AND HERE ARE THE PEOPLE

I asked my wife, Jane to share with you her Pentecost sermon.
I think you will agree it gives us food for thought. . .




Acts 2:1-17. Selected text from Eugene Peterson’s wording:
“Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks….There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. (They said) “They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!” Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “what’s going on here?” Others joked, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.””
“That’s when Peter…spoke out with bold urgency: “...They haven’t had time to get drunk—it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. This is what the prophet Joel announced would happen:
“In the Last Days, God says,’
“I will pour out my Spirit
on every kind of people:
Your sons will prophesy,
Also your daughters;
Your young men will see visions,
Your old men dream dreams. I’ll pour out my spirit on those who serve me, men and women both, and they’ll prophesy…
When the time comes….”

Here is the church. Here is the steeple.
Open the door and here are the people.
(children’s hand game)
There are folks in an upstairs room, clinging to each other. They have too much shared history to let it go, but they have no idea how to go on with business as usual. The absence of the Teacher is heavy on their hearts. What can they do but pray and ask for strength and the ability to accept the situation? Surely there is more going on…I see them eating, that’s what I would do; reminiscing, shedding some tears and letting some laughter escape despite the solemn situation. Maybe they feel resentment, maybe anxiety, maybe they are trying to decide who was responsible for the trouble. All of them are trying to find that place in human experience where we honor the dead or obsess on someone who abandons us, but we labor to let them go. Perhaps thoughtful plans are being made as to how they will pick up their lives, store their memories, and manage their losses. They turn to sacred writings, looking for stories and images that will help them get a focus on the meaning of these changes.

What words are adequate for what comes next? They remain in the room, but quite abruptly…they are in the world, differently. As the change blows about and burns them, they are seeing everything that has happened differently. Understanding memories differently. Remembering all that has been said differently Still longing for the Teacher, gone away, but even longing for him differently.

Here is the Church...Here are the people who see things differently.
The moment seizes them and stuns them. They look around at one another. Something about this moment feels like the good old days when Jesus had fed them the Word of God like good food. In the empty place in each heart there swells a bounty of hope… dreams… surprise…wonder…for the first time in a long time.

There is a “pouring out” on each heart, a tender caretaking of each one. I dreamed once (nearly 40 years ago) that I stood under a waterfall of fresh orange juice. It poured over me, and all I had to do to be filled with its sweetness was open my mouth. Something satisfies them like this, fills them like this…even as it increases their appetite. It leaves everyone present astonished and grateful. It gives them new, crazy new, ideas… and an infusion of the energy, the artfulness, and the chutzpah to make good things happen.

Here is the Church. Here is the steeple.
Open the door...here go the people.
The little community of believers from the upper room races down the stairs and bursts into the glaring light of the street. They stumble into the gathering crowd; their ecstatic, romantic, heroic new way of seeing the world reaching out to find and share language that lives up to the moment. It works. People outside catch the wave, understand the significance, revel in the ecstasy…except a few folks who see intoxication, but miss the clear-mindedness of this experience. Those who believe cling together in a new kind of community…one like Joel, the prophet, had written poems about.

Here is the church. Here is the steeple.
Open the door and here is Holy Life in the midst of the people.
God strength around them and in them--tangled up with a new way for Jesus to be present among them and in them. Discovered in their own lives, the Body of Christ, not gone away, but in the world. “All flesh” inclusive, young people and old folks stepping up to say “This is how it is,” womanpower, manpower, workers united, leveling out the playing field, all dreaming and believing it together. The heady pleasure in the possibilities flows like wine in their veins. Ever since then, the church has been way too sober!

I am angry with the church.
Anger makes war against my gratitude, I ought to say. Not one particular feckless congregation, mind you, but the whole shmear—the church of two plus millennia, the church of crusades and inquisitions and witch hunts. The several limping, whining, compromising churches and parachurch projects and movements of which I have been a part. I confess to you that my first reaction to re-reading the Acts account annoys me. I wonder how Luke could bear it that these Joel-mentored believers, on whom the reconciling and liberating spirit of Christ had fallen, could arrange themselves into a squelching, power defending, hierarchy—apostles and elders directing the hoi polloi. What happened to the distribution of power on old and young, women, servants?
I wince at the condemning anti-Jewish rhetoric in the sermons. I am appalled by the vicious condemnation of two inexperienced believers, killed for a violation at the offering plate. And I am defensive for Elymas, the Magician, compromised for sure, but a proclaimed believer, who just missed the point and was cursed to Hell for it. I am offended by the apostles, whose feet had been washed by Jesus, to note their unwillingness to waste their time (as they put it) on the welfare of widows. I wonder how Luke could blandly report the bickering and resentment that so separated Paul and Barnabas that they could not even travel together. I am uneasy that the surprising gift of the Holy Spirit, falling so freely on humbled, receptive people, evolved into a status conferred by the laying on of hands by the right representatives. “Has the Holy Spirit fallen on you? No? Well I know you believe but you have the wrong baptism. We’ll do the water again and then we do the laying on of hands. Then the Spirit can fall on you.” Was this what they had burst through the doors of the upper room to be for the world?

The promiscuous use of Holy Spirit language and who possesses it dominates Luke’s early story. and then it kind of peters out, and the last references to the Spirit in that text tell us that there is a new message…”Paul, prepare for suffering, opposition, and death at the hands of people (who presumably don’t hear my wind or see my fire, nor hear the true word in their own language). I was almost relieved to see the obsession with ‘victorious living’ die.
I want to rail against the Church that often enough is too lazy to cultivate the mind of Jesus. She preoccupies herself with making declarations about the truth even when she does not know the truth. She is regularly co-opted by the system. She is too self-righteous to listen to a world so she has ignored the news, the insights of pop music and the movies and art of our times where the souls of people are on display. She is too rigid to respect human diversity, too arrogant to learn grace, and too defensive to do peacemaking. In my own personal life, the Church has forgotten my elderly parents, frustrated my siblings, bored my children, demoralized my friends with its infighting, and been often enough irrelevant to the public around me. The Church has boasted of its piety and pronounced judgment without wisdom. She has wasted called, passionate, selfless people and gifts given into her hands…The complaint inside me goes on and on.

I see again people of the powerful little congregation, packed with blessings, called to an extraordinary ministry, wound and scar each other and demolish the fellowship because they disagree on the definition of discipleship. Forgiveness would require a return to trust and that price is too great. If only a special dispensation of Spirit would force their surrender.
I see again the peacemaking counsel, its members alienated by their different work styles. I see them building defenses and gathering power against one another, saying that there is no action that they can see themselves taking to make reconciliation because those in the right must be vindicated and those who are wrong must be chastised. If only Spirit would fall so aggressively that they would be overwhelmed by the urge to see and hear each heart, then once again work together.
I see again the assembly given to ecstatic expressions of blessing and "joy in the Lord". People sing victorious psalms and praise for two hours. Afterward, I learn that the leaders of the congregation are depressed and demoralized, financially strapped, guilty that the sense of joy has escaped them. And none of this is being shared, when the people of God meet together, because the praise must not be broken. I long for the Spirit to shake them by their necks and burn out their shame so that they can lean against one another.

I hear again the Christian missionaries who share with us that they had once felt uncomfortable that their house servants lived in poverty and ate low quality food, but that they had eventually gotten used to it, and their servants didn’t know what to do with wealth anyway. I long for the Spirit to crush them like Ananias and Sapphira.
And the people of the Church worldwide…separated, on opposite sides of walls and causes--in America, in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, in Central America, in Africa…often enough sending their children to kill one another for houses and history and name calling and getting in the way.

Am I too hard? Is this rant unfair? Did I let my own self righteousness carry me away? At the very least, I’ve resorted to a generalization that paints everything ecclesiastical with the same brush. Oh yes, I know that it is the church that has introduced me to discipleship, taught me love of scripture and teased me with the idea of grace. Oh, and I make little of it but right now I remember it, that I have seen again and again occasions when the church is true to her calling and she is for a moment the Body of Christ in the world. And in every one of those moments, the world is better for it.

It has crossed my mind, the wish…if we could only call up Spirit and get a fresh helping on demand. What makes Holy Spirit fall on us? NOTHING. What forces Holy Spirit to take charge of things? NOTHING. Spirit is wild and goes where it wills. We have craved spiritual power—measured against the world’s very different kinds of power—apples and oranges. We have craved at least enough to win power over our enemies. Some of us have wondered if spiritual power has slept in us all along and waits for us to open a door, some gateway such as praise music or ecstatic prayer. We have the idea that there are ways to be open and ready, physically and mentally fit for work, but it is hard to follow through with soul-building so that we can keep up with Spirit. Or, maybe, we wonder (when we make nothing sensational happen), is spiritual power nowadays out of reach, or out of date (like wizards and dragons) belonging to another time and place?

But thank Goodness, Holy Spirit is wild and goes where it wills. Thank Goodness,it is not packaged and manipulated by heroes or even saints. Thank Goodness, it not a slave to human failure. Thank Goodness, for the Church and for you and me, that Spirit is not turned on and off as a reward or punishment. And thank goodness, the power and health of Spirit is not to be measured by mundane comparisons to other kinds of power. Thank Goodness, there are times when we will be called by Spirit and equipped with holy gifts even when there is yet no sign of power or victory in our projects.
In fact, we are forever going to be gathering inside…AND…bursting forth to the outside.

Inside, behind closed doors—we will continue to prepare for the world, being not yet in touch with vision, not ready, fearing changes, and looking around for wisdom that we didn’t quite get or seem to have mislaid. We are ordinary and frail, easily fatigued and vulnerable to our emotions. Our memories are faulty, and our histories are sometimes hard to bear. The work of our callings is enormous, seemingly without end, requiring superhuman capacity and more sterling character than we have acquired. But it is on this kind of people, ordinary people, that Spirit blows and burns.

We hear in our hearts the conversation between two men on an evening long ago. One says to the other, “We’ve seen the powerful and wonderful things you do. We can see that God is in you.” The other man says something like this: “What do you see? Unless you’re born in a fresh new way, you won’t even see God at work. Spirit is like wind; you don’t see where it comes from, you don’t see where it goes, but you know it is there."

Let’s face it, Spirit is wild and untamed. And we may be…willy-nilly… changed by it. We will recognize Holy Spirit when it is ourselves who are wild and untamed in our hope, when we are wild and untamed in the quality of our loving, when we are wild and untamed in our dreams of mending the world not with doctrine but with grace and service.

We are often going to wear our Spirit blessing self-consciously and awkwardly, but we are the people who burst through the doors of the church onto the street.

Music Therapy in Action

Reflections on 2 recent recording projects. . .

The Songster Preacher

He came bursting into the room back stage at the synod gathering two years ago. He wanted to meet and talk a little bit. Subsequently, I visited his church in New England and while I was there he told me about some songs he had written. I got him to play a few and asked him if he had been writing lately. He said there didn't seem to be much inspiration. I pressed him then and said I would push him in the weeks ahead to get some songs written.

Well, the dam broke, and songs began pouring out of his heart and head. In January, Ross Varney came to Michigan to record these songs. You would never put Ross up against the American Idol singers, in fact you would never assume that Ross is somebody who could build his vocation on singing. But, here is pastor, a lover, a man of deep compassion, a gentle worker for peace, who wants to use singing and songs as part of his pastoral calling. I get reports about how he gives these songs to people who need them. He has beautifully expanded his ministry by adding the gift of song to people who are hurting or need encouragement. In the process of doing this, I believe that Ross has moved forward in working out some of his own issues through creating this music. There is a beautiful song about the death of his father called "Why'd You Have to Go?" There are songs about other relationships and many about his faith and commitment to bridge building and peace making. If you want to know more about this CD, just write me at ken@kenmedema.com .

If you have always wanted to make a CD and don't have a lot of money and have some ideas about songs you want to sing, let's talk. I'm beginning to discover the most amazing music therapy happens while we're making records.

Twenty-five Years Later. . .

I first met her when she was in her 20s. She was a fine young singer with all kinds of possibility. We have connected again after almost 25 years. She has sung almost not at all during those years. There were many factors, but it is enough to say that her voice was silenced. Her life circumstances have changed now, there have been some sad but necessary endings to relationships, and at this point she wants to sing again. I wrote a song for her to encourage her saying to her that she would indeed find her song and sing it.

A few weeks after that first meeting, we met in my little home studio at Dave and Bev's home in Michigan, we began recording and what happened was amazing. I discovered not only an amazing voice with the same agility and flexibility that it had when she was 25, but a deep river of passion and determination flowing within her. There was laughter, weeping, leaping, and amazement. It was as if years of therapy were enclosed in those few days of recording. My own sense of purpose, my dedication to music and to God, my faith in the power of the Spirit to use music as a healer was renewed. I will not put names on this blog just yet but if you would like to know more about this amazing singer and the cd we have made, just e-mail me ken@kenmedema.com and watch for news on our website when it is finished.

The CD has a variety of songs because she is using it as a demo as well as selling it. We have everything from "It Is Well with My Soul" to "In Christ Alone" to some jazz and pop songs. I find the collection delightful and the singing is exquisite. Even so, as wonderful as the music is, for me the most exciting part of the whole thing was the healing, the sense of new life, the joy that came to us as we worked.

May music always find you,

nourish you,

refresh you,

and heal you.

MUSIC MATTERS

My wife, Jane, has written a piece about music that says everything I would want to say, only she is saying it better. Please read and enjoy.

Music Matters
By Jane Medema, April 2009
My singing voice is below average. I can sing in tune, but, due to some minor vocal cord damage, the quality of sound I make is wobbly and strained and my throat begins to ache. Mind you, I still sing. I have to really. Singing and hearing music for me is like song is for birds; it’s an instinctive calling out to the world or a receiving from it and it is evidence that I am alive.
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When I sing with other people, I’m grateful that my weak sound is strengthened and sustained by all of us together. I feel the change when my music becomes our music. Our music often blends not just voices, but hearts and lives, into one shared moment. We can all feel it. Many of us dream that a miracle will happen, and the moment will carry over into how we live and behave together as a variety of hearts and lives that can act as one body. In our religious communities we sing together often, taking for granted the magic: “It is the voice of the church heard in singing together. It is not you that sings”, said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “It is the church that is singing--and you as a member of the church may share in the song.”

Religious congregations sing together often, usually several times in a regular meeting. We sing together because it is the thing to do, because we believe that an offering of praise requires it. Or we sing because we need to stand and stretch, because we’re restless, because we need to fill time before more significant things happen. We sing because we need to do something, (anything!) that makes people feel less alone, less distracted, less numb, less mute, less invisible. Sometimes we seem only to make noise and mouth easily forgotten words-- words that say trite and shallow things or words that have been so often repeated that we are not curious about them anymore.

Quality matters. Selection matters. The best music for us sings our own lives and sings other’s lives to us. The best music asks for us to be awake and so contributes to our becoming wise, strong, sensitive, playful human beings. Beauty matters; and yes, it is in the eye of the beholder, but we cannot fail to serve beauty personally or corporately without becoming pinched in spirit. The best music embodies and recommends enduring value and therefore attunes us to Goodness. In the experience of it, we are redeemed and created all over again. The best music is holy even if it is quite secular in content --because of the holy work that it does in us.

Singing together carries our memory--mine, yours, and ours. Memory makes us who we are, tells where we come from, and how we see the world. When we make song and sing it, we dress memory in powerful words, in metaphors and stories. We shape it in rhyme and rhythm and pattern so that we will not forget. As we move through the music, we can labor over memory, looking out for where and how it reveals our nature.

Song is soul language. It gives us a way to make love to that which we care about. When we sing together, we are able to express more than words can say. We make new language with the lines of melody and the color of harmonies and the conflict of dissonance so that we with one another what we know by personal experience. The musical style we select reveals tacit cultural agreements and offers subtext to our message.

Our music is a fine tool. It organizes much that we want to learn and recall. It helps us to articulate complex ideas, events, and relationships. We are confronted and informed by it.

Singing together is performance. The sound and meaning we make sings back to us so that we are at once performer and audience. We are wooed by our own art. In the act of performing, we rehearse virtues and strengths and vows until they become not merely performance, but who we are.

When we sing together, there is the chance that we will experience a miracle. There is the chance that, by the time we arrive at the end of our singing, we have become something surprising to ourselves, something lifted out of the common, something both holy and very human.


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Singing in the Rain

New Podcast this week

Our new podcast is available today and there are little bits of several songs plus some conversation about the wonderful gift of rain. The whole thing ends with a most interesting musical setting of a story from my childhood. When I was 13, there was one amazing Saturday when all my family were gone and I was left home to practice the piano. Weary of practice, I put on an old bathing suit and ran out into the middle of a fabulous thunder storm. It was one of the most delightful, freeing, life-giving moments I have ever had and I wanted to find a way to describe it. See what you think of the telling of this story. Give me feedback and tell your friends.Go to www.kenmedema.com

THE WONDER OF WHY

A reflection on a song and a question

My son was a "Why" kid. From the age of about 2 until about 5 or so, no matter what instruction was given, what food was offered, what plans were made, there was always and forever the question, "Why?" Every answer brought another "Why?" Many of you know that picture so very well. As annoying as it is, we would not ever want our children to stop asking, "Why?",would we?

What happens when they stop asking questions and just go about their lives either accepting or ignoring the world around them? What happens to a culture when it stops asking "Why" and simply accepts or ignores the world around it? How many people are impatient with the "Whys" of this current financial crisis and simply want to race to the solutions?

Just fix it! Don't bug me with reasons. How many people in churches don't really want to know the "Whys" of trying to interpret holy scripture? They just want a quick answer, a principle, a rule. I must admit that I fall into bad habits more often than I would like. I don't take the time for "Whys" when I really should. I tend to want to rush to the answer or solution or practical application. For this, I ask forgiveness. I think perhaps the word why is one of the most important words in any language.

This past weekend, I had a chance to work with some amazing kids and we sang a song called "The Wonder of Why" which is both a children's choral piece and a solo piece on my "Kids' Play" CD. The piece is funny and fun to sing, but it also celebrates the importance of questioning.

I recommend it to you. You can find it as a free download on the website for a couple of weeks in it's children's choir form. Enjoy and keep questioning, it's good for us.

A REMINDER OF THE MUSICIAN'S CALLING

I tried to get permission to reprint this article on my blog, but I haven't heard back. Many of you may have seen this welcome speech given by Dr. Karl Paulnack to the freshmen class of Boston Convervatory. If you have not, please take a moment to be inspired and reminded of our calling as musicians. I know, it moved me to tears and I hope it will do the same for my musician friends.

Click Here

LOSING and FINDING

A reflection on the new podcast for March 15th

One of my dearest friends had told me that if there were a single text of mine that would qualify as Medema 1:1 it would be this one; "Finding leads to losing, Losing lets you find, Living leads to dying, and life leaves death being. Losing leads to finding, there's nothing more to say, no one will find life another way" .

I suppose there is no more potent word from Jesus than that one about losing and finding. You could live your whole life discovering the meanings and ramifications of that business. It relates to all the letting go that we continue to need to do all our lives; letting go of pride, misconceptions, lies we love, destructive cultural expectations, and the list could go one forever. It also relates to all that we might find in the process; rest, new purpose, some peace, forgiven relationships, new freedom in partnerships. All this was going through my mind as I created the new podcast "Losing and Finding" which goes on line today.

Quite clearly, I didn't talk about all this,I mostly just presented music around the theme. It is my hope that people who hear the podcast will do some of the thinking necessary around this theme. One doesn't even begin to scratch the top layer of the outside skin of the surface of this subject in a podcast, a book, a career in theology, or a life time. This is big stuff, the biggest. This is world changing stuff. Oh, that we could begin to makes friends with it.