A Sermon Delivered at St. Matthew’s, St. Paul, March 23, 2008
Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10
Blair Pogue
In a New Yorker article titled “A Bolt from the Blue,” neurologist Oliver Sacks shares the story of a man named Tony Cicoria who was hit by lightning. In 1994, Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon, was toward the end of a call to his mother on a pay phone in upstate New York when he saw a blinding light and felt a strong force knock him off his feet. His next memory was that of flying forward, of seeing his body on the ground and people converging around it. He saw a woman give him CPR and then he saw his kids and had the realization that they would be O.K. He was surrounded by a bluish-white light and had “an enormous feeling of well-being and peace.” The highest and lowest points of his life raced by him. Cicoria started to experience the “most glorious feeling I have ever had,” and then all of a sudden, boom! He was back.
Although initially sluggish and experiencing some memory loss, his memory came back and Cicoria was working again in a couple of weeks. Things started to return to normal with one exception. Cicoria had an insatiable desire to listen to piano music. This was out of keeping with anything in his past. As a boy he had taken a few lessons, but had no real interest. He didn’t have a piano in his home and tended to listen to rock and roll. He began to buy recordings and became particularly enamored of a Vladimir Ashkenazy recording of Chopin études. He desired to play all these songs and ordered the sheet music. Not long after that a family babysitter asked if she could store her piano in his house, and at age forty two he started to teach himself how to play.
All of a sudden Cicoria started to hear music in his head. The first time it started was in a dream, and he woke up, jumped out of bed and started writing down as much of it as he could remember. He hardly knew how to notate what he heard. Whenever he sat down at the piano to try to play Chopin his own music “would come and take me over.” The music had a powerful, overwhelming presence.
In the third month after being struck by lightening Cicoria – once an easygoing, genial, family man almost indifferent to music – was inspired, even possessed by music. It began to dawn on him that perhaps he had been “saved” for a special purpose. He understood the music as a blessing, a grace from God.
This Lent the people of St. Matthew’s have been on a pilgrimage, exploring together what it means to live a holy life and to die a holy death. We’ve examined a series of common life experiences – times when our faith is tested, times when we experience a strong sense of God’s calling and purpose, times when we must choose whether or not to reconcile with people who’ve hurt us and to be in relationship with others different from ourselves. We also faced the reality of our death.
From Palm Sunday until today we’ve walked with Jesus as he was welcomed as royalty by crowds waving palm fronds, and then rejected and abandoned by his own people and friends. Thursday night we remembered Jesus’ last meal with his disciples in the Upper Room and followed his example as we washed one another’s feet. Friday we accompanied Jesus as he approached the cross, meditating on the struggles and people he encountered along the way. We stood by and shuddered as he was nailed to a cross, and then we heard his final words, “It is finished.” We left in silence as Jesus’ body lay in the tomb. Thursday’s congregational singing was quiet and meditative, and Friday’s music was haunting. By Saturday, we could barely hear the music.
But today the music is back, and it is joyful and filled with “Alleluias.” This Holy Week cycle, this yearly repetition of the events of Jesus’ final days, becomes more true and meaningful to us over the years. Like Jesus, we all experience trials, suffering, abandonment and death. Some years we experience so many trials, so much suffering, we wonder if it will overwhelm us. We wonder where God is. Does God want us to suffer? Is what we are going through God’s will? Where is the silver lining? When will the suffering end? This year beloved members of our community struggled valiantly against cancer and other diseases, died in the arms of loved ones, watched once-committed relationships dissolve overnight, were betrayed by friends and co-workers, watched their children leave home and strike out on their own, lost their jobs, saw their health care benefits and stocks plummet and were threatened with the loss of their homes. On the global front we watched war, torture and violence continue in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan, witnessed the implosion of Kenya, and watched people around the world struggle with poverty, hunger, disease and the effects of global warming. At times the darkness seemed to overwhelm us.
And yet even in our most difficult, most seemly hopeless moments, God’s music was there. Perhaps we were so overwhelmed that we only heard a note or two. It may not have been as loud or earth-shattering as the quake recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, not as dramatic as the finale of a Beethoven symphony. But the sweet reminder of God’s unqualified love, God’s power to overcome all that threatens to destroy us, somehow broke through. Perhaps we were surprised by the music’s familiarity. The song is not new, but immortal, it is the song God sang as the universe was created, the love song at the heart of the Trinity.
In the Celtic Stations of the Cross liturgy we used this past Friday night, there is a 15th station titled, “Jesus is Risen!” The text for the station says, “Shut away in a box, he has conquered their coffin. Shut away in a book, He fulfils, Living Word. Shut away in our concepts, He shatters such shackles. No prison can hold Him; no tomb thwart the miracle. His life is our liberty; his love changed my life. No dying can rob me of what He has given: once blind now I see.” I thought about asking an artist in our community to paint this station, so we could unveil it today. And then I realized that we are the fifteenth station -- we the people of God at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Saint Anthony Park. We are an icon of the resurrection, our life together pointing toward the reality of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead to life. Like Jesus, and all the people of faith from Abraham and Sarah to the present, we are people of hope, claiming God’s promise of a New Creation, the future God envisions for us. We are the ones who must listen for the in-breaking of the music of God’s kingdom and then sing bold and thankful alleluias not just here in church, but out in the world, spreading the infectious song of God’s death-defying love.
God’s song knows the highest highs and the lowest lows. It is not a solo, but a chorus, polyphonic, in which the distinct voices of Father, Son and Holy Spirit call and echo in turn. That song is the music in which we are invited to share, each of us bringing our voices together. Jesus’ victory over the grave is a disruption—a bolt from the blue—that opens up a new future for us and for all creation. Can you see that future? Can you hear the music? Amen.
