Back in January, when AnnaMaria told the choir that she wanted to do a month of Jazz, it made me think, “What does jazz have to do with the Gospel?” So later that night, I googled “jazz gospel” which gave me lots of different links to particular gospel music sites. Then I added the word “theology” into my search, and found a blog called Reflections of a Jazz Theologian written by a pastor in Colorado named Robert Gelinas. He wrote, also quoting Brad Braxton:
“The beauty of a jazz musician, lies in their ability not simply to hit a musical note exactly, but to move around the 'margins' of a note, thereby increasing the vibrato and resonance of the sound...When one too precisely hits a note or too accurately defines a reality in black and white, some of the color that captivates and motivates may be lost."
Gelinas concludes, “I believe that to know God is to embrace tension, not necessarily resolve it. Classical theology seeks precision, jazz theology lives and thrives in the ambiguity.”
Less than 36 hours later, at the Bi-District Leadership Training Day, Tim Craig had with him a book called Blue Like Jazz: Non-religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, by Donald Miller. I picked it up and read the author’s note at the beginning:
“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Baghdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for 15 minutes and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this happened.”
This did not feel like a coincidence, but a God-incidence. So I have begun to explore the connection between Jazz and the Gospel--not that U2 has been displaced from my favorites list by any means. But I have discovered that jazz is not just a particular genre of music; it is a style of approaching the art of making music. Within the boundaries of jazz, the music can sound very different, so different that you didn’t even know it was in the same genre. Isn’t that similar to our Christian life? Within each person of faith beats not only a physical heart, but also the heartbeat of God. It is this heartbeat in a sense that binds us together, but the lives empowered by that heartbeat certainly don’t look like the same from person to person.
When we were trying to figure out what to call this series, I asked AnnaMaria to talk about some of the terms used in Jazz. That’s when I discovered “in the pocket.” Almost off-handedly she said, “you know what that means,” and started to move on. But no, I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked.
“In the pocket” means that you’ve got the beat right; that you’ve got the time almost in your bones. Maybe all the rest of you already knew that in jazz the time is actually very strict. But I didn’t. Jazz always seemed so free flowing, so improvisational, so offbeat, as it were. But no, the time, the beat provides the base for all the improvisation to happen. When jazz musicians play “in the pocket,” they are united at the very base, at the beat, so that they can play their own instrument to help create the whole piece.
And that’s what it is like in living the Gospel as well. The heartbeat of God provides the base for all the different improvisations in individual lives. When we live “in the pocket,” we are united in the heart of God so that we can live and use our own gifts to be a part of the whole Body of Christ.
Evelyn Underhill, a 20th century Christian writer, said that “a spiritual life is simply a life in which all that we do comes from the centre, where we are anchored in God: a life soaked through and through by a sense of [divine] reality and claim, and self-given to the great movement of God’s will.”
Augustine of Hippo, a Christian from the 4th-5th centuries, wrote that “we humans, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you….You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.”
The closer we walk to the heartbeat of God, the more we live “in the pocket.” But how can we find ourselves walking and living close to the heartbeat of God? By keeping close company with the Incarnation of God, Jesus, and allowing his Spirit to infuse our own hearts and lives.
The Apostle Paul prayed for the Christians in Ephesus, and we take this prayer to our own hearts as well:
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.”
Being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ is being connected to the very heartbeat of God which beats so deep that our bones, our very fiber vibrate to this love. This becomes our song, sung in glorious praise to the One who out of overwhelming love set all the Creation into motion.
Then Paul went on to pray “that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
The strings of a bass, or a guitar, or a violin, or a cello mean nothing when they are sitting idle in their case. The top skin of a drum means nothing as it sits idle. But when the fingers of the musician set them to work, they vibrate with the note and play the song.
It is when our lives begin to vibrate like those strings or the tautly stretched drum-head that the song begins to play. When we begin to vibrate with the deep-rooted love of God in Christ, the very fiber of our being sings out and the world becomes filled with the heartbeat of God. And our hearts and lives begin to look and act more like the heart and life of Jesus, “who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”
As we live close to the heartbeat of God as revealed in Jesus the Christ, our lives truly begin to look more like his as we begin to live out and act out his love for the world. As our lives begin to vibrate with the very heartbeat of God, the song of love will begin to transform not only us, but the world.
This is living “in the pocket.”
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Holy Saturday
Bishop Will Willimon, North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, preached this sermon when he was Dean of the Chapel at Duke University in 1998.
Passage: I Peter 3:19
Where is Jesus now, this night, in this present darkness? Where might we seek him? He is dead. “He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He emptied himself freely accepting death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6). Where is Jesus? You know the words of the Creed: Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead, and was buried, he descended into hell....”
That’s why this Chapel seems peculiarly dark, dismal, and empty tonight. The one for whom this great arched room was built, the one whose presence draws us on Sunday, is not here.
“Crucified died and was buried, he descended into hell.” Nineteenth Century Methodists removed that portion of the Creed, claiming it unbiblical. But it’s not. The First Epistle of Peter speaks of Christ’s descent into hell, called by the Church, “The Harrowing of Hell.” It’s from the Old English hergian, to harrow, to deposit. Tonight, Satan’s territory is being despoiled.
After his death this afternoon (at the hands of us good, Bible quoting religious people), when he breathed his last, Jesus, ever on the move, descended to hell. Having harassed us, the living, he descended to the dead. Tonight, he is there, preaching to them, cajoling, enticing those who had not the benefit of his life and words during their lives.
How did the church come up with such a notion? This “harrowing of hell”?
It was inconceivable to a church which had been the beneficiary of the intrusive, relentless, incursions of Jesus — the way he was forever speaking to us, prodding us, invading our settled world with his words, touching our wounds with his hands — it was inconceivable that some, so many, shall by their deaths, be excluded from his relentless, probing love. So for Virgil, and Plato, and the myriad who, by their deaths, had missed the advent of God with us, he came to them who could not have come to him.
He is there tonight, doing what he does so well, preaching, teaching, touching, relentlessly seeking, persuading, inviting, announcing the love and mercy of God. Psalm 16:10, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell....” Byzantine art depicted Jesus, in the jaws of hell, giving a hand to those who had died lifting them up, out of the darkness.
And though he is down there, and therefore not here, there is something to be said to those of us he has temporarily left behind. That word is this: Because I am there, tonight, descended into the deadly darkness, confronting the enemy on the enemy’s own turf, you have hope.
If he is there, then know well that nothing — no darkness, bereftness, or pain you experience, is immune from his gracious presence. If he, though he was God, is able to risk all, to wade deep into the death we so fear and avoid, then what might he risk for you?
Tonight, this usually gracious Chapel is rather cold, empty, cavernous, and dark. And, life being as it is, there will be nights for you that are cold, and dark, and alone. Hell is dark, bereft, and void. The Good News: Tonight, hell is being harrowed, emptied by the word and work of a relentlessly seeking savior who will not leave us be. He told us stories of the seeking Shepherd who forever seeks the one lost sheep, the faithful father who awaits the return of the one lost son, the relentless woman who does not rest until she finds the one coin (Luke 14). He meant what he said. There is no place where you languish, no darkness so dark, which places you beyond his seeking, searching, reach. He is willing to go all the way to Hell to bring his harvest home.
On a warm, Galilean day, he sat down on a hill and taught us to pray. You know that prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven....”
Tonight, he teaches us to pray a prayer you shall need on some dark night, a prayer which can give you infinite hope, even in the dark. That prayer: “Our Father who art in hell....”
[The orginal of Will’s Sermon is here.]
The powers and the principalities cannot prevail. The darkness cannot hide. The light has come, and nothing, NOTHING, NOTHING can overcome it!
Passage: I Peter 3:19
Where is Jesus now, this night, in this present darkness? Where might we seek him? He is dead. “He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He emptied himself freely accepting death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6). Where is Jesus? You know the words of the Creed: Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead, and was buried, he descended into hell....”
That’s why this Chapel seems peculiarly dark, dismal, and empty tonight. The one for whom this great arched room was built, the one whose presence draws us on Sunday, is not here.
“Crucified died and was buried, he descended into hell.” Nineteenth Century Methodists removed that portion of the Creed, claiming it unbiblical. But it’s not. The First Epistle of Peter speaks of Christ’s descent into hell, called by the Church, “The Harrowing of Hell.” It’s from the Old English hergian, to harrow, to deposit. Tonight, Satan’s territory is being despoiled.
After his death this afternoon (at the hands of us good, Bible quoting religious people), when he breathed his last, Jesus, ever on the move, descended to hell. Having harassed us, the living, he descended to the dead. Tonight, he is there, preaching to them, cajoling, enticing those who had not the benefit of his life and words during their lives.
How did the church come up with such a notion? This “harrowing of hell”?
It was inconceivable to a church which had been the beneficiary of the intrusive, relentless, incursions of Jesus — the way he was forever speaking to us, prodding us, invading our settled world with his words, touching our wounds with his hands — it was inconceivable that some, so many, shall by their deaths, be excluded from his relentless, probing love. So for Virgil, and Plato, and the myriad who, by their deaths, had missed the advent of God with us, he came to them who could not have come to him.
He is there tonight, doing what he does so well, preaching, teaching, touching, relentlessly seeking, persuading, inviting, announcing the love and mercy of God. Psalm 16:10, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell....” Byzantine art depicted Jesus, in the jaws of hell, giving a hand to those who had died lifting them up, out of the darkness.
And though he is down there, and therefore not here, there is something to be said to those of us he has temporarily left behind. That word is this: Because I am there, tonight, descended into the deadly darkness, confronting the enemy on the enemy’s own turf, you have hope.
If he is there, then know well that nothing — no darkness, bereftness, or pain you experience, is immune from his gracious presence. If he, though he was God, is able to risk all, to wade deep into the death we so fear and avoid, then what might he risk for you?
Tonight, this usually gracious Chapel is rather cold, empty, cavernous, and dark. And, life being as it is, there will be nights for you that are cold, and dark, and alone. Hell is dark, bereft, and void. The Good News: Tonight, hell is being harrowed, emptied by the word and work of a relentlessly seeking savior who will not leave us be. He told us stories of the seeking Shepherd who forever seeks the one lost sheep, the faithful father who awaits the return of the one lost son, the relentless woman who does not rest until she finds the one coin (Luke 14). He meant what he said. There is no place where you languish, no darkness so dark, which places you beyond his seeking, searching, reach. He is willing to go all the way to Hell to bring his harvest home.
On a warm, Galilean day, he sat down on a hill and taught us to pray. You know that prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven....”
Tonight, he teaches us to pray a prayer you shall need on some dark night, a prayer which can give you infinite hope, even in the dark. That prayer: “Our Father who art in hell....”
[The orginal of Will’s Sermon is here.]
The powers and the principalities cannot prevail. The darkness cannot hide. The light has come, and nothing, NOTHING, NOTHING can overcome it!
Friday, April 6, 2007
Father, Forgive them...
Our local ministerial association offers a community Good Friday service at noon where we each preach on one of the 7 Last Words of Christ. This is my word from today.
Father, Forgive Them
Good Friday
April 6, 2007
The first words Jesus utters from the cross, at least in Luke’s account, after he has been raised upon the bar, are, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
I’ve always seen this request as showing Jesus’ graciousness. I haven’t really thought about it much before, but who is Jesus forgiving here? Does he ask God to forgive the soldiers who have nailed him on the cross and raised him up? Is he asking God to forgive the Jewish leaders and crowds who called for his crucifixion? Or is he asking forgiveness for all humanity?
Biblical scholar Raymond Brown raises the same question, and decides that the forgiveness is requested for the specific group at the scene of the crucifixion, not for all humanity. He says we can theorize that it extends further, but that’s not Jesus’ original request.
Actually, there’s another question that raises its ugly head on the sidebar: why should Jesus ask forgiveness for those who were just doing what God demanded? In other words, if, as some believe, God required Jesus to be sacrificed in order for salvation to happen, then why do those who are simply the actors accomplishing this requirement need to be forgiven? Why shouldn’t they be commended for following orders, or at least given a pass?
Because that very assumption is askew. God did not demand that Jesus be sacrificed to atone for our sins. We did. From the very first pointing finger, we have been a people who make others into our scapegoats. Whenever there is discomfort, disorder, discord, we cannot rest until we find one to hold responsible. “There. She’s the one who started it.” “Over here, he caused it all.” We point the finger and move all our discomfort, disorder, discord onto the shoulders of our scapegoat. Then, we at least shun, and perhaps even sacrifice, the goat so that order, accord and comfort may once again reign in the land and in our lives, at least until the next time things begin to get out of whack.
We have practiced this art throughout the centuries until we brought it to perfection in Jerusalem, and have continued trying to practice it for the nearly 2,000 years since. But when we pointed the finger at Jesus, he was the One Person in all creation who had no culpability. He was without sin. But still we demanded his sacrifice, the sacrifice of One for the people. And so, he was arrested, beaten, mocked, scorned, nailed and raised on the cross so that all who passed by could point their fingers at him, and relieve themselves of their own culpability.
When the sinless One was raised on the cross, the power of sacrifice was broken for all time, no matter how many more times we have tried it since. No peace or order will ever reign again, not when scapegoating and sacrifice rule the day. Peace will reign only when we begin to live into the reality of those words Jesus uttered from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
So back to my first question: who does Jesus ask God to forgive? He asks God to forgive the soldiers who carry out the execution. He prays God’s forgiveness for the leaders and people who pointed their finger at Jesus. And here, I disagree with Brown, Jesus asks God to forgive us, for every time we point our finger and seek a scapegoat.
René Girard said, “What makes our hearts turn to stone is the discovery that, in one sense or another, we are all butchers pretending to be sacrificers. . . . One thing alone can put an end to this infernal ordeal, the certainty of being forgiven.”
Forgive us, Lord, for we do not know what we are doing.
Father, Forgive Them
Good Friday
April 6, 2007
The first words Jesus utters from the cross, at least in Luke’s account, after he has been raised upon the bar, are, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
I’ve always seen this request as showing Jesus’ graciousness. I haven’t really thought about it much before, but who is Jesus forgiving here? Does he ask God to forgive the soldiers who have nailed him on the cross and raised him up? Is he asking God to forgive the Jewish leaders and crowds who called for his crucifixion? Or is he asking forgiveness for all humanity?
Biblical scholar Raymond Brown raises the same question, and decides that the forgiveness is requested for the specific group at the scene of the crucifixion, not for all humanity. He says we can theorize that it extends further, but that’s not Jesus’ original request.
Actually, there’s another question that raises its ugly head on the sidebar: why should Jesus ask forgiveness for those who were just doing what God demanded? In other words, if, as some believe, God required Jesus to be sacrificed in order for salvation to happen, then why do those who are simply the actors accomplishing this requirement need to be forgiven? Why shouldn’t they be commended for following orders, or at least given a pass?
Because that very assumption is askew. God did not demand that Jesus be sacrificed to atone for our sins. We did. From the very first pointing finger, we have been a people who make others into our scapegoats. Whenever there is discomfort, disorder, discord, we cannot rest until we find one to hold responsible. “There. She’s the one who started it.” “Over here, he caused it all.” We point the finger and move all our discomfort, disorder, discord onto the shoulders of our scapegoat. Then, we at least shun, and perhaps even sacrifice, the goat so that order, accord and comfort may once again reign in the land and in our lives, at least until the next time things begin to get out of whack.
We have practiced this art throughout the centuries until we brought it to perfection in Jerusalem, and have continued trying to practice it for the nearly 2,000 years since. But when we pointed the finger at Jesus, he was the One Person in all creation who had no culpability. He was without sin. But still we demanded his sacrifice, the sacrifice of One for the people. And so, he was arrested, beaten, mocked, scorned, nailed and raised on the cross so that all who passed by could point their fingers at him, and relieve themselves of their own culpability.
When the sinless One was raised on the cross, the power of sacrifice was broken for all time, no matter how many more times we have tried it since. No peace or order will ever reign again, not when scapegoating and sacrifice rule the day. Peace will reign only when we begin to live into the reality of those words Jesus uttered from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
So back to my first question: who does Jesus ask God to forgive? He asks God to forgive the soldiers who carry out the execution. He prays God’s forgiveness for the leaders and people who pointed their finger at Jesus. And here, I disagree with Brown, Jesus asks God to forgive us, for every time we point our finger and seek a scapegoat.
René Girard said, “What makes our hearts turn to stone is the discovery that, in one sense or another, we are all butchers pretending to be sacrificers. . . . One thing alone can put an end to this infernal ordeal, the certainty of being forgiven.”
Forgive us, Lord, for we do not know what we are doing.
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