March 21: Mortality and Immortality
♫ Music:
Thursday, March 21
Mortality and Immortality
Scripture: I Corinthians 15:51-58
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Poetry:
At Cave Hill Cemetery
by Dave Harrity
Some say a beginning, others an end. Either way,
we are a window into earth: starched and quiet slate
of monuments, eroded annunciation of an angel’s face.
The graves are tidy, arranged repetitions for miles
in magnolias. We are quiet, reminded: bustled jars against
the former lives and sparrows arrowing over the lake.
The answers are buried, and we wander. You wonder
if any of it ends. All leaves waxing out, seeded reds
shelling skins. Beneath ground, all touch is nothing.
No caravan of clouds above crosses--no blank or gray
or white winnowed with speech. Our voices: slight lisps
to one another in the twisting blond exit of summer.
MORTALITY AND IMMORTALITY
I got the call in a hotel room near San Diego. It was my department chair. And the shuffling sound I heard was her getting up from a meeting, stepping into a hallway. She was almost whispering. She said she wanted me to know, first, before the official emails came. My colleague was dead — “passed away” was the way she put it. And there was silence for a moment. She didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t either. How could it be?
This was the guy who shared a wall with me in the office building, who played his music too loud and laughed and talked so boisterously with students I had to put earbuds in and listen to classical music. This was the guy I’d recruited out of a PR career to teach adjunct for us. He came in unsure about whether he could do this. So, he over-compensated by getting to know each student, investing in each one as if this was one-on-one instruction. And his student evaluations were off the charts from the beginning. He brought food to class. He brought gifts to students he knew needed a boost. He brought flowers to the office staff. And days before I got this call, he’d asked for prayer from one of my colleagues and the administrative assistant. Something was wrong; he was going to see a doctor.
I was at a national college media conference. Below me on two floors of a high-rise hotel were hundreds of students and media professionals and media advisers talking about how to do better journalism in campus newspapers and apps and in social media. I sat on the bed looking out a window at the high-priced condos and hotels and office towers down the street, at the expensive cars and SUVs winding through perfect pavement. All the stuff downstairs, all that was outside my window, none of it matters, I thought. None of this will last.
Our Scripture today says this perishable must put on imperishable. It must — like seed that won’t grow unless it goes in the ground. “O death, where is your victory?” asked the Apostle Paul, sitting in a dark, filthy prison with Roman swords near enough to touch. God has something better. Life here on earth is not all there is. And my colleague’s work for the Lord, I know, was not in vain. That trumpet will sound one day — like the horn in the artwork alongside these words. The expression on the trumpeter’s face is a quiet joy. So, will it be when we hear it one day, calling us to wake from our sleep. Music will call us, in a tone of victory. The bouncing rhythm of the music you hear with this message is one with which my colleague would be tapping his feet. Hope has rhythm — a syncopation. We who know hope beyond the grave is better prepared to face that dark place. And as Paul told the church in Thessalonica, we should “encourage one another with these words” (1 Thes. 4:18).
Prayer:
O God, giver of life, death is fearsome. And for those of us who remain when a loved one goes, there is pain, a unique and lonely void. You know. You grieve with us. Thank you for sending your Son, the spotless Lamb of God, to pay our penalty, to bring us near you—to conquer death forever. Comfort us in this temporal life, especially those of us grieving the loss we all dread. Come into our pain, stay with us in our darkness, hear our questions. Be our refuge. For you alone are able to deliver.
Amen
Dr. Michael A. Longinow
Professor of Media & Journalism
Department of Media, Journalism and Public Relations
School of Fine Arts & Communication
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
The Last Trumpet
Patrick Dougher
Collage and gouache on paper
9” x 12”
This dynamic collage creates a cultural collision between a modern urban cityscape and a traditional African trumpet player. This forces the viewer to rethink the layers of meaning to in the biblical account of the “Last Trumpet” by moving the imagery from a religious framework into a very real moment in time, interrupting daily life with the unexpected.
About the Artist:
Patrick Dougher is an American artist, musician, and educator with over 30 years of experience as a fine artist and drummer/percussionist and over 20 years of experience working for community-based arts and social justice organizations. He has played and recorded with Grammy award winners Sade, Chuck D (Public Enemy), and Dan Zanes as well as many other notable artists. Dougher has also worked as a Teaching Artist in NYC public schools, as an Art Therapist at Kings County Hospital working with HIV positive children, and as the Director of community arts and program coordinator at Project Reach NYC. He has also worked as assistant curator at The Museum of African Art. For over 20 years he has used the arts to empower and support the socio-emotional growth and health of “at-risk” and disenfranchised youth of the city, seeking to inspire and to celebrate the noble beauty of people of African descent and to connect urban African American culture to its roots in sacred African art, spirituality, and ritual.
About the Music:
“Summer Song Two: Evening” from the album In Italy - Volume 2
About the Composer and the Performers:
Bill Dixon (1925–2010) was an American musician, composer, visual artist, and educator. Dixon was one of the seminal figures in the free jazz movement. He played the trumpet, flugelhorn, and piano, often using electronic delay and reverberation. In the 1960s Dixon established himself as a major force in the jazz avant-garde movement. Dixon founded the Jazz Composers Guild, a cooperative organization that sought to create bargaining power with club owners and effect greater media visibility for jazz. Dixon's playing was noted for his extensive use of the pedal register, playing below the trumpet's commonly ascribed range. He was Professor of Music at Bennington College, Vermont, from 1968 to 1995, where he founded the college's Black Music Division. From 1970 to 1976 he played "in total isolation from the market places of this music", as he puts it. Solo trumpet recordings from this period were later released by Cadence Jazz Records and collected on the self-released multi-CD set Odyssey along with other material. Dixon’s association with saxophonist Archie Shepp led to the formation of the wonderful Archie Shepp-Bill Dixon Quartet.
About the Poet:
Dave Harrity is a poet and lecturer who travels the country teaching workshops on contemplative living, spiritual discipline, and poetry. He is the author of Making Manifest: On Faith, Creativity, and the Kingdom at Hand (2013), a book of meditations and creative writing exercises for individual spiritual growth and communal formation. He has also written two books of poetry, These Intricacies (2015) and Our Father in the Year of the Wolf (2016). A recipient of several fellowships and awards, Harrity works closely with organizations that seek to educate and promote change. An Assistant Professor of English at Campbellsville University, he lives, teaches, and writes in Louisville, Kentucky.
About the Devotional Writer:
Dr. Michael Longinow
Professor of Media & Journalism
Department of Media, Journalism and Public Relations
School of Fine Arts & Communication
Biola Univeristy
Dr. Michael Longinow is the former chair of Biola's Department of Journalism and the advisor of Biola’s The Chimes student newspaper. Longinow attended Wheaton College, earning a BA in Political Science, and completed a PhD at the University of Kentucky. He has not only been an educator, but has worked as a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. He was a founding adviser member of the Association of Christian Collegiate Media (ACCM) and now serves as its national executive director. Longinow is a frequent workshop presenter and panelist at national conventions, has written chapters for five books dealing with journalism, history, media and religion, and the popular culture of American evangelicalism. Longinow lives in Riverside, California, with his wife Robin and their three children, Ben, Matt and Sarah.