{"id":628,"date":"2012-12-02T11:00:45","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T16:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=628"},"modified":"2020-02-11T16:18:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T21:18:09","slug":"the-bach-experience-advent-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2012\/12\/02\/the-bach-experience-advent-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bach Experience: Advent Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

 <\/p>\n

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

The sermon for today is lifted up and out of Our Bach Experience.\u00a0 In worship and life at Marsh Chapel we engage all the newest forms of communication (see today our website), and we desire to do so with a cloud of witnesses, with the wisdom of the ages, with the faith once delivered to the saints, with words and songs and prayers that last, through the ages.\u00a0\u00a0 The high Gothic nave here is meant to affirm what lasts.\u00a0 The beautiful windows here are meant to enshrine what lasts.\u00a0 The historic enchanting liturgy of the service is meant to spell out what lasts.\u00a0 The deliberate preparation and pacing of the sermon are meant to announce what lasts.\u00a0\u00a0 We have about 8000 Sundays in a lifetime, 8000 moments in word and music to experience God.\u00a0 We dare not waste one or one minute of one in pandering, in entertaining, in minimizing, in doodling.\u00a0 In this 59 poem of worship each week, the 16 musical moments and the 11 spoken moments are offered in the praise of God<\/em>.\u00a0 Remember your mortality.\u00a0 Remember your fragility.\u00a0 Remember your imperfection.\u00a0 Remember who you are.\u00a0 And so remember that you are happily a child of the living God.<\/em><\/p>\n

John Wesley, chiseled in stone above our Marsh Chapel portico, taught Greek, evangelized Native Americans, rose daily at 4am to preach at 6am and throughout the day, changed the course of English and American history, and founded Methodism which itself gave birth to Boston University.\u00a0 He claimed to be a man one book, \u2018homo unius libri\u2019<\/em>.\u00a0 For all this we do rightly honor him.\u00a0 We cherish him.\u00a0 We revere him.\u00a0 But, truth to tell, it is brother Charles, the musician, the hymnist, whom we love, especially as we come toward the caroling hour.\u00a0 Martin Luther, enshrined in stained glass near and far, splintered the church on the anvil of truth, recalled us to salvation by faith alone, withstood physical ailments, mental trials, political clashes, and religious hatreds.\u00a0 He founded a movement that became the Lutheran church, and gave us the Protestant Principle of the necessary rigorous self criticism of all religion.\u00a0 We honor him.\u00a0 We cherish him.\u00a0 We revere him.\u00a0 But, truth to tell, it is his musical great grand child, J S Bach, whom we love, especially as we ready ourselves to hear an Advent cantata.<\/p>\n

We need both the words and the music.\u00a0 But music lasts even when words fail.\u00a0 That tune you heard on the radio that took you forty years back in time.\u00a0 That hymn whose melody was lifted in a high or hard moment, a wedding or funeral.\u00a0 That new experience\u2014as Bach is for many young adults and others today\u2014that took you by the hand and led you out into the ineffable, the serene, the beautiful, the heavenly, the high and holy.\u00a0 One of you may have found yourself Thursday listening during the memorial service for Dr. John Silber to the beauty of Brahms. We need both words and music, but the music sometimes finds an opening in the heart, a little crevice into which to maneuver, which would be too small and too angular for the word alone.\u00a0 \u201cI come mainly to sing the hymns\u201d:\u00a0 one of you might have said that.\u00a0 I think one of you did.<\/p>\n

Our words and music today are folded around several expectant themes. \u00a0The themes therein include expectation, prophecy, the coming reign of God, times and seasons, and the emerging recognition of Jesus as Messiah, all good Advent fare.\u00a0 *Expectation puts us on his shoulder when experience lays us low.\u00a0 Our undergraduates teach us this, for even when they are brought down by one or another standard young adult trial, and as hard as they fall, they just as strongly get back up, dust off, come to church, and live to write another day.\u00a0 *Prophecy has kept the darker ranges of apocalyptic and Gnostic fears at bay, or at least has kept them company in the Bible.\u00a0 Isaiah week by week has been singing you a song your mother taught you as well.\u00a0 Where there is hope there is life.\u00a0 *Jesus means more to us now then when we first believed.\u00a0 In that evolution we have company in the ancient writings and the saints of the primitive church.\u00a0 We are more aware as we grow, or grow older, that we are in good hands and so we can risk a bit to bear one another\u2019s burdens. *So this season of Advent surrounds us with expectation and prophecy and trust.\u00a0 In a wee moment we will hear this Advent gospel sung.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s cantata is indeed one of joyful expectation. One of the happiest cantatas I know, Cantata 140 depicts the Christian soul as a bride awaiting her promised Bride-groom, Christ. Drawing on imagery from the Gospel of Matthew, with text from the Song of Solomon, Bach sets the stage for a beautiful wedding feast. The three verses of Philip Nicolai\u2019s famous chorale punctuate the cantata and establish the structure. There are three soloists: the tenor in the typical role of evangelist, the soprano as the voice of the Bride, and the baritone as the voice of the Bride-groom, Christ Jesus.<\/p>\n

From the start the festive nature is apparent with the French overture styled rhythms in the strings echoed by the three oboes. One of the best examples of this cantata style, the chorale tune is set in the soprano part in long tones, doubled by a French horn. You won\u2019t miss it! The chorale tune appears again the central movement, this time sung by the tenors of the choir in unison. You\u2019ll likely recognize this material as \u2018organ music\u2019; Bach adapted this movement in 1748 for inclusion in the set of chorale preludes for the organ known as the Sch\u00fcbler Chorales. Nicolai\u2019s third verse concludes the cantata in the familiar four-part setting as found in your red Methodist Hymnal, No 720.<\/p>\n

Between these bright movements, Bach unfolds the drama of the woman awaiting her bride-groom. As it says in the Gospel of the day, \u2018Watch, therefore; for ye know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of man cometh.\u2019 The tenor evangelist calls to the daughter of Zion, \u201cMacht euch bereit. Er kommt, er kommt! Make yourself ready, He comes! He comes!\u201d<\/p>\n

The first of the two love duets follows. Listen for the deeply expressive violin solo, the longing of the woman as she awaits her bridegroom –\u00a0 in the background the calming voice of the baritone assuring her that he comes.<\/p>\n

After the familiar second verse of the Nicolai chorale, the groom arrives to profess his vows. The words of Christ are accompanied by strings, an aural halo familiar from the same practice in the Matthew Passion. These words offer comfort and assurance, and at the end, even the promise of a kiss!<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most famous of all Bach\u2019s duets, \u2018Mein Freund ist mein\u2019 is completely delightful. With obbligato oboe, parallel thirds and sixths, the frolicsome interplay of melismas, this is one of the best love duets in the entire repertoire.<\/p>\n

Vows exchange and love professed, we are invited to join the heavenly banquet with Nicolai\u2019s final verse.<\/p>\n

The longing, uncertainty and expectation are present, but this cantata\u2019s focus is much more on the joyful moment when Christ comes to redeem the world. Watch, pray. Pray and watch. Trim your lamps. He comes, he comes!!<\/p>\n

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

May the rigors of Advent continue to prod and challenge us.\u00a0 May this not be an easy season.\u00a0 May this season unfold with moments in which we are brought up short, put on notice, called to account, and changed.<\/p>\n

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of expectation.\u00a0 You do not drop your chin at the first mention of bad news.\u00a0 You do not fold your tents at the first sign of giants in the land.\u00a0 You stand your ground, singing the music of expectation.<\/p>\n

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of Prophecy.\u00a0 You do not lie down and weep, only awaiting an unknown and unseen future.\u00a0 You accept the unforeseen as part of the future, and you take up arms against a sea of troubles, hoping to end them. You let the day\u2019s own trouble be sufficient for the day, remembering \u2018sufficient to the day is the evil thereof\u2019.\u00a0 You live your eyes, singing the music of prophecy.<\/p>\n

You are a people of faith, so that you are also a people of Trust.\u00a0 You know that for anything to get done, trust is the coin of the realm.\u00a0 You have learned in your experience that the good future requires us not only to work hard but also to work together.<\/p>\n

Bonhoeffer loved Bach too.\u00a0 He wrote:<\/p>\n

Tolstoy once said that the czar would have to forbid Beethoven to be played by good musicians, for he would excite the passions of the people too deeply and put them in danger.<\/em><\/p>\n

Luther, by contrast, often said that next to the Word of God, music is the best thing that human beings have.\u00a0 The two had different things in mind:\u00a0 Tolstoy, music to honor people; Luther, music to honor God.\u00a0 And regarding music, Luther knew that it has dried an infinite number of tears, made the sad happy, stilled desires, raised up the defeated, strengthened the challenged, and that it has also moved many a stubborn heart to tears and driven many a great sinner to repentance before the goodness of God.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018O sing the Lord a new song\u2019 (Ps 98).\u00a0 The emphasis is on the word new.<\/span> What is this song, if not the song that makes people new, the song that brings people out of darkness and worry and fear to new hope, new faith, new trust?\u00a0 The new song is the song that God himself awakens in us anew\u2014even if it is an ancient song\u2014the God who, as it says in Job, \u2018gives songs in the night\u2019 (Job 35).<\/p>\n

\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":"

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