Show the Way

An Open Letter from Dad (Larry Christensen) to his choir, the Cathedral Choir of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Des Moines, IA.

Dear Cathedral Choir,

Here are the lyrics to the song I will be singing this Sunday, for which you will be acting as backup singers “Twenty Feet from Stardom.” Yeah, right. I take a finely tuned Mercedes and use it to haul bags of manure; St. John’s Cathedral Choir singing “Oo” and “ah.” What a waste!

Show the Way
David Wilcox

You say you see no hope,

You say you see no reason to believe

That the world would ever change.

We’re saying love is foolish to believe

Because there’ll always be some crazy

With an army or a knife

To wake you from your daydream

And put the fear back in your life.

Look, if someone wrote a play

Just to glorify what’s stronger than hate

Would they not arrange the stage

To look as though the hero came too late

As if he’s almost in defeat

So it’s looking like the evil side will win.

We’re on the edge of every seat

From the moment that the whole thing begins

Chorus

It has been Love who mixed the mortar

And it’s Love who stacked these stones

And it’s Love who made the stage here

And made it look like we’re alone

Within this scene set in shadows

Like the night is here to stay.

Yes, there’s evil cast around us,

But it’s Love who wrote the play

So that in this darkness

Love can show the way.

So now the stage is set

You feel your own heart beating in your chest.

This life’s not over yet,

So you get up on your feet and do your best.

We play against the fear;

We play against the reasons not to try.

We’re playing for the tears

Burning in the happy angels’ eyes.

(chorus)

This has been a favorite song since the first time I heard it, and at one David Wilcox concert I heard him say that if he had written only one song, this would be the one he would choose. Personally, I need it. I am a big picture person, and I connect all sorts of information from history, world events, politics, science, trends, social commentary, and religion, and often the big picture is pretty bleak. My friends and co-workers know me as a “glass half empty” sort of person, and I see disaster lurking behind every piece of good news. In other words, I’m a barrel of laughs and a real fun guy to hang around with. So this song reminds me that, while the “big picture” might look bleak, if I bring the focus in closer to what is happening around me all the time, every day, with the people I actually know and interact with every day, there is love and kindness, a deep desire to do good and make a positive difference, and to be “little Christ’s” (as Luther would have said) whether or not they would think of it that way themselves.

So, I personally need that song, and, strange as it may seem, Linda and I not infrequently dance to it in our living room. Romantic it may not be, but hopeful it surely is.

But the other reason I love it is the way it names another way of looking at faith, religion, and the Judeo/Christian tradition: not as doctrine and theology but as story and art. What if for the second verse Wilcox had written, “God gives you struggle, hurt, and pain to make you stronger,” or “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle,” or even, heaven forbid, “You must have done something wrong for which God is punishing you”? The moment we start to pretend we understand God’s motives or what divine purpose might be driving the crisis at hand, and then instead of comfort we are selling a heartless God and inviting the inevitable question of why, then, did God create a universe in which we need to be so strong, that we need to be able to handle extreme pain. Could not God, the all-powerful Creator – supposedly loving and on our side – have created a less daunting world for God’s creatures to live, where happiness and contentment were not fleeting or, for some, almost non-existent? In the movie “Flight” the suggestion by the airline’s lawyer that he could get the crash declared “an act of God,” the airliner’s captain replied, “What kind of God would do this?” Exactly.

You may think that Wilcox song comes pretty close to saying just that, and I admit he skates pretty close to that edge. In alternate versions I have heard on Spotify Wilcox plays with the lyrics to see if he can find better words to express what he knows in his heart but are a bit dangerous when spoken out loud. Still, what Wilcox is saying is something we all simply know: you cannot write a story without a crisis or conflict. There is no “Peter Rabbit” without Mr. MacGregor, no “Harry Potter” without Lord Voldemort.

Do you remember David Cherwien saying of music that you need to create a “crisis”? Tension and release is what moves music forward; you create expectation with dissonance and satisfaction by resolving it to consonance, or at least relative consonance. There is no point in saying stories or music shouldn’t need to be like that, because we all know it is true. It simply is.

I suspect that is why Jesus, Mohammed, and the Buddha did not write theology. They told stories and described life-affirming practices (or at least what they considered to be life-affirming practices.) That is why we would rather hear one of Jesus’ parables than Paul’s trying to package or unpack who Jesus is or what he represents. The hymn texts that Martin Luther wrote are, for the most part, like setting the catechism to music. He wants to teach theology, and most often that we are saved by grace and not works. That is bed-rock Lutheran stuff, but it does not get its hooks in you like the poetry of Sarah Kay or the song lyrics of a David Wilcox or a movie like “The Color Purple.” Emily Dickenson famously said, “Give me all the truth, but tell it to me slant.” We can handle truth slipped under the door in a sealed envelope better than having it hit us in the face like a cold blast from a Polar Vortex.

And that is why so much of our discussions about what sort of music or art is appropriate in worship is beside the point and way off target. Different kinds of music and art tell different stories, or the same story different ways. One of the wonderful things about the visual art that Pastor Rachel and Beth Ann have chosen to project on Wednesday evenings based on the Lectionary A narratives from the Gospel According to John is the variety of ways the artists choose to view the story and reveal something new to us even after we have heard that story dozens of times. This past Wednesday we saw a statue from England in which Lazarus is looking back over his left shoulder, back into the tomb from which he has been summoned, and you realize, “Lazarus did not ask to be raised from the grave. Is he sorry to be called back into the turmoil of the world he thought he had left for good? His sisters and friends were grieved that he had died, but was he?

Artists make us see differently, put ourselves in the story, and make us wonder. To write in the previous paragraph “The Gospel According to John” reminds us that we have three other gospel stories: “According to Matthew,” “According to Mark,” and “According to Luke.” Doctrine tends to make us defensive or make us brace off with, “Yes, but…!” I am not saying doctrine or theology is bad, nor did the Church or religion invent theology. We all come up with theologies that help us explain the world, even atheists. (Atheists have to invent a god they don’t believe in.) Bad theology is very dangerous and needs to be countered with better theology, life-giving theology. But theology always feels, and to some extent is, speculative. It lives in a space right beside philosophy, and fewer people care about philosophy these days than listen to classical music. “Philosophy” and “theology” have a red label on the box that says “Boring and irrelevant to my life.”

That is why my pastor son, Erik, says if he could do his life over he would rather be a film maker than a preacher. Erik claims the best public theology being done these days is in films and on T.V. And it matters to ordinary people because they care about the characters in the story. The story. If you create a situation – a crisis – in a story (or a song or a poem) people will put themselves into it. It is people-sized and human, not coming from the heavens to crush and flatten us into submission.

That is what the arts do, and that is why, in addition to the Brahms “Let Nothing Ever Grieve Thee” we will be presenting “De Profundis Blues” and “Show the Way.” They do not enjoy the same artistic merit – not by a long shot. But they exercise different parts of our brains, our feelings, and our humanity.

The Brahms transports us to a realm of sublime trust and faith by way of beauty and deep confidence that a God who created humans who can write music like that must be good and loving. The Wilcox is earthy, down in the muck and mud. Wilcox is clear that life DOES grieve us, and it is no fun. Still, even though we may never understand why it has to be this way, deep down we know that…well, it does. And that is okay. Brahms comforts us from above. Wilcox comforts us from street level.

I am so grateful to direct a choir that can sing Brahms and Bach and Mendelssohn. It is a privilege and a delight. And I am a bit embarrassed to have you singing “back up” to Asphalt & Stained Glass for “Show the Way.” It is a bit of a waste of your talent and skill, but it is not a waste of worship time. I believe that songs like this minister, which is why, in addition to a Cathedral Choir, St. John’s has an Asphalt & Stained Glass. It is why St. John’s does not have a “traditional service” and a “contemporary service,” and why I don’t believe that the kinds of music appropriate in worship is small but rather very large indeed. As for you choir members, nothing makes Paul and Susie happy like singing Bach, and nothing puts a smile on Eric Busch’s face like a good gospel tune.

I love that about you, so thanks.