A Sermon for House Communion at Christ Church, Oxford
Trinity Term 2016: 1 Corinthians 2.6-end
IMPROVISING WISDOM
My first thought was that I shouldn’t write a sermon for tonight at all. After all, this
is a Jazz Mass, and the quintessential characteristic of jazz is improvisation. So,
surely, in the spirit of jazz, I should be improvising, taking a theme or two, and
having a jolly good riff (I hope I’m sounding cool enough: stop me if it gets too much
for you).
However, your Chaplain told me that my old friend and, indeed, sometime
supervisor, the Dean might be present, and, rather like the weedy chap who buried
his talent in the ground rather than investing it in a hedge fund, I was afraid. So I
have resorted to my roots as a classically trained musician, and, uncooly, written it
all down.
Having said that, I’ve done quite a lot of improvising myself over the years. I trained
as an organist at Durham Cathedral, and, before and since my ordination, have
played the organ for hundreds, if not thousands, of services, many of them weddings
and funerals, many of them involving late brides and late (in every sense of the
word) coffins. This required me to improvise. In the old days, no-one really taught
English organist how to do this well, preferring to leave such peculiarities to our
continental friends. We tended to stick our left foot down and hope for the best.
These days organ improvisation is increasingly recognized as a real art, and there are
some amazing exponents. I am not one of them, but my variations on Blackadder,
Thomas the Tank Engine, and Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars, have all made
appearances when the bride has been late; and the latter piece of music makes a
fine ringtone for when my mother-in-law calls.
But what about when Christ calls? For, surely, to be a Christian is to do nothing other
than improvise on the theme of Christ, crucified, and risen, in the power of the
Spirit! Isn’t the daily living out of the Gospel a form of improvisation? Are not you
and I instruments in the orchestra of Christ, tuning and retuning ourselves to his
beautiful music?1
Well, I think we are. And I think improvisation is our calling. But we need to
understand what that means – what is improvisation? And on what are we
improvising?
1
cf. The Revd Dr Gordon Wakefield (d.2000), from a sermon preached at the Lichfield Festival July
1990
I’d love to spend a long time on both of these, but I want to touch lightly on the
former, and dwell more deeply on the latter. Improvisation, according to the latest
edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Music and Musicians, is – and this is so Oxford A performance according to the inventive whim of the moment, i.e. without
a written or printed score, and not from memory.2
Hmm. I’m not sure that that will quite work for us. I don’t much feel like I’m
operating on a whim when I’m talking about my faith in the pub. The theologian
Jeremy Begbie loves to explore the borderlands between music and theology, and
he says this
Improvisation provides a powerful enactment of the truth that our freedom
is enabled to flourish only by engaging and negotiating constraints. 3
Begbie – no mean jazz pianist himself – writes of those who improvise ‘showing
hospitality to constraint, even if it might eventually be shown the door’.4
His point is that improvisation expresses freedom within a framework – and that the
framework, harmonic, melodic, rhythmic – is essential if the wonders revealed by
improvisation are to be enjoyed.
OK. I hope you can see where this is going. We’re the performers. Jesus is the
theme. How do we know how to play? What to play? When to play? If to play at all?
Time for wisdom – after all, the Regius Professor of Divinity in another University
tells us that
The central reality of Christian theology is the God of blessing who loves in
wisdom.5
And tonight’s new testament reading is one of the great passages on wisdom that
exists, not only in Scripture, but anywhere.
The first Christian theologians longed for wisdom, and they sought it with all their
heart. Before them many thinkers, fine men and women, had sought to love wisdom
– so much so that these thinkers, were called ‘wisdom-lovers’, in Greek, of course,
philosophers. For Augustine, the greatest of the early Christian thinkers, Christianity
was the ultimate philosophy, the goal of his searching. He said that in the gospel of
Jesus ‘All philosophy is here’. The greatest mediæval theologian, Thomas Aquinas,
says in his great Summa Theologia
2
Kennedy, Michael, and Joyce Bourne Kennedy. "Improvisation" in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, ed
Rutherford-Johnson (Oxford University Press, current online version 2016)
3
Begbie, Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge University Press 2000), p. 200
4
ibid.
5
David Ford, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge Studies in Christian
Doctrine series; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007).
Hence sacred doctrine is especially called wisdom – practical wisdom that
attains to God more intimately by a kind of union of the soul with him. It is
able to direct us not only in contemplation but also in action.6
These thinkers were rooted in scripture, and the love of God in their hearts and
minds. Their thinking is not airy-fairy, but rooted in a desire to understand God, to
love the God of blessing who loves in wisdom.
St Paul, writing to the young church in Corinth, has an interesting take on all this. He
writes not only of wisdom, but ‘God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God
decreed before the ages for our glory’.7 He tells his listeners that the rulers of this
age had failed to understand this for, ‘if they had, they would not have crucified the
Lord of glory’. 8 For Paul, this wisdom has a location, and a sign: that location and
sign is nothing other than the cross of Christ. Paul calls this a mystery, in the
translation we heard tonight, ‘secret and hidden’. And Paul is clear: there is only one
way to comprehend the mystery, the hidden and secret wisdom of the cross, part of
God’s plan from the beginning. That way, that vehicle, that key, is God’s Holy Spirit.
The word ‘wisdom’ is mentioned, one way or another, eight times in tonight’s
reading. The word ‘Spirit’ is mentioned eight times too. The Spirit reveals, she
searches, she teaches, and she gives. The Spirit reveals the truth of wisdom,
searches everything, ‘even the depths of God’. She bestows gifts on us, gifts of
understanding, of interpretation, of discernment. The Spirit gives us the mind of
Christ.9
Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, has built on the ideas of Bishop Tom
Wright, and others, to have an extraordinary imaginative take on how we might use
scripture.10 Our Scriptures, and especially the stories of Jesus, are not books to be
read, but texts to be performed. The church is a community of interpretation, of
performance, rooted in that mysterious wisdom which, as Aquinas recognized, is as
much about action, as it is about contemplation.
And the mechanism we employ for this performance? You’ve guessed it.
Improvisation. Improvisation is inevitable, scriptural, and corporate.11 And, crucially,
it is about the Spirit. It’s about you. It’s about your being open to God, open to his
Spirit, so that that same Spirit can inspire your improvisation of the Gospel.
But how. Well, in an entirely non-political, non-partisan, but definitely Europhile
spirit, let us turn to the French, and, in particular, to the concept of la disponibilité.12
6
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Article 6, reply to Objection 1
1 Corinthians 2.7
8
1 Corinthians 2.8
9
1 Corinthians 2.16
10
Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (London: SPCK 2004), pp. 51-57
11
Ibid., 65-66
12
See Frost and Yarrow, Improvisation in Drama (Macmillan 1990), pp. 151-155
7
This term is devised by a leading practitioner of theatrical improvisation, Jacques
Lecoq, to enable performers to inhabit a condition of extraordinary awareness, but
in an intensely relaxed fashion, entirely open, conditioned to both give and to
receive. Openness. Alertness. Attention. Engagement. But not in a state of fear.
Rather, in a state of what you and I might call grace. Dwelling in grace, so that grace
might dwell in us. The secret and hidden wisdom of God, the God of blessing who
loves in wisdom.
C.S. Lewis understood the importance of the secret and hidden wisdom of God. In
the story of the death of Aslan at the hands of the Witch Queen, this secret and
hidden wisdom was given a different name: Deep Magic. The Deep Magic would
lead, inevitably, to Aslan’s death, and Susan could not bear the reality of it all:
‘Oh Aslan’, whispered Susan in the Lion’s ear, ‘Can’t we – I mean, you won’t,
will you? Can’t we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn’t there something
you can work against it?’ ‘Work against the Emperor’s Magic?’ said Aslan,
turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made
that suggestion to him again.13
Of course, what we know, and what the wicked old Witch didn’t know, was that the
Deep Magic was deeper than she thought.
‘Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic’, said Aslan, ‘there is a magic deeper
which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time.
But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and
darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different
incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had
committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack
and Death itself would start working backwards.’14
In Narnia, and back at home, Peter, Edmund, Lucy and Susan, were freed by the
deep magic to improvise a disponibilité that was all their own. And here, in Oxford,
so are you.
But this is no magic. It is wisdom. It is the Spirit. She has given you the rhythms of
the Gospel, and the harmonies of grace. So now, it’s time for you to improvise. It’s
time for your song to be heard.
13
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (Geoffrey Bles: London, 1950; this edition Lion
1980, p. 129
14
ibid., p. 148