The Rev. Sandra Curtis

May 2008

      (Each year, my daughter Sarah’s church has a Sunday when one of the lay members of the church preaches. Below is an offering that Sarah, as a member of the church’s music program, has prepared. She sent it to me to ask if I thought it was okay to preach. I do indeed, and I offer a written version of it to you to enjoy!)

      If I played some familiar tunes from outside the Church and ask you to raise your hand as soon as you recognized them, I am sure your hands would be in the air with just a couple measures of “The Sound or Music” or “Star Wars”.
      I was thinking about the theme song from “Star Wars.” It always brings back the same memory for me. Just that tune, the tune alone, brings it all rushing back. I'm sitting in the back of a Chevy station wagon - wood grain on the sides. My mother has smuggled popcorn into the drive-in theater in a very large purse, because she had budgeted enough for the movie, and enough for ice cream afterward, but not theatre popcorn. My little brother is sitting next to me, and we've just finished elbowing for the best viewing position. He's way too close, but if I want ice cream I'll sit down and be quiet.....My mother knew how to budget... By the end of the movie, Princess Lea and Luke Skywalker, who thought they were alone in the world, have discovered they're brother and sister. Maybe brothers aren't so bad.... He did save her life after all...and she his. I was glad I had my brother to eat ice cream with.
      The most successful movies, the ones we remember past one season, the ones that become classics, tell the story of the hero's journey, the search for truth, the importance of sacrifice, the importance of forming and relying on a close circle of friends. Sound like a familiar story? We tell pieces of it every Sunday. And for us it's not just a story, it's the real deal. It's the original hero's journey, the one all the best Hollywood movie stories emulate. The story of the life, work, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The story of God's love and sacrifice for us.
      And like all the best Hollywood movies, it deserves a great soundtrack, to cement the principals we hold dear in our minds, to lift us to an emotional space where our words alone cannot go. In a most obvious example, on Palm Sunday our soundtrack builds suspense. On Good Friday, the singing washes over our sorrows and leaves us cleansed of our sins and grieving for our Saviour at the same time - a rare mix of emotions we could never express or feel as strongly another way. On Easter Sunday the music lifts our spirits high - it might even make us want to dance.
      I remember a Sunday last year when we were singing a particularly rousing recessional, and a little girl spontaneously pulled her sister into the center aisle to dance with her. After the choir passed by the two spun around in circles, I thought "what a beautiful way to feel the Holy Spirit surrounding us. Those children will have happy memories of church.” Seeing them made my heart dance too. That, is music!
      The music we hear as we move through our lives becomes our own personal soundtrack. It makes our life more intense and sticks to our memories. Think about a party or event you went to with no music, and another that had a band. Did that music really get the party rolling? Chances are you can name songs from your senior prom, your wedding, a family member's funeral...
      And the music we hear in Church becomes part of our personal sound track. It's not just "God's sound track", it's ours, and it pulls us closer to our faith. It's the favorite hymn we find ourselves humming for comfort on a sad day. God's sound track - God with us - always there. It's the Christmas carol that gets us in the spirit. Christ's sound track - God with us - the true meaning of the holiday. It's the anthems we sing for our soldiers on Memorial day - God with us as we honor their sacrifice.
      So how do we make the soundtrack work for ourselves and for each other? Christ tells us to "Love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” "All your mind" is not with the recitation of words alone, but with all the senses we can engage - our complete concentration. Modern scientists know that unlike spoken language (or spoken prayer) music effects every major area of the brain, every one, from the the parts that process logic, to the parts that process language, to the parts that control movement, to the earliest, most primitive emotional center... and the whole of these connections is greater that the sum of the parts. This is why people who lose their speaking skills in a stroke can sometimes still sing words, or why my friend paralyzed with Parkinson's disease could "dance" his way across the floor to a little song he sang, when he couldn't walk.
      Music is powerful for us, as humans. There is no society in the world without music, and the earliest archeological finds have included musical instruments. Humans have been musicians for as long as we have been human. Music is a second language for us. A universal language shared by all the world's people. We have some different dialects, for sure, but we all understand it on a certain level.
      A change in America is occurring which dilutes our very human need for music as a sensory experience. In this land of specialists we have begun to "outsource" music. "Let the experts play it, and sing it - we'll listen". We can do this with some level of comfort because we live in a wealthy society where we get fabulous recordings of those experts whenever we want them - inexpensively on CDs, a few cents a pop on our iPods, free over the airways. And somehow along with that luxury, we've developed a self-consciousness about our own active participation in music because we're judging ourselves against the experts. Music on our televisions is a competition - American Idol presents us with vocal theatrics and cruel judges - if we can't sing like that, are we good enough to sing in front of our friends, or the guy in the next pew? Of course we are. Do we hesitate to cook dinner for a friend because our spaghetti and meatballs isn't as fancy as what the chef in the restaurant down the road can offer? Of course not. Do we hesitate to write a letter to a friend because we can't make it sound as eloquent as the writers of our favorite novels? Of course not. In the long run, it is no more human to outsource the sensation of participating in music, than to outsource tasting our own food, or hugging our own children.
      How different music participation is, in other cultures, was really driven home for me when I experienced what I call "real Karaoke". My friends know I really detest Karaoke. I'd been prodded on stage, against my better judgement, just twice, to sing with the electric box and try to follow the little words flying across the screen. Those boxes terrify me; a whole band is easier to sing with than that machine any day. So when I went to China for work and was informed by my boss that I would be singing at Karaoke tonight because that was what our hosts wanted to do, you can imagine my reaction. Yikes - the only thing I could think of worse than the box and the usual drunken audience, was a Chinese box (some humor in this delivery) and people I work with and have to face tomorrow. But Asian Karaoke is more like the old fashioned practice of ordinary people getting together around a table or a guitar in their homes, and singing harmony together - with some modern technology thrown in. You go to the Karaoke parlor and rent a little room with a TV juke box, for just you and your friends. There's no stage. You use several microphones, not just one, and you sing for each other, and with each other. And luckily for me, a lot of the songs are in English. When you have nine people and three mics you lean in, arms slung over each other's shoulders, and voices in each others' ears, smiling into the faces of the people across the room. And all the cares of the day go away. You forget that your feet hurt, and that a long work day waits for you at dawn, and that you can't even speak the same language as the person next to you. You're all in the same place, in every way...for a little while. Just about everybody in Asian cities enjoys Karaoke. Those in the country get together without the juke boxes, play instruments and sing. If you tell someone "Oh I can't sing", they look at you like you have three heads. That you would talk but not sing is a concept as bizarre to them as saying you're blind, but can see on Wednesdays.
      We should revel in hearing the experts take music to a highly skilled level - it elevates our experience for certain, and having them there keeps us all strong, and in the same key, and sounding wonderful. But our own participation in our hymns, and psalms, and service music is part of our offering each week as well. Our music is not offered to God "out there". This music is offered to God, and each other, and ourselves... in our heads, and in our hearts, and all through us like the sign of the cross, because we are the temple where God lives - God's sound track, God with us, God in here. It puts us all in the same place, in every way, for a little while.
      Which brings me to the mission of the church musician.
      Every once in a while the rewards of a mission come shining through. I was recruited to sing for a funeral a few years ago. The day before the service, I listened to the widower talking about the funeral planning. He was a dairy farmer, a strong man with a strong constitution. He'd seen plenty of birth and death and everything ugly and beautiful in between. He had nursed his sick wife as her strength failed. He'd watched her fade despite all his efforts, and the doctors efforts, to save her. By watching changes in her health, he knew the day, almost the hour, when she was going to die. He knew death, he could see it coming a mile away. He'd seen people and many animals die in his time. Death didn't scare him. It was part of life. His wife was going to be with God. He was ready to let her go,... and of course not ready at all.
      He told the priest and me that when he returned to her bedside to find her still, he didn't cry. While he was planning the details of her burial, calling the family, taking care of all the business he needed to, he didn't cry. Didn't even think about crying. But when he started to choose the music for her funeral, the hymns she loved, he couldn't stop crying. "Why?" he asked us. "Why couldn't I stop crying, why then?" Music sticks to our memories. It finds the deep places we can't find any other way. It consoles and inspires. He only had to hum her sound track, and all the memories of their life together came rushing in on him at once, hurling him back in time - he didn't see it coming.
      What an honor it was to sing the postlude of her sound track, as the credits rolled to a life well-lived.
      It is God's gift to musicians, to be his gift to others. We sing our brothers and sisters in at baptism, we sing them through to burial, and we help them dance as much as we can in between. On All Saints Day, Easter, and whenever we play the sound tracks we share, we sing them back to us again, resurrected with Christ.
      We get so used to the richness of St. Luke's music program from week to week, that it's nice to remember music like ours is a gift few churches have, and many among us labor to bring it to us every week. If you are a musician, or would like to be, please think about joining us. From your place in the pew, or from a place nearer the organ, every voice brings us closer to our collective mission, sharing the light of Christ.
                                                Sarah Curtis McLenaghan