First
Presbyterian Church of
Mark 9 and Philippians 2
“A Matter of Emphasis”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry
It’s
a matter of emphasis. So often, the
difference, in the end, is simply a matter of emphasis. Once you discover this, what you choose
really does make a difference, a whole new freedom is
given. In life this can be hard to see,
but this is the great gift of art: music, literature, plastic works they belie
the choice. To see and understand the
song, the symphony, the poem it is a matter of emphasis. With this in hand, then the words, lyrics,
notes, keys, they all take on new meaning.
It’s a choice.
In
our day to day sometimes the matters we emphasize get lost in the chaos of
schedules and appointments, bills and obligations. What we chose to emphasize becomes hazy. That is why art is so helpful, for in the
end, it is all a matter of emphasis.
This becomes truly transparent, when
we look at a piece of art that has been reinterpreted. What one artist takes from another and
changes, reconfigures, refashions and finds something altogether new always
exposes the matter of emphasis. They
take what is a dirge and turn it into a dance tune; a happy tale is redone to
convey a grave injustice simply by emphasizing something else. Sometimes this is done by placing an older
piece of work in a modern context. This
happens a lot with Shakespeare. Yet, and
this is just a personal preference, the one I enjoy the most, is when something
that is harsh and painful is made a what Van Dyke tried to suggest in the ode
to joy, “a triumph song of life.”
For to capture the
turning from despair to joy is probably the hardest thing of all to do. There is a Hasidic saying that goes: to bring
someone back to the dance of life is the greatest challenge. To reach out to a friend who has lost his
way, to say to a sister deep in grief, come let’s dance again, this is pretty
hard to do.
This summer Kathy and I have truly
enjoyed listening to Nina Simone. Nina
Simone is a jazz singer from the sixties and seventies. She was a civil rights activist and ex-patriot. I just love to listen to her voice for there
is so much joy and sorrow at the same time.
When she sings her soul is transparent.
She is what Kierkegaard described as a poet: someone for whom the shape
of their mouth is such that beauty and life and meaning just flow like
water. It just happens.
We listened to Nina Simone a lot
over the summer, but one song in particular.
I should confess here that I am a very frustrating person with whom to
listen to music. For I enjoy the repeat
button. When I find a song that is truly
profound, I will just press that little button and listen to it over and over
and over. Well the song of the summer
was Nina Simone’s version of “Trouble in Mind.”
“Trouble in Mind” was written by Richard Jones in 1929 and it is really
a sad song. It’s about reaching such a
desperate place that he wants to lay his head on the rail road tracks and “let
the two-nineteen ease his troubled mind.”
Nina Simone took this terrible song,
this painful song and transformed it.
She took most of the lyrics and kept them the same. Yet, she emphasized one line, the sun is
gonna shine in my back door some day, which Jones sung as a kind of fleeting
sense of capitulation; she took this and made that one line a kind of
determined, tight-fisted prayer for joy.
Again, in the original it is the first line that is quickly left behind
for the determination to end his life. Nina
Simone takes the one line that has been discarded, “the sun is gonna shine in
my back door someday” and makes it a kind of plea, fight, hope, assurance to a
troubled mind; it is something to hold on to.
In the original song it was sung and left aside; with Nina Simone it is repeated
again and again and again through out the song.
The sun is gonna shine in my back door someday.” Oh yes, it will. It’s gonna shine. Believe me.
In this she takes the moment of
despair, “I am gonna lay my head on that lonesome railroad line,” and
transforms it into a moment of joy, a triumph song of life. And yet it is even more than a moment or even
a song; it is a kind of place wherein you and I if we believe can leave despair
to live unto joy. And it was simply a
matter of emphasis.
Ludwig von Beethoven did the same
thing with his version of the “Ode to Joy.”
It took him more than 40 years, the loss of his hearing, financial ruin,
and despair heaped upon despair, but he took a poem that was popular- a kind of
reckless embrace of ideals- and crafted it into a triumph song of life. Friedrich Schiller wrote the poem called the
“Ode to Joy” and in it he expressed the confidence of his generation and
culture. Yet, decades later, when
Beethoven had no reason to compose the very incarnation of joy, he did. He took Schiller’s poem filled with classical
images and wild calls for people to embrace one another; he took this poem and
recast in music.
To do this he chose one line to
emphasize: brothers above the starry canopy a loving Father must dwell. The chorus sings this nine times.
This was a line in Schiller’s poem,
the original “Ode to Joy,” but when Beethoven set it to music; he chose one
line to emphasize, above the starry canopy a loving father must dwell. He has the chorus repeat this line over and
over and over.
Although it is a liberty to read in
such meaning, Beethoven’s father beat and abused him terribly and he himself
had endured the failure of trying to be a loving father to his nephew
Karl. For Beethoven to chose this line,
“above the starry canopy there must be a loving father,” with all the cruel
twists of fate he endured, with the shame and obscurity he lived in when
writing the 9th Symphony which is concluded by the Ode to Joy, for
him to emphasize “there must be a loving Father above the starry canopy” is
just too much to be ignored.
And yet, this was his choice. When he finally, after forty years, captured
the “Ode to Joy” for all generations to come, he did it with this image, a
loving Father.
In our readings today there is a similar
emphasis that is surprising, something transforming grief unto joy. Jesus, in the midst of his warnings about his
imminent death, takes a child, and in a moment where there are so many
possibilities says, this, this is how you must be, a child. He could have taken any image, any metaphor,
or person from scripture; he could have said, be like
Abraham, or be like Elijah, or David. Be
like a stone or pure water or fire. But
instead he said, be like a child and in this you will see the
Paul does the same with his pleading
to the Philippians. Locked away in
Make
my joy complete he says in the opening lines.
And in our reading today he implores the Church at
I don’t believe Paul simply chose to
look on the bright side of life in prison.
Just as I don’t believe Beethoven finally loosened up enough and wrote a
happy symphony. In the same way I have
looked into the life of Nina Simone and it is not that all she could see were
good things explaining her version of Trouble in Mind- her life was pretty
rough. With the time of death drawing
nigh it was a strange choice to point to the young child and say, this is the
greatest. In each of these there is
something more than simply emphasizing the positive.
In Jesus’ words and Paul’s letter,
in Nina Simone’s song and Beethoven’s symphony there is a matter of emphasis
transforming darkness to light, despair to joy.
The emphasis though is not so much what we chose, in so many ways it is
what God has chosen. God has chosen in
us, as a matter of emphasis, joy. Like
an artist reinterpreting a sad song, he has taken our very souls and recast
them with a new spirit, a new tune as it were.
What was broken has been made whole;
what was just a dellusitory gasping for breath has
become an aria rising from ashes to glory.
What if that is our life as a church?
What if this is what it means for us to be a church: to be the song God
has reinterpreted for all to hear? A
song that was confused and looking for the “
Our youngest Dave was playing a game
on the computer a week ago. It was a
music game based on Beethoven’s For Elise.
He had to hit the keys to make the sounds. Knowing the tune, it was fun to listen to him
try to play Beethoven. After he was done
he came out of the room and as he passed me by he looked up at me and said, “don’t you just love Beethoven?” I said, “yes, yes I
do.” Later I was playing some Bach and I
said, “what about this, do you like it?”
He said, “it’s nice, but I like Beethoven
better.”
I could be over reading this, but I
couldn’t help but wonder if something in his childlike splendor heard and felt
what God was doing in Beethoven. Did he
hear the tune of grace remaking a soul?
Did he weed through all the history and the influences and the genius and
just hear the little child in Beethoven looking for a loving father?
This is why we must share this
church, give it to others, and let them hear the triumph song of life. For them to come as a child, to be beloved of
Christ; this is the purpose of a church, this church. We need to make this a matter of emphasis. Amen.