Psalms and music were both important parts of my growing up. I appreciate early memories of my parents praying before meals, my father’s including psalms in bedtime conversations, and also my mother’s love of music, which she shared with all of us. Over the years, spurred on by the joy of singing hymns and anthems, my heart’s love of psalms and music have merged into something which is continually life-changing. In mysterious ways, the musical notes and phrases have operated on those wonderful Biblical texts, driving them deeper into my soul. The wedding of music with psalms has been further coupled, of course, during my almost fifty-years of marriage to my church musician spouse Barbara. In recent months I have especially valued those psalms as they must have been sung in the years during and after the Babylonian Exile. The words “I will lift up my eyes” now resonate deeply in me with the creative art of Felix Mendelssohn, Zoltan Kodaly, John Rutter, and others. We can be certain that the composers of the future will be stirred to imagine further works of art, enriching these ancient words with new genius.
I am Peter Hulac, a ruling elder at Montview and, for this year, moderator of Denver Presbytery and Council. I am delighted to bring you a progress report about how your presbytery is working through our current transitions. In recent weeks you have heard from other leaders about our work. They have written about our consultant, Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall, and about the progress we are making with his leadership. You can read about the “chapters” of our transition by clicking here. The Vision Creation Team is currently working to create and generate the vision which will guide us through our next steps.
It is presumptuous, of course, to equate our current situation to the experiences of the generations-long Captivity in Babylon. These current presbytery transitions, as significant as they are, are far less wrenching than the ones of 25 centuries ago in the Holy Land. A pastor friend has noted another difference: that during these days we are exiled to our homes, not away from them. On the other hand, the Church of today and our entire culture are experiencing so many concurrent challenges. We also share many of the laments, yearnings and hopes which our ancestors in faith experienced all those centuries ago. You might appreciate reading Ezra, chapters 1 and 3, for a historical account of their return to Jerusalem. Then turn to some psalms, which bless us with more poetic gifts. At one point, as in Psalm 80, God’s people prayed that God would restore life to the way it was before the exile. God’s people must have sung different psalms, though, as they returned to Jerusalem, saw the destruction, and realized that life would never be restored to “just the way it used to be.” Many of those psalms are among the “Psalms of Ascent,” pleading that God will lead the people in a much different kind of way. (See especially Psalms 121, 122, 124, 125, and 130.)
Over recent months our own yearnings and hopes have evolved in similar ways. Early in the pandemic we anticipated a time when “it” would be all over, when the habits of life would be restored to their previous ways. As the months have passed, though, we have come to recognize that the next chapters in our lives and in our life together will be different from life before the coronavirus. Knowing that to be so, we appeal for your prayers, and we also yearn and hope for your own individual wisdom. We ask you to write to us about your own wise discernment about where God is leading us, and your own hopes for our future life together as the Presbytery of Denver. CLICK HERE to share your hopes and dreams→
We are grateful for the challenges and joys we share in this time of change, and we thank God for the witness and the words of our ancestors in faith, the ones who have traveled this journey before us. Just as they sang psalms as they climbed their way up to Jerusalem, we look forward with joy and hope to the day when we, like them, will gather, worship, and sing together in new ways.
Psalm 122
I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’
Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together.
To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.’
For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.
-Amen.
In the service we share,
Ruling Elder Peter Hulac
Presbytery Moderator
Denver Presbytery Council