Listening with Patience and Letting Music Do Its Work

I've not put much stock in the theory of art as purely the artist's expression of an inward state.  Art, no matter how personal, remains a public act with communal significance.  Not to belabor the point, but why use a canvas?  Why this paint or that clay?  Why this instrument and this tempo?  There are numerous potential reasons why an artist struggles to get work into public view.  Even the desire to have one's art recognized is something more than just wanting personal validation.  It is better understood as a form of communication, of connecting with others.

Thus, when I claim in the title that music has work to do, it is a work of communication.  Music's communication may operate at many levels.  These ramblings about art and music arise out of spending an evening listening to Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo play saxophone and piano as a jazz duet.  Interviewed about their collaboration, Marsalis argues that the jazz duet is not merely a mini-quartet or a truncated ensemble.  It is itself a distinct kind of performance able to display its own communicative style of close collaboration, sensitivity, and balance.  Marsalis says, "The object is not to play in the same way that you play in other situations.  You have to change the conversation as well as the setting.  Once you know the form, you can just react to each other." 

Their further reflections on their engagement with the music as a duo help the reader, and listener, to understand there is a kind of work going on with musicians that is at least part of what I mean when I say that music is doing work.  It is the musicians, of course, who drive and make the music live.  This is why at a jazz concert, one learns it is appropriate to give applause when one musician in the ensemble completes a "solo" or highlighted portion of a longer musical composition.  People don't do that during a harpsichord concerto at the end of the harpsichord section, but in a jazz performance, when the pianist has carried the lead for some time and then recedes back into the balanced ensemble playing, clapping is appropriate and expected.  Jazz audiences, in a less formal relationship with the performers than in classical performances, immediately recognize and acknowledge the virtuosity and the effort it takes by communicating their appreciation.  At classical concerts, the audience struggles to demonstrate patience when moved by the musicians' art and waits until the end of a lengthy composition.

To take an aside, I did not grow up in a family which schooled me in the appreciation of jazz or classical music.  My introductions to these was slow, through the music education programs of public school and college.  Our music came more from folk traditions, church hymnals, and popular gospel and secular radio.  If my mom used the word "jazzy" to describe music, it was not a compliment.  Beyond that home training, in high school I sang and listened to music of various eras of Western culture, from Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Neo-Classical, and Modern eras.  We learned the discipline of remaining silent until an entire piece was finished before offering applause.  In college, my exposure grew through public performances of chamber music, orchestras, string and woodwind quartets, and occasional jazz. But learning about jazz really came later from listening to the public radio station in Dallas during my two years working there. Even now, I have attended few live jazz performances, and when I do I appreciate the chance to go with a friend from whom I can learn, by observing, the skills of listening and appreciating what I see and hear.

The work of music is partly understood as the work of the musicians, but there is in music as in all art a surplus of work that is greater than the particular agents of its production and performance.  Scientific study confirms many anecdotal links between music and the brain, affecting emotion, reasoning, creativity, exercise, memory, and personality.  I won't try to report on all these scientific studies.  A quick internet search will uncover popular and scientific resources about the complex relationship between music and the brain and body.  Play around with the search terms and you may, like me, find yourself reading all kinds of research and commentary rather than this blog post.  Rather than be comprehensive or even particularly scientific, I will comment briefly on a few aspects of the work music does for human flourishing.

Perhaps most obvious to many people is the emotional and formational link one retains to the music one listens to during formative periods and significant moments.  Music marketers have developed business models around stratifying the various niches in which people become attached to musical styles and artists during adolescence and early adulthood.  Music of the 60s, of the 70s, of the 80s, etc., become the organizational structure for attracting a certain type of listener to whom advertisers can target messages to match the demographics.  This business use of music taps into something many of us have known personally--that tunes, rhythms, instruments, and songs of a certain era propel us into memories or emotional states relevant to deeply formative parts of our history. Certain beats and tunes stir the confusion and rebellion of teens frustrated by the struggle between independence and parental authority.  Songs and lyrical hooks may evoke early attempts to understand feelings of attraction, infatuation, and one's bodily awakening as a sexual being.  Longings, hopes, and decisions about life direction may have close ties to a personal "musical score." The work of music clearly includes an interplay with crucial emotional and formational eras and mileposts in one's personal narrative.

The mention of a musical score points to another aspect of music's work.  Music taps deep structures of the brain to arouse emotion: anxiety and fear, sadness, anger, attraction, happiness, excitement and more.  While not all people respond to the same music with the same emotion, there are widely accepted patterns of "happy" and "sad" music, shaped by harmonies, rhythm, tempo, volume, timbre, and other complex aspects of music.  I tend to be skeptical of overgeneralizations about happy and sad music, but scientific study tends to support links between emotional perceptions of music and emotional reactions to other sensory perceptions.  Listening to a "happy" or "sad" musical clip will likely influence a person's perception about facial expressions as more happy or sad. Some theorize an ancient link between music and the sound of active human living as influencing this reaction in the brain.  Even without needing the hard science, the use of sound tracks to shape the mood of a movie is a widely tested and effective sign of the work music does. Many people regularly choose music to play at home or in their headphones at work or out in public with an idea of influencing a mood toward happiness, energy, melancholic remembrance, or meditation.  Music works in our brains and bodies to reinforce or redirect our moods, even without our conscious planning.

Finally, there are many directions of research on the relation of music to strengthening reasoning ability, to helping focus mental activity, and to opening up creativity in thought.  I am particularly interested in the work of music to spark creativity and reflection.  "Brain science," a term of growing popularity, is apparently something different from psychology or physiology or philosophy.  I take it to be a specialization related to each of those fields, using newly available knowledge to offer insights that could be valuable to all of those older disciplines.  Brain science offers explanations rooted in the activity or reduction of activity in various parts of the brain under certain circumstances.  One such explanation says that just the right volume and type of music can create enough disturbance in brain activity that a person's most routine reasoning and memory patterns become interrupted, requiring the brain to work a little harder, to work around interrupted routines, and seek creative solutions to problems.  I don't really know how to evaluate how credible that explanation may be. Yet, it offers one kind of reasonable explanation, rooted in basic brain function and in growing knowledge about  the complex process of memory and reasoning. Regardless of how accurate the theory may be, the actual work of music to stir creativity has wide anecdotal support.

To wrap up my ruminations on letting music do its work, I will go back to my seat in Baldwin Auditorium, listening to the jazz duet.  Not really a novice any longer, but far from a connoisseur, I listened with eagerness to the various ways the two musicians intertwined their roles, sometimes stepping back or forward as accompanist and lead, and other times mingling two lines into one.  I was listening with a friend with much longer experience of attending live jazz performances, so at times my learning included watching her responses to the music to help me understand what might be going on in the room.  In a fancy auditorium at an academic institution, I gathered that the crowd was somewhat stiffer, with less bodily movement of the head, legs, and feet, than one might see in a different venue.  There were times when it seemed I ought to be standing and moving my body, but not on this night.  Different styles and melodies took my thinking in different directions--sometimes into issues of work and intellect, and other times into relationships, social life, and politics.

There is an interesting relationship between the listener's thoughts and feelings about a piece of music and her or his desire to know a "back story" of how a piece came to be written, or when it emerged during the life of the composer.  This is not essential, and in fact may function to limit the creative reverie that music may incite.  Yet, it also can be part of the complexity of how music works. In one case, Joey Calderazzo told a story about a piece before he played it.  He does not always tell it, but the performance fell on an important anniversary relevant to this particular composition in which he was engaging his thoughts and feelings about a dear friend who was struggling with cancer. He mentioned being on tour, performing in many different places, yet looking regularly at the postings about his friend on the CaringBridge website, where people dealing with terminal illness (usually cancer) and their loved ones can provide regular updates about the progress, or regress, of their health as they deal with various treatments, symptoms, improvements, and setbacks.

Some of you readers know that I spent about a year and a half writing on CaringBridge during Everly's illness and after her death.  So the mention of CaringBridge immediately set my thoughts and feelings on a trajectory.  As the duo began to play the piece, named "Hope," I was already on track for a tour of memories.  A few years ago, I may not have been able to listen to the music because of the intensity of grief.  I'm not completely sure how to describe this particular moment which is the primary reason I am writing about the music.  The music went to work.  I was listening and being drawn along by the melody and rhythm. 

At the same time my imagination took me to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.  I saw the waiting rooms in various clinics.  I recalled the hospital rooms where we waited for and through treatments.  I saw the pharmacy, the doctor's examination rooms, the hallways, the pre-op and recovery rooms. And there were so many waiting rooms.  I remembered Everly's moments of impatience during the tedious waiting for CT scans, having to drink barium shakes to get ready.  There were times when she was anxious and needed me in sight.  There were procedures that lasted hours and left me wandering the halls.  Sometimes I even taught my classes through video and audio conferencing in the lobby of the hospital.  Mostly, it was a chain of memories of the two of us doing our work to live a little longer and share time with our kids, our families, and one another.

I did shed some tears, but the interaction between the music and my thoughts and feelings was more complicated than a mere trigger for sadness.  I'm not sure sadness accurately describes the emotions that accompanied the work this music was doing.  It was an opening to creative possibilities.  It was not only a memory of loss, but also a memory of effort, of unified struggle, and of hope for what might still await us. I'm inclined to think that what was going on between me and the music is partly described as creative thinking. It was not merely a catalog of memories, nor a sinking into a blue mood.  It was also a process engendering the love, the hope, and the good that went on between us, and even among us in relation to the medical staff, as we lived that struggle toward what we did not yet know would come to pass. I'm not trying to make this sound like a mystical vision, because it wasn't.  Yet I found myself in that evening in a concert hall in a kind of creative simultaneity with the remembered time in Houston, when the future was not known and the possibilities awaited.  Thus, there was a mixture of grief and hope, tied together in the beauty of having lived alongside Everly during those events, as well as in her presence in memory now amidst all that my life can and may yet be.

I don't want to overdramatize or idealize a song at a concert.  I'm trying to describe through self-report and reflection what I think appears as a possibility in the way music works and can work in many occasions.  I did not take a flight of ecstasy.  It was not one of the highlight events of my life.  Still, it was a moment of power, a glimpse of glory, a flash of soaring that opens the eye to possibilities that may not seem obvious in most of the mundane hours of work and routine. I think that the right kind of listening, with patience, can let music do some amazing work. 

Learning to See and Learning to Listen

This dialogue sermon was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church, Durham, NC, on March 1, 2015.

Matthew 16:1-26

The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Jesus they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red. ’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening. ’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” Then he left them and went away.

 When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. Jesus said to them, “Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” They said to one another, “It is because we have brought no bread.” And becoming aware of it, Jesus said, “You of little faith, why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? How could you fail to perceive that I was not speaking about bread? Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees!” Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the yeast of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

Today we are going to try an experiment in dialogue.  Those of us who have studied about preaching have been taught that good preaching is not a one-sided lecture.  Good preaching is a dialogue between the pulpit and the pew.  In the tradition of black churches, we practice that dialogue in part through a kind of call and response.  When the congregation appreciates the preaching, they speak back to the preacher.  When the preacher gets a response, it affects how the sermon continues to unfold.  A quiet congregation may be giving a message as well.  Nowadays, when I go to a white congregation to preach, it’s a bit of a struggle for me.  I’ve grown used to having you help me out.  So today I am going to ask you for some help, but in a different way than usual. 

I’m going to ask you to have a conversation with others who are around you in the pews, considering a set of questions relevant to the sermon.  These questions relate to our life as a congregation on mission in this community.  They also relate to our church’s alliance with other congregations and community groups in Durham, through the community organizing group Durham CAN.  Mt. Level has been a part of Durham CAN from its very beginning, almost 20 years ago.  We want to continue strong relationships with our friends across the city and county.  We have accomplished many important things in the past, from improving after-school care opportunities for young people, to getting sidewalks and streetlights fixed, to promoting a living wage for workers, to helping arrange a means for poor people to get access to specialized medical care, to getting the schools and the local governments to hire bilingual staff and interpreters, to pressuring the city and police to respond and change their ways of relating to minorities in the community, and so many other ways.

There is not a head honcho of Durham CAN who decides what we will work on next.  There is not a backroom board that sets the agenda.  In organizing of this kind, the agenda rises from the people.  It happens in listening sessions.  Today, we want to listen to one another, to have a listening dialogue in this sermon.  Over the next month or so, at least a couple thousand people in member organizations across our city, including many congregations, will gather to discuss what is on our hearts and minds, each in their own ways.  At Mt. Level, we are having this discussion as part of this morning’s sermon during our 7:55 am service.  Don’t think you came to the wrong place and have ended up at the PTA meeting.  No, this is still church, and I am bringing a sermon, but you will also have a part of the sermon.  So let’s press on with it.

Not everyone gets caught up in the latest fad story on the news or on the internet, but I would not be surprised to find that at least some of you have heard about people arguing over the color of a dress in the past few days.  Is it white and gold, or is it blue and black?  Physicists, computer programmers, psychologists, and all kinds of people have given expert opinions about “the dress.”  I am not sure why it is such a big deal, but I bring it up because it illustrates an aspect of what this sermon is about.  Although we all may be in the same space and time together here and now, that does not mean that all of us see and hear the same thing at the same time.  What you and I may see as we look around us may be very different.  That’s in part because of the way that we look at things.

Sometimes we call this having a different perspective on things.  From my point of view, and from your point of view, the world may look different.  Sometimes we call this our vision of reality.  And part of what Jesus, his friends, and his opponents are dealing with in this chapter from Matthew is that they see the world differently.

There is more than just how they see at stake in this chapter.  Also, when someone is speaking, they are not always hearing the same thing.  I can bet many of you have been in a conversation in which one person thought she said one thing, but the other person heard something very different.  Listening to one another is often harder than we think.  Husbands and wives, parents and children, long time friends—even people who are close to one another often struggle to agree on what is being communicated between them.  

You said this. 

No, I said that. 

No way! I distinctly heard this. 

Well, you distinctly heard wrong, because that is not what I said.  

If you’ve never been in one of those conversations, I would be very surprised.

So today I want to consider the proposition that we all need to learn to see and learn to listen.  A good example of this difficulty happened just a week ago on national television.  On a program called “This Week,” hosted by George Stephanopoulas, two authors were pitted against each other concerning the way to overcome the wrongs of racial injustice which go back across centuries through slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination in housing, employment, and society in general.  Ta-Nehisi Coates argued for actual financial solutions to previous financial damages.  Shelby Steele said that government efforts to help black people had only hurt them.  These two well-known intellectuals saw a different world and heard very different things being said.  They agreed on the wrongs of slavery.  They disagreed on what has happened since that time in the lives of blacks in the United States.  They saw different histories unfolding.  They did not hear the same message when they listened to the cries of the black community.  Something like that went on in our text from Matthew’s gospel as well.

Let’s walk through this complicated series of events.  They happen across different geographical settings as Jesus and his followers travel and carry on conversations on a whole range of matters.  I think there is a lot to observe here about how we see and how we listen.

It begins with an argument between some of the community leaders and Jesus.  The Pharisees and Sadducees come with a chip on their shoulders.  They don’t like Jesus.  They are the ones who know “what’s what.”  They don’t approve of Jesus’ talking to so many people and having so much influence.  They don’t think he has the right credentials.  They see an opportunist and imposter.  They come at him demanding to see a sign from heaven.

Jesus turns it all back on them.  He points out that they know how to interpret the weather and plenty of other things around them, but they can’t see the signs of the times.  They are supposed to be the spiritual leaders who know what’s what.  But they can’t see what everyone else seems to see.  Crowds of people are following Jesus around, listening to every word he has to say and watching every movement he makes.  These crowds are convinced that something great is happening in the world and that Jesus is at the heart of it all.  They believe that God is doing something momentous through Jesus.  But the Pharisees and Sadducees can’t see it.  They are so fixed on what they already see as the way of God, that is the way that they like to do things, the way that keeps them in the dominant class of society, that they can’t see something new happening. 

Jesus says, repeating something he said earlier recorded in chapter 12 of Matthew, that the sign they get is the sign of Jonah.  Now of course, there is an allegorical meaning here related to Jonah’s being dead to the world in the belly of a fish, then sort of resurrected when the fish spit him out, a story that parallels the coming death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.  But the meaning of the sign for this moment is more focused on the ability to see and hear what God is doing in the world. 

Jonah himself could not believe that God would do something new in Ninevah.  Yet when the Ninevites heard the word of God, they received it with repentance, thanks, and joy.  God was doing something new in Ninevah, and the prophet who should have known about it did not see it coming at all.  In the same way, the people all around the countryside and in the towns and cities can see that God is doing something great, but the religious leaders don’t see it at all.  The crowds listen and hear the possibilities, but the leaders hear only interference with their plans and their power.

Which are we?  Are we able to see a world of possibilities in which God is working for our good?  Do we hear the words of life and respond in faith?  Or do we see only the same old same old, day after day, nothing changing, so we are just settled in to wait out this life until its over?  Do we shut out the sounds of fresh beginnings because we have become comfortable where we are?

This same kind of drama keeps playing out in various ways throughout this chapter.  When Jesus, upset about his encounter with the Pharisees and Sadducees, makes comment in figurative language to the disciples, they completely miss the point.  All they can think about is that they forgot to buy some lunch.  So when Jesus mentions “yeast,” they think he is talking about bread for lunch. 

This makes Jesus even more frustrated.  They seem not to have been listening to him at all.  He starts telling them some stories to remind them of all that has been happening.  He reminds them of days when many thousands were fed from only a few bits of food, and all the many baskets of leftovers that were collected.  The twelve baskets of leftovers, like the twelve tribes that make up the whole of the nation of Israel, and the seven baskets of leftovers, like the seven days of creation and Sabbath, represent completeness and abundance.  The work that God has been doing is the ushering in of a new age, the age of God’s reign, the Kingdom age.  It is breaking into the world right before their eyes.  Don’t they remember?  Yet the Pharisees and Sadducees “yeast” was their teaching which supported the status quo, the existing power relations, the economic disparities and injustices of their world.  Jesus said to look out for those who only can continue to prop up the world as it is and cannot hope for and see a world as it should be.

What are we seeing as we go about our lives?  Are we seeing a world that cannot change?  Is it a world of injustice that will always be bad or even keep getting worse?  Or is it a world in which Jesus has put thrones, dominions, powers, principalities, and authorities under his feet?  Can the way that power and economic life is arranged be turned upside down?  Can God bring down the mighty and lift up the lowly?  Are we able to hear what Jesus is telling us, or are we just trying to get our lunch and forget about making a difference?

In the next part of the story, we read that they arrive at their destination of Caesarea Philippi, a place bearing the names of the current and previous empires that have dominated Judea, the Roman Caesar and the Greek Emperor Phillip.  In this place, Jesus decides to have a listening session of his own.  He has a set of questions for the disciples to discuss.  The first one asks them what they have heard and what they know.  “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  They had a range of answers.  At least two important findings emerge from this conversation.

The first important finding is that many people think that Jesus may be John the Baptist.  That is a dangerous political idea.  What has happened to John the Baptist, who was once the same kind of popular traveling preacher that Jesus is now?  John has been arrested, imprisoned, and executed by beheading—that’s what happened to him.  So if powerful people believe that somehow John the Baptist, or someone just like him, is still out there, they may be soon on their way to arrest, imprison, and execute Jesus, too.  What else did the first question bring out?  They say that people compare Jesus to the great prophets.  They recognized that he is bringing the same kinds of preaching today that the prophets did of old.  They believe Jesus is calling Israel back to faithfulness to God.  They see him as challenging injustice and demanding a change in the way the powerful and wealthy treat the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the immigrants.  So the disciples report that Jesus’ message rooted in the prophets of old is getting through.  People recognize that he is bringing God’s word and the possibility of a new age.

Then the second question asks for the disciples’ own judgments, their own heartfelt answers.  “Who do you say that I am?”  We don’t know what all of them said, but I suspect this was a long and interesting conversation.  Different disciples must have shed different light on how they had come to understand who Jesus was.  We only get the report of Peter’s answer in the gospel text.  Peter gives a great answer for which Jesus commends him.  Peter has expressed, perhaps in summary of what all the group had to say, that Jesus is the Messiah.  To say in his day that Jesus is the Son of God was not the same as we use that term in the post-resurrection, post-Pentecost era of the church.  Peter’s saying he was the Son of God was pretty much the same as saying he was the Messiah.  For the Jewish monotheistic faith, Son of God did not mean that Jesus was a divine being.  That would be blasphemy to them.  Son of God in the Old Testament generally means something like calling someone a messenger directly from God.  An angel, for instance, might be called the Son of God for delivering a vital word directly from heaven to earth.  So Peter says in two different ways that we believe God sent you and that what you bring to us comes from the very heart of God.  Jesus was so happy to hear that answer.  He was not, to his disciples, just a magic show, a gravy train, a crackpot orator, a charismatic figure.  To them, he was from God and doing God’s work.

It was a high point, followed by a very low point in the career of Jesus.  Because they acknowledge this valuable understanding of who he is and in doing so express their willingness to follow him further into his mission from God, Jesus starts having a strategy session with the disciples.  He begins to talk to them about what he needs to do.  In the tradition of the prophets, he needs to speak the truth to power.  He needs to confront the powerful and the oppressors, to challenge them for their injustices, and to press for them to change their ways.  Because he has already heard his enemies talk about wanting to get rid of him, and because of what has happened to John the Baptist, he realizes that what he needs to do next will be risky.  In fact, he does not believe he will survive it.  He is, in fact, expecting that he will help get the movement started, but that when he gets arrested and executed, his followers will have to continue the work.  God will vindicate their sacrifice, and he is confident that even if he dies, God will raise him up again.

Hearing this, but not really listening, Peter jumps in and contradicts Jesus.  Wait a minute, Jesus.  Let’s not rush into anything.  There are other possibilities.  Like you reminded us, there were lots of baskets of food left over before.  You can afford to wait awhile.  Maybe we don’t need to go to Jerusalem just now.  Let things calm down a bit.  Take another lap around Galilee.  Let’s build up the base of support a little more.  Don’t go inviting disaster when things are going so well.  You don’t have to say everything you know to people who don’t want to hear it.  There’s lots of work to do besides confronting the powerful.  Go heal someone else’s mother-in-law.  That went over well before.

Jesus was crestfallen.  He was so disappointed.  And apparently he was troubled.  He knew what Peter was saying.  Those thoughts had probably passed through his own mind.  Maybe he didn’t have to face down the people in power.  Maybe he could just keep things straight in his own backyard, his own household.  This is what we call temptation, and Jesus was tempted just as we are.  It’s like the first temptation he experienced in the wilderness, linked to his conversation about the baskets of leftover food. 

That’s why he responds to Peter’s words with the command, “Get behind me, Satan!”  He’s not calling Peter Satan.  He’s calling out the tempter.  He’s saying like the song, “Get out of my way!  Get out of my way!”  Get out of my way, Satan.  I’ve got a job to do.  So he tells his disciples not to be a stumbling block.  They need to understand the mission.  They need to do the power analysis.  If God’s mission is to be fulfilled, then the fight has to be taken to those who are in the way of God’s work.  They need to believe that change is needed and that it is possible.  They need to listen to what they are saying to one another and listen to what Jesus is saying to them.

Do we really believe that God has a better way for our world?  Can we let the joy of knowing God, the hope of God’s will being done on earth, the love of one another to stir our passion to take on the challenges of our time?  Is the Messiah God has sent to us the one who leads us into a more livable, loving, just world?  That’s what the first invitation is today. 

I want you to get a partner, just two or three of you together at the most, and talk about the questions on the half sheet of paper that you received from the ushers.  Open yourselves up and be willing to have this holy conversation.  What has made you proud to be part of this church?  What pressures are bearing down on you and your family?  On what matters should our church take a stand?  As you carry on this blessed conversation, talk about what really matters to you.  You are in the presence of God and of brothers and sisters in the family of God.  When you get to the last question, jot down in a few words what each of you would believe to be priorities to continue the work of God that Jesus was starting and that we are continuing even today.  We want to collect your notes on that last question especially to begin this process of listening to one another, right here in our congregation and all across Durham.  So start now to talk with one another.  I’ll be doing the same thing right here in the room with you.  After a few minutes, we will come back together to finish this sermon.  Don’t be timid.  Start right away.

[Conversations began all over the sanctuary using the following listening guide.

Mount Level Listening Sessions:

Contributing to a Common Agenda for

Durham CAN

Tell a story about one time when you were most proud to be part of Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church.

What are the greatest pressures that you and your family are having to face at this time?  Can you give an example of how this has affected you?

If there was one issue that Mount Level should stand up for and strive to make a difference in now, what would that be?  Why is that such an important issue for us to take on?

After giving a reminder and a few minutes to complete the conversations, we returned to the more traditional part of the sermon.]

All right.  I hope that most of you were able to talk through the three steps of this conversation.  If you are still jotting down what you heard from listening to one another, finish that up.

Jesus went on to explain to his disciples how important the work they were about to do would be.  He said, in anticipation of his confrontation in Jerusalem, that following him would be like taking up a cross.  That means being willing to be mistreated and suffer because you stood up for the weak, the oppressed, the poor, and the outcast.  He said if we are not willing to do that, it is as if we are throwing our own lives away.  Clinging to our own comfort and selfishness rather than giving of ourselves for brothers and sisters means that we lose the true meaning of life, the true joy of fellowship, the true communion with God.  But if we can put aside our self-centeredness and count the lives of others as of infinite value to God, then we can find what God has made us for, what God has made us to be.  What is the profit of winning a pointless, worthless life?  Nothing is worth throwing away what God wants for us just to get a moment of comfort.  Nothing is worth a life without knowing God. 

Have you met the Lord Jesus?  Have you seen the world Jesus offers to us?  Have you heard his call to loving community and mutual service?  Today is the day to follow Jesus with your life.  If you have never taken the step to join Jesus on the road to victory over sin, oppression, and death, there is not better time than now to join yourself to him. 

Are you in Durham and not united to a congregation?  We at Mt Level want to be a people who follow our Lord wherever he may lead.  If the Spirit is telling you that this is the place, that these are the people, that this is the mission to which you should join your life, come and become part of this congregation.  Follow Jesus with us.  Help us become what God would have us to be, as we offer to you our friendship and fellowship along the way. 

Can We Be in Control?

One annual event on many church calendars is Men's Day.  As part of the Men's Day preparation, three preachers were asked to speak briefly at the Wednesday night Bible study and prayer time, all using the same text, 1 Corinthians 15:56-58.  We got our heads together to try to avoid too much repetition, and it worked well.  Thanks to Rev. Patrick Clay of Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church and Rev. Dennis Horne of Monument of Faith Church for being my excellent partners in this enterprise.  I focused on verse 56 because it gave me the opportunity to think about the relationship of sin and the law.  The focus, according to the theme, was on men, but of course the same kinds of arguments found in this sermon can apply regardless of a person's gender.

1 Corinthians 15:56-58

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

I want to address the first portion of the passage, verse 56, a compound sentence which says, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.”  The question I want us to consider for a few minutes is “Can we be in control?”

One of the great unknowns of human existence is death.  Everyone faces it eventually.  We watch helplessly when loved ones die.  We remain on this side of a great, impenetrable divide.  The uncertainty of death arouses great anxiety in some people.  Others are able not to dwell on such fears, and some face the inevitability of death with a kind of calm resolve and peace.

            Those who put their trust in God can often put aside their anxieties about death and rest in the hope of God’s salvation.  With or without faith, most people manage to keep thoughts of death at bay through one strategy or another.  They keep focused on living and on building security in this world.  But that does not mean that fear does not break through now and then.  Death can be a powerful shaping force in our lives, even if we keep the subject buried just below the surface of our consciousness.

            Death, or its possibility, may drive us to change our diets, to start exercising, to take various medicines, to have surgeries, to break old habits and start new habits, to take a vacation, to change jobs, to move to another climate, to improve our relationships, to pray and meditate.  Death makes us act because it is the ultimate loss of control.

            If that is true, that death is the ultimate loss of control, then perhaps we might also say that the desire and efforts and strategies that people use to take control of their lives can be ways of warding off death.  And warding off death can be a good thing.  God made us for life.

            But there is a kind of striving for control that can get out of hand.  We talk about people with a “controlling personality.”  We say that some co-workers are “micromanagers.”  And we accuse people in our lives of being “control freaks.”  We protest to people who try to tell us what to do and how to live, “You’re not the boss of me!”  There is a kind of concern for control that is not good for relationships and gets out of hand.  It may, in fact, mask an underlying anxiety about losing control.  It may be a reaction to the fear of death.

            We don’t want an untimely death.  On the other hand, death comes to all, and in the right season it can be received with grace.  But when we let ourselves get so concerned with controlling every detail of our lives and the lives of people around us, could it be that we have let ourselves be controlled by fear of death rather than by the goodness of God’s gift of life?

            The Apostle Paul wrote in this text that the sting of death is sin.  He says that death has a sting.  The sting is what hurts us.  The sting is the harm that comes to us.  Death stings us because of sin. 

            On one level, that means that if we die in sin, we face a future without hope.  Death swallows us up, and we are in the clutches of an enemy we cannot defeat by our human power.  The sting of death, in this way, speaks of dying in sin and facing judgment.   I would like to say more here, but the time is short, and I can come back around to this in combination with the next important thing to say.

            On another level, saying that the sting of death is sin means that death gets its poison into us through sin.  Sinning puts us into the atmosphere of death, the sphere of influence of death.  Death sneaks its way into our lives and pollutes them and twists them and dominates them, and it does this through sin.

            One of the principle biblical concepts of sin is our desire to control our lives without depending on God.  All the way back to the Garden of Eden story, human beings believed that they had a better plan than God.  It’s not a story about a magic fruit tree and an arbitrary prohibition from God.  It is a story about human beings trying to become sovereign over their own lives and realizing how unready and how unqualified they are to take charge for themselves. 

            We, like Adam and Eve, often find ourselves trying to take control.  We want to run things.  We want the people around us to do things our way.  Men want their wives, their co-workers, their neighbors, their kids, their siblings, their girlfriends, their buddies, their teammates, to do things their way. 

            You know the guy I’m talking about.  He can’t seem to listen to others.  He gives long speeches about how to do things (Lord, help me here, I’m talking to myself.)  He gets angry when people don’t automatically comply with his plans and his wishes.  He always acts like the expert.  He’s got a plan for you and expects you to carry it out.  If he’s a pastor or deacon, he may try to enhance his control by invoking God as his sponsor.

            In the extreme, he may be like the prominent athlete in the news who wants control so bad he breaks out into violent acts.  He can’t be questioned or challenged.  And the odds are that every church, ours included, has in its pews men (or women) who have resorted to violence to control their loved ones.  It’s wrong.  It needs to stop.  God and the church can help you get help and stop.  You don’t need to demand to be in control over others and become violent.

            One thing Paul is telling us here is that trying to fight off death by controlling everything around you is really a way of giving in to death.  Instead of pushing death away, fear of death is pushing itself into our lives.  We think we can prevent the chaos by keeping everything under control, but the chaos is working within us, pressing upward toward consciousness, fighting our love for life and replacing it with control.

            Only God is capable of guiding our lives.  So I’m not saying don’t use your gifts of leadership and administration.  I’m saying let them operate in a realm of grace and freedom and love.  Grace means letting God work through other people, not controlling other people.  Freedom means being open to changes in plans and the choices of others.  Love means listening and valuing the many people God sends into your life, with all the gifts they bring.

            Paul expands his argument by saying that the power of sin is the law.  I could spend a few weeks talking about the ambiguous concept of the law in the Bible and theology.  There are many controversies over its significance across the history of the church.  But let it suffice tonight to say that the law has a limited good purpose.  It cannot save us.  But understood rightly, it can guide us.

            Our anxiety, however, makes us want the law to be our salvation.  We think it is straightforward.  It is simple.  It is clear.  There it is in black and white on the page.  We feel that we can follow something that is in plain view.  So we sometimes wish and long for the law to be our salvation.  It is, again, a strategy of control.  And as you know, the people who own authority over the law, own the rest of the people.

            Again, you have seen this guy.  He knows the regulations.  He has told you exactly what he wants done.  He wants it done this way, no matter what good idea you think you have.  In our churches, he says that we have always done things this way and it worked for our parents and their parents and the ones that came before.  He says the constitution and bylaws of a Missionary Baptist Church tell us what organizations and officers to have, and that should be good enough to do the work of the church.  He loves standard operating procedure and prefers no variations.

            But law cannot save.  It is by grace we are saved.  The power of sin is the law.  Law turbocharges our sinfulness.  Law boosts sin’s power.  Law becomes the lever to let sin shove the world around.  The law is a club in a violent man’s hand to beat down his opponents or any who question him.  That’s not the purpose of the law.  So when sin gets it’s grip on us, we use the law to intensify our controlling impulses.

            So don’t be one of these guys.  You can be a man without being in control of everything and everyone around you.  Let God send co-workers, fellow-travelers, teammates, into your life who can bring their goodness and truth and beauty with them.  Let it be life that flourishes, not death through the sinfulness of control and the power of law. 

           God gives the victory.  Jesus gave up control as he prayed in the garden.  He laid out his ideas for a good plan, but he acknowledged that there might be other plans that would work out.  He said, “Not my will, but thy will, be done.”  He went down a path that was not in his own control.  It looked like death would win.  Death tried to sting him, but he was without sin.  The law tried to condemn him, but he was the lawgiver himself.   
           When it seemed that he would be swallowed up by death, instead, death was swallowed up in victory.  Jesus knew that the God who loved him before death would still love him even into eternity.  In the world Jesus gave us, death is not a destroyer, but a passage to new life.  He showed us the way.  May we walk in it with courage, and not succumb to our fears.

Community Organizing Process

The following is a speech I gave recently at a community organizing meeting. It is a brief description of the cycle through which our community organizing work moves periodically as we reorganize to address new issues.

Good Afternoon, and welcome to this Durham CAN Internal Assembly. I am Rev. Mike Broadway, associate minister at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church and a member of the Durham CAN strategy team.

As we begin today, I want to answer two questions: “Why are we gathering today?” and “What will we be accomplishing in this meeting?”

Durham CAN does its work on a flexible timetable, but according to an intentional process. As a system of discernment, planning, action and evaluation, it can be thought of as a circular process, what we theologians might call a hermeneutical circle.

By following this purposive process, our organization is able to reorganize and re-energize ourselves. As has been said before, “All organizing is REorganizing.” So that is why we are here.

At least three, if not more, times Durham CAN has been at this point in our process. We have achieved significant victories, accomplished the goals we had set in education, crime prevention, youth services, living wages, housing improvement, health care access, environmental cleanup, and more. That is why we are here today, to keep the wheel turning, to move on in our work toward new goals, new growth, new maturity, new actions, and new community-building.

Take a look at the image projected on the wall. It is one way of describing our process.

Everything begins with building relationships. You are here because of your relationship to people in an organization, congregation, or neighborhood, and because your group has built relationships with these other groups present. We don’t start by reading the headlines or answering the mass mailing about politics. Issues we take up come from our relationships. We listen to one another in relational meetings, in house meetings, in planned listening sessions.

The house meetings give us new institutional priorities. Watts Street Baptist Church, Monument of Faith Church of God, Nehemiah Christian Center, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Watts-Hillandale Neighborhood Association, Judea Reform Congregation, Ar-Razzaq Islamic Center, and all of our member organizations have arrived at a new set of priorities based on listening to one another. We also learn where the energy of our people lies in these meetings. To what are we ready to give ourselves? Who is ready to lead on these priorities?

These institutional priorities cover a wide range of issues. They may have started as a laundry list of issues, then were narrowed down by each institution. Then these narrowed-down institutional issues must be brought into a collective vision for the broad-based organization of Durham CAN. It is a process of conversation and even debate at times. It requires compromise, and it guides our collective action. That discussion is part of what we are doing here today.

When we have set our collective priorities, we do so because this is where we are ready to generate energy for action. These will be our next issues. We will work on these first.

That does not mean that other issues which emerged from a congregation or neighborhood are unimportant. It only means that for now, we will narrow our focus so that we can accomplish something for the good of our community. If we try to do everything at once, we will surely fail. But when we succeed, we build energy to move on to the things we have not yet done.

Another part of what we are doing today is activating leaders. We will begin the formation of action and research teams around the priorities we set. If we want to make a difference, our priorities must be linked to a group of people committed to making a difference. These action teams will do research and make recommendations to the larger membership of CAN through the Metro Council. They do not work in isolation or set the policies, but they guide the rest of us in identifying our action agenda.

These teams help turn a priority into an issue. That means that it becomes actionable—it becomes something we can act on by being specific, measurable, and achievable. It becomes winnable. We can rally behind an issue. We can take it public and negotiate for its achievement.

These teams then move from research to action by identifying targets through a power analysis. Who has the power to make a difference for our issues? Whether it be elected officials, business leaders, public administrators, or someone else, we plan actions in order to get a reaction.

One of the ways we seek a reaction is in a public assembly. We do our homework and preparation so that we can bring our targeted public officials before CAN delegates to react to our proposals. When all has gone well, we know that they will support our issues even before they arrive. Sometimes, it gets a bit uncomfortable at an assembly when they are not sure they want to do what we ask. But either way, we have gotten the reaction we need, and we proceed to hold them accountable and if they are reluctant, find ways to get them to change their minds.

When we have received the commitments we asked for, we follow-up and make sure that it all comes to pass. And when we have achieved victory on our issues, we evaluate our progress. We look over how we did our work and find what we did well and what we did not do very well. It is kind of like digestion, as we break it down and make use of what we can learn. As the saying goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” We want to know how to do things better, and not to repeat our mistakes. We want to learn as an organization. We want to grow.

This internal meeting today is all about getting us from our institutional priorities to be almost ready for our Delegates Assembly with the candidates for City Council and Mayor on October 18. Today we will be sharing stories, setting priorities, bringing leaders into teams, and making agreements in a way that will get us ready and moving for a new cycle of successful organizing.

So let’s get busy reorganizing to make a difference in Durham today.