June 10, 2007 Des Moines

TEXT: 2 Timothy 1:1-7

Gospel Improvisation

I am an Eagles fan. I’m not talking about the national bird, although on my railroad retreat in February I thought nothing could have been more beautiful than seeing bald eagles just outside my window soaring over the river near Red Wing, Minnesota. No, in this case I’m talking about the rock group which soared to popularity in the 70’s and 80’s but still gets back together from time to time for reunion tours. I’m salivating over the anticipation of a new studio album rumored to be released sometime this month. I’ve heard them a couple of times in concert, have all their albums and a concert DVD.

So it was kind of fun to hear, a couple of years ago, a tribute band that performed at one of the “free stages” at the Iowa State Fair called Hotel California, from the Eagles’ song and album of the same name. It was enjoyable, in a way – hearing the musical impersonations. And they were good. If you closed your eyes and tilted your head just right, you could almost believe you were listening to the real thing. But that was also part of the eerie oddness of the concert. It wasn’t, after all, the real thing.

To put it more technically, Hotel California is a quintessential “cover band”: one who specializes in “covering” the songs of other people. The musicians in the band have a lot of talent; it’s just employed in the service of someone else’s music rather than their own.

Contrast, then, the cover band Hotel California with the Spanish guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela. Rodrigo (Sanchez) and Gabriela (Quintero), as their website describes them, are “two fast-fingered, Dublin-based, Mexicans with a unique sound created on acoustic guitars.” The two musicians met several years ago as teenagers in Mexico City and began to combine their talents. Their partnership eventually took them to Europe and Ireland where they took up residence and eventually carved out a reputation. I became acquainted with Rodrigo y Gabriela recently while sitting in a Starbucks with a friend, when I suddenly found one ear distracted by their version of the classic Led Zeppelin song, Stairway to Heaven playing on the sound system. I didn’t know it was their version. At the time, I had never heard of them. I only knew, as I listened, that I wanted to hear of them again, and so a few Google searches later, I tracked them down. The internet is an incredible thing!
Why was I so taken? Why did I care about one more cover of a classic rock song? At the core of the answer is that what Rodrigo y Gabriela do with Stairway to Heaven is not merely “cover it”. Vastly different from mere imitation, what they do is make the song their own. They receive the basic form – it is, after all, Stairway to Heaven – but they infuse it with their unique gifts, their particular style and sound and character and flavor.

To push it even further, on July 1 we will be settling into some jazz music in worship – Dixieland Jazz, to be precise – but all jazz has a few things in common. Though it might sound, to some, like a chaotic mess – as though every player is going his or her own way – the truth is that jazz has a structure. There is a key, a basic thematic concept or melody line. There are common rubrics – about beat, about the give and take of the various musicians, about the synergy that emanates from the space between them; about each player’s respect for the unique “take” each of the others has on the nuances of the music shared among them. But built on that basic structure, then – built on what they have in common – the musicians exercise playful and imaginative freedom to put the framework into their own voice. And so there is both order and innovation; constraint and freedom; a shared song, made very much one’s own. Which I think affords a wonderful way of thinking about the Christian life.

As disciples, we aren’t starting from scratch. We aren’t simply making it up as we go along. We have inherited a story. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “I handed on to you what I also received…” Or, as Paul reminisces with Timothy about the “faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” There is a received dimension to the Christian faith that creates some continuity from the ministry of the early church all the way to the contemporary church. There is, in other words, a key, a rhythm, and a basic melody line that is not up for discussion. If we were working with a different melody, it would be a different song.

But neither are we just imitating what others, in their way, have done. We aren’t mere “cover bands” of Christianity. We aren’t simply trying to reproduce the original recording as exactly as we can. We aren’t mere parrots of our ancestors in the faith. We are taking the music and making it our own. That’s what I hear Paul reminding Timothy. He wasn’t to merely hold onto the faith of his mother and grandmother as though it were an heirloom. Paul supposes that it is actually living in him. Timothy is to rekindle the gift of God that is within him. He is to take what he has received and apply the spiritual gifts with which God has entrusted him so that it becomes his unique manifestation of the Gospel, and offer it into the usefulness of the whole Christian community.

In the same way also the church. There are all kinds of congregations – little ones, big ones, rich ones, poor ones; ones with rock bands and projectors and ones with organs and pulpits; brand new upstarts and historic ones with deep roots. One could argue we have too many of them, and I suppose a case could be made for fewer. And while all of them have at least a few things in common, ultimately each of them is different – different personalities, different traditions, different stories and different neighborhoods. Each, to put it in a larger context, has its own spiritual gifts through which to bring into vivid and faithful expression the good news that has claimed us.

It’s foolish for one church to become a “cover band” for another church’s music –simply imitating the style and ministry that they have brought to life. Each church has its own gift to give, its own witness to bear, its own song to sing. The question is not “How do we do what they do,” but rather “how will we do what God needs us to in this time and place, as stewards of the gifts that God has given us?”
What is our music to make? Over the next few months, we will be exploring our particular giftedness together, taking inventory of the various spiritual gifts that animate us individually and, by extension, collectively. How might God be shaping us for the ministry at hand? Really helpful answers will only come through prayer and practice, reflection and ultimately experience, but a few observations I can already share:

– There is a new energy flowing among us and a fresh conviction on the part of many that can be seen in the various and different but wonderfully compatible initiatives bubbling up all around us in our congregational life.

– There is a broad and collective ownership of our witness as demonstrated by the numerous fingerprints left on virtually anything attempted – youth as well as adults; new members as well as those who have been a part for years.

– There is a renewed spiritual fervor and vitality among us that can be seen in the “thicker” way we pray together, study together, search together, and fellowship together. There is a fresh appreciation I feel for the sense that we are not merely “here,” together, we are disciples in God’s ministry together.

– And it feels wonderfully, gloriously contagious. Experienced by many who are new among us is a sense of holy hospitality that says they are welcome here – not simply that this is a place that is willing to share pew space, but here is a congregation that is willing to open the spaces of its heart and soul and mind and strength and make room for the gifts of others alongside our own.

Which is good, because there is no shortage of transformational opportunities. You might have noticed that the world is not perfect yet. There are still shadowy corners in need of light; desolate fields in need of planting; gaping chasms in our relational experience in need of bridging, silences in need of not simply sound, not even simply music, but specifically the song that we are spiritually gifted and enlivened to sing.

I am grateful to God, Paul wrote, for the faith that you inherited, and I am sure, lives now in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you…for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

Rekindle – warm and make uniquely your own – the gift of God that is within you; and powerfully, lovingly, intentionally make the music of the Spirit that is yours – and ours – to make.