Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-30-13

Jesus on the cross surely is one of the most depicted moments of humankind’s history. Think of icons, crucifixes, paintings, stained glass windows, mosaics, tapestries, statues, murals, tableaux, movies, and even Sunday-School lesson illustrations. I cannot think of any that do not depict this tender and powerful scene either straight-on or, occasionally, from some upward angle, the perspective of those at the foot of the cross.

Actually, I can think of one exception – the famous “Christ of St-John of the Cross,” the realistic/mystical painting by the master Salvador Dali. In this famous canvas, Dali painted Jesus from above, but front-on, hanging near the cross, without nails, or crown of thorns or scourges or blood. Beneath Him are not the gathered Mother and guards and random curiosity-seekers, but open water. At the extreme bottom, from a different perspective, the surrealist painted a shoreline of fishing boats. It is arresting, and thought-provoking.

Dali based his painting on a sketch by St John of Avila, a 16th-century monk, that came to both artists in dreams.

Yet I don’t think I have ever seen a depiction of the Crucifixion from the actual viewpoint of Jesus… as if through His eyes. Such a painting would not only suggest Christ’s perspective to us – literally and metaphorically – but Father God’s perspective too.

Jesus looked down, through encrusted, swollen, eyes, at His dripping blood and bruised body. He saw the splintery wood of the rough-hewn cross. On the ground He saw people looking upward – a collection of grief-filled, angry, regretful, indifferent, and hateful people. Looking toward the horizon, He saw the environs of Jerusalem, God’s Holy City, the scene of biblical history of the past, and of the future.

God’s perspective, as if to look down over the shoulders of Jesus? To think upon it is to come closer to understanding the mysterious separation yet unity of Father and Son, especially to meditate on the Incarnation: why God poured Himself out to become human flesh at this fulcrum-point in mankind’s history. Such an image would be to reassure a lost humankind, as if we need one more narrative – but we always do – that God sees us through the eyes, and the pain, of Jesus, who gave Himself so as to fulfill God’s provision, in turn, and so on! The Godhead identifies with our failings, our confusion, our need of salvation, our pain, our hopes.

It would be wonderful to see such a painting, or to paint such a perspective in our minds.

I have one more thought about that setting, seen through the eyes of Jesus lifted up on the cross. It is another example of what I call “virtual theology” – not in scripture, but not at all anti-biblical. In fact I think it might distill the sweeping message of the Bible’s entire narrative.

Jesus died for all. God’s plan, once mankind understood, or could be shown, that the Law was insufficient to lead people to right standing with a Holy God, was to cancel the blood-sacrifice of sheep and rams, and offer Himself as a sacrifice. This was according to prophecy. His children no longer would invent works or propose offerings to try to please an angry God. He would ask them only to BELIEVE in Him through the substitutionary sacrifice of the Messiah, thereby please a loving God.

Humankind. Here is my virtual theology: When Jesus looked down at the assembled few at the foot of the cross, I believe that He looked also into history past and history to come, and see the entirety of humankind. As God-in-flesh, He had managed more extravagant miracles.

Further, I believe that He was able, and did, look down, past the faces of Mary and the centurions, past the shades of millions of souls, into your face and mine, eye to eye, individually. After all, He came for us, and loves us, individually.

Still further, my theological understanding proposes this: that if every other person in history were perfect and sinless; that is, everybody except you or me out of billions of people, He still would have gone to the cross.

Willingly He would have gone. Eagerly. In fact, since He could have avoided the cross or miraculously changed those circumstances at Golgotha’s hill, the truth is that He virtually scrambled up the cross… answered the question “How much do you love?” by spreading His arms wide… and invited the nails.

He would have done that for you or me. In fact, that is NOT virtual truth: He DID do that for you and me.

+ + +

A great gospel song that parallels and illustrates the theme of this message was written around 1985 and has become a standard in hymnbooks and on concert stages and Christian radio. It was written by Ronny Hinson and Mike Payne. Here performed at the Family Worship Center, Baton Rouge.

Click: When He Was On the Cross, I Was On His Mind

+ + +

9-23-13

A theme song of cynics – there are many; many cynics and many are their themes – is the famous sentiment written by Shakespeare: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones” (Julius Caesar, Act 3, i). But the hopeful among us must see that this is honored in the breach, that the exception proves the rule. We must not merely be convinced that fights for righteousness and honor and creative expression are worth the fight in this difficult life… but that the fight ITSELF, not only the goal, is worthy.

Cynicism is challenged by uncountable examples of service and sacrifice by kind souls, by acts of charity, a word whose original meaning is “love.” Challenged in the over-arching sense by the work of weary toilers in the fields who sometimes are bent but never broken. And in the very personal examples of artists who die without ever knowing the effect their work eventually has on other people. There are stories we all know from history.

We think of van Gogh; of Poe; of the composer Schubert and the novelist John Kennedy Toole… and of Eva Cassidy.

Some serious critics have called Eva the greatest American vocalist. Do you ask, “Who?” Her relatively sparse playlist has swept record charts around the world. Some of the era’s greatest singers and producers have attested to her uniqueness. The acclaim and sales have all come years after she died. Eva was born in Washington DC in 1963. Self- (and dad-) taught on several instruments, she listened to the great performers of several genres she rapidly mastered herself: blues, jazz, gospel, country, pop standards.

Eva played in several clubs in the Washington area. A college town, DC is replete with jazz clubs, music venues, performance clubs. As a student there myself in ancient times, I was privileged to enjoy, in places like the Cellar Door, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Randy Scruggs before they were nationally famous. Later, Eva Cassidy attracted a local following and made a few CDs, but her fame was fairly restricted to the District. Pros and record execs who heard her music were astonished, but many of them simply did not know in which category to place her. All of them later regretted their short-sightedness. Her voice was angelic (if angels were to sing the blues); her interpretations were miraculously emotional; her guitar style was unique.

When she was 30 she had a malignant tumor removed from her neck. Three years later she was dead, the melanoma having survived within her body, spread to bones and lungs. After her diagnosis (three to five months to live, no hope of survival) she returned once more to her stage of choice, DC’s Blues Alley, and sang “What a Wonderful World.” That choice, as much as hearing her music, confirms what a wonderful person, not merely a musical talent, Eva Cassidy was.

But it was five full years after her death before the world really heard about her, and heard her. A stray CD made its way the BBC Radio studios in London. Airplay on a morning show lit up the proverbial switchboard. Fast-forward this story to Number One on British record charts; five CDs in the Top 150; continuing presence in England and Ireland, especially, but also Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Australia… and, finally, America; and sales exceeding 10-million CDs.

It is easy to lapse (thusly) into numbers and statistics. But it was Eva Cassidy’s astonishing talent, and her effect on listeners, that is the story. She had a gift for making mundane lyrics special, for discovering spiritual nuances in standard love songs, for making happy tunes blues-y and turning sad ballads hopeful.

That her “success” is posthumous is ironic at least. Yet once we take account of life’s vicissitudes, we should take heart. The good that we may do DOES live on “after our bones are interred.” When we do the Lord’s work, sharing hope and sunshine, we are eager to see the “seeds” we plant take root and bloom. But we don’t always know if, or when, it will happen. Mostly, we cannot know. As servants of the Word, it really is the Holy Spirit’s job to “close the deals,” and we should resist the temptation of pride if we are too concerned with the seeds we plant. We can plant those seeds; we can even cultivate; but only God can make life grow.

In fact there is a legitimate spiritual satisfaction in not knowing these details. When writers, artists, singers, songwriters, poets, and all people graced with God’s creativity set their works out (as it were) like baby Moses in a basket, among the reeds and into unknown waters, we don’t know who will discover them. But, trusting the God whom we serve by serving our fellow men and women, untold numbers of people, and their families after them, may be profoundly touched. Even if one person’s spirit responds, we have done our jobs.

If we, any of us, exercise the talents wherewith we have been graced, if we see our lives as parts of the cultural continuum of civilization, just as we are woven with the scarlet threads of redemption, then some of us might be the next van Goghs, Poes, Schuberts, Tooles, and Eva Cassidys. And be content that the value is in the working and the works, not the accolades of the world. And the rest of us? We can feel blessed that we are witnesses of these great talents.

Remember the Yogi Berra quotation, “It ain’t over till it’s over”? Memo to Yogi: sometimes it only BEGINS when it’s “over.” The theme song of THAT truth is sung by Eva Cassidy.

+ + +

One of the only videos of Eva Cassidy singing is an amateur camcorder capture of her and her guitar at Blues Alley. It often brings tears to viewers’ eyes for the unique interpretation and commonly untapped meanings from a pop standard previously considered without spiritual depth. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was recorded the year of Eva’s death, 1996. I commend this performance to you, and its compelling whisper to your soul: “Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true. … If happy little bluebirds fly above the rainbow, why, oh why, can’t I?” When Eva sang, she made it a spiritually rhetorical question: We can.

Click: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

9-16-13

Either God exists, or He doesn’t.

The question this statement poses, among uncountable other speculative, philosophical, ontological, and even religious questions, is THE most basic and most important that can be asked of human beings, or any beings.

As someone who is secure in the answer, I was confronted by the question this week in a way that never escapes anyone’s imaginings. The Voyager I spacecraft, NASA announced, has left the friendly confines of our solar system. Not the universe, of course, for that ends… well, we are not quite sure where. But Voyager has crossed the border of our Sun’s “bubble” of “plasma” – charged electrons in “empty” space whose density changed, though differently than expected, when Voyager passed over the line into interstellar “space.”

The inherent limitations of conceptualizing scientific facts, no less than imperfectly understanding scientific theories, has us turn to inverted commas and air-quotes. I will save electrons, myself, by dropping all these quotation marks. But we should keep them at the ready, because they represent the intellectual crutches we often need when discussing such things. We – humans – know more and more every day; by one estimate, every eight months we discover and learn more things than in all of mankind’s previous history. Yet even with Voyager the assumptions about the density of outer-space electrons, in these otherwise empty-seeming neighborhoods of the universe, have been revised. Interstellar plasma is acting differently than scientists predicted. And brand-new questions about magnetic forces in space, not just as carried by solar wind inside the solar system, have presented themselves.

My brain starts to hurt too, despite the thrill of such data. Perhaps we will learn more when Voyager reaches its next sun’s neighborhood. Be sure to stock up on provisions, if you plan to wait for that news; that will not happen for another 40,000 years. Such is the vastness of our universe.

By then, Voyager probably still will be hurtling along, but its information-gathering and transmitting facilities expired. Interestingly, the probe, which was launched in 1977, has computers far less complex than of any smartphone today. It records data on… yes, an 8-track cassette. And it sends that data back to earth by a 20-watt signal. By comparison, a radio station near where I live has a thousand-watt transmitter, and can be heard for a range of 25 miles or so. Yet, we launched Voyager, it observes, and we learn: a modern, and more peaceful, turn on Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici” – “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Amidst this week’s tsunami of news of wars, rumors of wars, crises, corruption, killings and beheadings, revolutions, disasters of weather, economies, and human folly, we have this news that takes our minds (and I hope the imaginations of our spirits) to other things. Out of this world. Almost by definition, eternal things. If you didn’t see photos or artist conceptions, or movies of distant solar systems and planets, watch the video whose link is at the end of this essay. We inevitably are in awe.

In awe of what? There is that question again. If God doesn’t exist, the theories of atheists and agnostics and secularists about when the universe was formed, why it was formed, and how it was formed are interesting (or not) only as speculation.

Although theories abound, no one comes close – absent the God Proposition – to advancing any sort of a definitive idea about when the universe began (including the question of what was here previously, wherever here is); how large the universe is (when the question includes “what, then, lies beyond its borders?”); and how, just how, then, did we get here? There are scientific ideas… that often change. And these questions are lights-years from the larger question facing scientists: Why?

The fact that no human has, by oneself, answers for such questions does not automatically prove the existence of God. There is no proof, which is why it is called Faith. But it does suggest a universal prerequisite, humility, when one addresses such questions without what I call the God Proposition.

My explanation of why many “intelligent” (yes, I will resurrect the quotation marks) people reject God is that we all of us have a latent desire to BE God, to be in control of our situations, to have all the answers. Unfortunately, among the primitive, including sophisticated primitives, this leads to superstition. At the other extreme it leads to oppression, destruction, and death; that is, when clever and resourceful men presume to be gods, the eternal temptation consumes. Never has a mortal been able to benignly control others – an oxymoronic concept anyway – when none ever has been able to control his own self, and the “base passions” of our spiritual DNA… absent the God Proposition.

More than the rudimentary computer systems on Voyager was something of greater significance. In the hope that the craft might meet some alien civilization in a remote part of the universe, it carried a unique payload – a copper and gold alloy disk (estimated by its designers “to last a billion years”) with greetings in 115 earth-languages; some images of our species and schematic maps of earth; and music. The first selection was a recording of the Second Brandenburg Concerto, first movement, by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Karl Richter and the Munich Bach Orchestra. Among the playlist of global music, Bach was the only composer represented thrice; the Gavotte from the Violin Partita No. 3, and the Prelude and Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2 were the other pieces chosen to represent humankind’s creative profile.

Biologist Lewis Thomas was asked what he would have nominated for this message to unknown civilizations. “The complete works of J.S. Bach,” he said. “But that would be boasting.” I love the (proper) tribute to mankind’s greatest music-maker, but it is interesting that our greetings, our physical likenesses, and our greatest artistic expressions were sent aboard Voyager, in hopes of telling the Universe about us.

… but, significantly, the designers and programmers chose to skip the crowded narratives of human history that are filled, like this week’s headlines, or any week’s headlines, with war, cruelty, murder, and oppression. A half-truth can be no different than a lie. We wanted to show what earth is like, what humanity has done. We just wanted to sanitize the story.

But in my view, there comes that “God Proposition” once again. The dirty little secret, deep down in all our souls, is that our natures are sinful, and many humans have tended to kick and scratch and resist God… but there is also a part of us that yearns for the God who sees good things, and has created good things, and wants to share good things. Part of us – because God planted such yearnings – seeks the good: sometime, occasionally, we have the same impulses as our God.

We don’t need to understand every little (unknowable) thing about the universe and God; we do need to accept Him. It should not be difficult! We cannot be God, no matter how hard some will try. And though we know Him imperfectly, and even love Him imperfectly, we can rest assured that He knows us, and He loves us, perfectly.

Just look at the stars and the galaxies and the universe, fellow voyager.

+ + +

I chose another of Johann Sebastian Bach’s immortal works, the second movement of his Third Orchestral Suite, BWV 1068, commonly known as “Air On the G-String.” Images are from NASA probes, including from the Hubbell Space Telescope. N.B.: the text’s passage about Bach’s music aboard Voyager is adapted from my biography of Bach published by Thomas Nelson, 2011.

Click: Bach’s Air On the G-String

9-9-13

“This do in remembrance of me.” A few thoughts that do not pretend to be Theology 101, but have long been impressed on my heart. Communion… the Last Supper… the Eucharist… the Lord’s Table. Some few Christians make special daily observance; many churches celebrate each Sunday. The church of my youth offered it on the first Sunday of each month, common cup at one service, individual cups at the other. The church where I worship locally celebrates it twice a year, accompanied by foot-washing. Some churches have returned to the ancient practice whereby every celebrant passes the bread and wine, with spontaneous blessings spoken.

These are all celebrations, and indeed we should celebrate what Jesus did for us: breaking His body, shedding His blood. He did not merely prophesy: He announced at the Passover meal what would happen not many hours hence. “Ritual” has sometimes become a disparaging word, yet rites are instituted to honor things – events, ideas, truths – worth honoring. With reverence.

Here is what has roused my spiritual heart: the Church in all places and at all times has made a set-apart ceremony of the Lord’s Supper. It is observed in divers ways mentioned above, and others. There is something special about “breaking bread”: in every culture, every generation, the dinner table – no, the kitchen table – has represented the ultimate in hospitality and fellowship. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” The One who could not lie never spoke a clearer truth.

So, should we not regard EVERY meal, every time we “break bread,” whether it is literal bread or any food, and share a cup, whether wine or juice, or whatever in a meal… should we not be reminded every such time of the broken body and shed blood of Jesus? Why just at a designated Communion Service?

Of course I do not think less of 2000 years of church traditions. Neither do I mean to visit disputes over Communion’s symbolism or literal essence – consubstantiation vs. transubstantiation – we are, I think, past the time when bloody wars were fought over the debate. I am trying to commune, here, with the Heart of Jesus, and what the Holy Spirit would have us do.

As reverent as a weekly or monthly observance can be, would not a… remembrance, every time we eat (“breaking bread”) and drink at a meal, be holier? To bring ourselves to think more often, virtually constantly, three meals a day or more times, of Jesus’s amazing sacrifice for us?

Would it lose its meaning? That depends solely on us. Is it, practically, too burdensome, especially in these busy times? No, many of us offer brief prayers before meals, and thanksgiving has been a traditional part of meals among many. Thanksgiving, usually for material blessings, can be joined by thanksgiving for spiritual blessings. To be reminded, and think upon, ever fresh, the sacrifice of broken body and spilled blood represented by the meal before us… is holy.

It is not the calendar, or a tradition, but the hunger in our hearts, fed by spiritual food, that institutes the sacramental aspect of the Lord’s Supper. True communion in all ways.

Read, maybe in a new way, from I Corinthians 10 and 11:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. … Therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. … What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? … I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.

+ + +

A contemporary song, “Breaking Bread,” visits these questions. This version, with meaningful images, is a studio session of Johnny Cash from end of his career. Harmonies are by internet fans of the Man in Black. The lyrics recall the Bible portions cited above, as well as “bread cast upon the waters,” the feeding of the 5000 miracle, and other associations with breaking bread.

Click: Breaking Bread

9-2-13

An excuse to combine a spiritual message, or so I hope, and to pay tribute to a hero this week. It is 100 years since Walt Kelly was born. Presumably, as a baby, and his Philadelphia home having no particular bearing on the situation, he came into the world crying, but maybe for the last time. Soon and ever thereafter, the world responded to Walt by laughing. And thinking. Loving. Sometimes misty-eyed. Often angry – sometimes at him, but usually with him.

Walt was the cartoonist who created the “Pogo” comic strip. It was almost the perfect comic strip – gags, continuity, literary allusions, puns, slapstick, parody and satire, irony, poetry. And Walt might have been the perfect cartoonist. Trained as a Disney animator, he then drew comic books, and political cartoons, and a newspaper strip, and book illustrations, and children’s books, and magazine covers. There were dozens of volumes that collected his work.

I met Kelly as a child (me, not him). It is not a knock to say that I regret never to have seen him sober. He managed quite well, I suppose, but I always wondered whether I communicated the fervor of my admiration. I collected “Pogo” strips as a child; my father knew the automatic presents and rewards I coveted as a boy were “Pogo” and “Peanuts” books – footballs and erector sets meant nothing to me. I am grateful to have autographed sketches and original strips from Kelly. Just after he died in 1973, I became comics editor of the syndicate that handled his strip, which limped on by other hands for a while.

One great afternoon in Los Angeles, Walt’s daughter Carolyn drove me around to spots associated with Walt during his Disney days, including the church where he first married. Walt had, I believe, three wives (serially) and five children, one of whom became prominent in the pro-life movement. Kelly himself never evinced hostility to religion, as far as I know, but his philosophy, while humanitarian, was not sectarian.

Yet he did fight the “good fight,” in fact many good fights. A committed liberal, his most resonant commentary was, however, on broader themes – like his advocacy of the environmental movement. For the first Earth Day, in 1971, he drew the iconic poster that showed a downtrodden Pogo in a littered Okefenokee Swamp with the caption, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I once owned the original artwork of this.

I am not going to claim that Walt Kelly had a subliminal biblical message in this; he didn’t. Yet, very often in life, perceptive and creative people mirror the messages of scripture. After all, God’s truths OUGHT to be plain as day!

We ARE our own worst enemies – Satan leads us astray, and tempts us, but he does not drag us; we choose to sin. This message is all through the Bible… especially in Christ’s admonition to Nicodemus, that we must all be born again (John 3:3). Shakespeare had Cassius speak another version of the truth: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings” (Julius Caesar: I, ii, 140-141).

Walt Kelly did more than argue against littering. As “Pogo” was, all things considered, a commentary on human nature – in the best tradition of that first anthropomorphist, Aesop – Kelly’s famous catchword is a clever way to remind us about personal responsibility, whether to the environment or for our own souls.

In text, Walt Kelly expanded his thesis: “Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle. There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.”

+ + +

One of the few songs Roger Miller recorded that he did not write himself is this week’s music vid. He must have liked it a lot; I do; I think Walt Kelly would have. I hope you like Scott Avett’s version.

Click: Where Have All the Average People Gone?

+ + +