{"id":591,"date":"2012-09-30T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2012-09-30T16:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=591"},"modified":"2020-02-11T16:18:16","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T21:18:16","slug":"the-bach-experience-a-prelude-to-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/09\/30\/the-bach-experience-a-prelude-to-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bach Experience: A Prelude to Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Matthew 21: 23-32<\/a><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

Dean Hill:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beauty opens the world to grace.\u00a0 Beauty may prepare you for the gospel of faith, the faith of the gospel.\u00a0 Beauty is a \u2018preparatio evangelium\u2019, a preparation of the gospel.\u00a0 Bach is a prelude to faith.<\/p>\n

You will recognize the two sons of today\u2019s parable.\u00a0 One strong and one weak.\u00a0 One secular and one religious.\u00a0 One defiant and one compliant.\u00a0 One directly negative and one indirectly positive.\u00a0 One comes to faith.<\/p>\n

Nineteen year olds, strong and secular and stepping away from their primary identity, recognize our gospel\u2019s dilemma.\u00a0 Whether to say a meek \u2018yes\u2019 to cradle religion, when the heart is steadfastly in the \u2018no\u2019 column, or whether to speak up, to rise up, that is, to stay away, to stay in bed on a Sunday morning, and so be honest to God, if not happy in God.\u00a0 I walk past snoring dorms full, brother, every Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

Forty one year olds, conditioned and religious and doubting in the pew, recognize our gospel\u2019s dilemma.\u00a0 Whether to say a meek \u2018yes\u2019 to Biblicist religion, when the mind stays steadfastly in the \u2018no\u2019 column, or whether to rise up, that is, to step away from the fundamentalism that has swamped American religion today like a hurricane turning good cities into mud, or to stay put, to smile, to murmur Sola Scriptura, and so to be dishonest to God, as well as unhappy in God.\u00a0 For thirty five years I have served in churches among such struggling souls, every Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

Sixty five year olds, who have avoided pride and falsehood since 1968, but when it comes to faith have succumbed to sloth, to a kind of personal laziness, a deadly personal ennui, recognize our gospel\u2019s dilemma.\u00a0 Whether, having said a good, honest, heartfelt \u2018no\u2019 some years ago, whether to look real hard at what condition your condition is in, and then whether\u2014HOW HARD THIS IS\u2014to think again.\u00a0 About what?\u00a0 About love, about meaning, about eternity, about God, about faith.\u00a0 It takes a leap. And the leap takes some preparation.\u00a0 Yes, when it comes to faith, there is always a leap involved.\u00a0 And that leap requires some preparation.\u00a0 What preparation, Dr Jarrett, do we receive in today\u2019s glorious cantata?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s cantata is for those who have chosen to go into the vineyard \u2013 maybe they\u2019re our newest students entering the vineyard of Boston University this autumn \u2013 maybe they\u2019ve just moved to begin a new job \u2013 or maybe they\u2019ve just taken on a new leadership role. For Bach, the vineyard workers are the newly elected mayor and town councilors of M\u00fchlhausen where Bach was organist at St. Blasius\u2019s Church. The text, drawn variously from Psalm 74 and Second Samuel, depicts the old and the new, and the charge for those working in the vineyard.<\/p>\n

From the title of the cantata, we can understand that Bach intends to remind the new town council of who\u2019s really in charge \u2013 God is my King, and so it has been in ages past. The realm of God\u2019s power knows no boundary. God alone determines the order of all things \u2013 the sun and planets take their course from God alone.<\/p>\n

Bach reminds those taking up any work in the Vineyard that faith and trust in God alone will bring peace, salvation and prosperity.<\/p>\n

Written when Bach was only 23, Cantata 71 is one of his earliest attempts at a larger choral\/instrumental form, and it\u2019s his first use of festival forces. Today we hear not an orchestra with chorus, but many choirs of instruments and voices in concert \u2013 trumpets and timpani, a choir of strings, oboes with bassoon, and the sweet sound of two recorders with cello. And as Bach\u2019s primary responsibility in M\u00fchlhausen was as organist, there is a prominent part for organ obbligato in the second movement.<\/p>\n

Bach includes another special indication or grouping in the score that separates vocal soloists from their section. Today you\u2019ll hear the Choral Scholars of the Marsh Chapel Choir as a small group, joined intermittently by the full Chapel Choir.<\/p>\n

As we begin a new semester at Boston University, students, faculty, staff and all within our voice are reminded by Bach to go to the vineyard, accept the charge, but do so only with the full mantle of faith and trust in God.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dean Hill:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Faith, the leap of faith, requires preparation.\u00a0 Our colleague Peter Berger has written about this preparation: \u201cI can find in human reality certain intimations of (God\u2019s) speech, signals, unclear though they are, of His presence\u2026joy, expressed in (great music) which seeks eternity\u2026the human propensity to order which appears to correlate with an order in the universe\u2026the immensely suggestive experience of play and humor, the irrepressible human propensity to hope, the certainty of some moral judgments, and last, but not least, the experiences of beauty\u2026\u201d(Questions of Faith, 12).<\/p>\n

Beauty prepares us for faith.\u00a0 Bach is a prelude to the gospel.<\/p>\n

When you stand before your grandchild, in the hour of birth, you might think about that.\u00a0 When you look into your father\u2019s eyes, as he lies critically ill, you might think about that. When you realize that you have a real friend, one real friend, you might think about that. When you look at your beautiful country, in a mess, and wonder whether you should bestir yourself to write a check or make a phone call, you might think about that. When a sunset seizes you, when a poem teases you, when a sermon freezes you, you might think about that.\u00a0 It takes a leap.\u00a0 Faith takes a leap.<\/p>\n

The beauty of our gospel, in part, is found in its silence about what caused brother one to take his leap, to turn around, to come back, to seize, I mean to be seized by, Love.\u00a0 We do not know.\u00a0 Only Matthew tells this story.\u00a0 His telling is misremembered in five different versions in its textual history.\u00a0 Its challenge and promise are the same: \u201cthe irreligious can often be awakened to a realization of their spiritual need, while those who are actually more righteous are sometimes impervious to the gospel and make no progress beyond the formal morality which they already possess\u201d (IBD, loc. Cit., 510).<\/p>\n

Something beautiful may have prepared our brother.\u00a0 Bach may prepare you today.\u00a0 Bach may lift your soul beyond youthful grunge.\u00a0 Bach may raise your soul out of religious hiding.\u00a0 Bach may sear your soul with beauty, and call you out of forty years of spiritual sloth.\u00a0 It would not be the first time.\u00a0 Today we hear a song of thanksgiving, a grateful and beautiful anthem. \u201cBach\u2019s cantatas, in fact, were conceived and should be regarded not as concert pieces at all, but as musical sermons; and they were incorporated as such in the regular Sunday church services\u201d. (The Cambridge Companion to Bach, 86).\u00a0 I wonder whether the beautiful holiness of this music will touch you?\u00a0 I know that you swore an oath one day at the Vietnam Memorial that you had turned your back on all that, all this, all gospel, all God.\u00a0 In a way, once, I did the same. But I wonder whether there is preparation this morning for your return.\u00a0 I believe there is.\u00a0 I know that the flat building, shallow music, one dimensional fundamentalism you hear as faith has soured you.\u00a0 I know.\u00a0 It did me too.\u00a0 But I wonder whether there is a preparation this morning for your return.\u00a0 I believe there is.\u00a0 I know that the lonely, awkward wastelands of freshman year can make you question anything lovely and lasting.\u00a0 I know.\u00a0 They did me as well.\u00a0 But I wonder whether there is a preparation this morning for your return.<\/p>\n

\u201cSon, Go and work in the vineyard today.\u201d\u00a0 And he answered, \u201cI will not\u201d.\u00a0 But afterward, he repented and went.<\/p>\n

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

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

Click here to hear the full service. Matthew 21: 23-32 Click here to hear the sermon only.   Dean Hill: Beauty opens the world to grace.\u00a0 Beauty may prepare you for the gospel of faith, the faith of the gospel.\u00a0 Beauty is a \u2018preparatio evangelium\u2019, a preparation of the gospel.\u00a0 Bach is a prelude 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\/591"}],"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=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2045,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions\/2045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}