Saturday, August 31, 2024

So That All Other Peoples

Acts 15:12-18
Jazz Communion

The whole assembly kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, “My brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written,

‘After this I will return,

and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen;
    from its ruins I will rebuild it,
        and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—
    even all the gentiles over whom my name has been called.
Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.’ 

 

You will be forgiven if you feel tempted to dance. The jazz for today is rooted in the rhythms of Brazil, rhythms that glide rather than bounce. So, we hear and feel the samba, the bossa nova, the cha-cha, and the meringue, all of which provide the rhythms for our music this morning.

Back in 1962, saxophonist Stan Getz connected with guitarist Charlie Byrd’s trio. They recorded an album in a Washington D.C. church and called it, “Jazz Samba.” The music caught everybody by surprise. It was nominated for three Grammy awards: record of the year, album of the year, and Getz winning a Grammy for best soloist.

It was the perfect time. TWA flew in and out of our airports, expanding American ears to new sounds from other continents. Bossa Nova, literally “the new thing” in Portuguese, was so cool it became hot. Elvis Presly latched on to the bossa nova. So did Frank Sinatra. Bossa Nova was portrayed as make-out music in that great American film “Animal House.” Bossa Nova provided the theme tune for a spy named Austin Powers. It landed in the Charlie Brown music of Vince Guaraldi and the jazz of Dizzy Gillespie and Chick Corea. Brazilian music became a national craze.

That may sound strange, especially for jazz. Stan Getz came up playing tenor saxophone Woody Herman’s big band. There he was, almost on a whim, hitting it big with the lilting melodies of Antonio Carlos Jobim. But it was not a fluke. Jazz first emerged from the musical jambalaya of New Orleans. There were folk melodies, African rhythms, European instruments, all with a pinch of Creole seasoning. From the beginning, it was all stirred together. The old jazzer Jelly Rolly Morton famously declared that true jazz has what he called “a Spanish tinge.” You can hear it. You can taste it. Tastes like gumbo.

So, why not welcome the sensuous rhythms of Rio de Janeiro and Ipanema beach? Jazz musicians know something good when they hear it. In 1962, the American listening public couldn’t have agreed more. The “Jazz Samba” album sold a half-million copies in the eighteen months of its release. “Jazz Samba” became the first and only jazz record to ever become a number one hit on the music charts in America.

Today we offer this music to reflect on the phenomenon of cultural appropriation. That’s the practice of taking the riches of another culture and absorbing them into your own. Last month, when we celebrated my wife’s birthday at a Mexican restaurant, the wait staff put a sombrero on her head and sang, “Feliz Cumpleanos.” Then they gave her a margarita. Nobody intended to be disrespectful, but it was a bit awkward.

And we do this, don’t we? We pick and choose from other people, claim it as our own. When I was but a child, one Saturday night we had pizza for the first time. It came out of a box from some guy named Chef Boyardee, who manufactured it in a Pennsylvania factory on the Susquehanna River. It bore no resemblance to the wood-fired pies of Naples, Italy, much less the delicacies of Old Forge, where there’s a pizza shop every hundred feet. We didn’t know. We didn’t care. All we knew was it wasn’t meat and potatoes anymore.

No one told us we were stealing a small slice of another culture. It’s just something we did. It never occurred to us, either that at roughly the same time, our elders were becoming enchanted by the music of Brazil. It’s something that happened – and somebody did it for profit. I’m pretty sure, for instance, that Verve Records, the company behind the “Jazz Samba” recording, never quite paid the Brazilian people a sufficient sum for the music they lifted from South America. They didn’t pay the American musicians, much, either. One of the American drummers got one hundred-fifty bucks for the recording session – and it was the number one album on the sales charts for seventy weeks. It made millions for the record company.

Now, this is a complicated matter. The blending of cultures, the buying and selling of cultural assets, the dilution of cultural riches – all at a time when we are waking up to the incredible diversity that already exists in God’s world. Diversity is all around us. My colleague Frank teaches in the Dunmore schools. A call went out from the office on the first day of school: “Does anybody here speak Russian?” A new student speaks only Russian. We can bark all we want about speaking English, but a lot of people don’t. God’s world is diverse.

Sometimes we discover the bias in our own thinking. In her novel, The Accidental Tourist, the novelist Anne Tyler pokes fun at us. The main character is a guy who is so uptight that he alphabetizes his spice rack. He has some control issues. He writes travel guides for people who accidentally get stuck in a foreign country. Where can you find a Taco Bell in Mexico City? Is there a Pizza Hut in Rome? He maps the world on his assumptions.

I bring this up because it is the Bible’s concern. Ever since the mythical story of the Tower of Babel, we have inhabited a world of multiple languages. This diversity has been built into God’s world. As much as we’d like to insist everybody else must be like us, the truth is they would like to be like themselves.

Back in high school history class, somebody told us America is a melting pot. No, that’s a myth. The truth is, America, like the rest of the world, is more like a salad: take a tomato, a radish, diced peppers, croutons, A variety of lettuce, and mix it all up. All the components maintain their distinctiveness yet make up something bigger. You might not like that radish, but it’s in the salad. It belongs as much as anything else.

This is how it was when the Christian church got started. It was a lot easier when all the believers were Jewish men. Then they realized women were around the table too. Then others started showing up, claiming Jesus had called them, too. The early church expanded. The leadership struggled with a fundamental question: are we going to make room for people who are not like the rest of us? The question has never gone away. And Christ has never let his people back off from the question.

For it became obvious to that first circle of believers that God was pushing them beyond their own boundaries, that God was loving those other people as much as he was loving them, that God had a message of forgiveness and grace that cut through all the walls that the human family constructs to divide itself The early Christian preachers found in their earlier Jewish Bible that has always been God’s intention to make room for all his own children. In the words of one of their prophets, they heard God say, “I will set it up so that all other people may seek the Lord.” And it does say, “all other peoples.”

Is this difficult? Of course it’s difficult. Anything worth doing is difficult. But when we discover that the love of God is not something we’ve hoarded, but a gift that is showered on all people, it opens you up to the gifts of other people, to the hunger and the food of other people, to the faith of other people, and as we taste today, the music of other people.

And this is where God is pushing us, ready or not. It is awkward. It stretches us. It pushes beyond our ignorance. It insists we learn how to translate. It requires us to show hospitality. It calls us to practice the holy skill of welcoming others. It opens us up to be loved by those we don’t know very well. And this is the first sign of Christ’s dominion, that wide-reaching fellowship to which all are invited. God says it first-hand in scripture:

“My love is for all peoples.” And I looked up the verse. It really does say “all.”

Is all this easy? No. Does it demand a great deal of us? Certainly. And I can understand that all-too-human inclination to pull back and stay among those who are just like you, even if that crowd is shrinking. But the day may come, in fact the day may be here, when we wake up to discover there are more people in God’s world than we ever realized.

When that day comes, blame it on the Bossa Nova. And move over a little bit on your comfortable pew. Somebody wants to sit by you. 

© William G. Carter. All rights reserved.


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