Sometimes a Song is Enough

Psalm 40
1 Samuel 16:14-23
Jazz Communion
September 3, 2023

One of the assumptions of American Christianity is that life always turns out well. We lean into optimism, always looking on the bright side of life.

This cheerfulness is often nourished by a selective view of scripture, particularly the Psalms. There are one-hundred fifty prayers in the middle of the Bible. Many of them start gloomy and conclude with a smile. For instance, Psalm 22 begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That’s a brutally honest text, suitable for Jesus to quote from the cross. By the end of the Psalm, the poet declares, “Lord, I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you” (Ps. 22:22). Suddenly, Good Friday turns into Easter.

We want this, of course. We hope for this. We pray for injustices to be corrected and hurts to be mended. We wish for every illness to be healed and every evil to be banished. We want to trust there is a moral order to the universe and that “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Those are the things for which I hope and pray – and there are enough joys and pleasures in this life to suggest life should be like this and ultimately will be like this. 

Yet there are enough troubles and difficulties to raise honest objections to any form of optimism. Health breaks down. Loved ones betray us. We make serious mistakes not easily undone. And there’s a whole lot of evil out there, both lurking in the shadows and glimmering in the sunlight. 

Perhaps you heard that in the reading of the psalm. Psalm 40 oscillates between pain and praise, damage and release, joy and anguish. The poem begins, “I waited and waited and waited for the Lord.” The Hebrew verb suggests a whole lot of waiting. And then God turned around and heard my cry. Lifted out of the quicksand of near death, the poet is placed on firm ground. The sorrow in the soul has been replaced. “God put a new song in my mouth.” Ah, yes, a new song.

That would be enough, right? Like the old story of King Saul, suffering with mental illness. His kingdom had come unraveled, and he sat in a deep slump. The castle staff was at wit’s end. They didn’t know what to do. Finally, somebody said, “I found this young man David. He plays the guitar. Maybe that will help.” And so it did. Every time young David played for the King, Saul’s spirits were lifted. Music can be medicine.

Now, we know King Saul continued to have trouble. The dark spirits kept swirling in his soul. In time, he came to a humiliating end. But his pain was interrupted by melody, harmony, and toe-tapping rhythm. And it was enough. Sometimes the song is enough.

As I mentioned, Psalm 40 oscillates. “I waited for the Lord.” “God gave me a song.” Then there was trouble again. It came from outside: “Evils have encompassed me without number,” he says. And there was trouble inside, as well: “My iniquities have overtaken me,” he says. To drop a footnote, what is an iniquity? The Hebrew word refers to the experience of being twisted out of shape. The soul is wrenched because of something we’ve done – or something we’ve failed to do. That’s an iniquity. And every one of us is prone to the experience.

When we first began playing jazz here years ago, one of the reactions was resistance. Simply phrased, “Why are you playing music by people so twisted out of shape?” My response has been, “Because that’s the only kind of music there is.” Not jazz, per se, but any kind of music – every kind of music – comes through skilled practitioners with their own set of personal issues. David, the young guitarist, would replace King Saul one day. He slew giants but couldn’t keep his tunic on.

By most accounts, Mozart was an immature genius, Franz Liszt was a drama queen, Richard Wagner was a bigot, Duke Ellington was a womanizer, and - God bless him - Jimmy Buffett never found his lost shaker of salt. Each one created amazing music. We would stay her all day if recounting the gifts and flaws of great musicians. It’s enough to reflect on trumpeter Lee Morgan, whose music we feature today.

Morgan got his first trumpet for his thirteenth birthday. By age eighteen, he was playing in Dizzy Gillespie’s band. A native of Philadelphia, he soared high, scoring record dates with drummer Art Blakey, pianist Herbie Hancock, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. He was full of melodies, often played with confidence and a playful swagger. First time I heard him, it was a recording with John Coltrane, called “Blue Train.” Coltrane was amazing, but when the trumpet solo began, I said, “Who is that?” It was recorded when he was only nineteen. 

Like any great artist, Lee was a product of raw talent and hard work. He was nurtured by the creative musical community in Philadelphia. He soared high – and like the Greek myth Icarus, his wax wings melted when he climbed too close to the sun. As with too many young musicians of the 1950’s, Lee fell into a drug addiction, and was in and out of rehab a few times. Relationships were tumultuous, friendships often betrayed. And all the while, he created some amazing music. He was a fountain of creativity, pulling new compositions out of the air.

His biggest hit, if anyone could say that jazz musicians have “hits,” was “The Sidewinder,” that boogaloo blues that we played for the prelude. Morgan had come off a tough stretch. He’d been struggling with his iniquities and had been terribly twisted out of shape. Hoping for a comeback, he took the band into the recording studio to lay down some new compositions. They didn’t have enough music to complete a full album. After some frustration, Lee excused himself and went to the rest room.

The band waited and waited, a whole lot of waiting. After twenty minutes or so, the bass player feared Lee Morgan had fallen into an old bad habit. Suddenly the door opened, and Morgan emerged with two panels of toilet paper with musical notes written on them. Whenever the inspiration comes, you’ve got to write it down! He called the tune, “The Sidewinder.” They recorded it on the first take. The album sold so well that it climbed to #35 on the pop charts and saved his record company from financial ruin. The case could be made that the song was a gift from God. It was an unexpected gift.

Alas, like Psalm 40, and like mad King Saul, the comfort and consolation did not abide. Morgan blew the $15,000 that he made on the record, fell into financial ruin and chemical disrepair. He put his trumpet in a pawn shop and lived on the street. A woman named Helen literally pulled him out of the gutter and got him back on his feet. She protected him, fed him, managed his money, kept him on his feet. But a few years later, they had a fight in a nightclub. She pulled a pistol. He was gone at age 33.

Now, I suppose we could stick with the happy tales, the success stories when everything turns out well. That’s how we want the plot to unfold. Yet that’s not always true to life. We wait and wait and wait for the Lord. Sometimes he comes and gives us a song. Then the evil surrounds us, the iniquities twist us, and we cry out for help again. And maybe there’s enough grace in the universe to give us some more help, to give us another new song.

That’s what I am hoping for, praying for, working for. There’s a lot of pain in our world, isn’t there? There’s anguish and sadness which can only be expressed by music in a minor key. But if we focus only on the anguish and sadness, we may miss the inspiration of creativity and the surprising grace that interrupts the despair. Life is both-and, not either-or.

And that lies close to the mystery of Christian faith. We gather at the Lord’s Table, which is a table that holds together death and resurrection. It’s both-and. At the heart of the Christian story is the memory of crucifixion, the clearest evidence that the human family has been twisted out of shape. The innocent man Jesus is killed by the very people he came to love. Yet the tragedy is flipped upside down, as the Christ is lifted again to life to preside over this Table with his wounded hands. It’s both death and resurrection.

Sometimes injustices are corrected, and hurts mended, the illness is healed, and evil is banished for a while. Sometimes we are surprised by how good life is, right when we were convinced that all was lost. And in the thick of it all, God can send us a song. God can put a new song on our lips.

So let me tell you why I like music like the music we hear today: because it’s real. Because it’s honest. Because it tells the truth about who we are – and the truth about who God is. Because it sounds like the old spirituals that Lee Morgan grew up hearing in his Baptist church in Philadelphia. He infused his music with the same yearning, passion, and hope that he heard in his church.

And so shall we. There’s a great old spiritual that we’re going to sing. It comes as a gift to our unfinished lives. It’s a new song placed on our lips. And it’s a reminder that sometimes a song is enough.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.