Fourth Monday of Lent

Lectionary Texts:

OT: Ezekiel 37:1-14

NT: John  11:17-27

Psalm 51:1-12 (UMH 785)

You may (or may not) have asked), "Why does this lectionary have a Psalm only on Mondays? The answer is (I think) that the Psalter selection is meant to be read every day of the week, Monday through Saturday, especially if you're praying The Daily Office. This week's Psalter is particularly important. It is the foundation of the doctrine of Original Sin, a major Christian doctrine formulated and enunciated by St. Augustine (354-430 AD). Although John Wesley and the large majority of Methodists have believed this doctrine, I've dumped it. An important book for me was Matthew Fox's Original Blessing. My delving deeply into Celtic Christianity, beginning with the first Celtic Christian writer, St. Irenaeus (130-202 AD), has led me to believe that humanity's original and natural state is goodness. God created us and saw that we were good (Genesis 1:27-28).  I'll talk about this more in another blog. But do comment or ask questions now.

Thanks to April for her comment. Yes Amy Grant was referring to the story of Paul and the Philippian jailer.

Last Monday I wrote about my love for Classical Music. This week it's jazz. I spent the first decade of my life in the pre-Rock and Roll era. My music was "The Great American Songbook," (a metaphorical designation not a literal book). The two biggest names of the Great American songbook are George Gershwin and Cole Porter. There are dozens of other writers of these songs. They might be considered as being within the broad overall category of jazz.  In 1963 I first heard the name Dave Brubeck and heard the song "Take Five" from the album Time Out. I bought the album. One thing I particularly liked about the Dave Brubeck Quartet was that it was racially integrated. Eugene Wright played the bass. It would be another 20 years of Classical  and Rock and Roll before I started going more deeply into jazz. 

 

From NPR's inception till the 1990's a lot of NPR radio stations played mostly classical but some jazz. Jazz musicians, singers, and aficionados love to talk about jazz and jazz history. I listened to them talk as well as heard them play. 

 

Jazz originated in New Orleans in the second decade of the twentieth century. It evolved out of Ragtime, a popular music of the 1890's, made famous by Scott Joplin. Fats Waller claimed to have invented jazz, but his claim is disputed. The word origin comes from a small music hall on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, which featured a Black dancer named James and a group of Black musicians. The sign outside read, "See Jas. Dance." The music that he danced was called by a change of his abbreviated name to "Jazz." The one consistent key element of jazz music is syncopation.

Jazz originated and has always been dominated by African-Americans. Some call it the American classical music or the first authentically American art form. It has had many offshoots from Blues to Big Band. The heyday of jazz was the 1950's. It's universally accepted that the greatest jazz composer was Duke Ellington. His music is universal, a part of The Great American Songbook and the big band era of the 1940's. His big band remained enormously popular through the 50's and 60's. 

Jazz thrives on improvisation. The players become the composers. A big change came in the 50's when the hot music of the Big Band era gave way to the birth of the cool (also the title of a Miles Davis album). Trumpeter Miles Davis brought the change. He had his own quartet, but in 1959 he assembled what was probably the greatest group of jazz musicians for one album, Kind of Blue. It is far and away the best selling jazz album ever and still sells hundreds of thousands of copies world-wide every year. If you don't have it, get it. 

The album was hugely controversial for the composition of the band. There were white jazz groups and black jazz groups. There was not to be any race mixing in the groups (and rarely in the audiences). Miles wanted the best players in the country for this album. He got John Coltrane on tenor sax, Cannonball Adderly on alto, Bill Evans, on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Johnny Cobb on drums. Bill Evans was white. Miles Davis composed all the songs. In three of them he and Bill Evans collaborated in composition. 

 

Several of the members of this one time sextet had their own careers. John Coltrane was most famous. He was born in High Point and grew up in Hamlet, N.C. He found his way to New York in his late teens. In the 60's, he delved into a deeper Christian based spirituality in his music. In 1965 he released the album  A Love Supreme, all his own compositions, considered one of the great jazz albums of all time. "Trane" died in 1967 at the age of 40 of liver disease.

In 1982 a church in San Francisco called the Church of St. John Coltrane was founded. it was a part of the small African Orthodox Church denomination. All the church music was jazz. Alas, the church closed permanntly just couple of months ago. I don't know for sure, but my guess is that it was a victim of Covid.

There is also a Lutheran church in New York, the Church of St. John (the apostle--not Coltrane), which has a jazz worship service every Sunday.

Lord of the Dance, Lord of the Song,

I thank you that you gave us the ability to create sounds with our voices and from instruments we have created and to put those sounds together in forms of beauty we call music. For voices to sing, hands to play, and ears to hear, we bless you with our music as you have blessed us with the ability to create it. Amen

Faithfully,

Christian