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Sermon for 10 July 2022 by Rev. Heather Prince Doss

Luke 13:10-17

In 2006, jazz great Wynton Marsalis was in a bit of a slump. On this particular night, he was playing trumpet in someone else’s band at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Marsalis was having a particularly riveting solo when all of a sudden, at a quiet climax in the song, someone’s cell phone rang. Marsalis went silent for a moment, the audience began to murmur, and it seemed like the performance would be ruined. In a couple of beats, however, Marsalis composed himself. But instead of returning to the song, he played the notes of the cell phone ring. He played them fast and slow. He reorganized them and played them in different keys, until gradually he worked his way back to the very spot where his solo had been interrupted and brought the song to a stirring conclusion as the audience roared its applause. That is jazz at its finest.

Some of the key elements of jazz are syncopation, improvisation, call and response, and creative tension. When these elements came together musically, a whole new genre was created that brought life and creativity out of a time when the people making this music were subject to every manner of discrimination and violence. These same elements continue to shape jazz today to make magic as in the story I just shared.

When I think about the ministry of Jesus, I see many of those same jazz principles.  Today I’ll spend some time introducing these 4 key notes: syncopation, improvisation, call and response, and creative tension. In the weeks ahead, we’ll explore how these jazz values might give new life to our faith in the areas of spirituality, scripture reading, how we respond to suffering, how we live together in community and how we do evangelism. I hope that when we put jazz and Jesus side-by-side, we will see our faith come alive in new ways, whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.

Syncopation

There are many ways to define jazz, but one of the things that makes jazz jazz is the way the music moves.  Maybe you’ve heard Ella Fitzgerald sing, “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.” Jazz music is built on syncopation. Briefly, that means that the music accents the offbeat. You might know how to count a beat 1 2 3 4 where the emphasis usually goes on the 1 and 3. In jazz, the emphasis often goes off the main beat. Instead of emphasizing the 1 and 3, they might put stress on the 2 and 4. Or maybe the emphasis will go to the notes between the beats, the “ands.” 

When we are talking about syncopation in jazz, we are talking about the ways the musicians can hear possibility in unexpected places. Syncopation upsets the expected rhythm to create something that moves and invites you to move, too. It’s not about playing notes that aren’t there so much as it is about noticing and uplifting what had been unnoticed.

By this definition, Jesus was a master of syncopation. He knew how to be attuned to what others couldn’t see or hear. We see it clearly in this story and Luke 13 and in many of Jesus’ healing miracles. It is Jesus who sees the bent over woman. The description of her almost makes her invisible, doesn’t it. She’s literally bent over, made small. She does not call Jesus or seek him out. Jesus sees her. 

Jesus also practices syncopation in the way he reads the scripture. The religious leaders who confront Jesus about the Sabbath healing are focused on the letter of the law, what we might think of that as the main beat. The 1 2 3 4 of the law. But Jesus wants to accent the offbeat, the meaning of the law that is written between the letters. Jesus can see that the religious leaders already know this offbeat, because they’re applying it to their livestock when they untie them to drink water on the Sabbath. Jesus wants to make the offbeat the main beat by freeing the woman of her ailment. Jesus is a master of syncopation.

In our own faith journeys, the jazz and Jesus value of syncopation invites us to see what others have not noticed. This might relate to how we read the scriptures. It might relate to how we understand our experiences of suffering. It might relate to how we notice and serve the people around us. And at times it might bring us into conflict with those who are more interested in preserving the main beat instead of seeing how God is swinging in this time and this place. 

Improvisation

Another principle of jazz is improvisation. In jazz, artists often take familiar chords, melodies, or whole songs and remix them to make something new. Sometimes they do this off-the-cuff in a performance, as Wynton Marsalis did. Artists who can do this have exceptional mastery not only of their instrument, but also of the song they are playing, and the essentials of jazz. Sometimes, artists improvise in the practice studio and then bring those to the stage. Maybe it seems counterintuitive to practice improvising, but I can assure you that that’s exactly what good musicians do on the way to becoming great musicians.

In jazz, improvisation is almost always respectful of tradition and of what came before. When you hear a band play a piece they tell you who wrote the song and who played the song before. Jazz musicians will tell you whose style they are playing in or whose version they are improvising on. When you improvise, you honor what has come before while at the same time leaving your own mark on it. 

I think we can see improvisation at work in the story from Luke 13. Jesus didn’t come to the synagogue to conduct miracles. He came to teach. Jesus  has deep knowledge of the scriptures. He clearly understands his own power. He also knows exactly who his audience is, both the crowd and the religious leaders. All of these things are foundational to the ability to improvise faithfully. And when Jesus is confronted with this woman with a need of healing on the Sabbath day, he knows what to do, even if it is not prescribed for him in the laws of his faith or his lesson plan for the day. Jesus’ act of healing is an improvisation. Perhaps we can even see this in the way that Jesus heals in different ways at different times. Sometimes he uses mud, sometimes a touch, sometimes just a word. Sometimes he commands people to go and wash, sometimes he doesn’t. Each instance is a response to a particular situation.

For us, improvisation is an invitation to do the work of the gospel creatively, respectful of tradition, but not bound by it. Improvisation also frees us from simply copying the successes we see in popular culture. But improvisation also comes with a challenge and a responsibility. Like a musician, to be able to improvise well we need mastery of the essentials of our faith and our own gifts. We might think of the church as our practice studio where we can try out our improvisations before we take them on the road. And remember, improvisation is not a license to do anything you want any time you want. In jazz, the musicians improvise but they don’t play anything they want. They play the song – the same song the rest of the band is playing – but they put their own spin on it. In the same way, we are invited to play the gospel, and to play in the way that any particular moment or circumstance demands.

Call and Response

Jazz music finds its roots in the churches of enslaved people in the south. Therefore jazz music also finds its roots in the musical cultures of Africa. One of the hallmarks of many African music cultures is call and response. Music is made when a leader sings a line and the community sings in response. We experience this here at Eliot whenever the CWF leads us in song.

In jazz, call and response shows up when instrumentalists take turns in the spotlight for solos. If you were here for our jazz worship service a few weeks ago you experienced it. That call and response style of playing requires constant listening. Every musician must be listening to everyone else so that when it’s their turn, they can respond in a way that is appropriate to the song. And we also see a call and response relationship between the band and the audience. Each time a solo ends, the audience applauds. That applause feeds back to the band, inspiring the notes they will play next. In the case of Wynton Marsalis, even a cell phone ring provided a call that he could respond to in music!

Call and response is also integral to our faith. From the very beginning of our story, God called and creation responded to God’s voice by coming into being. We can see the call-and-response relationship between Jesus and his disciples. And Luke 13 it is Jesus who gives the call for this woman to be healed to stand up straight. She responds first with obedience, and then with praise. And her response soon extends to the whole crowd who rejoices with her. 

In our own faith, call and response invites us to listen attentively for what God is doing. We might listen to our own lives. We might listen to people in the community around us. We might be listening to scripture. We might even listen to disruptions. When we listen attentively, we can respond to what God is doing appropriately: perhaps with lament, perhaps with praise, perhaps with some action. Call and response means that your faith is not a private matter between you and Jesus. It involves the response of the whole community.

Creative Tension

Finally, Jazz rests on the principle of creative tension. Without tension there would be no Jazz. This is music that came from a people who were living unfree in a free land. It is the tension that made the music possible. And tension might exist in the music itself when one band member plays something in an unexpected way that forces the others to reconsider their plans or ideas about the song. Sometimes it happens between the band and the audience when some experimentation goes a little wrong. It certainly happened at the Village Vanguard when a cell phone rang at exactly the worst moment. But without these tensions, jazz would not be jazz.

I would argue that without creative tension, Jesus would not be Jesus. He was not afraid of tension. In our story, he draws out the tension between the way they practice their Sabbath for their animals, and the way they treat a disabled woman. Jesus uses that tension in the hope that these leaders will reconsider how they’re practicing their faith. It doesn’t work for these leaders. They are entrenched in their way of thinking. But the woman is healed and the crowds are convinced. Jesus uses the creative tension of that moment to open up healing and hope. 

Tension means living with contradiction – between what is and what should be. Tension naturally makes us uncomfortable. We want to resolve it. But tension can also push us to greater creativity.  When we try to avoid tension or take it away too quickly, we might be missing an opportunity for growth or for some new thing that God might do. We might even be limiting God who is himself (herself?) mysterious and paradoxical, both immanent and transcendent, both just and merciful, both all-powerful yet subject to the free-will granted to human kind. 

Creative tension is probably inevitable in a multicultural church like ours, especially as we do ministry with people experiencing homelessness. We will continually rub up against situations that make us uncomfortable. Embracing creative tension invites us to be curious about our discomfort, to ask what the discomfort might have to teach us about ourselves. Not only that, learning to embrace creative tension might help us grow closer to our mysterious God, navigate the many paradoxes found in Scripture, and live both faithfully and authentically in an increasingly fractured world. 

I know not all of us are fans or students of jazz. But I am confident we are each students of Jesus, seeking not only to be fans but followers. And I hope that in this series, jazz and Jesus together might help us find new rhythms where our faith has grown monotonous, fresh melodies when our voices have grown weary, stronger connections in our life together, and deeper courage for the work ahead.  May it be so. Amen.

I am indebted to Robert Gelinas’ book “Finding the Groove: Creating a Jazz-Shaped Faith” for the ideas in this sermon.