MIdsummer SErmon

Welcome: About Midsummer wither.

Welcome to The Danish Midsummer Church Service. No one like the painter P.S. Kroyer has captured the moods of a Danish Sct. Hans evening as in his painting Sct. Hans 1906. Here, children and adults look at the Midsummer Bonfire that illuminates the beach, so that anyone who sees the painting can almost feel the heat from the blaze and smell the smoke.

There is no Danish song, which like the Midsummer-song, authored by the poet Holger Drachman, which has influenced and marked our Sct. Hans celebrations. The song is loved and sung, either on P.E. Muller’s old tune or Shubidua's enjoyable version.

Today Mette will lead as we sing the beautiful Midsummervise on Muller's old melody. Let the memories go back to former Sct. Hans evenings, to memories of bonfires and bright nights – and then sing.

Prelude: Midsummer.

Sermon. Midsummer, fathers, and bonfires.

I have given this Danish sermon a threefold title: midsummer, fathers and bonfires. All of these are something we care about, yes something and someone we love.

We love Midsummer, where we sing about how much we love our country! And to enjoy or commemorate the special bright nights that characterize summer in Denmark and the Nordic countries. Midsummer is a lovely time. It is strange that six months have already passed by 2020, and that we are now celebrating the longest day – and must realise that now it is going the opposite way. Towards autumn and darkness. But, let us remember that Sct. Hans is the highlight of summer, and we know that throughout July and August we will still have beautiful summer days. Let us enjoy the summer, let us enjoy the long days and the bright nights, let us celebrate Midsummer with joy and not with the sadness that the days get shorter.

It is Father's Day. It was already Father's Day two weeks ago in DK, but for all you brave, loving and good fathers here in the United States: we celebrate you and we know that it takes courage, time, attention, patience and love to be a good father.

In recent months due to COVID19, when we have been more at home and with our families, I think many fathers have enjoyed spending more time than usual with their children. Our busy lives were put to rest, where we were to stay at home and keep distance. I hope and believe that it has been good for many fathers and families.

Let us say or whisper our Father's Name — and let us think fondly of what he means or has meant to us.

Let us celebrate the good, let us forgive what must be forgiven, let us reconcile with what must be reconciled.

We thank good fathers, our beloved grandfathers, and other father figures who have shaped us, helped us, loved us, and made us who we are.

We celebrate Midsummer with sparkly bonfires: because we believe that light is stronger than darkness. As the gospel so beautifully and strongly says today: "What I tell you in the darkness, you shall speak in the light, and what is whispered in your ear, you shall preach from the roofs." We must talk about the light in the darkness, we must believe in the light in the darkness, and we must lead the way to the light in the darkness.

Sct. Hans around a bonfire. A sparkly bonfire that will be lit on Tuesday in many parts of DK and in many places around the world where we Danes are located.

Like the beautiful Skagen painting, the flare from the bonfire illuminates both the face and the hearts. Like a beacon.

We love our country, we sing.

We love our country when it is Christmas, and we turn on the star on the tree with brilliance in every eye.

We love our country when it is spring, and the birds let their voices greet and warm us.

But we love our country, the small kingdom of Denmark high to the north, mostly in midsummer. The nights are bright, and our minds are light-filled. We want nothing else than to chase all evil, all darkness, all war, all witches, and trolls away from our lives and will light bonfires of joy for all the world.

It is quite evangelical: that the light shines in the darkness and darkness did not overcome it.

That was the message that John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, paved the way for: with his wild cries in the sand of the deserts. He spent his life doing just that: paving the way for the light itself, the true light.

We call Sct. Hans St. after Saint John-Johannes, who was born half a year before Jesus on June 24. Sct. Hans is like Christmas, a mixture of pagan and Christian rituals. The Christian Celebration of John the Baptist was at one point mixed up with bonfire Midsummer Celebrations.

Sct. Hans is indeed a lovely and much beloved tradition. Celebrating the height of summer, the bright nights, the power of nature.

A sparkly bonfire that testifies to a belief in the best, and a heartfelt song promising to fight for goodness, light, and truth.

A sparkly bonfire that sends light into our lives and our world.

A sparkly fire that tells us that the light is always strongest.

"We will peace here in our land, Sankte Hans Sankte Hans.

It can be won where the hearts never get doubtfully cold."

Do you remember the beautiful fairy tale about the "Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen?

A fairytale about doubtful cold hearts. The fairytale tells the story about a troll-mirror that has the power to distort everything that is mirrored, so that you only see the flaws in everything.

The mirror falls to the ground and is crushed, and the splinters fly around with the distorted dark force in them. And it happens that one splinter speck gets into the eye of Kay, and the boy suddenly only believes in what can be counted, measured, and weighed. Gerda, on the other hand, cries over him and wants to save him.

The adventure is a long story of how Gerda bravely and purposefully travels far to get Kay back. It is a fairytale, and it ends well as it is revealed that the strongest power that can make even doubting frozen cold hearts melt…. is love.

At Midsummer we promised to keep away the cold of our hearts by lighting our bonfires, and lighting hope and love in each other's hearts, and faith.

Listen to Benny Andersen's beautiful tribute to life:

Live while you are living and do not be envious

But wish the living all the best in life

A hand can be clenched as well as opened

Use it for caresses and not for strokes

Tomorrow may be another day

Where nothing is quite the same as before.

Amen.

A Sermon in May

17.maj 2020

Danish church service at 10:00 a.m. 11 on Facebook

"May, larks and freedom."

Welcome: Today's service is about May, larks and freedom. In

In May, Denmark celebrated the 75th anniversary of liberation. In cooperation with the Danish priests in Canada and New York, I participated in a fine freedom greeting that we shared on Facebook. In this greeting we listened to the beautiful Danish song of freedom: A lark ascended. A beautiful text and a lovely melody that, like a beautiful fluttering lark, let us sing about a morning in May, about fluttering free larks and about that spring of 1945, when Denmark became free again after 5 dark years.

We begin this Danish church service by singing this lovely Danish song. We hope that you will sing along at home in the living rooms, kitchen or on the terrace. Let's sing with Mette and Rush about May, larks and freedom.

May, larks and freedom.

It's May, and we yearn for freedom. We long as larks to be able to fly freely, fling off out in the open. Fly out there where we can become quite dizzy with happiness: and once again fly far away to other homes, places, countries and missed relationships.

We long not to live with uncertainty, fear, and distance. We long being able to live freely again, breathe the air to the fullest without being afraid of infection, embrace the day with hope and especially to hug one another.

We long for freedom. We long to be able to reunite, as families, as neighbors, as friends and as churches.

At this Danish May church service, freedom will be the focus. Think for a moment what freedom means to you? Bearing in mind what freedom meant 75 years ago, and what freedom means now in 2020, when we are held captive by a world-wide virus and anxiety.

Gospel John 14.15-21

The promise of another spokesman

If you love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another spokesman who shall be with you forever: the spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. You know it, because it stays with you and must be in you. I will not leave you fatherless; I'm coming to you. Another short time, and the world no longer sees me, but you see me, for I live, and you shall live. That day you shall recognize that I am in my father, and you are in me and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he is the one who loves me; and he who loves me shall be loved by my father; i too shall love him and make myself known to him."

Sermon: May, larks and freedom.

"Susanne, if anyone starts saying anything, you know, and take my freedom away from me, then I'm completely lost, I tell you. I don't think I could survive without my freedom.'

These words come from a funny and satirical collection of poems about Gitte and her conversations with her friend Susanne in "Gitte Monologues" by the Danish writer Per Højholt.

"Gitte's monologues" were written in 1984 and I suddenly remembered Gitte’s monologues about freedom, when I thought about freedom, may and larks.

The late author Per Højholt's mixed lyricism and prose: and the author himself became world-famous in Denmark, when he travelled the country and recited these monologues and even went on national television, DR.

Gitte's monologues are about life's big and small issues: agriculture, the Social Democrats, nature, the garden, Denmark and not least freedom.

"Susanne, if anyone starts saying anything, you know, and take my freedom away from me, then I'm completely lost, I tell you. I don't think I could survive without my freedom.'

Gitte's freedom was mainly personal: to be able to control some of her time in her marriage to her husband Preben. He could spend time on his interest, and she on hers. That was her main concept of her freedom.

In light of Denmark's celebration of the 75th anniversary of liberation, and in the light of Gitte's hilarious monologue about freedom – well, the month of M ay 2020 is a good month to think about freedom.

What does freedom mean to you and me, to us? What limits our freedom, and what strengthens our freedom? Is freedom, freedom personal freedom without borders and considerations, or is freedom a more civic freedom based on responsibility and duty.

"Freedom is not constituted primarily of privileges but on responsibilities." the French philosopher of author Albert Camus wrote.

It may sound a little too intellectual and serious to us freedom-hungry 2020 Corona limited people, who really just long to be able to move freely between places and people fear of infection and disease. “My freedom, I don’t think I can live without it….”

But what if freedom, our high acclaimed freedom, actually first and foremost is conditional on the fact that we do our duty rather than simply enjoying our privileges? What if freedom is as the Danish priest and proverb collector Peder Syv emphasized: “He is free, who does not as he pleases, but as he ought."

But what if my freedom and my happiness is directly connected to and depending on the freedom and happiness of others?

What if true freedom of life and the deepest happiness of life are precisely found in being bound in love, in honesty, in decency and in society? Maybe our duty and our responsibility makes us free?

After all, freedom is not always the freedom from something, but even more freedom for or to something.

There is something liberating in doing your duty, the Danish psychology professor Svend Brinkman states in his book: "Standings – 10 old ideas for a new world" . He argues that our duty is the key to true liberation and true freedom.

For Svend Brinkman, Albert Camus and for Peder Syd, freedom is first and foremost a responsibility and a civic duty. Our answer to the obligations to be a human in the world with others.

With these thoughts of freedom, we listen to today’s gospel from John and at the first reading from Peter’s Letter

Jesus said to His disciples "Do you love me, so keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another spokesman who shall be with you forever: the spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. You know it, because it stays with you and must be in you. I will not leave you fatherless; "

Jesus shows the disciples the truth and the way and the life — by referring to the commandments as the means and ways to a good righteous life. The commandments set us free, to live as we should.

The disciples were not left fatherless, unattended, - as the spokesman, the holy spirit, the very spirit of God, was sent so that they could be guided, encouraged, strengthened, and set free to live the life for which they were created and called.

And then we listen to Peter’s letter:

"Live all in unity, and show compassion, brotherly love, mercy, and humility. On the other hand, not evil or scolding with scolding, but rather with blessing, for you are called to inherit blessing.

He who will love life and see happy days,

he shall guard his tongue for evil

and his lips to speak fraud.

he shall stay away from evil and do good, seek peace, and strive for it."

My freedom, our highly acclaimed and precious freedom, is the freedom to live with others in respect, in consideration, in compassion, in peace.

When the Danes celebrate the liberation 75 years ago with the beautiful song about the beautiful larks and the lovely freedom in May, it was not just a celebration of my personal precious freedom, but our fundamental civic freedom. Our freedom to live in peace. Our freedom to live in a democracy, in a just society which does grant us freedom to think, gather and be, but even more gives us the responsibility to protect these rights for others and protect the weak.

In this Corona era, where we all yearn for freedom: long for open doors and open arms, unlimited touches and hugs, - in this day and age we can so easily focus on our personal freedom and forget the responsibilities of that acclaimed freedom.

Yes, freedom is to be able to live your potentials, to be able to travel and move freely, to be able to express oneself, to vote and to gather freely. But in times like this we should never forget that true freedom is, after all, based on duty and responsibility.

“He is free who does not as he wants, but as he ought.”

It's May and we yearn for freedom. We long as the larks to be able to fly freely out in the open.

Fly out there where we can become quite dizzy with happiness: and once again fly far away to other homes, places and countries and missed relationships.

We long not to live with uncertainty, fear and distance.

We long to be able to live freely again, breathe the air to the fullest without being afraid of infection, embrace the day with hope and not least each other with loving hugs.

We long for freedom. We long to be able to reunite, as families, as neighbors, as friends and as churches.

But until then, until we can again open the doors wide open, open the distant virtual embrace to a heartfelt hug, it is our responsibility, as free people, who are fortunate to live in a democracy and in a civilized time, to think first and last with responsibility. Not just for myself. But for my neighbor who is also created in the image of God.

And we are not left fatherless or discouraged. God's holy spirit is with us and among us, and we pray to have new hope, renewed faith, and kind love in our hearts and mind to live as we ought: to live as free responsible, caring people, created in the image of God.

Amen

The last song to be sung today is one of the most beautiful spring and summer songs from the High School Songbook. It was written by Alberte Vinding and Aske Benzon, and many of you have probably heard the fine song. Perhaps you have heard it sung by Danmakr’s Radio's Girl Choir or by the lovely Sing a long, which is on DR during this time.

It's a beautiful melody and a beautiful lyric about the bright nights that come again, about the light pouring in and the house that's full of wind. Open doors, vision and outlook, love, longing and freedom.