Pentecost - Music Sunday
Acts 2:1-21
It has happened before but not often. Pentecost is fifty days after Easter. We pick Music Sunday to be the last Sunday of our regular schedule. So on rare occasion they coincide--but not often.
This year I was particularly struck by how reasonable it is to celebrate Music Sunday on Pentecost. The disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem behind closed doors. Suddenly, the sound of a mighty wind, out of nowhere flames appeared above their heads. And they left their safe, comfortable retreat and began speaking to the people on the street. The words that came out were not even theirs for they were in languages they did not even speak. The Holy Spirit is a fearsome thing. John Macintyre speaking at the Edinburgh Festival on the Arts of Religion spoke of Pentecost as "the wholehearted expression of the almost unlimited imagination of God." God has a pretty good imagination, picture the aardvark and the platypus, so consider the wholehearted expression of the almost unlimited imagination of God and you have this amazing, astonishing, awesome scene of spiritual awakening. The Spirit works. The Spirit works in mysterious ways, through us to get the world's attention.
The Spirit can work in the logic that will open up clues to the universe. The Spirit can work in a theological treatise or a pop culture book inviting us to a purposeful life. The Spirit can work as friends get together over coffee or in a formal lecture hall. The Spirit can work in all kinds of ways.
But what I want to say today is that the spirit finds a hugely effective route working through music. I would go so far as to say that music is the handmaiden of God's creative imagination, the Spirit.
Allow me then to offer three observations about the Holy Spirit as we see it at work in the Acts text for today and about music.
Before Christ sent the church into the world, he sent the Spirit into the church." The Spirit's going forth like wind or breath is fundamental to its origin and nature Movement, vitality, life and energy seems to accompany the Spirit's presence throughout scripture In the beginning it is the spirit that hovers over the water before the chaos is overcome and light and order enter the world. Again the Spirit is spoken of as wind or breath as it is blown into Adam and the judges and the prophets.
Is it any wonder then that the chief instrument in the service of the church is the organ? For the organ is empowered by wind. In the old days, back with Bach and Beethoven young boys were enlisted to squeeze the bellows to produce the air to fill the pipes to get the sound. Smaller organs had to be pumped with the feet of the organist, keeping them in top physical condition as well. Today that task is accomplished by electrical power, by blower. But even as we tame the process the spirit will blow where it will. At Trinity Lutheran church, Pastor Doug's first church there was a hundred year old pipe organ. It was small but effective. The organ was however in need of some refurbishment. The leathers, the part of the organ that opens and closes each of the pipes to let air in, were worn. Sometimes the organist, Ethel, would finish playing the hymn before the sermon and go to sit in the first pew. All of a sudden the organ would begin playing all by itself. Not ghosts just the spirit pushing and prodding the church.
Before Christ sent the church into the world, he sent the spirit into the church. The church gathers to receive that inspiration; to be led in quiet contemplation or to be carried to the lofty heights of crescendo or to be invigorated with an enthusiastic rendition that gets the toes tapping and heart pumping.
My second observation. The Spirit seeks unity not uniformity. It's interesting to me that our Acts text is often paired up on Pentecost with the story of the tower of Babel. In that ancient story one language is confused into many languages. Now the opposite of that would be to bring all peoples together to speak one language. But that's not what happens on that fateful Pentecost. Not at all. On that day the disciples speak and the people understand them each in their own language. Each language is maintained but universally understood.
If there ever was a universal language it is music. While the expressions are different the understandings are the same. In 1985 before South Africa was freed from apartheid musician Paul Simon went to South Africa to learn about the Black South African rural/ghetto musical heritage. The trip and the ensuing album Graceland did much to make the largely unknown South African music visible to the world. As one music critic put it, "The essential prayer of all those downtrodden or captive to injustice is that their predicament might resonate in the hearts of honorable people, however distant, as if compassion were a rhythmic sonority that no obstruction could impede or subdue." In the language of music people the world over can come to understand and appreciate each other. Though the form and style of Ladysmith Black Mambazo may be different it is not uniformity that the Spirit craves but unity...
Which brings me to my last observation. The Spirit craves unity--a unity of purpose and intent but more importantly a unity of love. Music can often remind us of that unity.
In 1999 at our Evangelical Lutheran Church Assembly, wherein representatives from all 65 Synods come together to do the church's work, the body was greatly split. The issue was the passage of a resolution bringing the Episcopalian church and the Lutheran church into altar and pulpit fellowship with one another. There were some who believed that there were theological issues that kept us apart. Others thought those issues were not significant enough to keep the two bodies so separate. The arguments were long and tedious. Faithful members of the church were divided. After intense and long debate the vote was taken. The margin to affirm fellowship was positive but not overwhelming. Clearly the disagreement had taken its toll. There was strain on both sides; there were no outbursts of joy or exuberance because it was clear that the unity of the body had been damaged. Then Bishop George Anderson did an amazing thing. He instructed the body to open their worship books and to sing--the hymn--The church's One Foundation. The first verse was labored--The Church's one foundation Is Jesus Christ her lord, She is his new creation...By the third verse the assembly was picking up steam and sounding more like Lutherans and by the fifth verse the medium had become the message. With three part harmony a thousand voices united "yet she on earth has union, With God the three in one...O blessed heav'nly chorus! Lord, save us by your grace, that we, like saints before us May see you face to face."
Music has power. So take a breath, breath in the spirit of God in this place and sing so the world can hear what brings us and keeps us together.
Amen.