Pastor’s Corner
I recently sang in the PLU Choral Union’s performance of the Bach b minor Mass. We were accompanied by a professional orchestra, and I found it striking that when the performance was about 2/3rds through, the conductor took time for the orchestra to tune their instruments. It was a planned but necessary stop. The musicians knew that their instruments change their tuning because they had been in use for nearly two hours.
This performance was a few days after Anne Frame gave her March Council devotions by reading from the same devotional book I use. It’s called “For All the Saints,” and the reading Anne selected used the following musical metaphor about tuning as a lesson in faith.
“We are like members of a choir which is singing together unaccompanied; possibly we do not know each other very well, and we are not used to singing together. Gradually, though we do not hear it, we drop lower and lower, and the choirmaster has to give a little toot on his pitch pipe to remind us of the level at which we ought to be singing.
Isn’t this rather like our tendency to live day by day, doing the same things over and over again, meeting the same duties and the same people, while we are often working at great pressure, rushing to get things finished, and breathlessly trying to “cope”? Whether we enjoy this pressure–and I am sure that some of us do like it–or whether we hate it, very often the effect is the same: without being aware of it, our “note” is dropping all the time; our prayers are becoming more formal, or more irregular, or more languid. When we are able to secure a little leisure, we find it increasingly difficult to make the most of it; we are “distracted,” or “dissipated” in the sense in which Pascal uses the word.
To revert to our parable of the choir; the note on which our lives are being lived is dropping all the time–and we don’t notice it. We need a sudden and urgent reminder, to pull us up sharply, as the choirmaster does when he sounds his pitch pipe. We need something to pull us together and to help us to screw the note of our lives up again.
That is why in any period for thought and prayer–such as Lent provides–it is far more important to turn our minds to God than it is to consider ourselves. The pitch pipe we shall use will be the consideration of our Lord’s Passion. When we consider him during this supreme moment of his life on earth, we shall see how far the note of our lives has dropped; at once we shall begin to start afresh and try to sing in tune with him.”
Olive Wyon (b. 1881-1966), British Methodist theologian and writer
Lent continues to be our tuning break. Listen to the pitch pipe we call the Passion Story and get ready to sing “Alleluia! Jesus Lives!” Easter is coming and this story about the cross and the resurrection will get us in tune with each other and our Lord.
Grace and peace,
Philip Nesvig, pastor