Ancient Truth | Modern Sound

As a rule I don’t like musicals - I just don’t see the point most of the time.  No story, characters I don’t care about, doing things I can’t believe in.  Why bother?

Les Miserables is the exception that proves the rule - with one caveat.  The book by Victor Hugo is a moving tale of redemption through forgiveness for Valjean contrasted with the cursed life of Javert, the man who cannot forgive.  God intervenes in the life of Valjean when a Christian Bishop forgives him without conditions.  But Javert cannot forgive the man Valjean and pursues him relentlessly through the book.  Javert commits suicide in the end when fate (providence?) conspires to have Valjean save his life.  At the start of the story Valjean accepts forgiveness and creates a new life for himself and his family.  At the end of the story Javert rejects forgiveness and at the same time rejects life altogether.  In response he drowns himself in the Seine, a man utterly alone. 

Les Miserables, the musical, has but one flaw and that is the ground of the redemptive power in Valjean’s life is not really evident in the musical.  On the other hand there is song after song that are at the same time beautiful, powerful, and moving.  The best is ”I dreamed a dream”, or at least it is my favorite.  Which brings me to the incontestable proof that there is a God and he is gracious.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

The above is Susan Boyle from Bathgate in Scotland, who looks like a bad version of my mum, but who sings like an angel.  The YouTube version of this has now 7 million hits and counting (make that 13 million - April 16th; total web views 66 million in a week - the most ever http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/19/AR2009041900508.html?hpid=topnews ).  Completely unbelievable.  Apparently she is an unemployed church volunteer.  Perhaps a new soloist for Crosspoint?  Over to you, Frank ……….

DEVIL MUSIC?
What’s the deal with CrossPoint?  On most Sunday mornings the band fires up some ungodly, un-spiritual, secular radio song right before the preaching of God’s Word.  Why on earth is that a good idea?  Shouldn’t God’s Word be set up with the most sacred, religious, pure and holy music that we can imagine?  Isn’t listening to secular music a sin?  I mean, I smashed or burned all of my Ted Nugent records at youth retreat in 1982.  Don’t you guys know that God’s House is not the place for that kind of nonsense?  Does Bob Larson need to play more records backwards for you?

It occurred to me that some people may be asking these kind of questions when they see that we often play songs by all sorts of pagans during our Sunday service.  Since I have been the worship leader at CrossPoint we have played songs by  Kansas, Eric Clapton, Green Day, Good Charlotte, Coldplay, KISS, Linkin Park, Talking Heads, The Who, Madonna, Rare Earth, Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel, Sevendust, Beatles, David Matthews, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Lenny Kravitz, Bob Marley, Kool & The Gang, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Tom Waits, Don Henley, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Blind Faith, Seal, The Cure, and honestly, we’re are likely to play a song by just about anyone.  I’m certainly not saying that all of those artists are rank pagans, because I don’t know any of them, but I am saying that their music is not usually thought of as sacred (or church music).  We tend to play these songs just before the sermon.  It sets the tone, introduces the topic, and gives an emotional and cultural touch-point for what is going to be talked about.

THAT’S NOT RIGHT!
There have certainly been people who are critical of this practice, but I believe their criticism is contrary to biblical teaching.  They would say that entertainment has no place in worship, and the music/lyrics of the  ungodly should not be used in holy worship.  One Christmas I received an Email from a very angry member of the congregation because we played John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas.”  She reminded me that John Lennon was an outspoken atheist, so his music was “not at all” fitting for a church service.  Imagine that.

WESTERN SOUNDTRACK
In the Western culture there are many works of music that “most of us” are familiar with.  We have heard them on the radio, on T.V., at the mall, in the grocery store, during football games, at the park, in movies, etc.  The soundtrack of Western Civilization includes many pagan artists that have become part of our cultural make-up.  I pull from this lexicon of popular music to find common ground with our audience.  If we are teaching on grace, I will search for a song that illustrates grace in either a positive or negative way.  Sometimes music can reach deep into us, places that logic can’t touch, places of deep memories and nostalgia.  Maybe the song will open our hearts in a way that some other sermon illustration wouldn’t.  Maybe it will open the door for a conversation at work during the next week, “You’ll never believe what song they played at my church this week!”

I’M GONNA NEED A VERSE!
St Paul certainly knew the value of using popular artists of his day to teach and preach.  He must have been a fan of Greek and Roman pagan poetry and philosophy (the secular rock stars of his day), because he used direct quotes from Hymns to Zeus in his sermons and in his epistles that make up the New Testament.  There are three famous quotes of pagan poets in the New Testament by St Paul, first the pagan philosopher/poet/mystic Epimenides in Titus 1: 12 when he says “Even one of their own prophets has said, “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.”  The second is when Paul is speaking at the Areopagus (in Acts) and quotes Cleanthes (from The Phoenomena of Aratus) saying that their native poets had said, “For we are also his offspring.” And, the third is in his writing to the Corinthians where he writes, “Evil communications corrupt good manners” or “Evil associations destroy excellent characters” from a tragedy of Euripides.  These quotations were from popular hymns to Zeus that would have been as common to a Greek audience as the Beatles would be to us today.  These are not the only times in the Bible that the words of pagans were used by God to teach something true.  Evil men speaking evil words (untrue words)  and then God’s people using those words to say something right and true.  God is constantly doing this.  He is doing it right now, to a much lessor extent, through me.  (ahem)

KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!
You may be wondering why I put the word secular in quotes (up there, in the title).  The reason is because I don’t think anything is truly secular.  St Paul was pretty fond of quoting another popular poet, too, his name was David, and David said “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” in Psalm 24:1 (Paul quoted this in 1 Corinthians 10:26).  I take this to mean that some things might not be specifically “sacred” but that doesn’t mean that they are evil.  There is not a good team (God, the angels and the church) and a bad team (the Devil, his demons, rock stars and politicians) with secular things belonging to the bad team.  Next week at CrossPoint we going to be talking about how we must teach our children to honor their bodies and maintain sexual purity as part of a series on Biblical parenting.  So my job is to find a song that will remind us of this and set up the tone for the sermon.  Do you remember the Georgia Satellites?  “No huggie, no kissie, until I get a wedding ring!”  (See how this works?)

I am an old guy, getting older by the day, and feeling it.  Never more so than when I am travelling like the last few days.  “Travelling Man” was the “B side” of a 7 inch vinyl extended version of Free’s “All Right Now” that I owned when I was a teenager.  It was important then to know these details and own the picture version of the sleeve which, of course, I did.  For some reason known only to my deepest psyche I hum that tune when I walk through every airport, railway station, or car rental place.

Today I travelled from Atyrau, Kazakhstan, to Moscow, Russia.  I have much to be thankful for.  I said a prayer this morning, knowing I would be travelling on Trans Aero Airlines, that I would not spend the 2.5 hours silently praying that the Russian airplane would hold it together for one last trip.  When the bus took me out of the check in area and drove me to the plane my prayers were answered better than I could have expected.  There was a Boeing 737 waiting to take me to Moscow.  Believe me, a Boeing 737 is a winged chariot fit for a god compared to some of the planes I get to fly in.  I rested easy.  (more…)