Two different challenges...

After a recent post re: peace-making through jazz I was asked about the historic split in the Protestant church re: art and discipleship - and why it continues to matter.  So here are a few interrerlated responses:

+ My use of art in worship - all types of art - is not designed to lure people into the church or faith.  That would be a gimmick or a technique - I've seen this approach - and I believe it is fundamentally manipulative.  Rather, when it comes to art in general and music in particular, I view it as a spiritual resource/practice that nourishes my discipleship in community. And by this I mean:  a) the selection of music - sacred and/or popular - involves a time of prayerful discernment; b) the practice of the music takes me (and the other musicians) deeper into the soul of the song; c) the sharing of the music in worship is done as an offering - a gift to God and the gathered participants - that is offered freely; and d) when that gift is received and embraced, the whole community is touched and nourished.

+ My use of popular forms of music in worship is equally grounded in a spirituality of the music.  Indeed, it has become one of the ways I pray.  At the heart of this spiritual discipline is a desire to hear and respond to God's voice/presence in the ordinary.  It is a radical sense of incarnation as first shared with Christians in Christ's birth: in the dark and cold, in the form of a vulnerable child God comes to us in the most unexpected way. And while I cherish this experience in its unique historical context, I also sense that it is still happening if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.  What's more, as the community of faith learns not to separate the sacred from the secular - to trust that God is at the supper table and cinema and work place as much if not more as the Sanctuary - an integrated and embodied life of faith ripens.  Blending ALL types of music into the worship encounter is a way of linking the ordinary with the extraordinary so that the complex and rich totality of our lives are lived awakened to the presence of the Lord.

+ The split between the arts and the Protestant churches was not a part of Calvin or Luther's cause as their use of hymnody, poetry, liturgy and the psalms suggest.  The Geneva Psalter is still a lovely resource for singing the ancient hymns of Israel.  No, I would lay the blame for this schism squarely at the feet of Ulrich Zwingli and his zeal.  The development of the Reformed Church in Switzerland under his leadership is where the roots of biblical literalism begin as well as the purging of visual, musical and liturgical art from worship. His goal, of course, was symbolically pure - like other radical non-conformists he wanted  worship to contain only what was found in the Scriptures - but his opposition to both Rome and his other Reformers pushed him into an ideological commitment that we are still trying to overcome.  The harsh line in the sand Zwingli drew between the so-called "sacred and the secular" was reinforced with a practice that true believers were to be "in the world but not of the world."  The roots for our antagonism and ignorance are deep. 

+ Add to this tension a growing trust in the importance of "the bottom line" - a utilitarianism born of the market place and post Enlightenment conceits - and many modern churches exist as little more than multi-purpose rooms.  They are functional, to be sure, but mostly ugly. Think of all the new congregations that simply rent school auditoriums for the weekend - these rooms are functional and clean - but without any visual sense of how worship is more than the Word. Where is the word made flesh - the presence of the Lord nourished and embraced - the integration of the holy and the human in these places? From my perspective, worship is not just an intellectual exercise in doctrine or even raw biblicism. 

So, for all these reasons I find it essential in a post-modern world to reclaim the arts and celebrate them in my spirituality.  As Eugene Peterson has written:   "The people who have been most most help to me in discerning the difference (between a job and a calling) - and embodying it into my life as a pastor - have been artists."  They understand that our calling, "the vocation of pastor, can not be drowned out by the job desciptions gussied up in glossy challenges and visions and strategies clamoring incessantly for my attention." ( For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts, ed. David O Taylor.) 

Resources that I have found for going deeper into this spirituality would include the work of Mako Fujimura and the International Arts Movement IAM @ http://www.internationalarts movement.org/) as well as the work of Gregory Wolfe and IMAGE Journal (@ http://imagejournal.org)  Other important resources include:  1) Arts, Theology and the Church eds. Vrundy and Yates; 2) The Substance of Things Seen by Robin Jensen; 3) For the Beauty of the Church (ibid) 4) Art and Soul by Brand and Chaplin; and 5) Imagine by Steve Turner.

When it comes to peace-making - a part of my spirituality - I have found, too that music has a vital role to play.  But I should make something explicit:  peace-making for me is not an act of evangelism.  I don't share compassion or work for justice as a way of bringing others to Christ.  There is intrinsic value in acts of mercy, sharing cold water with the thirsty and building bridges between people who are suspicious, afraid and angry.  In fact, I make a conscious commitment NOT to speak of the Lord while engaged in peace-making - unless, of course, I am asked.  And even then my witness is about how I experience and encounter the presence of the Living God in others.  PERIOD.  I refuse to let mercy be a tool of manipulation, ok?

In Turkey, for example, our work was driven by "the sacreness of the bandstand" as Marsalis puts it:  we had a gift of love and beauty to share and hoped it might be received. And when it was, we found a space to talk and trust for a little bit.  My hope is that we will have a chance to build on those experiences over the next few years.  Already having our friends Ahmet and Eser in town points in that direction.  And Ahmet will be sharing with us some reflections on the war in Syria after worship from the perspective of a wise and learned man from that region of the world.  And that will strengthen the bridges and bonds that began with jazz.

But even if nothing but the music was shared, that would be enough.  How do my cousins in Judaism put it?  Dayenu!  And the reason I have come to believe that jazz works best in this type of work - better than classical or pop - is because jazz celebrates groove, beauty, melody, improvisation and freedom all at the same time.  There is nothing elitist about jazz played well.  At the same time, you can still shake your booty.