For the past 18 months I have been involved in a process toward being a Commissioned Minister of the United Church of Christ, through music. In June 2016, I present Part One of my commissioning paper to the Committee on Ministry of the Central Association of the Massachusetts Conference of the UCC, as I begin the final steps of the journey. Part One calls for my theological perspective, prompting me to tailor it to my “What It Means to Me” series. This is a working copy of the paper.
Introduction and Justification
Feeling a call from our God in heaven, and inspired by the Holy Spirit all around us, I embarked in 2015 upon the path to become a Commissioned Minister of the United Church of Christ through music. It has been a lengthy process of self-reflection and of my current position, serving as choir director at Edwards Church UCC in Framingham, Massachusetts, where I intend to stay post-commissioning.
Step 10 of the process, as outlined in the Manual of Ministry’s Commissioned Ministry schedule (PDF), calls for me to write a paper in three parts to display my theological perspective, UCC understanding, and personal faith pilgrimage. The resultant paper is separated into sections, although, inherently, each complements the others, and my intention is that they could be read in any order, or separately. As such, at the Committee’s request, Part One is submitted for your consideration at this point.
Part One: Theological Perspective
I sometimes fantasize about having a born-again, “I saw the light” origin story to accompany my faith. One of my guilty pleasures is listening to Southern Gospel music where every lyric seems to telegraph some tale of abject wretchedness leading to redemption. But in my case, there is no such story to tell. I’ve been a practicing Christian my entire life, even during those youthful periods when straying was a natural instinct for many friends and family. My path has wound through exploring several denominations (as Part Three will attest to), but my belief in Jesus Christ as the foundational rock for my faith has never wavered. Spiritual exploration has never taken me away from Him.
As one who is both a practicing Christian and a practicing choral scholar, the majority of my exposure to Biblical analysis and deeper textual study have been through the lens of their setting composers, and not my own. To this day, there are countless passages which I cannot read without my mind accompanying my reading, via Handel, Hassler, Bach, Mendelssohn, and the like, often in languages not my own. I come to a deeper understanding of my faith through the melodies that these composers were inspired to craft. Symbolism, numerology, and metaphor can all be found if you dig deeply enough into the interpretations of our finest composers, and my goal is, as often as possible, to find a deeper connection to God, using these analysts as my guides.
Perhaps because I work so frequently in these distilled settings of larger texts, I have become a person who looks for similarities as a way to simplify larger, more difficult concepts.
I’ve long thought that the entire Christian faith can be summarized in terms of being kind to one another. It seems to me that the majority of Christ’s behavioral suggestions focus at least in part on doing what’s right through following him. I recently came across a list of some 49 commandments that he laid out during his ministry: Repent, follow me, keep your word, love your enemies, and so on.
During this discernment process, I’ve been attentive to what elements are shared between different religions and denominations. As such, I can’t help but examine these collected commandments and see a pattern. When confronted in Matthew 22, Jesus states that the entire Jewish law “hangs” on two simple commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart…” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (NRSV). This is Jesus at his most and least complex. When the entire Bible is reduced to these two declarations, there can be little excuse to fall from the path.
The first, Mozart’s, states “I pay no attention whatever to anyone’s praise or blame, I simply follow my own feeling.” At seventeen years old, it is not “cool” to go to church every week, sing in a choir, and aspire to be a classical musician. That didn’t bother me. The second quote, my own, declared my intention to spend every day trying to make those around me laugh. Trivial, it may seem, but laughter has been the bedrock of my relationships ever since. When (in a world fraught with broken marriages) we are asked “how do you do it?” of our fifteen-years together, my wife and I reference the fact that we found a partner who makes us laugh, and has continued to do so. Looking back on that yearbook, there’s documentary proof that for at least two decades I have been crafting inroads from “acquaintance” to “friend” through laughter, strengthened by that same Holy Spirit, who, through the advice of a German composer 220 years my senior, has allowed me to follow my own path, in spite of the reputation it may have given me at times.
During this discernment process, I have noticed in myself a greater confidence to proudly state my faith outside of the walls of my “sanctuary” (accurate with both of its definitions). Not the first time that Mozart has led me to God, and vice versa.
This New Commandment is, for me, a complement to our Golden Rule (Matthew 7 and Luke 6), “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you”, and serves as yet another simplification of the entire faith. For a decade, I have worked by day at Boston University’s business school, for most of those years as the “School of Management (SMG)”, “affectionately” satirized as “Sex, Money, Greed”. It wasn’t until a few years ago, when a naming donation christened us the Questrom School of Business, and with it a renewed interest in post-2008 business ethics, that I learned of our “creed”, established 100 years earlier by our founding dean who used the Golden Rule as one of the tenets of business teaching. As one could predict in today’s world, the hanging of the Golden Rule in each classroom has made more than a few administrators and professors uncomfortable, in spite of our university’s strong background as a United Methodist school. Yet, the Golden Rule concept has been a backbone of religions and movements the world over for centuries, and that was our dean’s point in presenting it.
A second precept of my theological perspective is the belief that all are welcome, and that God’s justice applies to all of us.
For me, music and scripture in inseparably linked. All the Bible verses that I know by heart are through their connection to an anthem or oratorio. And I always try to dig deeply, as in the Friedell example, to discover the hidden messages that may be uncovered when we take the time to study the musical setting as deeply as a rabbi or monk would study their text-only Bible.
Last summer, I was told at my first meeting with the Committee on Ministry of the Central Association of the Massachusetts Conference of the UCC that a church musician, in some ways, knows more scripture by heart that many pastors and theologians. Science shows that texts are more “sticky” when accompanied by music, and through repetition. My choristers frequently tell me on Thursday that Sunday’s anthem has been a weeklong earworm.
We all bring different interpretations to the scripture verses that we’ve learned over the years. And those personal interpretations can change wildly over the years, as we progress and make changes in our own development. The constant in all this is the verse itself. When we listen to choral albums and concerts, or make those glorious statements in rehearsal and worship every week, we choral enthusiasts are reaffirming our belief in those sacred texts. And if we find ourselves humming those melodies as we make our way through life, it may just be because it is the texts, and not the melodies, that God has planted for us to hear as the real soundtrack of our day.
Parts Two and Three
I am presently working on drafts for the two required documents for my next meeting with the Committee on Ministry. These will examine my place in and understanding of the Polity and History of the United Church of Christ; and my faith journey.