By Sally Messner, September 1, 2025
This sermon was originally preached at the Association of Lutheran Church Musician’s Morning Prayer on August 7, 2025 in Raleigh, NC. The conference theme, “For All That Is to Be,” celebrated the beginning of the ALCM’s 40th anniversary celebration.
All is vanity, pursuit is meaningless, we’re all gonna die. And we say, “Thanks be to God.”
All is vanity, hebel in Hebrew—breath, vapor, nothing to take hold of. “What with care and toil we fashion, tower and temple, fall to dust.” For the writer of Ecclesiastes, the impermanence of things in this world “under the sun” is paramount. All the striving, all the climbing, all the running, and at the finish line is death—for all of us, regardless of power, wealth, beauty, whatever has taken hold of us. We cannot fill the void ourselves.
But there’s another Hebrew word for breath—ruach—God’s breath, God’s spirit that created us into being, that created us in the image of Love. This breath takes hold of us. “By my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit [the ruach] has called me through the gospel.” Filled with the spirit, the life-giving breath of God, we can let go of that which sucks the breath out of us—because we cannot fill the void, we will never live up to God’s expectations.
The struggle with human autonomy and self-sufficiency is nothing new. Luther fought this despair and finally found solace in Paul’s letters.
“Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility [hebel] not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8:19-20)
Decay is not our destiny. Death is not the end. And we do not fill the void ourselves. God fills the void with God’s breath, God’s spirit.
In 1924, as French composer Gabriel Fauré lay dying, he spoke to his son: “When I am no longer here you will hear it said that my works did not amount to much…You must not let that trouble you. It’s fate…There is always a moment of oblivion.” Even the great Fauré knew well the wisdom of Ecclesiastes—that he wouldn’t be remembered. But we have been comforted by Fauré’s Requiem and his other works. We’ve been comforted by a great cloud of musical witnesses. And we do remember. Nothing is new—pitches are constant, rhythms are universally understood—and yet after hearing God’s promises proclaimed, we are new. We are changed. We are different people after we encounter—in the liturgy and elsewhere—the God who sustains us.
When we gather in community to sing, pray, and eat, we are filled with God’s breath, God’s spirit. Our work as liturgical leaders changes people, changes us. This is why we do this day after day, week after week, even when all things have become wearisome, even when we feel like we are chasing after the wind. The liturgy will proclaim the gospel and bear God’s breath as the generations go and come. We cannot fill the void ourselves. Jesus—the Life of life, the Death of death—sustains us, sustains all of creation. And so we grasp the promise we cannot see. We greet each day’s new light with eager longing, ever singing, ever praising, as it has already been, as in the ages before us.
Sally Messner is director of worship for the Institute of Liturgical Studies (Valparaiso University) and director of worship and music at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis. She has been a contributor for worship planning resources in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and has published articles related to hymn writing, worship planning, and assembly singing. She also served as hymn editor for Lutheran Forum magazine. Sally is the current president of the Twin Cities chapter of Choristers Guild and is founding musical director of the Elm Ensemble, a liturgical project that brings together professional and amateur musicians with great sacred music and creative worship planning to help keep the church in dialogue with diverse voices from Christian history.