Music Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday
John 10:11-18; I John 3:16-24; Acts 4:5-12, Psalm 23
This April National Public Radio aired the last of a four year series called “This I believe”. Originating back in the 1950’s with a program created by Edward R. Murrow, “This I Believe” presented short essays from individuals about the core beliefs and values that guide their lives. People from all walks of life; young, old, famous, infamous, unknown, Nobel Laureates, teachers, prison inmates, artists, musicians, poets—all have shared the stories of what is important to them.
This being Music Sunday and Thinking about the end of this series prompted me to consider one of my core beliefs and values. “I believe that music is one of the most profound gifts of God. That music has immense power to heal, to comfort, to unite and to transcend.”
Apparently I am not alone in this belief. In dozens of different ways, starting from unique perspectives many individuals share this belief. Colleen Shaddox from Hamden, Ct. says; “Jazz is the sound of God Laughing. And I believe in it.” Korinthia from Milwaukee Wis. Says “Music matters. Love matters. And in our best moments they are one and the same.” James from Yarskey New York is a Quaker and writes about the power of silence admonishing us to “Listen Carefully.” But concludes “Sometimes I think God is all about vibrations and sounds.” John from New York begins his essay, “Punk rock saved my life.” Vicky from Brooklyn writes, “The soprano’s voice soared. For a few minutes, the church was perfectly still but for that pure sound -- no throat clearing, bulletin rustling, not even an infant being hushed For during the hymn, it felt as though whatever theological place any one of us occupied at that moment, we all were experiencing God while the soprano sang.”
Yes I believe that music is one of the most profound gifts of God. That music has immense power to bring people together by helping us transcend our differences. What makes us different is far less important than what makes us the same. Yo Yo Ma the great cellist who has made albums in such disparate styles as baroque, bluegrass, traditional Chinese and tango talks about his birth in Paris to Chinese parents growing up in America. He writes, “As we struggle to find our individual voices, I believe we must look beyond the voice we’ve been assigned and find our place among the tones and timbre of human expression.”
But his essay was not nearly as moving as Mary Ellen Rusnov’s, a civil engineer from Conn. I believe in cultivating hidden talents, buried and unrelated to what we do for a living. In ordinary life, I'm a civil engineer. I make a satisfying, comfortable living working quietly in my cubicle. But in my other life, I am a pianist, bringing to life with my own hands the genius of Bach, Mozart and Chopin.
While earning my engineering degree, I worked as a waitress in the dining hall of a retirement community. One day during a break, I discovered a piano in a meeting room. I sat down to play a few Bach Two-Part Inventions. Those crisp, driving rhythms and harmonics flew out into the hallways. Residents, numb from ceaseless easy-listening radio, tentatively peeked in, then sat to listen. One time, feeling bold, I played a Mozart Sonata in an airport lobby, between connecting flights. People slowed down or even stopped to listen; readers looked up from their chairs. I saw smiles and heard a smattering of applause.
I thought: No one smiled and clapped after my presentation on the site engineering for a new strip mall. I believe we are more than the inhabitants of our cubicles, more than engineers or even parents, husbands and wives. I believe we are transformed and connected by the power and beauty of our creativity.
I believe that music is one of the most profound gifts of God. Music has the power to unite us, to bring us together not as me and you but as us; a community, interdependent
Brian Eno a rock music producer in London started an acappella singing group in his living room with four friends. Soon it grew to 15 or 20. He says “I believe in singing. I believe in singing together. I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor. Well, there are physiological benefits, obviously: You use your lungs in a way that you probably don’t for the rest of your day, breathing deeply and openly. And there are psychological benefits, too: Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness. And then there are what I would call “civilizational benefits.” When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings—to stop being me for a little while, and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.
I believe that music is one of the most profound gifts of God. I believe that music has the power to heal. Joyce from Juneau Alaska writes I believe in the healing power of music. I’m a singer. As long as I can remember, I’ve understood the way that singing sets my body to vibrating and puts me at one with the universe. But never have I been as aware as two weeks ago, gratefully singing with the Juneau Symphony the soaring melodies of the Verdi Requiem.
It was a moment I’d dreamed of for many years, to solo in that amazing work. But only a Creator full of divine imagination could have dreamt the journey that would lead me to it in the frontiers of Alaska. Imagine: after years of discipline and sacrifice developing a singing career -- to suddenly have my heart cracked open through the simultaneous fires of breast cancer and Guiseppi Verdi. Who knew?
I’ve been through a few things physically –But so far nothing quite equals the experience I had on that Sunday afternoon, singing the “Libera Me”: percussion reverberating in my bones, the breath of a hundred chorus members pouring into my back, the vibrations of each instrument rocking me forward like a great wind. Awake and alive, I flew on the combined desire of dozens of friends, colleagues and loved ones; at once privately and publicly at Peace.
Yes, I will undergo the rigors of my treatment, and like so many other, braver women before me have successfully done, will emerge stronger, more Real. But truth is: I’ve already been healed. For I believe this: no cancer cell could have possibly withstood the power of that moment we all shared. The rightness of that great music has re-aligned my being, and I’m good to go.
I believe that music is one of the most profound gifts of God. I believe that music has the power to comfort. Steve Banko from Buffalo New York tells this story. I've been moved by the magic of Christmas music since the nuns in grammar school etched the words of the carols into my brain. On Christmas Eve, 1968, I was a patient in a military hospital in Yokota, Japan. My leg had been shattered by a couple of machine gun bullets in a five-hour battle in Vietnam. My body was full of shrapnel and my hands had been badly burned. For three weeks, army doctors in Vietnam struggled to save my leg. They sent me to Japan on that Christmas Eve to give a new team of surgeons a chance to work their magic.
And I was in desperate need of magic. Somewhere it was Christmas, but it didn't feel like it to me—at least not until I heard the music piped through the PA system. A chorus sang of "peace on earth and mercy mild" and promised "God and sinners reconciled." Another voice called to "let us all with one accord sing praises to our heavenly Lord" and another, to "sleep in heavenly peace" but heaven and peace seemed so distant to me.
My misery was interrupted by a low moan coming from the next bed. All I could see was a white cast shaped like a body; cutouts for his eyes, nose, and mouth were the only breaks in the cast. Even as the music inched me toward comfort, the reality of pain anchored me in the present. But looking at my neighbor enclosed in God-knows-what-kind-of-pain, mine didn't seem nearly as important.
The soft strains of "Silent Night" were filling the air of the ward when the nurses made final rounds with our medications. When my nurse approached, I asked her to push my bed closer to the man in the cast. I reached out and took my new friend's hand as the carol told us "all is calm, all is bright." We spoke no words to each other. None were needed. The carol revived the message of hope and the triumph of love for me. I felt a slight tightening on my hand and for the first time that Christmas I felt I would survive my ordeal, and for the first time in a long time, I wanted to.
I believe that music is a profound gift of God. I believe that music has the power to transcend, unite, heal and comfort. I believe in singing—even singing badly if need be. Lee from Prescott Arizona said it best “a nun told us a story about a monk who in spite of his bad voice, crooned to God with the guileless abandon of a small child. The other monks whose voices escalated with angelic perfection treated him like a nuisance they could barely tolerate. They raised their eyebrows and glared at him but he was oblivious to their disgust. He wasn’t singing for them but for God, who was immensely pleased. The human imperfections of the monk’s voice could not be heard in heaven, only the pure pitch of his love and intention.”
So thank God for music, for singing and singers, for composers and musicians for our opportunity to lift our voices….together…in praise.
Amen