing, “Ready Lord” plays through my head like an ear worm from another time.

Ready Lord, I’m ready Lord, to follow where you lead.

Show me Lord, just show me Lord, the service you will need.

Ready Lord, I’m ready Lord, I’m ready come what may,

So call me, Lord, just call me Lord, and

I’ll be on your way.

Feed your lambs, I’ll feed your lambs

And first of all with food;

Give them drink and comfort them

And build their fortitude.

Then I’ll feed them with the word

You fed me with until

They’re ready, Lord, so ready, Lord,

To go and do your will.

More than words, yes, more than words,

I know you want from me.

Moving, Lord, I’m moving Lord,

I’m moving eagerly.

Take my heart, and take my hands

My feet, my life, my all.

I’m ready Lord, so ready, Lord,

To follow ‘til I fall.*

I have to admit, beloveds, that this leave taking is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I love these folks. I have given myself to the mission of this congregation and to Christ’s church. Oh, it is hard to leave them. But I leave with gratitude and love. And I’m ready, Lord, I’m ready Lord, to follow.

(*Hymn text by Richard K. Avery and Donald S. Marsh. Found in the Moravian Book of Worship)