The Choir That Learned a New Song

For years, the downtown church sang the same hymns in the same arrangements, and the congregation shrank to a faithful few who knew every note by heart. Then a new music director arrived — a young woman who had studied both sacred music and the blues — and she did something that made the old guard uncomfortable. She invited the whole neighborhood to join the choir. No auditions.

A retired drag performer with a stunning baritone stood next to a deacon who had voted against the inclusion resolution. A teenager with anxiety who could barely speak above a whisper found herself carried by the voices around her. A homeless veteran who smelled like the street sang with his eyes closed and his hands raised, and nobody moved away from him.

The sound was imperfect. It was also the most beautiful thing that church had produced in decades.

John writes that everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, because God is love. Not God has love, or God approves of love under certain conditions — God is love. As Rachel Held Evans reminded us, we do not get to screen who belongs at the table or in the choir loft. Love is not a doctrine we gatekeep. It is the very nature of the Divine, and it sounds like a room full of unexpected voices singing the same song in different keys, somehow finding harmony.