An Arabesque in Waiting--January 19, 2022

An Arabesque in Waiting--January 19, 2022

"But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves." [James 1:22]

It's all well and good to have sheet music sitting at your piano, waiting to be played--as long as you actually take the time to play it.  Otherwise you've just got a lot of black squiggles on pages that aren't good for anything, and a lot of silence.  The joy is in making the music, not merely possessing the paper its printed on.

I remember that every time I walk past the piano in our living room.  Earlier in the summer, we had to move all the furniture out of our first-floor rooms so we could install new flooring, and that meant packing up all of our collected piano music and boxing it up until the work was done.  But long after the room was put back together and all the furniture returned where it was supposed to go, we still hadn't gotten around to playing anything at the piano. When you get used to an absence of music for long enough, you just sort of forget that it's there, waiting to be played.  Piano keys get dusty, and schedules get full of other things.  

And then, for whatever reason, one day in the fall, I found myself in the room where we had left our boxed-up sheet music and started looking through it.  There were favorites from decades past in my life, from Broadway musicals to classical repertoire to hymnals in all sorts of colors.  And they were all still sitting in the box, because we hadn't gotten around to unpacking it. Staring back at me was the cover of a collection of piano pieces by Claude Debussy, a personal favorite, and as I thumbed through it, recalling the sound of the melodies and the memories that went with them, I realized what I had been missing.  I got up, book in hand, and sat down to play, and to see if the notes would come back to my fingers.  And even though I was a bit slow and rusty, I mustered an attempt at the French composer's "Arabesque No. 1," and something came alive in me again--something I didn't even realize I had been missing.

I know that the New Testament writer James lived about seventeen centuries too early to have played the piano, and even longer to have heard anything by Claude Debussy, but I think he's trying to tell us something much the same here.  The beauty of the music is in the playing, not merely the possessing of the pages.  And the beauty of God's word is in the ways we embody its cadences of mercy and justice, not merely owning a Bible, or even a bookshelf full of them.

Now, to be sure, there's nothing at all wrong with having or reading your own copy of the Scriptures--of course not!  After all, when you're learning to play a piece of music, you need the notes on the page so your brain and hands can learn how it goes.  But merely owning a set of black squiggles on paper in a bound volume makes one neither a pianist nor a disciple--it is the attempt to practice these things that makes the difference.  It's not even that we have to get all the notes right or follow the way of Jesus without stumbling--there's something beautiful to be experienced even if our fingers are rusty at the keyboard or our hearts are a bit stiffened from not being stretched wide with Jesus' love.  We get better the more we keep at it.  We come to embody the music, the beauty, the goodness. With a musician, there comes a point where the notes seem to come from our fingers, and for disciples of Jesus, there comes a point where you can just see the face of Christ in someone's actions, words or love, even when they're not quoting a Bible verse at you.

James wants us to experience that beauty and goodness in our own lives as well, so he reminds us that if all we ever do is hear the Word (or read it or merely own a copy of it), we will be missing something vital.  Hearing the Word is a first step--after all, we aren't making up the Reign of God out of whole cloth on our own.  And we need repeated, even continual, renewal in the Word, just like a learning piano student has to keep sitting at the keys with the music in front of them as they learn it.  But if the book is never opened--merely possessed--then our religious posturing is a sham.

It's easy (and rather cliche) for Respectable Religious people to bemoan how much they wish "they would put the Bible back" into public life (who or what the nebulous "they" refers to is never quite spelled out, but "they" are, to be sure, the enemy).  But to be very honest, sometimes you just get the impression that those voices just think the mere existence of Bibles makes a difference in the kind of people we are becoming, as if just having one on your coffee table or in a classroom or a city hall is a noble goal.  James tells us not to fall for that thinking--that's like owning the sheet music but never playing it.  And I suspect James would tell us, and the voices of Respectable Religion in our day, that it is vastly more important that we dare to live what's in the book, rather than just insisting it be "put back" in public places.  Rather than just complaining that "nobody reads the Bible anymore" or that the Ten Commandments aren't posted up in every city hall or courtroom, maybe it would be more honest if each of us would make an honest attempt at the sorts of things the Word calls us to: doing justice, practicing mercy, and walking humbly.  Rather than waving the Bible around as a prop or a token symbol of dominance (which, let's be honest, is often how Respectable Religious Folks mis-use it), James calls us to embody the Scriptures' vision of welcome for strangers, love shown to the unlovely, care extended to the most vulnerable, restoration for those who have been deprived or excluded, and a willingness to go above and beyond for the good of our neighbor... even when it is inconvenient.

After all, if I just hold up a book of sheet music to someone who has never heard the pieces inside it and say, "What you REALLY need is to pay attention to this composer!" I'll most likely just be met with an indifferent shrug.  But if I can sit down at the keyboard and play the notes that have been waiting to be heard, even if I'm rusty while I play, then people around me will get a feel for the music and want to be drawn into its beauty, too.  That's what the Christian life is meant to be: playing the music for listening ears around us, even when we don't get it perfectly, so that others will want to join in the song, too.

Today, let us put our hands to the keys and live the way of God's goodness with our hands and feet, our wallets and our wristwatches, like it is all an Arabesque in waiting.  The world is waiting to hear the tune.

O God, move us from merely possessing copies of your word to being captivated by your vision of justice and mercy, and letting the beauty of that vision be experienced by others around us.