I’ve Seen All the Cool Bands

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

August 19, 2012

I’ve Seen All the Cool Bands

John 4:23-24

“But the hour is coming, and is now here,

when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth,

 for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.

God is spirit, and those who worship him

must worship in spirit and truth.”

I was walking into the grocery store

when I spotted the bumper sticker on the back of a car:

“I may be old, but I’ve seen all the cool bands.”

I don’t normally pay much attention to bumper stickers,

but that one caught my eye;

I liked it.

I liked it because…

well,

I have seen all the cool bands!

Come back in time with me, 44 years,

to a place called Melody Fair,

an 800-seat outdoor theater in a suburb of Buffalo;

it was on the grounds of what had been

the giant Wurlitzer factory, where for decades

the Mighty Wurlitzer organs were produced.

My older sister and I had persuaded my father

to take us to there to see a British band

that was touring America for the first time,

a band called, The Who.

They’d only released two albums at that point;

their great rock opera “Tommy” was still in the future.

But we were eager to see them;

we wanted to hear them sing:

“My Generation”,

“Happy Jack”,

and their newest hit, “Magic Bus”.

A few months later I was with friends

at Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium

for a concert by the Beach Boys.

They were at the height of their popularity back then,

but it was the warm-up band I was more interested in,

a relatively new group from California

that had had one hit on the radio,

a song called, “For What It’s Worth”.

The band was The Buffalo Springfield,

fronted by a buckskin-fringed lead guitarist

named Neil Young,

and second guitarist Steven Stills,

who would later lead a group called Manassas.

The peak of my concert-going came in the fall of 1969

when my older sister and I went to Kleinhans Music Hall,

the home of the Buffalo Philharmonic,

to hear another relatively new group from Great Britain.

This band was very different from The Who,

the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, and other British bands.

This group’s music was loud, driving, pulsing,

blues deeply embedded in every song.

They had just released their first album

and not that many people were aware of them,

which explained why a thousand seats were empty

in the 3,000-seat music hall.

The next day, my friends at school

were not at all impressed when I told them

I had seen a band called, Led Zeppelin.

Over the next few years, I continued to see cool groups

as they came through Buffalo:

The Who on their Tommy Tour;

Led Zeppelin when they returned in 1971;

The Rolling Stones;

The Grateful Dead;

Pink Floyd;

Emerson, Lake & Palmer;

Iron Butterfly;

The Moody Blues;

I was a high school senior when I saw Eric Clapton

in his Derek and the Dominoes iteration.

It’s hard for me to believe that it was 40 years ago

that I saw all those cool bands;

it doesn’t seem that long ago.

I still listen to much of that music,

but now more as a way to time travel,

to wax nostalgic,

to reflect on my teen years

without the anxiety or the acne.

These days my iPod has an eclectic mix,

but my musical preferences lean to jazz and classical.

My musical tastes have changed over time

as my musical tastes have matured.

I don’t say that as a criticism of the rock bands;

But as we grow older we should grow in maturity.

Our taste in music, clothing,

reading preferences,

food,

the cars we drive –

they all change with time,

or at least they should as we mature.

                                   

The same is just as true in our faith life;

that too should change,

evolve and deepen

as we grow in spiritual maturity.

                                   

Both Paul and Peter in their letters

to the first followers of Christ

referred to them as newborns in faith.

Peter wrote,

“Like newborn infants,

 long for the pure, spiritual milk,

so that by it you may grow….”

(1 Peter 2:2)

Paul was typically more blunt,

even confrontational with the Christians in Corinth,

writing to them.

“I fed you with milk, not solid food,

for you were not ready for solid food.

Even now you are still not ready.”

(1 Corinthians 3:2)

Neither Paul nor Peter was trying to be

patronizing or condescending;

they simply wanted their hearers

to understand that as disciples of Christ,

they began, as we all do, as beginners.

The adage is true: we need to crawl before we walk.

But if we work at it,

we will grow in maturity in faith.

As Paul would later write to the Colossians,

“It is Christ whom we proclaim,

… teaching everyone in all wisdom,

so that we may present everyone

 mature in Christ.”

(Colossians 1:28)

That’s our goal: to be mature in Christ.

And that doesn’t come just with years,

but only with intention, with work.

In his book, “Falling Upward”

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr

speaks of our having two halves to our spiritual lives,

our faith lives.

The first he calls the “Ten Commandments” half.

This is where we begin,

by learning rules, creeds,

what we should and should not do.

The second half Rohr calls the “Beatitudes” half.

This is when our spiritual lives tip to spiritual maturity

as we learn to live not as much by rules

as by grace;

not as much by creeds

as by love;

when we learn to live in,

and with,

and through God’s blessings.

It is in this part of our life that we learn

that living our faith isn’t simple,

a matter of easy black and white rules,

but rather that our faith life is nuanced,

requiring discernment and wisdom

if we would live faithfully and well.

Certainly no text from the Bible makes that point clearer

than the lesson we heard not that long ago,

the lesson of the adulterous woman,

where Jesus ignored the clear words of Scripture,

not just one verse,

but two separate, distinct passages

that should have led Jesus

to pick up a rock and lead the group

to stone to death the clearly guilty woman.

But you recall that’s not what Jesus did;

he showed the woman grace and mercy

as he forgave her and sent her on her way.

(John 8:1-11)

        

In the “Ten Commandments” part of our lives

Rohr observes that “religion is almost always about

various types of purity codes,

or ‘thou-shalt-nots’

to keep us upright, clear, clean.”

In the “Ten Commandments” part of our lives

we define ourselves by differentiating ourselves:

who is smarter,

who is more successful,

who is more athletic,

who is more attractive,

who is more popular,

who has more money.

This type of thinking infects our faith lives:

who is more religious;

who is God’s preferred;

Who has Jesus in his or her pocket;

Who understands the Bible better.

I spotted this kind of thinking in yet another bumper sticker

that said,

“You worship God in your way,

while I worship God in his.”

That’s what is happening in our lesson:

In Jesus’ day, the Samaritans and the Jews

were always arguing with each other,

and among their arguments

was the proper way and the proper place to worship.

The Samaritans thought they had it right

and the Jews were wrong

and the Jews, of course, thought that they had it right,

and the Samaritans were wrong.

Jesus’ response was that it isn’t a matter of one way

being better or preferred,

that one group was right,

while the other was wrong.

In the Kingdom of God, rules, creeds,

buildings, decorations,

priestly vestments,

differences -- none of that will matter.

“But the hour is coming and is now here,

when the true worshipers will worship the Father

in spirit and in truth.”

This is all that matters.

                                            

Every time we look to Jesus

to reinforce our way of thinking,

that we have it right,

while others have it wrong,

he seems to turn things upside down.

And that’s just what Jesus does with the Beatitudes

that we find in both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels.

So, in our Beatitude half of life

we learn to stop focusing on the things that differ,

that separate us from others,

and instead look for the things we have in common.

We become bridge builders;

We open up doors,

removing barriers that get in the way of community,

that get in the way of Kingdom building.  

Rohr makes the point so simply:

“the classic spiritual journey always begins elitist

and ends egalitarian.”

Rohr acknowledges that this is a hard path

for us to walk, though:

“The ego clearly prefers an economy of merit,

where we can divide the world into winners and losers,

to an economy of grace,

where merit or worthiness loses all meaning.”

But the reality is that the life we are called to

is a life of grace, not merit,

where the glory is God’s,

not ours.

And so, Jesus teaches us,

blessed are the poor in spirit;

blessed are those who mourn;

blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;

blessed are the peacemakers;

and most troubling to our egos,

to our competitive spirit, to our drive,

blessed are the meek, the humble,

for they will inherit the earth.

(Matthew 5)

Peter tells us that we are invited

“to participate in the divine nature”

(2 Peter 1:4)

but we’ll be able to do this only if we grow spiritually,

only if we mature in faith,

only if we move from the “Ten Commandments” way of life

to the “Beatitudes” way of life.

It is why Jesus teaches us,

“For those who want to save their life will lose it,

and those who lose their life for my sake,

and for the sake of the gospel,

will save it.

For what will it profit them to gain the whole world

and forfeit their life?”

(Mark 8:35-36)

“No man is an island,”

wrote the poet John Donne.

Our lives are interconnected.

For good or for ill,

we touch and affect one another’s lives,

family, friend, and even the stranger.

It is why Jesus teaches an all-inclusive,

all-encompassing definition of the word, “neighbor”.

When we are indifferent,

when we fail to live with compassion,

when we hesitate to live generously

with what isn’t even ours in the first place

no matter how vigorously we may argue it is,

we aren’t living Beatitude lives;

we aren’t working to grow in spiritual maturity.

But when we see someone who shivers in the cold,

or who moans from an empty stomach,

or who struggles to think of a reason to smile

and reach out with compassion and kindness --

that reflects maturity,

that reflects that we are living Beatitude lives;

that reflects that we are truly living

the life to which Jesus has called us.

Yes, I saw the cool bands when I was younger;

but I am older now,

more musically mature,

and, I certainly hope, more spiritually mature.

The music that matters most to me

is the music God is playing,

with the lyrics written by Jesus

calling me to be salt,

to be light,

to be a life-giver.

This is the music of maturity,

this music of Beatitude life,

for it is music of blessing and joy.

        

AMEN