‘'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!’
Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’ can minister to us when hope is hard to find
LOUISVILLE — Last week’s sermon during Chapel worship afforded staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to be ministered to by one of their own — the Rev. Denise Anderson, director of Compassion, Peace & Justice ministries in the Interim Unified Agency.
Preaching from John 14:23-29 — Jesus’ reminder to the disciples they’d have the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to be with them after he was gone — Anderson recalled her own roots, especially the taste in music passed along to her by her father.
“My father was an early fan of Rocksteady and later Reggae music,” on which he raised his daughter, including the music of Third World, Steel Pulse, Peter Tosh, Inner Circle, “and, of course, Robert Nesta Marley,” better known as Bob Marley, who gave the world “Three Little Birds.”
As Anderson related, Marley’s inspiration was “a trio of birds who would fly by and settle at his house. He would see them day after day,” she said. “Seeing them every day became such a norm that it provided him with a sense of normalcy and stability and expectation. Seeing these three birds, he could rest assured that all was right with the world. Every little thing was gonna be all right.”
She wondered: How did Marley feel when they skipped a day, or flew away altogether, migrating somewhere else? “What happened if they found another house that they needed to visit and provide them with a sense of normalcy and security? Would everything still feel all right?”
In this passage from John, early on in Jesus’ Farewell Discourse, “we’re given an account of an intimate and somber moment he is having with his disciples — in which he is, in a sense, preparing them for his death and warning them of the things to come,” Anderson said. “Their sense of normalcy was going to be interrupted. Their sense of security was going to be challenged. It would become more difficult to know what to expect next, and that might be cause for some anxiety. How many of us can relate to that?”
What Jesus needed his disciples to understand was that “there would soon be a lot that would not make sense to them,” Anderson said. “In his leaving, he was going to be doing something big. He was going to be returning to them, but this time more powerful, more palpable and in a more substantive way than ever before.”
In the meantime, Jesus has a simple charge for his disciples: “Just keep my commandments. Just stay the course,” she said. “They needed to not be rattled. They needed to have, for you Star Trek fans, a Prime Directive in the event that their world would one day look drastically different. They couldn’t get sidetracked.”
That message “is just as relevant today for Christ’s church as it was the night before Jesus died,” Anderson said. “We’ve gone through a lot of changes. There’s been so much to jar our sense of normalcy, our sense of security, our sense of stability. We’ve had to say goodbye to ministries and programs and colleagues. With the loss of a sense of normalcy such as these, it can feel like we’re lost track of God sometimes. I’ll say ‘amen’ by myself if you don’t feel that way.”
“Somehow, in a way that’s even more powerful than if he were here and fleshed, [Jesus] promised his disciples he would send the Advocate, the Parakletos, and what’s beautiful about that word is the implication that it is someone who will walk with you, someone who will accompany you, someone who will journey with you. The Parakletos is an active presence in our lives,” she said. “That’s what the Holy Spirit does — walks with us, empowers us, strengthens us and encourages us, reminding us that God is still here, even if everything doesn’t seem all right.”
“In this world of distractions and enticements, our charge is to stay the course, to keep his commandments, to do what we have been called to do, to stay focused as much as possible — and try as best we can to not worry about a thing, because irrespective of how it feels, the Parakletos walks with us. Thanks be to God! Amen.”
At the close of worship, Anderson offered a charge and benediction she often delivers in parish settings when she’s asked to preach: “Having had church, now we are dismissed to be church. Having worshiped Jesus, we are now charged to follow him, for that is our true worship. We are not the first to try to follow Jesus in challenging times. We are not the first to have to hold on to God’s promise when it’s been particularly difficult. The same God who has been with our forebears accompanies us as the Parakletos.”
“So go in peace. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each and every one of us and all we serve, now and forever. Amen.”
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