For Wilshire Baptist Church
I’m a big fan of misheard lyrics. I especially like the ones that are goofy and nonsensical. Probably the most famous is Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “there’s a bad moon on the rise” lyric that has been humorously misquoted as “there’s a bathroom on the right.”
Sometimes the wrong words sound right but they change the meaning significantly. For years I heard an old Charlie Rich song, “Rolling with the Flow,” that said, “I’ve got my angel raising kids” until I read the actual lyrics, “While guys my age are raising kids.” Instead of being a married man who can’t settle down, the narrator is a single man who hasn’t grown up. Big difference for sure.
On Easter Sunday I misheard something in church that caused me to stop and think a little more deeply about what Easter and this life is all about. Quintin Coleman, one of our former choral scholars, was singing “The Trumpet Shall Sound” by George Frederic Handel. It was gorgeous, of course, and as I listened, my ear heard: “The trumpet shall sound, And the dead shall be raised incorruptible, And we shall be saved.”
It’s a straightforward and acceptable Easter message for sure, but then I glanced down at the words printed in the worship folder and realized I had misheard the message. The text isn’t “we are saved” but rather “we are changed.”
Hmm . . . changed vs. saved. To be frank, the faith I was taught as a youth really was about being “saved” from my sin and having my salvation and eternal life secured, and that’s all about me. But being saved to the point of being changed is a whole different matter.
In his Easter message, our pastor George Mason said, “If Easter means anything, it empowers us to embody the power and hope of the resurrection today. The Easter story calls us to new life and to embody hope in how we live now.”
That’s not about what happens to us when we die from this life; it’s about what we do with this life now. Like the Handel text says, we are not just saved; we are changed. A big part of that change is to be saved from ourselves and our worst inclinations, and the worst inclination of all is to live life totally for ourselves. The change that we’ve been saved for should have us living for others, and that requires more from us than just “rolling with the flow.”