Hit it, Brenda

“Hit It, Brenda”

Matthew 17.1-12 

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’ And the disciples asked him, ‘Why, then, do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ He replied, ‘Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but they did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands.’ Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.

In 1997 I traveled to Scotland with my father.  Part of the adventure was a long drive down the valley of lochs that splits the highlands.  Our landing spot was Glen Garry Castle.  The castle sits beside the loch Garry, which is fed by the river Garry, and, just beyond the castle, is the town of Invergarry.  Perhaps you could see the allure.

On our arrival I was chatted up by the proprietor. He wanted to know many things about us.  When I confessed my occupation as a Presbyterian pastor, he spun away from me and reached for a small drawer in a wall of small drawers with brass pulls.  From this small drawer he drew a small key and said, “here’s the key to the kirk.  You go have a look.” 

In short order my father and I were walking a winding trail through the woods until we came to a clearing and found a small stone chapel.  The key worked and in we went.  The quality of light and the closed doors gave a musty, tomb like smell.  Or at least it is what I imagine a tomb smells like as I have never really been in one. 

As we made our way through the pews to the center chancel I felt the weight of the granite walls and deep window wells.  When my eyes were adjusted to the light I spied a granite baptismal fount.  Passing by I dipped my hand in the well.  My heart broke when I pulled up a heavy coat of spider’s web.  It was as if I were holding the death of the church.

On our last morning at the Castle Glen Garry we returned to the kirk.  It was Sunday morning and we enjoyed the service.  There are two moments from that morning I will never forget.  The first was the music.  The church didn’t have a spectacular music program.  The hymns were played on a tired organ by an organist who seemed just as weary; the congregation sang with gusto, but they were not an angelic choir shall we say.  Yet the music gave me an epiphany.

The epiphany was how the words and the music came together.  Here, in our worship, in our tradition, the sense of the worship is driven by the spoken word.  The music binds the call, the prayers, the reading, and the sermon together.  Music is like the glue attaching one spoken moment to the next.  In the little kirk with its cob webbed fount, here it was the opposite.  What was spoken was offered to bind the music together.  This changed my life.

I realized something about our worship that has changed me again and again.  You see, you can go on line and listen to my sermon; you can read the readings on your own as you can the prayers.  But the hymns, the anthem, the choral responses, only in the moment together can we share these, be one voice.  We don’t have to be together to hear the word of God, but we need to be together to lift our voice as one in song. 

The other moment came after the worship.  The pastor called me the night before to introduce himself and personally invite me to worship.  So we gathered beside the front door and after the parishioners had made their way, we lingered to do what all clergy do, we engaged in shop talk.  This would not have been memorable, but we kept being interrupted.  Every few seconds a young child rushed past me.  Some simply dashed between us, others bumped us, some shouted, others were just loud. 

Getting a bit annoyed I said, “what are all these kids doing here?”  The question was not only born of the cobwebs in the fount, but also that there were no children in the worship service; the demographic of the congregation quite matched the gray granite.  “Oh, them.  Aye.  They are quite lively.  That’s Sunday School.  They do love Sunday School.”

They do love Sunday school.  All of sudden the dry fount seemed to be filled with water in my mind. These kids were running to church; a whole village of them.  The image of a church slowly dying was quickly replaced by a church being born anew.

We put a lot of stock in words.  Sometimes I feel lost in an ocean of words, mountains of books, and endless stream of emails and texts and on-line articles.  Recently someone took offence at a comment I made about love.  To fix me the offended sent me an article to read.  I must confess I didn’t read it.  I am not dying but I do not have enough time left in my life to read the twisted logic of the hyper-evangelicals, the thin mask of hatred the fundamentalist wear to conceal their fears.  All I needed to read was the call to read.  Here are some words to fix you, make you see the truth. We all believe words can do this.

I love words, take great delight in them.  But I have come to see their limit.  They are the glue, the binding agent, the fastener.  Words can bind us together: we take vows of marriage, vows of ordination, vows of service to country, vows of secrecy even—if you are spy.  Words, like a legal contract, are binding; they hold you to account. 

Words are often associated with truth and falsity.  “Let your words be true.” I always pause when I sign a document that asks if everything stated is true.  It’s not that I am trying to be false, but I am always mindful of how limited is my grasp of what is true.  I feel like the folks at the Iran Contra hearings.  Remember those.  “Senator, to the best of my recollection.”  It’s a great line.  So much better than saying, “well, I am just not sure, but I think so.”

Since that musty stone chapel in the highlands, the Holy Spirit has been working on me in terms of words, moving me closer and closer to a different way of seeing them, hearing them.  I still love words and spend my day with them.  But sometime a while back I began to see words as a servant of music, a helper to prepare for song, a moment to catch your breath before the next hymn.

One of the first things you learn when you study ancient Greek is that no one knows for sure how the words were pronounced.  We have ancient Greek texts, old enough to be sure this is what people wrote in Athens before the word became flesh.  But what we don’t have are recordings of people speaking, or better yet, singing in Greek.  The common belief is that Greek was not a spoken language; it was a sung language.  Think opera, plain chant, rap music.  Greek was a language born of music hence we cannot know how it sounded because we do know how the ancients Greeks sang their words.

Consider for a moment how difficult it is to find the right word sometimes.  How often have we gone through a list of words and with each one we say, “no, that’s not quite right.”  “A to do, a dust up, a scene, a melee.  No.”  This can go on for a while, we give up, and then the right word comes to mind and we say, “kerfuffle.  There was quite a kerfuffle.” Imagine for just a moment if we not only had to find the right word but also the right tune.  Imagine if your words needed to not only make sense but keep a rhythm, stay to the beat.  Why, we might not talk as much.

Not everyone knows this, I do by way of occupational proximity, but the profound union of word and music is the great challenge of the choir director, the organist, the minister of music. I just need to figure out where the commas go; I can’t imagine where to put the notes.

The church musician not only needs to search, hunt, and find the right lyrics, but also the right tune to match the moment.  How many pastors have chosen a hymn in your career Brenda, and you had to say, “well, those are lovely lyrics, but this is just not singable?”  There are a lot of hymns whose words are potent, provocative, but the music is deadly, or a death march. Sure, we can sing this if you want everyone to be brought to despair.

And it is not just knowing the right tune, it is also knowing the congregation, how they will hear something, what it means for them to find the tune. Some congregations take to a new piece of music like a fish to water; some take to a new hymn “like a fish to a bicycle.”

One of the joys of my life was to watch Malawians sing hymns.  In the US, we sing hymns like a fading star.  We start with a bang.  First verse we sign out long and strong, and then we start to fade.  Heaven help us if there are seven stanzas.  We sound like the last gasp of bag pipes in the end.  The Malawians are the opposite.  On the first verse they seem confused, as if they are trying to catch the tune.  And then, stanza by stanza they gain strength, so that by the final line the walls are shaking as they sing. 

I love that about singing in Malawi.  It is as if they gain momentum with each pass until they explode.  Can you imagine that?  How much fun would that be?  I know that is a secret hope of every organist who changes the tempo or the instrument before the final verse.  Wake them up before the end.  But what a different world it would be if you needed to play faster to catch up in the end.

There is so much preachers need to learn from music.  So often our sermons have no rhythm with the people in the pews; we have written something to reach the mind, not the heart; we are lost in our words, not in our wonder. A great church musician can fix all of this, keep the congregation close to the spirit. When the sermon sends folks far from joy, an anthem can restore the wounds of words; a hymn played softly and tenderly can soothe the ache of misapplied doctrine and dogma.

On the top of Mt. Tabor Jesus was transfigured into glory; he shown like the sun and the living memory of Elijah and Moses came near.  And then the preacher, Peter, spoke.  He nearly ruined everything. The story of the transfiguration is about not speaking; it’s about listening.

I am glad I got my first glimpse of this transfiguration in that small stone chapel with the cobwebs in the fount.  For it takes time for preachers to become convinced how important it is to listen.  Mostly, to listen to the church sing, to listen to the organ open the heart and the soul, to accompany the soprano or tenor so the cry of joy and the cry of lament stand in our midst.

You make it appear effortless; hence, I love to tease you and say, “Hit it, Brenda.”  I love to say this because I know all too well what it means create the moments, to craft the space, where the hearts of those who have gathered here become one and rise above the limits of brokenness. 

My words are merely the glue of those moments, your moments.  For forty years you made a place for people to hear their heart, to hear each other.  I just hope my words these last few years were a help, were sticky enough, so not to interrupt the flow of glory.  Amen.