I love jazz – I have become a believer and a convert. For so many reasons, I am discovering that
the way of jazz – the spirituality of jazz – the freedom and discipline of jazz
has opened me to a deeper way of listening and living in the world. And as a person of faith I have come to
realize that I need all the help I can get – and if you are honest you’ll know
that you do, too.
· We can’t be
faithful all by ourselves: we need
allies to help us go from the obvious to the innovative. We need partners to help us learn how to
listen and then respond with compassion and creativity. We need touch stones to help us get back on
track when we get lost. And we need
nourishment and refreshment along the way so that we have strength for the
journey. The wise old
teacher of Israel in the book of Ecclesiastes said that without soul friends to
encourage us and honest guidance and wisdom to keep us balanced, left to
ourselves we’ll get caught in the vanity of vanities: we’ll stumble through life trying one quick
fix after another only to realize when it is too late they all dust because we
are not the center of the universe.
I
turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors
under the sun, because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge
and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This
also is vanity and a great evil. What do mortals get from all the toil and
strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain,
and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This too
is vanity…
Jesus said much the same thing in the gospel for today: Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed
and selfishness; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of
possessions. No, what brings joy
and creates value is the quality of our relationships – our enthusiasm for
sharing – and our willingness to reach out and touch somebody with tender
affection. And if you are anything like
me, you’ll have to confess that at least on some days you need help living
beyond yourself – going the extra mile – sharing and being present for others
instead of just obsessing on yourself, right?
· Now you may think
this is a leap, but what I’ve come to realize over the past four years is that
jazz has some insights and tools that can help us live more faithfully and
joyfully as people of faith.
· So what I’m going
to try to do over the next three weeks is share with you three key insights and
resources from jazz that you can use in your everyday lives to not only become
more effective in sharing love in the world, but to do so with a creativity
that makes you swing.
· Carlton told me
that the king of bop, Dizzy Gillespie, wrote in his book To Bop or Not to Bop that
jazz is essentially a rhythmic
thing – and if you don’t get the rhythm right then you are in trouble.
So today we’re going to
talk about the way Jesus plays with something jazz
musicians call syncopation – later we’ll play with the call and response rhythm of jazz and the importance of improvisation – but day is all about syncopation.
musicians call syncopation – later we’ll play with the call and response rhythm of jazz and the importance of improvisation – but day is all about syncopation.
Insights
One way of describing syncopation is playing the offbeat: finding and emphasizing something in the
rhythm of the song that is always real but mostly just below the surface. Jazz theologian Robert Gelinas likes to say
that as a spiritual master Jesus was always looking below the surface of
things. He didn’t just take the obvious
for the whole truth. Rather he pushed to
uncover the deeper truths that are always present, but not always realized or
understood. In a word, Jesus accentuated
the offbeat.
And before I play with this notion and show you the syncopation of today’s gospel, I want to make sure that you know and feel what syncopation is all about. So I’m going to turn to the master and ask Carlton to show you – and play for you – some examples of what living with the offbeat means…
Carlton does
his thing…
Now in what I am calling a spirituality of jazz, feeling and moving
with the offbeat is a practice or a spiritual discipline that we can use to
give our faith shape and form. Just as a
jazz musician practices and plays with the offbeat in a song, we can do the
same thing with both the words of Scripture and the truth of our lives.
That is, we can
learn to listen for what is not obvious but just below the surface in the words
of the Bible and like Jesus tease out new and healing insights. And, we can learn
to be attentive to the off-beats in our own experience and bring them to the
surface so that God can use them for love and compassion.
So let me give you two examples of what I mean from this morning’s
text. As Jesus is moving towards
Jerusalem – where he will face betrayal and the Cross before the blessing of
the resurrection – he takes time to stop and share conversation and teaching
with the people he meets. In this story
someone in the crowd who is clearly in the middle of a family feud over an
inheritance wants to hear from a religious authority a word of judgment that he
can use against his brother.
But rather than emphasize the old tradition which would have given the
man a formula to follow in this fight, Jesus cuts beyond the obvious and offers
the syncopation of God’s creative kingdom.
First, he says with deep sympathy:
be careful, my brother, that greed doesn’t ruin your life. And then he tells a story about a very
successful farmer who winds up losing every-thing including his soul. “You don’t want to wind up like this selfish
fool,” Jesus concludes which must have stunned the crowd because it is such an
offbeat insight.
· Why do you think
Jesus called the farmer a fool? What is
so offbeat and syncopated about this conclusion?
· Clearly from the outside
the farmer was a winner – and God knows we all love winners – so what’s going
on?
Here’s my hunch: from the
swinging and syncopated perspective of God’s kingdom the reason Jesus calls the
farmer a fool is…. this man lived only for himself. Yes, he was successful – he needed to build
new storage units for his bounty – but he didn’t share his blessings with
anyone else.
He just horded it
all for himself only to find that at the end of the day his life over and nobody
was able to benefit from the bounty of his blessings. He thought he
would be happy having more – he believed that success was the way to security
and peace – but all his vanity turned to dust.
As Jesus taught in another place: what does it profit a man or woman to
inherit the world but lose their soul?
The offbeat insight of this story is that we can spend our whole lives
living in ways that are so self-centered and self-absorbed that they never,
ever matter. And this is just one
example of a life that had no room for God or creativity or joy or sharing with
our neighbors – I’m certain we could name others. But you grasp my point about why the
spiritual practice of syncopation is so important: it can help us listen for and play with the
offbeat and go deeper. Going beyond the
obvious with the Bible is one way to let God’s kingdom voice join the conversation.
The other way of playing with the gift of syncopation is to let those
places in our own lives that we keep hidden away rise to the surface so
that they might be embraced by God’s love, too.
·
Let’s be
real: each of us has wounds and places
buried below the obvious that we want to keep hidden, right? I know I do and I suspect that is true for
you, too? These are our off-beats –
truths we keep quiet about – pains we mostly deny and try to hide away.
· But hiding our
off-beats from God is a vanity that will only turn to dust: it is foolish and wastes God’s grace and our
time. That’s where the upside-down logic
of the kingdom needs to be brought to the surface in a syncopated way.
Do you recall how St. Paul put it in II Corinthians 12? He tells us that he had a handicap – a wound
– something that caused him fear and shame that he could never get rid of no
matter how hard he tried. He says that
he hated this wound – that at times it caused him fear and anguish – but no
matter what he did it never went away.
Listen to the apostle’s own words:At first I didn’t think of (this wound) as a gift and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that and then the Lord told me: “My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own through your weakness.” Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take my limitations in stride, and with good cheer, knowing that these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks and wounds – are an opportunity to just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
Now THAT’S some totally upside-down and syncopated thinking, yes? This cat is totally out there… but grooving
on the offbeat and bringing to God in love what was broken was the only way
Paul moved from anxiety to peace. And
what was true for Paul can be true for you and me, too.
Conclusion
And as you probably expected, this is where I come back to jazz one
more time – in particular a song with lyrics and syncopation that I have come
to use as wake-up prayer almost daily. It is St. Paul Simon’s tune:
Slip Slidin’ Away – that we’ll share with you now – for two reasons:
· First, it will
give you a chance to practice clapping your hands – or snapping your fingers –
or tapping your feet to the offbeat.
Spiritual disciplines need to be practiced so I want to help you get the
groove of syncopation.
· And second this
song sounds like a combination of Ecclesiastes and the words of Jesus to me
brought down to the nitty gritty reality of our everyday lives – especially the
chorus – that goes: slip slidin away,
slip slidin away, you know the nearer you’re destination the more you’re slip
slidin away.
It is a call to take care – to wake up –lest you spend your whole life
working for things that turn to dust…
We’ll share it – you clap or snap or tap – and then we’ll be still
together for a moment to see what the Spirit brings up within.
Slip slidin' away - Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination the more you're slip slidin' away
I know a man he came from my home town
He wore his passion for his woman like a thorny crown
He said Dolores, I live in fear
My love for you's so overpowering I'm afraid that I will disappear…
I know a woman became a wife
These are the very words she uses to describe her life
She said a good day ain't got no rain
She said a bad day's when I lie in bed and think of things that might have been…
And I know a fa-ther who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he'd done
He came a long way just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping then he turned around and headed home again…
You know the nearer your destination the more you're slip slidin' away
I know a man he came from my home town
He wore his passion for his woman like a thorny crown
He said Dolores, I live in fear
My love for you's so overpowering I'm afraid that I will disappear…
I know a woman became a wife
These are the very words she uses to describe her life
She said a good day ain't got no rain
She said a bad day's when I lie in bed and think of things that might have been…
And I know a fa-ther who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons for the things he'd done
He came a long way just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping then he turned around and headed home again…
God only knows, God makes his plan
The information's unavailable to the mortal man
We're working our jobs - Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway when in fact we're slip slidin' away
credits
1) Gil Mayers, The Jazz Singer, @ http://wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/drawing/the-jazz-singer-gil-mayers_20850.htm
2) http://phil4jazz.tel/
3) www.shutterstock.com
4) www.munipuchuncavi.cl
5) Pedro Uhart @ http://www.pedro-uhart.com/WebPagesFR/tapisserie.php
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