NUCC

November 26, 2006

Pentecost 25

Mozart Sunday

2 Samuel 23:1-7

Revelation 1:4b-7

            When I think of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart my mind goes back to 1970.  Karen and I were spending the summer in Switzerland while I worked on my Master’s thesis.  During that time we took a trip into Austria and stopped in Salzburg, where we were to meet Karen’s parents, who were also visiting in Europe.  We had arranged to meet them at the entrance to Mozart’s birth house.  Things went well and we arrived at the appointed time.  However, Karen’s parents were nowhere to be seen.  After waiting a while we gave up and walked to the city square where a glockenspiel played a tune from Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute.  All of a sudden we heard a voice from above calling out our names.  It was Karen’s mother calling from the third story window of a nearby museum.  As it turned out both Karen’s parents and we had been at the right place at the right time.  The only trouble was:  Mozart’s birth house had entrances on two different streets!  This was my introduction to a man who many people, including theologians and professors, call their favorite composer.  Today we remember him toward the end of his 250^th birth anniversary year as, to use the words of the theologian Karl Barth, “the living voice of God on earth.”

            I dare say that all of us have heard of Mozart, and even if we are more likely to listen to country, polkas, rock, or pop, each of us has heard the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  Perhaps you have also seen the movie “Amadeus,” a fictionalized account of his last days and how he, like the former Russian spy in the news these days, was poisoned.  Most likely you have heard Mozart’s music and never realized it.

Mozart was what we now call a “classical composer.”  He was the son of an Austrian court musician, Leopold Mozart.  His father had him playing the piano at age three and composing at age 5.  He took his “child prodigy” on tours of Europe and cultivated him as a musician’s musician.  Indeed, the young Mozart’s life was consumed with music.  He focused on nothing else, and wrote all kinds of symphonies, operas, sonatas, choral music and sacred music.  His middle name, “Amadeus,” meant “loved by God.”  He certainly was gifted by God, but like some other great artists he died at the rather young age of 36 and was buried in a common grave.  Today if we traveled to Austria we would not be able to visit a headstone, for there would be none.

If we were to travel to neighboring Switzerland, we might visit the home of one of Mozart’s greatest fans ---- Karl Barth.  We have some Barths here in Neillsville.  I have no idea if our Barths are related to Karl Barth.  He was one of the 20^th century’s greatest and most famous theologians.  He wrote a long and detailed theology called Church Dogmatics and is especially remembered for his opposition to both the optimistic theologians of his day and the Nazi regime of Germany.  He saw God as “wholly other.”

One might be surprised that such a man would begin each day by turning on his record player  (There were no cds in those days.) and playing a half hour of Mozart each morning.  Even though Barth was not a trained musician and could not sort out the technicalities of music, he knew that God was speaking to him through Mozart --- “the living voice of God on earth.”

Barth once said that the angels might sing Bach while doing their work of praising God during the day, but when they wanted to enjoy themselves they sang Mozart, and God was listening to.

Why is this music of Mozart so “heavenly?”  If you ask either Karl Barth or Karen Mohr they will tell you that his music is so natural and glorious sounding.  It is as if it was not music Mozart wrote, but rather music he heard from another world and then wrote down.  Mozart’s music has an effortless-sounding quality most of us would be hard put to duplicate.  Perhaps this music is so heavenly because Mozart thought of his talent as a gift from God and his work as a duty from God.

What would happen if each of us were fully aware of the God-given abilities and gifts within each of us?  We may not be musicians, but each of us was created by God for some particular purpose.  Each of us shines in a certain way.  God’s beauty is seen in each of us.  We recognize that this world would be mighty dull if all of us were alike and all of us performed the same duties.  Like the orchestra Mozart directed with its many instruments from violins to drums to oboes, our own church features a variety of “musicians” ---- from the literal musicians in the choir to the figurative musicians working in the kitchen, sitting in a study group, or visiting the sick.  I believe Mozart could have appreciated the beauty in each of us, just as Thomas Merton would encourage the “musician” in each of us:  He wrote this to Karl Barth:

“Fear not, Karl Barth! Trust in the divine mercy. Though you have grown up to be a theologian, Christ remains a child in you. Your books (and mine) matter less than we might think! There is in us a Mozart who will be our salvation!”

            On this Mozart Sunday I believe it is appropriate that we are also reading from the book of Revelation.  Mozart and Revelation have something in common.  They are both musical!  Mozart was at his core musical ----- not particularly political or philosophical or scientific.  The only thing he knew was music.

            In many ways I also believe that the Book of Revelation is at its core musical.  The Bible scholar M. Eugene Boring wrote this:

"Not the least of the scandalous things about Revelation is that we ask for a diagram and get a mind-blowing picture; we ask for a logical explanation, and get a song."

Think of the words we heard in our reading from Revelation: 

• Alpha and Omega.  Beginning and End. 
• Glory.  Dominion. 
• Who is and who was and who is to come. 
• The Almighty.

            When I hear these words and picture in my mind’s eye the spectacle of Christ upon the throne, I have to put myself into something akin to a Mozart opera.  The story has to be sung.  Or as one preacher has put it:

 “Music can go places where words can never go.  It can touch, and heal and liberate us in ways that theology can only stand back and envy.”

            Mozart’s music would be a good accompaniment to Revelation.  To sing Revelation would be a hundred times better than to dissect it and rationalize it and reshape it into a book of predictions or judgments.  In its original time the Book of Revelation was written to give encouragement and hope, which is also what music, great music like that of Mozart, gives to us.

            Soon we will be entering the “singing season.”  In the Sundays before and after Christmas we love to sing the familiar songs.  They speak to us with an emotion and feeling that is not wholly explainable.  I don’t know if Mozart ever composed anything we would call “Christmas music.”  Probably not.  However, Mozart would appreciate our need to sing ----- both on this last Sunday of the Christian year and in the weeks to come.  He would encourage us to lay aside our worries and doubts to simply sing as children.  We could do much worse.

Amen.