Free Harmonics
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
October 7, 2012
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
Romans 12:16a
Luke 13: 10-17
Exodus 32:15-20
Let
us pray,
Help us to see
despite our eyes
Help us to think
outside our minds
Help us to be
more than our lives
For your eyes show us the way
Your mind knows the truth
Your being is the life.
Amen.
I
want to get right into it this morning because I'm excited about this sermon.
I've been thinking a lot about it this week, and the week really lined up to
help me put some things into perspective. So as we continue with our
"Marks of a True Christian" series with this week's passage verse
16a, "Live in Harmony with One another" looking back at where we've
been: Romans 12:9:
9 Let love
be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10 love
one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do
not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in
hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to
the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
14 Bless
those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice
with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one
another.[1]
I
chose to compliment it with Luke 13: 10-17:
10 Now he was
teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then
there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.
She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When
Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your
ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up
straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue,
indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd,
“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be
cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 But the Lord answered him and
said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his
donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And
ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long
years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17 When he
said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was
rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. [2]
To
me the idea of living in harmony is a pretty cool one. The musical metaphor really
literally sings of truth, but I want to unpack it a little bit this morning
because it really gets at one of my favorite theological ideas about the way
the world is and just how beyond our scope big God is. I've asked the choir to
help me out a little bit with showing exactly what harmony is. According to the
dictionary, harmony is "any simultaneous combination of tones," so
that means if all of us decided to sing at once, all on different notes that
would technically be harmony, but harmony tends to have the connotation of also
being a simultaneous combination of tones that is pleasing to the ear. We call
these chords. I've asked to choir to give an example of such a chord. If you
will, one note all, (choir sings one note in unison) then in harmony (choir
steps in to a 4 note chord) quite
pleasing to the sound, and if they change one of the notes (change the Alto
note to one that would cause disonance) not pleasing sound. The other idea that
I've asked them to help me with is the concept of resolution. In order to show
this I've asked them to sing the last line of a hymn from the "Lent"
section. I've chosen a song that does not resolve, to show you what I mean be
resolution. Again if you would (choir sings last line of lenten hymn without
resolution) Do you hear how that is
hanging at the end, and it seems like it is missing something? Now sing another one
(with resolution). Do you hear the difference between unresolved and resolved? Now
keep those in mind as we go forward.
So
if we are called to live in harmony together the first thing that it suggests
is that we are not all the same. We can't all be the same and be in harmony.
There needs to be that simultaneous combination of different tones, but as we
saw today, as well, just because all different notes are sung simultaneous
there is not necessarily going to be beautiful pleasing music. That is why in
music there is always a composer, who puts together the notes, placing them in
order, in time, and in place, so that the notes are pleasing to the sound, and
so there is that beautiful sounding resolution at the end of a phrase. I found
in my research this week, as I was looking for a God as the composer metaphor,
the passage I used as the "Prayer of Preparation" from Jesuit Priest Father
Peter Ribes Take a look at it.
There was a
wonderful melody which God himself had composed from eternity. It was the most
beautiful and captivating of melodies, one that no man could dream of listening
to.
One day, God
said to himself: "I want to build an orchestra to play my tune in a
harmony of the most enchanting music. I want all men and women to play in my
orchestra. Yes, I'll prepare for them all sorts of sweet melodious instruments,
yes, a unique instrument for each man suited to his unique abilities. Thus, one
and all will create with them the most wonderful symphony ever."
God distributed
all the instruments among all peoples of earth, and told them: "Now, let
us play all together my eternal song of love, joy and peace, It will be the
most wonderful symphony ever."
So, all men,
God's orchestra, began playing along with God. And this is what came out of
God's beautiful and most charming tune: A jarring din! A cacophonous sound! A raucous
noise!
So God's got this
amazing symphony for us, if we would just learn to play it, but one of the
weaknesses of his metaphor is that he doesn't really get at why human beings
created that cacophonous and raucous sound. What is it? Did God not teach us
well? Why can we just not play it? I think this, our passage for this morning
is a part of why? We don't live in harmony with each other. We do not have a
concept of our role, and how our lives fit in with the overall symphony. Somewhere
we lost it. We may have been given instruments to play, but we seem to not
understand what our instrument is, when to play it, and how it fits in with the
rest of the orchestra of humanity. So you get this cacophonous sound that we
hear resonating all around us in our world filled with strife and discord, the
very antithesis of harmony. So the question becomes then, how do we learn to
live in harmony? We have to go to the composer.
We
have to go to God, the author of our gifts, the one who, according to the
metaphor, has distributed our instruments, but what is God's style of music? Is
he a classical composer, with every note meticulously arranged? Many think so.
It seems that the Pharisees in our Gospel passage thought so. They had
dedicated themselves to a return to the strict laws of the Pentateuch, looking
to return some identity to the Jewish people, believing that their song had
been written, and that the people needed to simply read the music of old to
find their place again. But then in comes Jesus, and he heals a woman, who had
been crippled for 18 years, and he chooses to do it on a the Sabbath. What are
you doing Jesus, the music says you should rest, and yet you play a note, what
gives? Jesus uses an interesting word in his response. After calling them
hypocrites, as he typically does, he says, "and ought not this
woman." Ought is an interesting word, especially when looking at law,
because it seems to be a judgment call. There is some lee way in ought, and in
this case the ought goes against the letter of the law, or to keep our metaphor
going, the notes on the page. It is rare in music for there to be optional
notes, at least not in classical music. Have you ever heard the acronym for
Bible? I've heard it named Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. I know
right wow. I'm not sure there is anything basic about a book that proscribes
some laws, and then poses some moral dilemmas, like a woman who has been
crippled for 18 years, and you've got to break a law to save her. As Alice in
Wonderland said often, "Curiouser and curiouser." God is bigger than
what the Pharisees thought, and the Bible is far bigger than that acronym.
So
there are some optional notes, but how many? How does that work? How can an
instrument player have options, but still be in harmony with others? Is there
flexibility and freedom within God's symphonic masterpiece? How can we ever
play in harmony with that kind of freedom, or are we always doomed to
cacophonous unresolved dissonance? How will that ever work? How can harmony be
created in an atmosphere of uncertainty? Is there music like that? Yes.
I've
been playing the harmonica for years. Basically you have ten holes, and the way
it is set up is that each hole is a note, and they are spaced in such a way
that they are within the chord of the hole around it, and then if you breath in
instead of out you get an entirely different sound, but yet still in harmony with
itself. (Show this on harmonica). Now I add my guitar, it works like this,
there are certain chords that I know will sound good if I am blowing out and
certain I know will sound good if I am blowing in, all within harmony. (Play a
few chord changes to show how it works).- Now it works like that, I don't
really have to plan what notes I will play but they are all in harmony as long
as I am within the framework of the two instruments together. Basically I can
make the notes up as I go along, as long as I understand how it works together.
Now obviously it's only me playing, but the same concept would work with a
group. That is the basis of jazz and other forms of modern music.
What
does it take then to play jazz effectively? You have to know the rules, and how
the instruments work together. You have to have a sense of the other people you
are playing with, and you have to know your place, your role. It becomes then
not about what note you have to play in each place, but instead, how well you
understand your place in harmony with each other, and then there are no limits
to the amazing music that can be created.
I've
been surrounded by football analogies all week, so I'd like to take a step
outside of my jazz metaphor for a moment. As some of you may know we are on a roll. 5-0 as of
yesterday, and in some unknown water for our team and for our school. Blue
Ridge has always had good players. In the three previous years I have coached
we have had a winning record each season, and we have made the playoffs 2 out
of the 3 years, so we've always been good, but greatness has eluded us. And
before coming to Blue Ridge, coaching against them, it was much the same. There
always would be something that would pop up that would divide the team, some
piece of adversity that would arise, and the team would fall apart, the players
would get down on each other, and implode. We, the other coaches and I, were
trying to figure out how we could keep that from happening this year. How can
we mold them together so that no matter what, through the hardest games, up
against the wall, after a bad call, after a silly penalty, or when someone
wasn't putting in enough work, or something happens off the field and our
players are missing, or a star gets hurt. How can we teach them to get through
those hard times? We decided we'd raise the stakes at practice. We decided that
we would push them and push them and push them, raising the level of intensity
up to a game situation, an uncomfortable situation, a situation that was
unfair, and unjust. They were running for mistakes, they were running for
penalties, they were running for walking, they were running for having to run
it seemed. At the end they were all at each other's throats, and angry at us.
They were focused on the errors that each other were making, and so very sure
that the reason we were yelling and having them run was because of each
mistake, they thought that if they could just figure it out that they wouldn't
have to run anymore. They didn't know they couldn't win, that they were focused
on the wrong thing. They were focused on trying to control the results of their
actions, rather than on the action, the harmony of the action, the way they
worked together. It was too easy to take them out of their focus. So afterwards
we told them. Sometimes you just can't control your fate. Bad things happen,
you can't stop it, you can't fix it, you think you caused it, but you didn't,
it just happened. I said when you get in that situation, where nothing is fair
there are only two things you can count on: discipline and each other. Now
yesterday we were down 3 with 1 minute left, having our last 3 offensive
possessions end in a fumble and two interceptions, back against the wall. Yet
they kept their composure, we got the ball back, three straight plays, executed
them with discipline, touchdown, game victory, upset, number one team in the
division above us.
So
we look at the world around us. Unfair, out of sync , out of tune, and we are
told to be in harmony with one another. Like the football team we each have
unique and different talents, different roles, different responsibilities. Like
the jazz ensemble we have the freedom to find our place within the group. It
may seem to us that notes on a page, perfection attainable, following basic
directions would be easier, easier because we'd have control, we'd know when we
messed up, we'd know when others messed up, and we could fix it fix all the
problems, but it seems that the masterpiece of God's symphony requires
something more from each of us than just the air in the trumpet, or the fingers
on the keys, we have to give a little
bit of ourselves, in the moment. There is always the danger though, as we see
in our Old Testament Lesson, that too much of ourselves can be a problem.
Knowing our place in the world is key. Without instruction, without learning,
without discerning our place, it is easy for us to forget it all and indulge
ourselves. The Israelites had been led out of Egypt, led through the desert,
but then when their leader seemed away, nowhere to be found, how quickly did
they decide there was no leader, no standards, nothing to guide their behavior?
How quickly did they forget their place? It seems that freedom is important,
but we can never forget who gives us our instruments, and how if they were all
played together, the harmonies would resonate, and the symphony, would reach
heights like we cannot even imagine, for God did not just write the symphony,
he did more, because God is bigger than a symphony, God invented music itself,
each note, and each chord, harmony. that perfect sound that the choir sang, and
he also brings things in time to their perfect resolution, may we all seek to
hear and participate in that perfect harmony. Amen.
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