{"id":1350,"date":"2016-04-17T11:00:04","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1350"},"modified":"2020-02-11T16:04:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T21:04:57","slug":"the-bach-experience-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2016\/04\/17\/the-bach-experience-12\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bach Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

John 10:22-30<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to listen to the\u00a0meditations\u00a0only<\/a><\/p>\n

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

So let us keep the festival whereto the Lord invites us; Christ is himself the joy of all, the Sun that warms and lights us. \u00a0By his grace he doth impart eternal sunshine to the heart; the night of sin is ended. \u00a0Alleluia! \u00a0(So wrote Martin Luther in 1524).<\/span><\/p>\n

You will see down the street a block, outside the BU Academy, a new photograph commending the Academy. \u00a0A young woman, with face upturned, radiantly smiles and casts a long look, eyes beaming, into an unseen future. \u00a0It is a striking, even staggering image, the look of Easter. \u00a0Behold there the look of promise, hope, freedom, openness, courage, excitement, joy, and peace. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lent is for preparation and discipline in living. \u00a0Easter is for living. \u00a0We are not meant to live in Lent. \u00a0We are meant to live in Easter. \u00a0\u00a0For this reason itself and alone, it will have been excellent practice for us to have heard all Easter cantatas all year, here at Marsh Chapel, where we are blessed with the finest University Chapel music anywhere in the country. \u00a0\u00a0Your life is made for and meant for and marked for meaningful freedom, joyful growth, loving service, and personal peace. \u00a0You are a child of God, one for whom Christ died, and in whom His resurrection is intended to dwell. \u00a0If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, then you will be saved. \u00a0Confession is an act, uttered by the lips, and lived in the spirit. \u00a0Belief is a matter of the heart, embraced in the dark, and carried forward in the light. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Think about the novelty of Marsh Chapel Community Ecclesiology, one of several \u2018new ways of being church\u2019. \u00a0You are in one sense\u2018The Church of the UnChurched (students, radio listeners, occasional attendees, those returning to faith, pod cast people, all)\u2019. \u00a0God is doing a new thing. \u00a0\u00a0You come Sunday, you listen Sunday. \u00a0Sunday opens the rest of the week for living. \u00a0\u00a0Then you live in community and University in the three other \u2018ships\u2019, other than worship\u2014discipleship, fellowship, and stewardship. \u00a0This wide berth of freedom can be a great challenge, but is also a magnificent gift, for those with ears to hear. \u00a0As WS Coffin so often said, \u2018God gives us minimum protection and maximum support\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our Holy Scripture, the prototype of every type of struggle in life, breathes us life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Psalm 23 forever proclaims a Good Shepherd, a shepherding goodness forever available, always possible, eternally present. \u00a0Goodness and mercy shall follow me, all the days of my life. \u00a0But such shepherding, incarnate, requires human time, effort, voices, notes and donations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Acts 9\u2014we still are reading Luke, but have jumped to the second season for a time, his full history, the Acts of the Apostles\u2014accounts a dramatic healing, a raising like that of Lazarus, but this time at the hands of Peter, not of Jesus. \u00a0\u00a0Our teacher reminded us that the one-to-one things are the most important, the personal things count most. \u00a0Tabitha! \u00a0Rise! \u00a0Please do not become lost in the mystery or magic of these multiple acts in Acts. \u00a0Here the Scripture attests strongly and simply to real healing, the potential for real help, in real time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Revelation 7 begins with tribulation, suffering. \u00a0There will be a time, a place, a setting when the Shepherd will guide the thirsty to springs of living water, when the Shepherd will meet the sorrowful and wipe away every tear from their eyes, when the Shepherd will find the hungry and feed them all, when the Shepherd will embrace the thirsty and slake their thirst, when the Shepherd will wash with mercy and peace the robes of tribulation and suffering. \u00a0\u00a0Now this is aspiration not actuality, right now. \u00a0We are hoping for what we do not see; we are seeing in a glass dimly; we are holding treasures in earthen vessels<\/span><\/p>\n

John 10:22-30 makes audible the voice of the Shepherd, and so the sheep may know that voice, they may hear and they may know and they may follow. \u00a0This Spiritual Gospel of John is so lastingly redolent with the Divine Presence! \u00a0We are in good hands, and so we are able to bear one another\u2019s burdens (H Smith).<\/span><\/p>\n

John Wesley taught us: \u201c<\/span>Do all the good you can, at all the times you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can\u201d\u2026<\/span><\/i>.and\u2026<\/span> \u201cDo you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Dr. Jarrett, for what shall we listen, this Eastertide, as the beauty of Bach\u2019s Cantata addresses us?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Jarrett
\n<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Our cantata this morning is one of the most famous in all Bach\u2019s output. One of his earliest cantatas, <\/span>Christ lag in Todesbanden<\/span><\/i>, or Christ lay in Death\u2019s Bonds, sets all seven verses of Martin Luther\u2019s 1524 hymn in a remarkable display of invention and variation, within an overall symmetrical design of proportion and elegance so familiar to us from this composer. <\/span><\/p>\n

The text depicts the epic battle of life over death, redemption versus destruction — the Paschal lamb roars as the Lion of Judah. Bach scored his cantata for strings only, including two viola lines, and achieves an astonishing degree of variety and color with such limited instrumental resources. Here are few things to listen for this morning:<\/span><\/p>\n