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TWO HEAVENS #5
CAVIAR AND CRACKERS
There was a cute cartoon in Leadership magazine not too long ago, and
it didn't have a single word of dialogue in the caption. Two preachers
are staring silently up at the grand fresco, this great wall of marble.
And carved in it are the following words: "Introit. Ministers kneel.
Welcome. Hymn of Worship. Offering. Pastoral Prayer. Sermon. Closing Hymn.
Benediction."
And that was it. Not a word of discussion, no jokes or puns or ha-ha one-liners.
Just this order of worship . . . CARVED IN GRANITE. And of course, that
was the point. This "(quote) way of doing things," or what we
call the "liturgy," was carved in stone. The offering comes
before the pastoral prayer, it always HAS come before the pastoral prayer,
it always WILL come before the pastoral prayer . . . and woe betide the
person who even clears his throat to suggest a change from that sacred
WAY. It will not happen. In my own Adventist denomination, we sometimes
joke that such-and-such policy has been dictated down to us "according
to the laws of the Medes and Persians, which ‘changeth not.'"
And you know, "changeth not" are two words which sound pretty
wonderful to some of the participants in what we've called the "music
wars" this week. Perhaps some of you listening have felt, or wished,
that it was carved in stone at YOUR church: "Music will be done with
the organ, and only the organ." And we come up — on both sides —
against a certain fierce inflexibility.
I mentioned yesterday how a very unhappy C. S. Lewis really did hate ALL
the music they did at church. Oh, he didn't think it was sinful; the Christian
rock group Stryper hadn't come on the scene yet. But week after week,
he sat in his pew, looking at the common folks bellowing out their favorite
songs — all of them so banal and simplistic, he thought. And it took a
while before a certain humility crept over him. He finally began to appreciate
the fact that other people WERE being blessed by this common music; they
WERE finding Jesus Christ through the cheerful singing they were doing
each Sunday. Maybe the great cathedrals of London weren't as desecrated
as he had thought.
So . . . humility is important for all of us as we look up at the great
stone carving which thunders down: "MUSIC SHALL ALWAYS BE DONE IN
SUCH-AND-SUCH A WAY — THUS SAITH THE LORD." We need to realize that
our thoughts and opinions aren't the final answer to every question.
But in other writings of his, C. S. Lewis makes two additional points
that are helpful as we continue to grapple with the very real dilemma
of music in the church. What do we do when WE are unhappy with the choices
being made? Where do we turn if we're not being blessed by the guitars
and keyboards people are bringing in?
First of all, as Lewis points out, it's a good and common rule at sea
if two ships are about to collide: the more maneuverable of the two ought
to give way. To back down or turn at least a bit to the side so as to
avoid a crash.
What does this mean for us in a new millennium, as pipe organs are giving
way to drum sets, and where hymnals are meekly surrendering to the overhead
projector and the PowerPoint song lyrics? Many churches are attempting
to hold their congregations together with what they call "blended
worship." A hymn, then a praise song. A traditional favorite, followed
by something with a bit of Southern Gospel. And what the pastor and the
minister of music are hoping the Christians in the pew will learn to do
is to hang in there. Be flexible. If you don't like the song they're singing
RIGHT THIS MINUTE, just sit tight. In three minutes, they'll be doing
one you DO like. "And," the pastor might be saying, "liking
music is not the MAIN point anyway. We're here to honor God, not just
to like things." That's a point we'll return to later.
But now the second concept. I mentioned yesterday how there are among
us "high" musicians and, well, "low" ones. Worshipers
who like the pipe organ, and the great composers. And those who like the
Maranatha Praise Band and songs like "Everything's Gonna Be All Right
in Christ." And both of these groups often tend to look DOWN at the
other group. "There but for the grace of God go I." Except that
there's not much grace in the confession.
Well, here's the second point from C. S. Lewis, and this comes from a
1948 essay he wrote entitled, ironically, "Correspondence With an
Anglican Who Dislikes Hymns."
"There are two musical situations,"
he writes, "on which I think we can be confident that a blessing
rests. One is where a priest or an organist, himself a man of trained
and delicate taste, humbly and charitably sacrifices his own (aesthetically
right) desires and gives the people humbler and coarser fare than he would
wish, in a belief (even, as it may be, the erroneous belief) that he can
thus bring them to God."
And there's probably a lot of that happening. A music
director with a doctorate and years of university training gives the church
family crackers instead of caviar, even though he much prefers caviar.
He's GOT caviar. He LIKES caviar. He knows, or believes, that caviar is
better. But, in order to be a blessing to the cracker-eating public, he
quietly lowers himself and gives them crackers. In this case, "common"
music.
Here's the rest of Lewis' essay, though.
"The other [situation God blesses],"
he writes, "is where the stupid and unmusical layman humbly and patiently,
and above all silently, listens to music which he cannot, or cannot fully,
appreciate, in the belief that it somehow glorifies God, and that if it
does not edify him this must be his own defect."
Have you ever been in THAT camp? You sit in the pew,
and the music someone is doing is just MILES too high for you. Maybe not
even in English. Now, you can tell that it's a well-performed Latin madrigal;
it's "high church." But you're not getting heads or tails out
of it. And yet, I hope, you quietly sit there, saying to yourself: "This
isn't doing it for me. But it DOES honor God . . . I guess. (He speaks
Latin.) And others around me must be getting a taste of heaven out of
it, even if the wiring in ME doesn't seem to tune this in very well."
Here's the conclusion of C. S. Lewis' essay . . . and remember that this
was hugely personal for him. This is how HE reacted too — stuck in a pew
at church, listening to music which went right past him, either on the
high or the low side. For sure, it wasn't hitting HIM. But he hung in
there, and now he writes about these two groups who are perhaps frustrated,
but who patiently endure for the sake of others.
"Neither such a High Brow nor such a Low
Brow can be far out of the way," he writes. "To both, Church
Music will have been a means of GRACE; not the music they have liked,
but the music they have DISliked. They have both offered, sacrificed,
their taste in the fullest sense."
That's a huge challenge, isn't it? To make our musical
dissatisfaction a "(quote) means of grace." Hanging in there
while music you don't care for blesses others. May God help us.
But there's a flip side we have to contend with for sure. What if we block
out the grace? The Ph.D. music director looks down in disgust at the masses
with their guitars. The kids with the ponytails and the Alesis synthesizers
and sound boards look up at the pipe organ with equal disdain. Here's
Lewis' final thought about it all:
"But where the opposite situation arises,
where the musician is filled with the pride of skill or the virus of emulation
and looks with contempt on the unappreciative congregation, or where the
UNmusical, complacently entrenched in their own ignorance and conservatism,
look with the restless and resentful hostility of an inferiority complex
on all who would try to improve their taste — there, we may be sure, all
that both offer is UNblessed and the spirit that moves them is not the
Holy Ghost."
I've been sharing, all through this week, bits and
pieces of a wonderful editorial by William Johnsson, editor of our own
Adventist Review. After making a number of key points, he concludes with
this:
"Our big need all around is to respect and
appreciate each other, regardless of age, culture, or musical idiom."
Let me close with this – and I do hope you'll join
us next week as we continue to think about God's will for us in this area
of music. But in Matthew chapter 26, right after Jesus has the final Passover
supper with His disciples, the night before He dies, the Bible tells us
they sang a hymn and then left for the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane.
And Jesus Christ, who in His prior glory with the Father, had heard the
choral praises of millions of adoring angels, cherubic choirs we could
never comprehend, who had Himself created all the intricacies of melody
and harmony the universe has ever known or ever will know, quietly sang
a hymn, blending His voice with the rough, untrained voices of eleven
fishermen. In all the forms of grace He would pour out that weekend, we
also have . . . a country song.
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