Connecting facts about Bach with the call

This item should arrive on the three hundred and twenty-eighth anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach. Not everyone enjoys Baroque music, but anyone whose compositions endure for more than three hundred years deserves respect. The following reflections attempt to connect facts about Bach with the call we receive in baptism (on which we reflect during Lent) and with Holy Week (for which Bach composed no small amount of music).

Bach spent much of his life perfecting the fugue. When he took his first breaths, the church had primary influence on the lives of most Europeans. The discipline and earnestness of the fugue echoed the sway of the church on daily life and cultural norms. By the time Bach entered the Church Triumphant, the varied pursuits of the Enlightenment were changing culture significantly. Almost as soon as Bach died, the form he perfected became passé. That does not, however, diminish his endeavors. Baptism calls us to live our faith here and now and to allow what we believe and whom we follow to affect present individuals and practices. The forms by which we express them vary, but life, love, and faith endure. God does not call us to mimic those who preceded us or to restrict those who follow us. Rather God calls us to build on the foundation we inherited and to lay a foundation for our heirs. Bach did that. How's that going for us?

The stern portraits we view of Bach often make him seem dour and humorless. Yet, many of his contemporaries described the "holy cantor" as a man quick to join in trivial amusements. Those who understand music much better than I note that Bach appears to have had fun as he composed and that his smiles appear often in his music. His first biographer, Johann Nicholas Forkel, described his musical genius as cheerful and even jocose. While squeezing more than eleven hundred compositions, care for his large family, and constant wrestling with congregational dynamics into his sixty-five years, Bach found and made room for joy. Baptism calls us to similar gladness. Although little that we do in faith comes easily and our most important tasks stretch us considerably, we can with Paul "rejoice in the Lord always" because blessings weave and worm their way into everything. Do those around us know us for our gladness?

Even those of us who do not appreciate his music recognize Bach's name and fame as a composer. In the eighteenth century, however, most knew Bach primarily or solely as a performer, a virtuoso on the harpsichord and organ. The compositions of Vivaldi, Telemann, Scarlatti, and Handel drew rave reviews and adulation. Most of what Bach composed did not become known to the public until a century or more after his death. Similarly, we respond to God's call not for the recognition but because doing so makes us more alive and echoes true in our depths. Like many Reformed musicians, Bach wrote the letters S D G at the start and end of his compositions. They stand for the Latin words "Soli Deo Gloria," which means "Glory to God Alone." Surely Bach had as much pride as most of us; but he knew and pointed to his maker. Our tradition declares that we have no purpose higher than to glorify and enjoy God. Most of the celebrities we admire point primarily to themselves. The baptized point to God. How's that going?

As we enter Holy Week and follow Jesus past the palms and the upper room, beyond Gethsemane and Golgotha, and into the tomb, where we await the light in silent stillness, please remember that we find ourselves by losing ourselves in the call that leads to true life.

            Lenten Blessings,

            LP