Stardust

…so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.

—Philippians 2:15

Introduction: 1969

I came upon a child of God—
he was walking along the road.
And I asked him, 
'Where are you going?
This he told me:
I’m going down to Yasgur's Farm; 
gonna join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land 
and set my soul free.' [1]

48 years ago this coming August, a singer and songwriter named Joni Mitchell was planning to perform at an obscure music and arts festival in Upstate New York. But her agent told her that it would be better for her career if she appeared on The Dick Cavett Show instead. And so that's just what she did. The festival she missed was named Woodstock, and they say that she wept when she saw the reports on television of what it was that she missed. Her boyfriend, Graham Nash, was there, and he told her all about it. So she sat down and wrote a song, and named it Woodstock after the event she wished she’d gone to. This song has been acclaimed by one 21st century author as “the most popular and influential poem written in English” in the past forty years. [2]

The Whole Image of God

Introduction: Strong Mother God

Our opening hymn this morning is a UCC favorite. But before it made it into our New Century Hymnal, it was supposed to be in the United Methodist Hymnal that came out a few years earlier. Somebody from their hymnal committee approached Brian Wren—the theologian who wrote the text—and told him they wanted to include his hymn that opened with the words, Strong Mother God, but that the denomination as a whole might find that a bit too challenging. Was there anything he could do to help them out? And so Brian wrote a whole new opening stanza so that the hymn would have a title that was a bit less challenging to conservatives. Unfortunately, the conservatives were still unimpressed. They approved a new hymnal back in 1988… but one of the songs they insisted be omitted was—you guessed it—Bring Many Names. [1]