A Parable
Once upon a time, there was a village in decline. There had been several meager harvests in a row. Resources had been mismanaged. A shadow hung over the homes in the village, as despair crept into the hearts of the villagers.
It was around this time that a stranger appeared in the village. He carried nothing with him but a violin. No one took much notice until the first time he began playing the violin. It was a drowsy Saturday morning when people heard music coming from the town square. It was gentle and soothing at first, slowly gathering speed. It was lyrical. Even though there were no words, the music clearly told a story. There was birth. There was growth. There was light and energy and hope. There were pauses, moments of quiet, marked with sadness, but the arc of the story was love—a steadfast love that endures forever. When the violinist finally finished his song, it was as though the town was rubbing the sleep from its eyes. Life looked different. Better. Even though the harvest had been bleak. Even though supplies were running low.
Over the next several months, there were several more impromptu performances of the same song—or, at least, it sounded the same, even if the notes were sometimes different. Once, on a Sunday, the violinist was heard playing atop a hill just outside the village. Another time, on a weekday evening, he showed up in the public house where people had started to gather once more. Soon, everyone knew his song and longed to hear it.
And then one day, just as suddenly as the stranger had appeared, he left. No one knows why. Rumor has it that he was heard playing in the next village, and then the next. In any case, the village mourned the loss of his music. It wasn’t long before people were clamoring that this beautiful song should be preserved for all generations. They prevailed upon one of their own musicians to transcribe what he could remember of the song into notation. He complied and produced a very fine score of the song that the town had come to love. The score was ornately framed and hung up in a prominent position at the local museum. Every year around the time that the stranger had visited, the score was taken out of its exhibit and paraded through town.
But as one generation gave way to the next, the music faded from memory. The sheet music was still there in its special place in the museum, and every year it was still paraded around the village. The people continued to venerate the song, to praise it. But no longer were they touched by it. No longer did it move them. Because, of course, sheet music that is not played, is not music. It is just a piece of paper. The shadow that had once hung over the village returned.
It wasn’t until three generations later, that a young, curious saxophonist brought her saxophone into the museum one morning when no one was there. She began to play the music on the sheet. Captivated by the song and its beauty, she began to play it everywhere she went. Listeners were likewise overwhelmed by the song’s beauty and began to inquire about it. She said she was playing the song from the legendary stranger, the song that had been enshrined in the museum.
The village came to life once again under the spell of this song. But this time, they did not seek to preserve it for all generations. This time, they sought to learn it. Everyone with an instrument began to play the song. In the quiet of their home. Together at the public house. Out in the open field. On pianos and tubas and cellos. Even people who did not play an instrument, began to sing it, to hum it, to whistle it. In every person, on every instrument, it sounded a little bit different, but it bore the same unmistakable melody. The arc of the story was the same, namely love—a love that endures, a love that brings life.
Perfection
“No one has ever seen God,” writes John (1 John 4:12). Sort of like, no one has ever heard a sheet of music. No one has ever heard a piece of paper. The music on it is real—just as God is real. But until it is played, until it is given expression, until it makes a sound, it is practically meaningless. It cannot touch us. It cannot move us. It cannot inspire us and bring us to life.
But if the music is played, then it lives in us and its song is perfected in us. Likewise with God, whose music is love: “If we love one another, God lives in us, and [God’s] love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).
I learned piano growing up, and one of my faults as a pianist was perfectionism. (Which, at its root, was fear. The fear of making a mistake. And as John notes, fear is debilitating.) I wanted to play the music perfectly, and I thought perfection was hitting all the right notes. Anyone who loves music knows that hitting all the right notes is not perfection. You can hit all the right notes and produce a very stale, lifeless, unmoving piece of music. “Perfection” has more to do with expression and the listener’s experience. I love Donna’s piano playing not because she hits all the right notes but because she brings the song to life and plays it with feeling. I think of how Linwood frequently regales me with stories of a musician or band whom he has just heard. My guess is that their music is not completely without missed notes or miscues, and yet that doesn’t make a difference to Linwood, who sings their praises and can probably still hear their tunes in his head. Because the musicians are playing with real soul, any mistakes become a thing of grace and are enfolded into a once-in-a-lifetime performance that leaves the listener (Linwood) breathless and saying, “That was perfect!” I’m sure you’ve felt the same way after a special performance. Perfection. Bravo! Nothing can recreate what has just unfolded before your eyes and ears.
The word “perfected” in our scripture today could be translated more literally as “completed” or “finished.” So God’s love being “perfected in us” does not mean that we are perfect. It means God’s love is “completed” in us; God’s love is finally given expression, finally made real, finally played out loud. This perfection is not playing perfectly, getting everything right, note for note. This perfection is playing for the love of the song, which really brings the song to life in a unique, once-in-a-lifetime way. This is the perfection of a grandmother’s hug, a cup of water given to a thirsty soul, a smile offered to a stranger, a tearful embrace of reconciliation.
“God Does Not Exist;
God Insists”
I read once about a clinical therapist who had anorexic patient. Every visit, she would bring him a big bag of donuts. She would tell him how good they were and beg him to eat them. The irony of it all, he thought—that the patient would proclaim the goodness of an experience of which she deprived herself. It would be like…worshipping a piece of music and never playing it. It would be like proclaiming the good news but living in fear and sadness.
In all the Bible, God is equated with only two things: spirit and love. We find these two explicit statements. God is spirit (John 4:24). And in today’s scripture, God is love (1 John 4:8). What this means is that, like music, God needs to be played. Like sheet music needs a musician, the spirit of God, which is a spirit of love, needs flesh. According to John, this is how we know God: God’s love is “revealed” through Jesus (cf. 1 John 4:9). Jesus played the song of God. He gave flesh to God’s love.
I’ve heard it put this way—rather provocatively, but I find it helpful—“God does not exist; God insists.” In other words, God is real, very real, as real as love or fear or anything else that moves us to act in a certain way. But for God to be revealed, God needs flesh. God’s call needs a response. We give existence to God’s insistence. Or as John puts it, “No one has ever seen God [but] if we love another”—if we play the song of God’s love—“God lives in us, and [God’s] love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).
I shared with you last week a saying, a motto of sorts, that was common among Christ-followers in northern Africa in the second and third centuries: “We do not speak great things, we live them.” It is a helpful reminder for me that the good news is not a sheet of music to be enshrined, but a song to be played. (Jesus himself reinforces this point on more than one occasion, reminding us that not everyone who knows the name of the song is a follower. Not everyone who says his name, “Lord, Lord,” is a doer of God’s will.)
The Christ-followers in northern Africa were a marginal community, sometimes persecuted for their faith. But, remarkably, they were not defensive. They did not retaliate. They did not tell others what to do or think. They simply played the song that had captivated them, that they had come to love. They lived out its beauty. When plague after plague hit their villages, they were the ones taking in the sick. They were the ones burying and honoring the dead. They were the ones meeting week after week to share the hope they had in Christ.
They gave existence to God’s insistence. Which is to say, God lived in them, God’s love was completed in them, like a sheet of music given a heart-stopping performance. (Perfection! Bravo!) They were part of the one song that plays over the noise, and the noise has not overcome it.
Prayer
You have revealed God’s love for us in so many ways:
At the table, where you welcomed the shamed and neglected
And acted as a servant;
Among crowds, where you made sure
All were fed;
On the road, where you touched the hurting
And welcomed interruption;
On the cross, where showed us the depths
Of God’s compassion
…
Help us to hear your song in our own lives.
And may it be perfected in us,
Not with fear and all the right notes,
But with love for the song.
Amen.
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