The Text of Pastor Karel’s sermon is below:
I was listening to a NYT podcast called “The Daily” you can find it on the internet. Every day you can hear about something important that is going on in the world today. This particular one was about a radio show. It was about a woman who is the most listened to on the radio, she gets around 30,000 calls each time she is on the air. When you look up the top 20 radio shows there’s NPR, then there’s conservative talk radio and then there’s this show Delilah. Delilah’s radio show does something very simple. She takes calls from all sorts of people from all across the United States people from red states, people from blues states, of different backgrounds, colors and ethnicities, and listens to what they have to say. She gives each of them her attention and love and then finds a song that sings about their circumstance and gives voice to their heart.
(Delilah) “Good evening Helen this is Delilah.
(Helen)” Hi Delilah thank you for a great show every night”
(Delilah) “Well Thank You for being so patient what can I do for you”
(Helen) “I just wonder if you have Kenny Rogers ‘Through the Years” to play for me.”
(Delilah) “Oh I love that song it’s a favorite of mine. Is it a dedication or just a favorite?”
(Helen) “No, my husband passed away when the same song came out in 82 and it was everything that my life with him was like for 31 years, a good marriage and he died much too young so if you can find it in your records there, I’d appreciate you playing it”
(Delilah) “And what’s your late husband’s name Helen”
(Helen) “Jack”.
Then she plays the Kenny Roger’s song. “I can’t remember when you weren’t there when I didn’t care for anyone but you, I swear we’ve been through everything there is can’t imagine anything we missed can’t imagine anything the two of us can do through the years you never let me down you’ve turn my life around the sweetest day are found are found with you through the years. I’ve never been afraid I’ve loved the life we made and I’m so glad I stayed right here with you through the years.” (“Through the Years” by Marty Panzer and Steve Dorff)
The show unexpectedly broadened, and the tone of the show changed dramatically the night that “Desert Storm” happened. The conflict started on August 2, 1990 when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless state Kuwait. In the midst of this geopolitical political event people turned to her. She said:
(Delilah) “The phone lines into my studio melted down, people were scared, and they were upset, and they were afraid for their children the kids that were in the military, and what does this mean, it was terrifying.”
So those things began to change, the scope the flavor of the show from just being about love and romance and getting married and breaking up to really the human experience.
(Delilah) “yeah and I try every day on the radio to let people know their loved when anybody listens, I want them to hear your loved, I want them to hear peace I want them to hear hope especially now.”
I remember listening to Delilah for a couple of years, she helped me through so difficult times, though sometimes it felt a little cheesy. But really it was a catharsis for me. What she did for me was what a chaplain does for hospital patients. People respond so much to Delilah in the way that they do just driving around in their cars is exactly this, she sounds the same, nothing about what Delilah is doing has changed, but everything else is profoundly different so that in this moment the super simple thing that she’s been doing for decades, it feels in its sincere, radical, to just listen to people to perform the most essential act of love giving people attention. This thing that she’s always understood that she wanted that she needed; right now, it’s almost subversive in his earnestness.
(Delilah) “I want to touch hearts and I want to bring joy and even with all the craziness in the world I was born for such a time as this but now more than ever we need hope.”
And while this past year she’s been broadcasting through the pandemic and through the protests this past year, and through an incredibly polarizing election when you listen to the show this year it sounds almost identical to how it’s always sound.
(Delilah) “Hi good evening who is this”
(Tracy) “This is Tracy”
(Delilah) “Tracy what can I do for you”
(Tracy) “I’m trying really hard to be in the Christmas spirit but I lost my mom to breast cancer seven weeks ago today and it’s the first Christmas that she won’t be with us so I was hoping you would play ‘I’ll have a Blue Christmas’ for me and my sister so we can get through this first holiday without her.”
(Delilah) “I will do that but here’s my only piece of advice to you just give yourself permission to feel whatever you’re feeling without thinking it’s the holidays and I have to do this, and I have to do. You don’t have to do any of those things.”
(Delilah) “This is Delilah how are you tonight”
(woman) “I’m okay I’m missing my husband he’s in the military and he’s been gone for quite some time now and (she fights back tears) oh it’s, it’s pretty miserable”
Each time someone calls into her radio show Delilah listens to their confessions, to their concerns, to their joys, and then Delilah plays the perfect song to support whoever it is on the phone with compassion and love. The perfect song for the situation they are in.
Her show gives people peace, and hope, and joy, and love. People express their deepest feelings of hurt, or confession and Delilah listens, supports, loves, and plays a song that touches their hearts.
It’s really what Advent is about. We’ve been talking about it for the last four weeks. How the incarnation of Christ will bring hope, peace, joy, and love to a world starving for all of those things. God came down to be with us in the form of a man named Jesus, except in a much more complete way than Delilah’s show ever can.
But there is a reason why Delilah’s show has been going on for decades. For each one of us seeks a love that cannot be realized from the people we know, even from our closest loved ones. Though they love us dearly, there have been hurts, and will be. We even have a hard time ourselves. Sometimes, we listen to the voices and have feelings about ourselves that are negative. We don’t hear the voice of the one who loves us eternally, the one who loves us unconditionally. Our mother, our father, our sisters and brothers and friends and spouses you could say are really our second love. But the one who loves us eternally the one who came to live with us, the one who is both holy and divine understands us and is truly our first love, eternal from the heavens. The one we can truly trust, who holds us in the palm of his hand.
In order to become whole, we need to be able to say yes to that one who loved us first. It says in 1st John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.” Listening to Jesus, gradually we will grow and we will become more whole. We need to say yes to Jesus, whose birth we celebrate today.
We need to say yes to the one that trust for as it says it says in our confessions (“A Brief Statement of Faith”, book of Confessions) “We trust in Jesus Christ, fully human, fully God. Jesus proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel. Unjustly condemned for blasphemy and sedition, Jesus was crucified, suffering the depths of human pain and giving his life for the sins of the world. God raised this Jesus from the dead, vindicating his sinless life, breaking the power of sin and evil, delivering us from death to life eternal.
Our life on this earth is but a short one. I may be here 20years or so, maybe more, maybe less. Our lives truly are like grass as Isaiah reminds us. But I can trust in the eternal love that awaits me that surrounds me that is before me, that is behind me.
The songs that we sing at Christmas are songs of hope, and of praise, and peace, and joy, and love and they are all eternal, never failing. We can sing even this Christmas which is more unusual and difficult than most. We can sing (sings) “Gloria in excelsis Deo! Gloria in excelsis!
Resources
- “The Daily” podcast Friday 12/21/20
- An audio letter to Franz and Anika from Henri Nouwen titled “To be the Beloved”