Midweek
Lenten Devotion
Week 4
“Slip Slidin' Away”
by Paul Simon
Slip
slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away
I know a man
He came from my home town
He wore his passion for his woman
Like a thorny crown
He said Delores
I live in fear
My love for you's so overpowering
I'm afraid that I will disappear
Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away
I know a woman
Became a wife
These are the very words she uses
To describe her life
She said a good day
Ain't got no rain
She said a bad day's when I lie in bed
And think of things that might have been
Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away
And I know a father
Who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons
For the things he'd done
He came a long way
Just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and headed home again
He's slip slidin'
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away
God only knows
God makes his plan
The information's unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway
When in fact we're slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away…Mmm
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters:
Paul Simon
Slip
Slidin' Away lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
This Lenten series will explore the human condition through the lyrics of Paul Simon and address the malady suggested by the song with the Gospel.
Concordia Lutheran Junior College, Ann Arbor, Michigan – September, 1966:
Professor
Richard Zwick introduces himself and one of the goals of his class in English
Literature to the incoming freshman, including many pastors’ kids.
“One goal of this course will be to shatter your illusions.” There was a gasp from many of the PK in the class. Through American authors like Hemingway, Knowles, Fitzgerald, Jane Austin, George Eliot, our sheltered worlds were open to the reality of the human condition.
Illusions: Paul Simon’s lyrics are illusion shatters. We live with the illusion that we are in control of our lives. Yet, in a minute, or even a second our lives are upended by accidents, a decision, a job loss, a pandemic. Our maturation, too, often causes unexpected losses as we move from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to middle age to elderly. At each place we may not recognize just how far we are slip slidin’ away.
Overpowering love may lead us to fear and loss of the one we seek to love.
On rainy days we may remember the loss of things that might have been.
We may come to moments and fail to live up to moments of confession slipping away with just a quiet kiss.
The followers of Christ had their illusions shattered. The one to bring in God’s Kingdom is betrayed, convicted, tortured, and crucified.
The passion according to Mark reveals a follower who flees at the time of betrayal leaving his robe behind and running away naked. He indeed is slip sliding away for his commitment to follow Jesus.
Scholars guess that it was John Mark, companion of Paul and writer of the gospel who was the follower who ran away in shame.
How often do we reach a moment – a moment for change, commitment, new life and slip slide away figuratively naked and ashamed?
Lent shatters our illusions, exposes our slip sliding away – our need for forgiveness and renewal.
Each of us can point to a time when our silence allowed prejudice to be spoken or hurtful words to have the last say as we were slip sliding away.
God only knows
God makes his plan
The information's unavailable
To the mortal man
God only knows how to bring new life out of our slip sliding ways.
Mark makes much more of this incident than we might imagine. The robe that was left behind has a particular Greek name: sindon. The young man described in this incident and at the open tomb looks to be the same. Mark’s Gospel does not have an angel messenger at the tomb but a young man in a sindon – same rare word!
Pastor William E. Flippin, Jr. writes on the site Biblical Hermenetics:
“In Mark's Gospel,
he explicitly says that the person that proclaimed to the confused women
present at the tomb was a young man, not an angel wearing a white robe. For him
to be wearing a sindon, which is very specifically used for burial clothing,
has some deliberate correlations by the Gospel writer Mark in identifying the
significant transformation of the death and rebirth of humanity as found in the
Resurrection.”
Source: https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/4826/what-is-the-significance-of-the-young-man-who-runs-away-naked-in-marks-gospel
The one ashamed and naked becomes the messenger of the Good News:
As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you. Mark 16:5-7
The Crucified One stripped of all robes is witnessed to by the redeemed one who fled and now in a great reversal becomes the first witness to the shrouds left behind.
God in love reverses all our slip sliding away to effect new life. Amen
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