{"id":957,"date":"2014-09-28T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2014-09-28T16:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=957"},"modified":"2020-02-11T16:16:26","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T21:16:26","slug":"the-bach-experience-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2014\/09\/28\/the-bach-experience-6\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bach Experience"},"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

Experience
\n<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

We are entering a new year, whether with the academics at matriculation, or with those following this season\u2019s autumnal sports, or with the hikers and campers as fall arrives.\u00a0 Our Holy Scripture and our Cantata this morning both offer us insight for a new day.<\/p>\n

In particular, those of you who may find yourself outside of the religious traditions around you, or the tradition, if any, in which you were raised, may be heartened to hear the music and word this morning.<\/p>\n

Our community of faith at Marsh Chapel, Boston University, shares with other such communities, far and near, an alertness to the meaning in beginnings.\u00a0 Jesus shall be my everything.\u00a0 Jesus shall remain my beginning.\u00a0 Jesus is my light of joy.<\/i>\u00a0 So the duet affirms in just a few moments.\u00a0 Beginnings remain.\u00a0 The start of something new stays with us long after the newness has been spent.\u00a0 We recognize the power of new beginnings.<\/p>\n

Look at the few days of this week and weekend.<\/p>\n

Thursday, hundreds of students and other gathered within the Jewish community to celebrate Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish new year.\u00a0 Songs, prayers, readings, teachings were deployed to plumb the depth of meaning in the return of the year\u2019s opening.<\/p>\n

Saturday, many hundreds of students and others gathered for feasting and dancing at the celebration of Raas Lela, the seasonal and communal recognition of what is new this autumn.\u00a0 Songs, prayers, readings, teachings were deployed to plumb the depth of meaning in the return of the year\u2019s opening.<\/p>\n

Boston University is proud to host the largest Hindu student association in the country.\u00a0 Their yearly Saturday evening festival provides a colorful, fervent, rhythmic opening to the rest of the year.\u00a0 The dance and the meal seem to pray, as does our cantata: bless all faithful teachers, bless hearers of the word, may peace and loyalty kiss each other, thus we would live this entire year in blessing.<\/i><\/p>\n

This evening, this Sunday evening, yet another several hundred students and others will gather to share a common meal, a common table, a common reading, a common address, a community of fellowship.\u00a0 The event is the feast of Eid, in which our Muslim community completes Ramadan and enters the year following those days of discipline.\u00a0 Songs, prayers, readings, teachings will be deployed to plumb the depth of meaning in a sort of return to the year\u2019s opening.\u00a0 Let us complete the year to the praise of the divine name.<\/i>\u00a0 So the meal suggests, as the cantata affirms.<\/p>\n

All of these events this year will have been located in the same space, in the same week, in the same University, on the same street.\u00a0 They happened and will have happened in the very same room.\u00a0 In engaging difference, in embracing alterity, we do well not to minimize the variations present.\u00a0 We also do well to recognize the common hope present.\u00a0 Community emerges from diversity when diversity is longing for unity.\u00a0 Without that common hope there will be no common faith and then over time no common ground.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Christian community will be gathered for worship, here in the nave of Marsh Chapel and across the airwaves, and later in through the afternoon and week for other Christian services\u2014three Catholic masses, an Evening Ecumenical Sunday Eucharist, prayer and devotion preceding the Inner Strength Gospel Choir practice, a Monday evening Orthodox communion, a Wednesday evening ecumenical and Episcopal Evening Prayer, a school of theology service, a moment of Thursday silent prayer, a Common Ground Thursday communion service, and other services, all located here in the Chapel.\u00a0 Next Sunday afternoon we will celebrate at 2pm the baptism of Nathan Hutchison-Jones, one of several infants baptized this year.\u00a0 It is an hour of new beginnings as well.\u00a0 Beginnings remain.\u00a0 Beginnings reverberate.\u00a0 Beginnings resound through time and space.\u00a0 And every dawn, every morning awakening, is one such new beginning.\u00a0 How seriously, studiously, and curiously, famously wondered Howard Thurman, have taken our moment of waking from slumber, morning by morning?<\/p>\n

Keep a list this week of beginnings, new year celebrations of different kinds.\u00a0 A first paper submitted.\u00a0 A first date enjoyed.\u00a0 A first real conversation in friendship.\u00a0 A first blistering failure.\u00a0 A first day on the job.\u00a0 A first ache in the bones to hint at the advent of autumn in life.\u00a0 A first handshake.\u00a0 A first argument.\u00a0 A first genuine disappointment.\u00a0 Whatever \u2018years\u2019 begin in the next week, take a moment to savor them or at least to consider them.\u00a0 You can do so with confidence, as we hear in a moment: His good Spirit, which shows me the path to Life, guides and leads me upon a level road, therefore I begin this year in Jesus\u2019 name.<\/i><\/p>\n

Dr. Jarrett, you have been our guide to the heart of the music brought us by choir and collegium, over these past several years.\u00a0 How best should we listen, receive, give ear to word and music this morning?<\/p>\n

Bach (Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Thank you, Dean Hill. Today\u2019s cantata was first performed on New Year\u2019s Day in January of 1724 for the Feast of the Circumcision and the Naming of Jesus. It may seem an odd choice for the end of September, but the text of the cantata celebrates the start of the new year, and contains all the hopes for God\u2019s blessings and guidance in new endeavors. It seemed particular appropriate for the new beginnings all around us. In particular this morning, we welcome our newest choir members, and four new Choral Scholars, two of whom \u2013 Ethan De Puy and Kim Leeds —\u00a0 sing their first solos in our Bach Experience this morning.<\/p>\n

Just as our Gospel lesson from Matthew 21 finds Jesus in the temple teaching, the Luke 2 lesson that occasioned this cantata finds Jesus in the temple just eight days after his birth for the celebration of his official naming. It is a moment of great joy and promise, and Bach provides music full of fanfare and flourish.<\/p>\n

Like so many of Bach\u2019s opening choral movements, Psalms of praise are used to ring in the new year: Sing to the Lord a new song; The company of Saints shall praise Him; Praise him with drums and dances; Praise him with strings and pipes, and finally, All that hath breath, praise ye the Lord, Alleluia. Scored for full festival forces with three trumpets and timpani, three oboes and the usual complement of strings, Bach engages the full range of the concerted style. The opening movement is cast in three contrasting sections. The central text, \u2018All that hath breath, praise the Lord\u2019,\u00a0 is treated contrapuntally as a fugue, but offset from the outer sections by grand unison statements from Luther\u2019s setting of the Te Deum, \u2018Lord God, we praise you\u2019 and later, \u2018Lord God, we thank you.\u2019<\/p>\n

The second movement introduces the three soloists in personal and contemporary petitions. And with the choir\u2019s interjections of the Luther Te Deum texts, the movement serves as an extension of the opening chorus. There are two arias in today\u2019s cantata. The first, sung by alto soloist Kim Leeds, is an elegant dance-like movement for strings with characteristics of the polonaise. After a recitative seeking God\u2019s guidance in the new year through the Jesus\u2019s name, tenor Ethan De Puy and DJ Matsko sing a duet, again in spirited dance rhythms. Listen for the outline of the melody in the opening solo played by Ben Fox on the Oboe d\u2019amore.\u00a0 Bach dresses up the otherwise mundane chorale tune with trumpet and timpani flourishes, rounding out a festive work brimming with hope and expectation.<\/p>\n

And if I may be permitted, Dean Hill, on behalf of the musicians, we wish to offer you and the Marsh community our sincerest thanks for supporting our continued study of the fifth evangelist and his astonishing repertoire. Over the years, we have taught, explored, and performed more than 30 cantatas, with regular performances of the St John and St Matthew Passions. Last year\u2019s survey of the B Minor Mass kept us on the mountain-top from September to April. As we begin the eighth year of the Bach Experience, please know how truly grateful we are for your support.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Faith
\n<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

This is a day of new beginnings.\u00a0 As by potential at least is every day, and every Lord\u2019s Day.\u00a0 Now is the acceptable time.\u00a0 Today is the day of salvation.<\/p>\n

Our love of Holy Scripture impels us to listen, again, just a bit more closely, to the new beginning announced in Matthew 21.<\/p>\n

One portion of our passage explores the perennial religious issue of authority.\u00a0 The pages of the New Testament themselves were composed and collected in no small measure as a way of exploring authority.\u00a0 \u2018By what authority?\u2019 is the question Jesus parries with another question which puts his interrogators on the horns of a dilemma.\u00a0 When something new is on the horizon, this question invariably arises.\u00a0 In a new year setting, a day of new beginnings, when something big and new is in the offing, it may be worth asking:\u00a0 On whose authority shall weighty and consequential decisions be taken?\u00a0 It is at least worth thinking about: by what authority?<\/p>\n

Another portion of our passage tells of two sons and the opportunity to work the vineyard.\u00a0 It is easy for us to hear the acclaim reserved for the first, who goes ahead and does the work, and to hear the criticism of the one who pays lip service to the stewardship of the vineyard, but goes another way.\u00a0\u00a0 For Matthew, at least, here, at least, the surprising gospel is that those not attired in the formal clothing of faith, those even who are engaged in the most secular and ancient of professions, seize the day, and take up the labor and tend the vineyard.\u00a0 Not the membership list, but the prospect list.\u00a0\u00a0 Not the clergy, but the laity. Not those at the center, but those on the periphery.\u00a0 Not the nominally present, but the actually absent.\u00a0 Not those who have cleaned the outside of the cup, but those who have had the inside washed and laundered and pressed and put to service.\u00a0 Not those who say a comfortable yes, but those who say an honest no, yet whose lives say yes, when others\u2019 lives say no.\u00a0 Here, at least, to the extent one understands the phrase, one hears an initial encouraging word for those who may be \u2018spiritual but not religious\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 The vineyard awaits those who will tend it.\u00a0 This perhaps is what John Wesley meant to say as he preached, \u2018if thine heart be as mine, then give me thine hand\u2019.<\/p>\n

Paul says it clearly:\u00a0 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.\u00a0 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.\u00a0 Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.<\/i><\/p>\n

It may be that on reflection, the first son had a vision of what such a vineyard could look like over time, what such an unusual kind of labor could feel like over time, what such a new start to a new year in a new way could become over time.\u00a0 It may be that on reflection you will have a vision of what such a vineyard, God\u2019s garden, could look like over time, with a little effort, what such an unusual kind of labor, faith working through love, could feel like over time, and what such a new start to a sober and loving life this autumn Sunday could become over time.\u00a0 If so, you may silently whisper, walking or driving home, Lord God we praise you, since you with this new year send us new fortune and new blessing and still think upon us in grace.<\/i><\/p>\n

– The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel and 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 Experience We are entering a new year, whether with the academics at matriculation, or with those following this season\u2019s autumnal sports, or with the hikers and campers as fall arrives.\u00a0 Our Holy Scripture and our Cantata this morning both […]<\/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\/957"}],"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=957"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2033,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions\/2033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}