Pr. Ben Adams
First Sunday in Lent
March 9, 2019
Gimme Shelter
The opening track of the Rolling Stones 1969 album, Let It Bleed, is a song called “Gimme Shelter.” Even if you don’t know this song, you’ve probably heard it before. It has one of the most iconic opening guitar riffs ever played and its repeating chorus is beautiful and haunting. And what really makes the chorus so spine chilling is that the Stones invited guest vocalist Merry Clayton, to sing it. To this day, it remains the most prominent contribution to a Rolling Stones track by a female vocalist.
Merry Clayton is a gospel and soul singer and when she was called up by the Rolling Stone’s producer, Jack Nitzsche, at midnight, she was pregnant and in bed. Clayton made her recording with just a few takes then returned home to bed. In the song you can hear Clayton's voice crack under the strain, its an extremely powerful delivery. But upon Clayton returning home, the physical strain of the intense duet with Mick Jagger resulted in a miscarriage of her baby after the session.
It’s so heartbreaking to me that the very song that was written as a reflection and response to the Vietnam War and the violence and tension of the late 60s resulted in trauma for Merry Clayton. The song is a plea for shelter from these very things and yet, the song caused such pain for Clayton herself.
Years later, Merry Clayton was asked about this moment of her life, she said, “That was a dark, dark period for me, but God gave me the strength to overcome it.” Somehow in the storm of her life, Merry Clayton found enough shelter and strength in God to survive.
Shelter from the storm, I think it’s something we all need and desire. From the realities of our current wars, to the pain of death, to the daily struggle to survive and thrive, we can all understand and resonate with the deep longing, gimme shelter.
And we are in our first week of the season of Lent, a season often described as a time of being in the desert or wilderness where we are without shelter. But this week in particular even as we hear of Jesus being lead to the wilderness and tempted by the devil, we also hear of the Israelites in Deuteronomy who are promised to be delivered from the brutal slavery they endured in Egypt to a land of milk and honey, as well, in our Psalm we receive the promise that, “You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, "My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust." Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways”
But even as we hear this promise we look around and we see storms and desert and wilderness and we feel unprotected and without shelter from the elements. So we cry out, “Gimme shelter!” And we hear this promise of shelter in God, but it is a promise that might seem too abstract, too otherworldly. But this is where it is helpful to center ourselves in the experience of our ancestors in the faith. In Deuteronomy the ancient Israelites did not imagine a life after death outside this world: so if we listen to this ancient creed in our first reading it situates us on this earth: a land that produces foodstuffs, a place of deserts, but also of abundance, “flowing with milk and honey.” it is on this earth that we are to celebrate the bounty of the Lord our God.
That is the promise we are given today, that in the shelter of the most high, in the shelter of this abundant creation there is sufficient resources for all people, right here, right now. This isn’t some otherworldly promise but it is the promise of today of the here and now.
This was a healing promise for me personally to hear this week. I’ve been in my own wilderness of death this year after the death of my Uncle Jim, my internship supervisor Reverend Jim Stender, and my high school friend Hameed. All of these deaths occurred within a month of each other and I found myself feeling uprooted like my foundation had been loosed and the storm was blowing me all around.
I needed to find a shelter, and through connecting with old friends and family, receiving love and support from Tara and the folks around me, and talking with my spiritual director, I heard this promise of shelter this week anew. I was even able to see the storm as a source of water and life during a desert like parched time of life.
With all of the recent death in my life, this past Ash Wednesday felt very different to me. The reality of our mortality was real for me in ways that went beyond just the remembering that I am dust and to dust I will return. But it was also the sermon that Reverend Amity Carrubba preached on Ash Wednesday that I was reminded that returning to the dust, returning to creation, is an ultimate return to the shelter of our God. The shelter of the most high that the Psalmist speaks of.
And in knowing that I realized that as dust that God has breathed life into, I am already a part of that shelter of God. We are currently residing in the abundant land of milk and honey, so we don’t have to hoard the first fruits. We can harvest them into a basket, place them before the Lord and as it says in Deuteronomy, together with the aliens who reside among us, we shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to us and to our house.
The final verse of the Rolling Stones song “Gimme Shelter” makes a beautiful turn from the apocalyptic lyrics of war and murder being a shot away to love being a kiss away. The shelter we so desire is just that close to us. It is here and it’s only a kiss away, a connection away, a movement of justice away. Merry Clayton found that strength and shelter amidst a hard and troubling miscarriage, the Israelites found that strength and shelter even in the desert wandering, we can find our shelter in the most high even in the wilderness of Lent
God is inviting us into this shelter even as we cry out “Gimme shelter!” It is here and now, it is in the delicious bread and wine we share at communion, it’s in refreshing water of our baptism, it is the infinite in the finite, it is ultimate and everlasting, the land of milk and honey, the shelter of the most high, in the desert, the wilderness, the war torn area, the stormy, pain soaked places of our lives, God’s shelter is there too.
In the shelter of the most high there is room for all. No matter if you are Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all. Amen