Singing in Place: A Story of Two Songs

Hello again, Dick Foth here with stories to make sense of it all. This podcast was to be part two of a double podcast with my friend Kirk Noonan that I did back in mid-March, but because of these shall we say present circumstances, how's that for a euphemism, we'll save that for a bit later. Today I want to talk to you in this culture of sheltering in place about something a little different, singing in place. It's inspired by two old friends stuck in a dungeon in southern Europe two thousand years ago, talk about present circumstances, and two inches of snow in northern Colorado the day after Easter. Here's the story from southern Europe, let me set the scene. These two guys, Paul and Silas, who were Jewish fellows, had had their lives transformed miraculously, and they wanted to share that good news. You can read about this in the scriptures in the book of Acts in the New Testament. They came across Turkey, sharing this good news from city to city, and village to village, and then they headed across the G and C, and the first town in Europe, what we would call Europe today, was a town called Philippi. It was a town that was in a grarian area, that gold mines in the area, Roman soldiers, and they retired would come and settle there as idyllic, in a lot of ways, not far from the beautiful Aegean. But these fellows went into town saying, you really need to think about this Jesus person, and they got in trouble for it. This is how it reads in Acts the 16th chapter. And when they had brought them to the magistrates, because people got upset, some people. They said these men are Jews, they're disturbing our city. They advocate customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept our practice. The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them, gave orders to beat them with rods, and when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. You talk about sheltering in place, there you go, having received this order. He put them into the inner prison, and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying, and singing hymns to God. And the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were open, and everyone's bonds were unfastened. Well, you can imagine that jailer and the rest of the story freaks out, and Paul calls out and says, nobody's runaway, just hang in, and they had a wonderful conversation, and wonderful things happen. You can read it for yourself. But here are these two guys in horrific circumstances, and they decide to pray and sing. So on this edition of Stories to Make Sense of It All, the story of two songs. I began working on this podcast a couple of days ago, Monday, April 13th, to be exact, with two songs in my head, and here's how it happened. This past Sunday, April 12th, 2020, was the most unique Easter in my 78 years, as at home like you, hunkered down, watching videos, church services, some really good messages and encouragement, and then there was that singer in Milan, Italy, who in his words, chose to offer up a musical prayer, was an opera singer. Many of you would know his name, André Bocelli, at the invitation of the mayor of Milan, sang songs of hope and faith in Italian, inside the Duomo di Milano, Milan's great cathedral. Just he and the man at the pipe organ were there, standing, he was standing on the platform organist off to the side, and he sang Italian songs, pray songs, I would assume, old hymns, things like that for 20 minutes. Then he stepped down and walked down the long Cedarile, out the magnificent high front door, and he went to stand overlooking the beautiful Piazza. He first stood alone, singing a prayer for the world from a full heart in an empty square. We could all see him, the whole world could see him, but he couldn't see us. He couldn't see anyone, because he's been blind from the age of 12. And he was singing amazing grace, what a song. These words written almost 250 years ago, I had goosebumps, I got to tell you, hearing his soaring tenor, I once was lost, but now I'm found, it was blind, but now I see. That song carried truth and hope around the world. And I got to tell you this, COVID-19 couldn't touch it. I suggest you watch it on YouTube sometime, like today, you had nothing else to do. Who would have thought Bacheli would sing that song? Blind in that song is a metaphor for incapacity to observe by seeing, or perhaps disorientation or the inability to experience shape or distance or color. But the song was even more freighted than that. The words, those words, were written by a man who had been party to another scourge, years ago, hundreds of years ago, who was a man made scourge that would kill millions. In the 1500s through the 1800s, it wasn't a microbe or a virus, but it was still a disease, but it was a diseased way of seeing people. It was being blind to the value of a person, any person, all persons. They called it the slave trade. Today we call it human trafficking. The words for Amazing Grace came from a man who for years as a young man, bought, used, and sold human beings in the British slave trade. Then one day something happened. This young man, by the name of John Newton, was surprised by Grace. Newton was born in London, 1725, had a godly mom who died of TB when John was seven. He was raised by relatives until he was 11, and then he went to see with his father, who was a sea captain. These are tough, rough folks. It was a rough life, it was a rugged life. At a young age as a teenager, he was impressed then. That doesn't mean he was impressed by, oh wow, he was impressed by, come here, we got you. These gangs from the Royal Navy called Impressment Gangs would grab you off the street. I think he was about 15 when that happened to him. He was made to serve in the Royal Navy, but he was, as they would say, there a rounder. He wouldn't submit to authority. He took the lash a bunch of times. At one time, I think they beat him almost a hundred times with a hundred lashes, excuse me. Finally, he asked to be put off and transferred to a slave ship with slavers. And ultimately, he was sold himself to a plantation owner off the west coast of Africa. He himself described himself as an infidel of the highest order. He was a horrific human being and lived much of his young life, carrying only for his ways in his own wants. 1748 at 23, John Newton was rescued by a friend of his fathers from that slave plantation off of Africa and an island. An in-round home in a ferocious storm off the coast of Ireland, he called on God for help. He thought he was going to drown. Several of the sailors on the ship did drown trying to pump water and all of that. And that moment, in March of, I think it was 1748, yeah, 1748, was the start of a faith journey. It wasn't a straight line at all for this 23-year-old. Many of you can understand what I'm saying. It wasn't just, I went from this to this overnight. It was a long journey. As a matter of fact, he stayed a slave for several years. He didn't connect what he was doing with his newfound experience with God. But he grew in his faith 24 years later in 1772. He would pen the moving words that Bacheli sang in Milan last Sunday. Seven years after that, those words were put to music and we have come to know it as amazing grace. It would be one of more than 280 songs that John Newton would write and compose in his lifetime. He died at 82 years of age in 1807, the year Britain abolished the slave trade. He would die as an Anglican minister, actually, with severely failing eyesight. Those words to his blind, but now I see, have become a metaphor for seeing people and the world and our lives in a different way. I had actually heard Andrea of a Shelley sing amazing grace before at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2016 in Washington, DC. It's powerful. But the moment and the setting this past Easter morning will live in my memory till I die. Scientists tell us that songs that frame our lives abide deep in our brains. Sometimes people have Alzheimer's or other kinds of dementia, those kinds of neurological conditions, retain music or songs from their childhood up until the moment that they pass away. And often the most powerful songs, I would say always the most powerful songs that people sing and hold close, are pieces of music that come from wrenching moments or times of loneliness or lostness in the composer's life, just like John Newton's. Now the second song happened this way, six years before Newton's near drowning in that storm off Ireland. That would be 1748, six years before that, 1742. A German fellow named George showed up in Ireland in Dublin, as a matter of fact. His name was George Friedrich Handel. He was one of the world's greatest composers, is a German fellow living in London. And in 1741 he was going through some difficult times, difficult seasons. Some stories say that he was even threatened with debtors, prison and things were bleak for a time. But in August of that year some English and Irish friends helped him out with a bit of money. And sometime around then a friend named Jennings provided the words for an oratorio about Jesus. These were these wonderful compositions that told stories and had orchestras and all of that. He gave him this biblical context for writing music about witch to write music and Handel wrote the music it has said for that piece in 24 days. It came to be called the Messiah. It's become the most celebrated piece of choral music ever written, sung more often and heard by more people than any other single piece of music in the last 300 years. It's often performed at Christmas time, but it was written originally for Easter. And it was first performed in Dublin music hall in front of 700 people in April of 1742. Just six years before Newton had his experience off the coast of Ireland. That was 278 years ago this month. For me in the Messiah, the most memorable passage at least stirring for me is that the heart called the hallelujah chorus captures a truth and a feeling like all a one shot. On a side note, JB Phillips, a London pastor just after the Second World War paraphrased the New Testament. And he did that to encourage soldiers coming back from horrific months and years of battle and bloodshed and death and slaughter. And he wanted to have them be able to read scriptures in something other than say Elizabeth in English, what we call the King James Bible. And he said rewriting the text or paraphrasing the text of scripture was like rewiring an ancient house without turning off the power. Well, when he came to the word hallelujah, which literally means praise Yahweh, praise God, in his purely British take on this, he said hallelujah means three cheers for God. Well, when you when you put that idea to music, what you get is the hallelujah chorus. With all the great problems and challenges and loss and grief that COVID-19 is brought and continues to bring, I know this to be true. A Redeemer lives. And on the day after Easter, I looked out at two inches of fresh snow on the high plains of Colorado. And the snow reminded me though in the short term, we face hardship and loss in some cases staggering. In the long term, we have hope Newton and his song responded to a generous God. And he wrote this piece called Amazing Grace, handled praises an overwhelming God, a sovereign God. And he gave us the hallelujah chorus. On that snowy Colorado morning, I heard another voice words from the prophet Isaiah as I looked at that snow, where this is how it reads, come let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins be a scarlet. They shall be as white as snow. Paul and Silas discovered that. And they began singing in place, George Friedrich Handel expressed that singing in place. John Newton from 23 years of age to his death at 82 knew it again and again as he put ink to paper and wrote 282 songs. About the one who found him fighting for his life, diseased in his mind and flooded him with the truth of Isaiah's words. Both says it this way, come over here, let us talk. I want you to know this, though your sins be a scarlet. Can you hear the melody of Amazing Grace in the background there, though your sins be a scarlet? Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. They shall be as white as snow. That's huge, that truth is huge and it needs a huge sound to carry it. So don't just shelter in place these days, okay? Listen to redeeming songs, music that lifts the soul, try singing in place. I'll leave you this week after Easter with Resurrection Music. George Handel's try at three cheers for Jesus. I'll leave you this week after Easter with Resurrection Music. I'll leave you this week after Easter with Resurrection Music. I'll leave you this week after Easter with Resurrection Music. I'll leave you this week after Easter with Resurrection Music. I'll leave you this week after Easter with Resurrection Music. I'll leave you this week after Easter with Resurrection Music. You