{"id":3141,"date":"2021-04-25T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2021-04-25T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=3141"},"modified":"2021-05-02T15:16:28","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T19:16:28","slug":"the-bach-experience-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2021\/04\/25\/the-bach-experience-29\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bach Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

1 John <\/span>3:16<\/span>\u2013<\/span>24<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

John 10:11<\/span>\u2013<\/span>18<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear just the sermon<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Personal Faith<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Christian life is a daily combination of personal faith and social involvement (repeat).\u00a0 Deep personal faith and active social involvement.<\/p>\n

While personal faith is not merely individual faith, nonetheless, it is in persons, like you, that faith is received, and known, and nourished.\u00a0\u00a0 There is no hiding here, no hiding behind an unconsidered ignorance, nor behind a well-tempered philosophy, nor behind a mountainous and real hurt, nor behind sloth.\u00a0 Your faith is yours, especially when it is about all you have left to go on.<\/p>\n

So, you will continue, brightened by Easter, to develop and practice your faith.\u00a0 We are not meant to live in Lent.\u00a0\u00a0 We are meant to live in Easter.\u00a0 The difference Easter makes comes in part by way of a full body embrace of your own personal faith.\u00a0 Let us in Easter spirit embrace the faith we have been given.<\/p>\n

We know God to be a pardoning God.\u00a0 We hope to be made whole in this lifetime.<\/p>\n

Knowing pardon, seeking wholeness, holiness, can you creatively and even at some risk, work with another whom you think needs your pardon, I beg your pardon, but who may himself think you need his?\u00a0 Just how sharp is your faith in its faithful practice of what we pray, Come Sunday, \u2018forgive\u2026as we forgive\u2019?<\/p>\n

Longing for wholeness, can you creatively and even at some risk, take up work that you have long left behind, but you know is part of personal faith development\u2014reading, prayer, giving, serving, listening?\u00a0 Pardon?\u00a0 Wholeness?\u00a0 It is up to you.<\/p>\n

Here the faithful Lutheran, JS Bach, can indeed help us, by means of his own example in faith.\u00a0 His own Bible, we have recently been further taught, was laden with notes in the margin, questions, renderings, and ruminations.<\/p>\n

Personal faith may quicken with personal practices, of a new post-Covid sort.\u00a0 In this past year, we may have discovered some new measures of resilience, grace, creativity and love.<\/p>\n

One may choose to play the piano again.\u00a0 Another may take a language study.\u00a0 One may find a daily devotional reader, which sits on a bureau so one can read it while tying a tie.\u00a0 Another may sit in the quiet of the sanctuary for a while before worship, as did Emerson, who said, I love the silent church before there is any speaking.<\/em>\u00a0 One may wander, saunter, flaner dans le rue, <\/em>walking for a bit every day.\u00a0 Exercise is so spiritually central and important. Another may start to journal, to record dreams, and to record insights, and to record angers and to record escapes.\u00a0 Teaching and learning are spiritual adventures in pursuit of invisibles and intangibles <\/em>(W. Arrowsmith).\u00a0 Or, if nothing else, you can hardly do better than a conversation, in loving care, with another person of faith, say, over the phone.\u00a0 One may look hard at her life, her actual activity, to see whether it becomes the gospel, and whether it approximates the very general guidance in the wisdom saying, in singleness integrity, in partnership fidelity.\u00a0 <\/em>At least one, it may be, will choose to listen with weekly discipline to the Marsh Chapel recorded and broadcast service, Come Sunday. \u00a0At least one, it may be, will choose to receive as a spiritual practice, the beauty of choral music, Come This and Other Bach Sundays.<\/p>\n

Personal faith may quicken with disciplined personal practices, perhaps of a new post-Covid sort, inspired and empowered by the presence of the Good Shepherd, who knows his own and his own know him.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jarrett:\u00a0 in terms of today\u2019s music, and text, what witness do you sense Bach brings us, of personal faith, within the setting of this lovely cantata?<\/p>\n

Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bach<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s cantata, is, indeed, a lesson in faith, assurance, and the promise of God\u2019s goodness in our lives. Cantata 69a \u2013 \u201cPraise the Lord, o My Soul\u201d was first performed on August 15, 1723, during Bach\u2019s first three months as Cantor in Leipzig. We have seen in these cantatas not just a remarkable display of compositional craftsmanship, but also an authoritative theological understanding through both the compilation of the libretto and the setting of those texts. Cantata 69a features from beginning to end an exuberant and joyful hymn of praise of God and the good works that enable a life of faith. Opening with full festival forces with trumpets and timpani, Bach sets the words of Psalm 103, vs 2 in a marvelous double fugue. The music is absolutely radiant, brilliant, and brimming with the praise of all God\u2019s faithful. With this rich texture, we can well imagine the sound of Wesley\u2019s thousand tongues to sing the great Redeemer\u2019s praise.<\/p>\n

For Bach, the Gospel lesson of the day was from Mark 7, the account of Jesus healing the deaf man at the Sea of Galilee. As the cantata turns from corporate to personal praise, the soprano and tenor soloists join the voices that witnessed Jesus\u2019s miracle proclaiming the goodness of his deeds, and the glory of God. The cheerful tenor aria is delightfully score for recorder and Oboe da caccia. Listen for the extended line that Bach writes for the word erz\u00e4hle or \u201cdeclare\u201d, and like the man whose tongue Jesus loosed, the tenor promises a \u201cGott gef\u00e4llig Singen durch die frohe Lippen\u201d or a \u201cGod pleasing singing though joyful lips.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the following alto recit, we turn inward to remember our human frailty and shortcomings. With further reminder of the Gospel lesson, the alto calls on God to utter his mighty \u2018Ephphata\u2019 just as Jesus did in Mark 7:34. From the singing of that Aramaic word meaning \u201cBe opened\u201d, the otherwise syllabic recitative opens to a lovely melody on the words, \u201cso wird mein Mund voll Dankens sein!\u201d \u201c Then my mouth will be full of thanks!\u201d<\/p>\n

The bass aria which follows affirms God as Redeemer and Protector. The believer, here the voice of the bass, pens himself to Christ\u2019s Cross and Passion, pledging to praise at all times. In the same way that Christ gladly took up the cross, thereby exalting his Passion, we, too, will rejoice and sing praise in our own Cross-bearing and suffering. Note the stark contrast of the lines for Kreuz und Leiden (Cross and Suffering) with \u201csingt mein Mund mit Freuden\u201d (My mouth sings with joy).<\/p>\n

The final Chorale echoes the close of Mark 7 proclaiming \u201cHe hath done all things well!\u201d \u201cWas Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, darbei will ich verbleiben.\u201d Because God holds me in a fatherly embrace in his arms, I will let him alone govern me. Confidence, assurance, affirmation, and ultimately, faith to live in freedom, and freedom to live by faith.<\/p>\n

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

Social Involvement<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Christian life is a daily combination of personal faith and social involvement (repeat).\u00a0 Of deep personal faith, and active social involvement.<\/p>\n

The community of the Gospel of John knew the necessity of nimble engagement of current experience, and the saving capacity to change, in the face of new circumstances.\u00a0\u00a0 The community of this Gospel could do so because they had experienced the Shepherd, present, \u2018here\u2019, hic et nunc.<\/em>\u00a0 In distress,\u00a0we hold onto divine presence, on word, the Shepherd\u2013 here<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On the front porch of our beloved Marsh Chapel stands John Wesley, posed in preaching, who reminds us that there is no holiness save social holiness <\/em>(repeat).\u00a0 In the tradition which gave birth to Boston University and to Marsh Chapel and so to our worship on this and every Sunday, personal faith and social involvement go together, and, in truth, are not found, except hand in hand.<\/p>\n

As all of our 55 weeks and Sundays of worship, teaching, fellowship and remembrance, throughout these 385 days of contagion, masking and vaccine, have evinced among us, pistis<\/em> and polis<\/em>, faith and culture go together.\u00a0\u00a0 Here Bach may help us, if especially in the surge of beauty his music showers on us a sense of grace, and in so doing gathers us as one.\u00a0 The older Lutheran preference for the two kingdoms, Christ and Culture in paradox, is at some lesser closeness to the transformational aspiration in Wesley\u2019s social holiness.\u00a0 Yet Bach\u2019s very vocational choice to embed himself in congregational musical life is itself a harbinger of transformation.\u00a0 More, the universal regard for the beauty of Bach itself places on the edge of a way forward, as a global village.<\/p>\n

As women and men of faith, we are not free to celebrate faith apart from life, to affirm faith in ignorance of the polis<\/em>, the city, the culture, the political.\u00a0 The Bible itself is a 66-book declamation of social justice, at every turn, by every writer, with every chapter, at every point.\u00a0\u00a0 Moses, Amos, Micah, Matthew, Luke, Paul, All.\u00a0 Try and read the Bible without being confronted, accosted, seized and shaken by its fierce acclamation of the hope of justice.\u00a0 Real religion is never very far from justice, even though justice alone, a crucial part of the Gospel, alone is not the heart of the Gospel.\u00a0 The Gospel is love, which is more than justice\u2014though not less.<\/em><\/p>\n

You then, in real time, read the newspaper as well as the Bible.\u00a0 You have reason and obligation to be concerned about what you read.\u00a0 You have reason and obligation to be concerned about the persons and personalities driving cultural and political formation. You also have reason and obligation to be concerned about the policies, speaking of polis,<\/em> which emanate from those personalities and persons, those forms of rhetoric and language and behavior. You have full reason and obligation to be concerned about public good, about the polis<\/em>, about the forms of culture and civil society across our land, painstakingly built up over 250 years, that are not government and not politics, but are more fundamental and more fragile than both.\u00a0 You have reason and obligation to be concerned about the use of force of any kind, as we have been this past week. For example, our own BU President, Dr. Robert A. Brown faithfully wrote this week:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s my hope that this trial, and the activism and awareness which resulted from Mr. Floyd\u2019s death, will bring us closer to that elusive equality, certainly as it relates to policing and the threat posed by law enforcement practices in communities of color. I also hope his legacy\u2014and the legacy of the many other Black people who have lost their lives to police violence\u2014helps to illuminate and redress the many other racial injustices which continue to afflict our society. These tragic deaths cast a bright and honest light on every form of racial antipathy, and I hope this energy carries into the fight we are having today to secure voting rights for people of color, and to stand up against every other manifestation of racism around the world.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let us run the race set before us. So, as a runner, say, you have reason and obligation to be concerned about the route itself.\u00a0 Run with joy the race set, but neglect not to engage by precept and example the social support, the cultural forms required for the race. \u00a0Like our beloved Marathon, which we have not celebrated now for two years, but we may honor in imagination today:\u00a0 \u00a0The route.\u00a0 The roads cleared.\u00a0 The police.\u00a0 The first responders.\u00a0 The supporting cheerers.\u00a0 The rules and traditions.\u00a0 The many, thousands, standing by you, and standing with you, and standing for you.\u00a0 Personal holiness is the run.\u00a0 Social holiness is the route (repeat). They go together.<\/p>\n

The Christian life is a daily combination of personal faith and social involvement (repeat).\u00a0 So, our song this Lord\u2019s day, is just this:<\/p>\n

Ah, would that I had a thousand tongues!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Ah, would that my mouth were<\/em><\/p>\n

Empty of idle words!<\/em>\u2028<\/em>Ah, would that I said nothing other<\/em><\/p>\n

Than what was geared to God\u2019s praise!<\/em>\u2028<\/em><\/p>\n

Then I would proclaim the Highest\u2019s goodness, <\/em><\/p>\n

For all my life he has done so much for me<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0That I cannot thank Him in all eternity.<\/em><\/p>\n

-Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, Director of Music<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service 1 John 3:16\u201324 John 10:11\u201318 Click here to hear just the sermon The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel: Personal Faith The Christian life is a daily combination of personal faith and social involvement (repeat).\u00a0 Deep personal faith and active social involvement. While personal faith […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,36,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141"}],"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=3141"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3148,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3141\/revisions\/3148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}