"O Worship the King"

Last Sunday we sang “O Worship the King”, the refrain six simple words, six words that tell it all, six words I hope I can sing all my days, even if my mind in old age wears down to just be able to say six words. I want to remember these:

OUR MAKER

When I was in the sixth grade, enamored with the colors pink and blue, I painted a picture of a lady in a long, formal dress with a matching parasol. I loved my picture, and when the teacher taped it above the bulletin board along with all the others, every day my eye would go to my own creation. I admired it as much as I would later admire my “Faberge” monarch butterfly, the personality of my paper mache’ giraffe, and my hand-sewn kimono-clad Japanese doll, complete with toothpicks in her hair.

DEFENDER

During college, as a Young Life leader, I was talking to a group of girls at a football game. These were rough basketball players who often got in fights. One of them, whom I didn’t know, was standing above me on the bleachers, talking fast and standing so close that she spat on me, just a little, but enough that I laughed and wiped my face. Her face went stone cold. She summoned a mouthful and spat it out on top of my head. Stunned, I just stood there, the warm spit slowly sinking into my crown. Juana and Tijuana, twins that I picked up every week for club, found something to wipe it off, and then told me they would beat her up. And they would have if I hadn’t begged them not to.

REDEEMER

Jean Valjean, a hardened criminal, is caught red-handed with stolen goods, taken from a gentle priest who had fed and given him a bed for the night. When the police asked the priest if the tableware belonged to him, the priest insisted that he’d given it to Jean Valjean. The priest then gave him two more pieces, his beloved candlesticks, saying that Jean Valjean had “forgotten” them. After the police left, the priest explained, “I have bought your soul for God.”

AND FRIEND

He could have made us, and left it at that. But He didn’t. He defends us because He has redeemed us. And He still could have left it at that. And, as the Jews say at the Seder, “it would have been enough.” But, astoundingly, He doesn’t leave it at that.

“I have called you friends,” Jesus said. Let the words sink in. Stand there. Don’t move. Think about your best friend or the best one you could ever imagine. Think about all that is involved in a friendship; that free delighting in another person, free of obligation or necessity, where all is given, all is taken, all is shared. Just for the joy of it.