“The Spirit is moving farther and farther from the centers of power and propriety toward those most victimized by the empire.”
(Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope)
For years I was privileged to share ministry with an organist of international acclaim and accomplishment who was, at the same time, among the humblest of friends. Having preceded me by decades in the chancel of this historic church, his tenure there continued beyond my own 19. Countless sanctuaries across the country are filled with the music of his students - congregations who never heard Carl’s name but who were nonetheless blessed by his pedagogical and artistic excellence. Not merely a musician who happened to play in a church, Carl was a church musician who was attuned to the movements of worship - its surprises and inspirations - and responded to them as the Spirit led. As I acknowledged at his funeral a few years ago, Carl was my pastor, though he surely would have balked at the attribution. In the wordless eloquence of music, he proclaimed the gospel in transformational ways. Sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, sometimes improvisationally and sometimes according to the massive scores he had reproduced and taped together and positioned on the music rack, Carl reliably elevated whatever I might dribble out from the pulpit up to within close sight of heaven. Quite often, in ways that give fresh and tangible meaning to the overworn, increasingly cloying phrase, his literally were the “hands and feet of Jesus” that transported us over its threshold.
I was struck, when I had the disciplined patience to listen carefully, how often all that vitality was carried by his feet, sliding over the peddles with deceptively subtle power. Most of the time, the fingers ignited the flash and fizz. Their sprints and pirouettes, their trills and trumpeting command of the melody garnered most of our aural attention. Only rarely did we notice that, for all the noteworthy agility of the fingers, the heft of the music was borne by the feet; that without them, the notes prancing above them would be shallow, thin, and reedy. One could stand and watch and be mesmerized by the hands dancing upon the keys, while all the time, virtually hidden from view by console and bench, were the feet, moving the measures to their compositional resolution. Given that one of Carl’s rituals of grace was to polish the shoes of his students before their senior recital, I think he understood this better than I.
I thought of Carl and his laboring feet as I reflected afresh on the Christmas story. As Luke unfolds the story, the cast of characters is striking. The “where” and the “who” and the “among whom” is notable for what is missing. There are no “important” people - no “movers and shakers”, no rich and powerful influencers. There is no castle or Capitol, no prestigious address. There are only peasants and poor in a marginal town, laborers and lambs, an old lady and a young girl, and their husbands who followed rather than led.
“It’s a strange way to change the world,” we might say to God. And revealing, as Kelley Nikondeha hints in the quotation above. “God is working his purpose out,” the old hymn almost metronomically sings, but hardly in the gears and engines we might expect. Through the “irrelevant poor” and peripheral,
according to Luke, rather than the name-recognized and volubly “powerful.”
“But what about the kings?” someone will surely object. “Surely their presence counters the claim.”
Of course the answer is in the clarification that the magi in Matthew’s telling were scholars, not kings, and “not from around here” at that. Foreigners and academics - adjectives neither of which would afford them credence today.
We in the church could benefit from reading this precious story with a different set of eyes - one’s not blinded by the celebrity politicians we love to trail around after like obsequious sycophants, thirstily lapping up any drivel of “significance” they might leak out in a shallow puddle behind them. We have become addicted to the center, to the klieg lights, to the loud, to the prestigious. Having given up on persuasion, we have, like the tyrants of every generational empire, settled for coercion. One of the most dangerous places to stand today is between us church people and a news camera, or a politician, oozing facile moralities and certainties about God’s approbations and disapprovals.
Meanwhile, God strikes a match and lights a candle in the bleakness of the periphery, among the utilitarian creatures and common folk where most of us have forgotten - or would never think - to look. And from there, with them, sets about to change the world.
God changing the world with the pedals and the feet;
Never mind what the hands are playing.
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