An overflow of worship
Singing has never really been my gift. As a new believer, the church I was part of practiced baptism by full immersion, which when first observed seemed like an aquatic mugging. The time came for me to publicly affirm my faith in Jesus by taking a public dip.
Expected to share a pre-dunking ‘word of testimony’, I decided to write a song about my journey into faith. The result was surely was an appalling experience for the dutifully grinning congregation. A friend accompanied me, singing in an entirely different key from the one I’d chosen. My key was too high, resulting in some high pitched shrieking from yours truly. The lovely church family I was part of clapped and cheered when I went under the water, possibly because they knew that I wouldn’t be able to warble another excruciating verse while submerged.
Undeterred, I decided to become a worship leader. Armed and dangerous with a guitar, I even spent some time in a Christian rock band, until finally, a trusted, bold friend suggested that I hang up my guitar for good, adding that the Christian church would likely offer a collective sigh of relief if I heeded his advice. And so I did. But my own tuneless ventures came back to mind just this last week.
Attending a small church with a congregation of around 40, I noted that they were singing to backing tracks. It was then that I spotted Amy - not her real name. Rather obviously disabled, Amy sat in her wheelchair in the front row, next to the minister. Amy’s love for Jesus is obvious, as is her tunelessness. As we sang along with the tracks, her voice soared above the rest of us, stunningly off key, utterly liberated from the shackles of musical notation. To add to the agony, she’d decided not to sing all the lines of the songs, but rather save her breath, enabling her to bellow out every third or fourth line at a volume possibly heard on Pluto.
It was then that it happened. The minister turned towards Amy, and I feared a gentle rebuke, a gesture of hush. But instead, he gave her an encouraging smile, one that told her to go for it, to sing her heart out.
That momentary gesture brought back the truth of what the church is called to be. We are a band of the broken, our lives often tuneless. We so want to be beautifully symphonic, but to paraphrase Paul’s famous words to the Corinthians, often our lack of love makes us sound like clanging cymbals, like someone has dived headfirst into a drum kit. We are at best, to borrow Henri Nouwen’s phrase, a band of wounded healers.
Yet in God’s family of ragamuffins, we find welcome, or at least we should. Yet the good news doesn’t stop there, because we are in the presence of the ultimate maestro.
Lloyd C. Douglas, author of the novel, The Robe, tells of a retired music teacher. They lived in the same lodgings, the older man housebound. Every morning Douglas would open the old man’s door and they’d share a ritual of sorts. Douglas would ask the same question: ‘Well, what’s the good news?’ The older gentleman would pick up his tuning fork, tap it on the metal arm of his chair, and say, ’That’s middle C! It was middle C yesterday; it will be middle C tomorrow; it will be middle C a thousand years from now. The tenor upstairs sings flat, the piano across the hall is out of tune, but that, my friend, is middle C!’
We may be musically shambolic, but we walk with the Jesus who is the middle C, perfection personified, and who works daily to create melody in and through us.
But that is a work that takes a lifetime. And so patience is needed, with others, and with ourselves. I can still remember the shining eyes of those who were kind enough to celebrate my cacophonic baptism. It’s the same sparkle that is to be found in lovely Amy’s eyes. It comes from the knowledge that we are at home. Grace is ours. Let’s pass it around.