{"id":1077,"date":"2015-02-08T11:00:32","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T16:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1077"},"modified":"2020-02-11T16:16:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T21:16:09","slug":"the-bach-experience-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2015\/02\/08\/the-bach-experience-8\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bach Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Mark 1: 29-39<\/a><\/p>\n

Psalm 147: 1-11<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to listen to the sermon only<\/a><\/p>\n

Reverend Hill<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There come wintery episodes in the course of a snow battered lifetime that place us deep in the shadows. \u00a0\u00a0If the shadow is dark enough, we may not feel able to move forward, for our foresight and insight and eyesight are so limited. \u00a0We may become frozen, snowed in.<\/p>\n

You may have known this condition\u2014of confusion or disorientation or ennui or acedia. \u00a0You may know it still. \u00a0The death of a loved one can bring such a feeling. \u00a0The loss of a position or job can bring such a feeling. \u00a0The recognition of a major life mistake can bring such a feeling. \u00a0The recollection of a past loss can bring such a feeling. \u00a0The disappearance of a once radiant affection, or love, for a person or a cause or an institution can bring such a feeling. \u00a0The senselessness of violence inflicted on the innocent can bring such a feeling.<\/p>\n

Over the years I have grown frustrated by my own mother tongue in various ways. \u00a0English places such a fence between thought and feeling, when real thought is almost always deeply felt, and real feeling is almost always keenly thought. \u00a0We need another word like thoughtfeeling<\/i> or feltthought. \u00a0<\/i>When C Wesley sang \u2018unite the pair so long disjoined, knowledge and vital piety, learning and holiness combined, and truth and love let us all see\u2019 he described something so bone marrow close to my own life, happiness, hope, ministry, faith. \u00a0And he also I think was wrestling with the limits of our beautiful language. \u00a0Anyway, you by nature and discipline live the thoughtfeeling <\/i>gospel, and for that I am lastingly thankful.<\/p>\n

Be it then thought or feeling or thoughtfeeling<\/i>, there do come episodes, all in a lifetime, that place us, if not in the dark, at least well into the shadows. \u00a0You may have known all about this at one time. \u00a0You may know it still.<\/p>\n

Come Sunday, some snippet of song, or verse, or preachment, or prayer, or, especially today a line from the Cantata, it may be, will touch you as you meander about in the dim shadow twilight. \u00a0Hold onto that snippet. \u00a0Follow its contours along the cave of darkness in which you now move. \u00a0Let the snippet\u2014song, verse, sermon, prayer, line\u2014let it guide you along. \u00a0So you may be able to murmur: \u2018I can do this\u2026I can make my way\u2026I can find a handhold or foothold\u2026I can hope and even trust that the Lord heals the brokenhearted\u2026I can make it for now, at least for now, for the time being.\u2019 \u00a0\u00a0It is the power and role of beauty, verbal or musical or liturgical or communal, to restore us to our rightful mind, our right thoughtfeeling.<\/p>\n

Today the epistle, the Gospel and the psalm lifts a hymn of faith, a song of courage in the face of adversity. \u00a0\u00a0It is this lift for living which beauty, especially the beauty of holiness, and particularly, this morning, the beauty of holy music is meant to provide. \u00a0Here we want to underscore Truth, for sure, and Goodness, for sure. \u00a0But we don\u2019t want to leave behind beauty. \u00a0Beauty can heal. \u00a0In our work with demons. \u00a0In our quiet and contemplation. \u00a0Beauty, in the case of this morning, the beauty of Bach, often has the power to shake us loose, to set us free.<\/p>\n

\u2018How happy I am, that my precious one is the A and O, the beginning and the end; He will claim me as his prize and take me to Paradise, for which I clap my hands. Amen! Amen! Come, you lovely crown of joy, do not delay, I await you with longing.\u2019<\/p>\n

Dr Jarrett, how shall we listen, both on the radio and in person, most fully to be immersed in today\u2019s Bach experience?<\/p>\n

Dr. Jarrett<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

BWV 1 was written for Sunday, March 1725. By it\u2019s date, it concludes Bach\u2019s Second Yearly Cycle (Jahrgang) of cantatas written for liturgical purposes in Leipzig. Following the pattern of many from that second cycle, the piece is named for and draws inspiration from a great chorale tune, in this instance, one by Philip Nicolai \u2018Wie sch\u00f6n leuchtet\u2019 \u2014 we Methodist sing this chorale as #247 \u2018O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright\u2019. The tune is featured prominently in long high notes in the soprano throughout the first movement in one of Bach\u2019s most opulent Chorale Fantasias. The final chorale is the same tune as well.<\/p>\n

Liturgically and theologically, March 25, 1725 presented Bach and the clergy with a rarity: the movable feast, Palm Sunday, coincided with a fixed feast, the Annunciation of Mary. Officially, BWV 1 is listed as for the Annunciation of Mary, though there is good \u2018King\u2019 language through the piece. In general, the cantata\u2019s text and music celebrate Christ\u2019s coming both as King entering Jerusalem, and with \u2018eastern opulence\u2019 of the anticipated birth of the King. Pairs of violins, English horns, and French horn contribute to this opulence and richness of texture in a cantata so highly regarded that the first publishers of Bach\u2019s collected works listed this as BWV 1 in the initial volume of the Bach-Gesellschaft.<\/p>\n

It is unbridled in joy and praise, heard in hearty dance rhythms befitting the celebration of the coming and the entrance of the King\u2026.<\/p>\n

\u2018How happy I am, that my precious one is the A and O, the beginning and the end; He will claim me as his prize and take me to Paradise, for which I clap my hands. Amen! Amen! Come, you lovely crown of joy, do not delay, I await you with longing.\u2019<\/p>\n

Reverend Hill<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Given the wintery snares, cold air illness, icy night terrors, and snow bound disease, noonday destruction, evil, scourge, wild beasts of this very day, it could be that a sober reading of our lessons, particularly our psalm, one of the great trusting hymns of a faithful heart, will sustain us this morning. \u00a0Beauty can heal.<\/p>\n

Our psalmist, our singer is a person of simple faith. \u00a0We could make many complaints about this hymn and its singer. \u00a0He has a dangerously simple view of evil, especially for the complexity of a post-modern world. \u00a0He has a way of implying that trust, or belief, are rewarded with safety, a notion that Jesus in Luke 13 scornfully dismisses, and we know to be untrue. \u00a0He has an appalling lack of interest in the scores of others, other than you, who fall by the wayside. \u00a0He seems to celebrate a foreordained, foreknown providence that ill fits our sense of the openness of God to the future, and the open freedom God has given us for the future. \u00a0He makes dramatic and outlandish promises not about what might happen, but about what will be. \u00a0As a thinking theologian, this psalmist of psalm 147 fails. \u00a0He fails us in our need to rely on something sounder and truer than blind faith. \u00a0He seems to us to be whistling past the graveyard.<\/p>\n

And yet\u2026 for those who have walked past a February graveyard or two, for those who have walked the valley of the shadow of death, for a world at war, for a world searching to match its ideals of peace with its realities of hatred, for you today if you are in trouble, and who are worried today about others and other graves and other yards, and who have seen the hidden traps, unforeseeable dangers, and steel jawed snares of life, there is something encouraging about this simple song: \u00a0\u201cthe Lord heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.<\/p>\n

Our writer is not a philosopher. \u00a0He is a musician, perhaps, but not a systematic thinker. \u00a0He has one interest: \u00a0getting by, getting through, getting out, and getting home. \u00a0So he does not worry about the small stuff. \u00a0In fact, I have a sense that the psalmist is a bit desperate. \u00a0His song is one for that point on the road when you just have to go ahead and risk and jump. \u00a0You have made your assessment, you have made your plan, you have made your study, then you have prayed. \u00a0Yet you see all the pestilence about you in homes and institutions and nations, so you wonder, is it worth the risk? \u00a0You are not sure.<\/p>\n

This hymn of the heart is one you sing when you are not sure, but you are confident. \u00a0Not certain, but confident. \u00a0You can be confident without being certain. \u00a0In fact, a genuine honest confidence includes the confidence to admit you are not sure. \u00a0Faith means risk. \u00a0Isn\u2019t that part of what we mean by faith? \u00a0Our writer is at that point, the point of decision. \u00a0Once you are there, you have to choose between walking forward and slinking away.<\/p>\n

Our psalmist is speaking just here to our immediate need. \u00a0Fear not\u2019 \u00a0The Lord is not interested in \u2018the strength of the horse or the speed of the runner\u2019. Go about your discipleship: \u00a0pray, study, learn, make peace, love your neighbor, agree to disagree agreeably, every one be convinced in his own mind.<\/p>\n

I remember a Day Care center where I used to see notes pinned to the coats and sweaters of daycare toddlers. \u00a0\u00a0This psalm is a note pinned to the shirt of a loved one heading into danger. \u00a0When there is nothing else we can give our daughters and sons we want them to have faith. \u00a0Faith to go forward, bravely, without being sure of what they will find along the way.<\/p>\n

\u2018How happy I am, that my precious one is the A and O, the beginning and the end; He will claim me as his prize and take me to Paradise, for which I clap my hands. Amen! Amen! Come, you lovely crown of joy, do not delay, I await you with longing.\u2019<\/p>\n

-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/a><\/p>\n

&<\/p>\n

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music, Marsh Chapel<\/a><\/p>\n

For more information about Marsh Chapel at Boston University,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For information about donating to the Chapel,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service Mark 1: 29-39 Psalm 147: 1-11 Click here to listen to the sermon only Reverend Hill There come wintery episodes in the course of a snow battered lifetime that place us deep in the shadows. \u00a0\u00a0If the shadow is dark enough, we may not feel able to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,36,22],"tags":[11,6,10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1084,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions\/1084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}