Well, I was thinking of a certain MASH episode this past week. The one where Radar wants to go out with a certain nurse but he’s intimidated by her superior intellect. So he asks Hawkeye and BJ to help him appear to be sophisticated and intelligent And one of the pieces of advice they give him (besides having him wear a smoking jacket and smoke a pipe) is this: to seem knowledgeable about classical music, he should answer any mention of J.S. Bach with “Ahhh, Bach!”
I was thinking of that MASH episode because, according to the church calendar, it was recently the commemoration of J.S. Bach. (Say it with me—“Ahhh, Bach!”) He was an important dude, and Lutheran to boot. What was his main claim to fame? You’ve heard of people vying for the title of “The fifth Beatle,” eh? Well, Bach is known as the fifth evangelist (evangelist as in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) because his music, much of it inspired by and containing the words of the gospels, reached and still reaches millions of people with the good news of Jesus Christ. His talent was phenomenal, both as a composer and an organist.
Would it surprise you then to hear that Bach was not always appreciated in his day? For example, when his Passion Music was sung for the first time, accompanied by 12 violins, oboes, bassoons and many other instruments, one biographer notes that ‘the people were astonished and didn’t know what to make of it. They were bewildered by the theatrical nature of the music, and looked at one another and said, “What will come of this?” One woman was heard to comment, “God save us, my children! It’s just as if we are at an Opera Comedy!” Everyone was displeased by it, and issued complaints against it.’[i]
Bach was misunderstood at his position as church organist as well. His supervisors got on his case for ‘having made many curious variations in the chorale…mingling many strange tones into the music… and confusing the congregation.’[ii] He was also told that the compositions he played were too long. He responded by playing pieces that were obviously too short. Bach was kind of a rebel. (Ahhh, Bach!)
He hardly ever traveled far from home, he wasn’t the darling of the king’s court as was one of his contemporaries George Fredrick Handel (Ahhh, Handel!). He didn’t make a fortune with his composing—in fact most of his music was not published before his death. And yet he is now recognized as the greatest composer of Western civilization—one who influenced the likes of Beethoven, Haydn, and Stravinsky—and as a gifted innovator, arranger, and organist.
Why is that, you think? Why did such a talent go largely unheralded? J.S. could have used a good publicist. Get him hooked up with an opera singer, do some red carpet premiers, work the paparazzi to get his name out there. But Bach didn’t see himself like that—all puffed up and celebrity like. He understood his work as a ministry, his talent as a gift—an abundant gift—for which he thanked and praised God. And gave God the credit.
At the bottom of each of his compositions, where he signed them “J.S. Bach,” he also wrote three letters that summed up for him his work and his life. SDG. Which stands for Soli Deo Gloria. Latin for “To God alone the glory.” Bach understood that the gift he had been given—this huge talent—was not his own, but came from God. And subsequently, he didn’t try to profit disproportionately from it, and he didn’t keep it to himself. Instead he worked diligently and humbly as a musical craftsman—serving his congregation and his Lord, and gave away even the simple glory he received to Almighty God. SDG. Soli Deo Gloria. To God alone be the glory! Ahhh, Bach!!
Now, contrast this with the farmer in Jesus’ parable this morning, or, for that matter, with the jaded view of humanity presented in the reading from Ecclesiastes. The farmer has been blessed—super abundantly blessed—with a harvest beyond all others. He immediately makes plans for super-sizing his barns to hold the extra, and for taking it easy and living large on his surplus. “Eat, drink, and be merry,” is his mission statement. Soli Me-o Gloria.
Then (oops) something he did not take into consideration happens—he dies. And he says to his soul, Soul—you’re (screwed) in big trouble! All his worldly goods go to probate.
The narrator of Ecclesiastes has an even more pessimistic view of human endeavor, wrongly focused. “All is vanity,” he cries—everything about your existence is futile—unable to satisfy. You work hard each and every day, you carefully manage what you reap, but you leave the earth with no more than you came in with. Zero, zippo, zilch, nada. The big goose egg. And worse still, all you’ve gained and managed to hold onto is left to some knucklehead who’ll probably just blow it. Life--it’s like chasing the wind.
Wow! What a downer. Not something you read in any Thrivent brochure I’ve ever happened upon. Certainly not the angle pursued by any retirement investment brochure. I guess I should not look with “interest” at my pension account either (especially of late). But are these two passages saying what they appear to be saying? That we should not plan for retirement, save for a rainy day, or set up a college fund for Junior? That we should do as the bumper sticker on the big RV suggests, “We’re spending our kid’s inheritance!” I mean—it’s no small potatoes we’re talking about here. It is estimated that there is 41 trillion dollars (!) out there that will change hands between now and 2050. That’s a lotta barns!
Well, I don’t believe that Jesus is giving a lesson on investing. And the teacher from Ecclesiastes isn’t touting the efficacy of irrevocable trusts, either. And I don’t think these lessons can be boiled down to a simple prescription for what to do with your worldly goods in order to please God. That would be law, and we’re looking for a little gospel today. That would be works righteousness, and we’ve a hankering for some grace instead. So—what to do? I’ll tell you what—say, “Ahhhh, Bach!”
Because old JS had the right idea. He was a great studier of the bible—even corrected some of Luther’s German translation—and he knew grace and gospel. He knew you received grace and heard good news. You don’t earn grace—then it wouldn’t be grace. And news is not something you make yourself because then it wouldn’t be news! Bach knew these things—you can feel it in his music.
And Bach lived a life that was neither works righteous, nor bereft of gospel truth. He played his organ, he wrote music, he messed with his supervisors, and frustrated his congregation by expanding their liturgical horizons—he did all this SDG—giving God the glory. It’s an awesome testament to the stewardship of all things. Everything you do, do it SDG. Every move you make, every breath you take. Everything.
And if everything you do, you do SDG, than you won’t be filling the barn with treasure, you’ll be filling it with God. And that’s good in the long run. That’s what we’re talking about today! The long run. This is an eschatological passage. Now there’s a word: eh-scat-o-logical. It has nothing to do with animal droppings, and everything to do with the end times. Judgment day.
The gospel story is set up with a question on inheritance, which is used as a metaphor for the end times in scripture. Same as the harvest. The meek shall inherit the earth—when? At the end of the ages. Judgment day. Jesus even says, with irony no doubt, “Who made me judge over you?” Duh, God does.
So if we take the situation of the brothers’ inheritance to be eschatological, then it follows that the parable relates to the end times too, right? The farmer goes so far as to tear down his present barns and erect newer, larger ones to stuff in as much as he can for himself. But, in the end, what good does it do him? None, zero, zippo, zilch—well, you get the picture.
It’s like the guy who hoarded gold on earth and was loathe to leave it behind when he died. So he hired a wise man who, for a hefty sum, revealed to him a way to take his treasure with him at life’s end. Which eventually came. The man found himself at the pearly gates, still clutching the suitcase full of gold bars he had died with his hands on. His turn at the gate comes, and St. Peter asks to look in his bag (Home Cloud Security, you know). The man opens it up and the gold glimmers in the morning light. And St. Peter exclaims, “One carry on bag allowed and you bring pavement?”
That’s the amount of good the overstuffed barns do. Because admission to this theme park is free. That’s the grace part of the story. That’s the good news. We’re saved by faith in the cross of Jesus Christ. It’s not up to us, and how many toys we die with. It’s a done deal. And if that’s ultimately our destiny, why should we waste our time and God’s precious resources piling up swag for tomorrow, when there’s people whom God loves every bit as much as us in need, waiting for us to share what we have and mark it SDG?
Imagine this: you take the same amount that goes into your pension fund and you give it away. SDG. You total up all the grocery bills and then give ten percent of that number to World Hunger. SDG. Count up the number of shirts you have in the closet and ask yourself why so many as you bag up some for the Salvation Army. SDG. Go into your pantry and look at the food stored there—figure how long you could last without shopping and then donate five days worth to the food pantry. SDG. These are just some examples—you could think of a lot more.
Soli Deo Gloria – to God alone be the glory. What we have is pure gift, and we my friends have been blessed with an abundant harvest. Sure you save some. Sure you spend some. But you don’t let accumulation triumph over salvation. You can’t take it with you. And your kids are just going to spend it on a flat screen HDTV and a Ferrari. And it serves God better here and now than as the bottom line in probate court.
And if you need someone to emulate, don’t let it be Donald Trump or Rupert Murdoch. Let it be good old humble and hardworking Johann Sebastian. Because then you can say, “I’ll be Bach!”
SDG
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