2018-04-16
Brooke Strong
Scripture: Luke 24:36b-48
(Reflection prior to presentation of Ola Gjeilo's Sunrise Mass)
“Have you anything here to eat?” This is what Jesus asks right after rising from the dead (Luke 24:41). What a strange thing to say in one of the risen Christ’s first utterances after escaping the shackles of the grave. Lutheran minister Peter Marty says that, at such an earth-shattering, mind-blowing moment, you might expect something more profound, more spiritually uplifting and memorable. But no. No reflections on the age to come or the significance of life or what it means to die and rise from the grave. Instead, it’s more like “What’s in the fridge?”
And what a perfect question, because what could be more human, more ordinary than hunger in the Savior of the world? And Peter Marty says this about that strange, simple question: “From the earliest story of God molding people out of dirt to the one where Jesus breaks bread one final time before his death, God revels in physicality” (Christian Century, March 28, 2018, p. 24). For Luke, Christ is not some disembodied, ethereal ghost. This risen Jesus is flesh and blood.
Sometimes people think Christianity is about little more than hope for an afterlife, with scant attention paid to earthly stuff. That’s hardly what the writers of the gospels are seeking to convey in their stories about Jesus, though. Again and again, they tell about a Jesus who is passionately invested in this life. Yes, we live with an eternal hope because physical death is not the end. But no, life after death is not the only life that matters. This life matters, and it matters hugely.
When the resurrected Jesus asks for some fish and eats it, the story implicitly reminds the disciples and us that there is something dazzling and utterly lovely about these few moments we have to live out our “one wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver).
A church mass, any mass, is an expression of faith in the living God, the God who is still speaking. It praises God for the richness of grace and love that surround us and fill us. It sings of mercy and glory and holiness and blessing and forgiveness. A mass is a huge “Wow,” a vivid “thank you” to God.
The mass we’re about to hear is no different. Ola Gjeilo’s Sunrise Mass has all the traditional components of a mass: it asks God for mercy (Kyrie), it basks in God’s glory (Gloria), it lays out the central beliefs of the faith (Credo), it declares God’s holiness (Sanctus), it confers God’s blessing (Benedictus), and it concludes with God’s forgiveness and peace (Agnus Dei and Dona Nobis Pacem). The whole mass is here.
Look carefully, though, and you see that Gjeilo has done something distinctive with his mass. You’ll see that it’s in four movements: “The Spheres,” “Sunrise,” “The City,” and “Identity and the Ground.” The text is the traditional Latin words we’ve just unfolded. Those Latin words, though, are juxtaposed with these titles of Gjeilo’s that seem to have, at first glance, nothing to do with the traditional words. What, after all, do spheres have to do with a plea for mercy?
Look more closely, though, and what we see is a suggestive interplay between these church words of such long standing and what we might call the spiritual concerns of this day and age. Gjeilo starts with “The Spheres.” And what we picture is God bringing into being this entire stunning universe. Picture galaxies and stars arrayed in a clear night sky. Imagine the 100-200 billion galaxies, each with at least 100 billion stars, that populate this unimaginably grand and expansive universe. The Spheres, Gjeilo suggests, are God’s creation.
So God’s creative powers span the entire universe. But wait. It’s not just that ginormous universe that is God’s creation. Every morning, on this apparently insignificant little rock located in a nondescript part of one galaxy, the earth turns and over the horizon comes the sun. Or at least I hear that happens somewhere outside of Northeast Ohio! And with the coming of light, every single day there is new grace and hope—for this spectacular little planet, for this earthly home of ours. The spheres know God’s unending care. But so does this earth, with its sunrises and storms and rivers and mountains and butterflies and trees. The sunrise snaps us to attention: the earth, too, is God’s playground.
Not just the natural world, either. The City comes next in Gjeilo’s mass, and it alerts us to the presence of God in our work and in our homes and in our villages. Tower City, Glenville, the Museum of Art, Progressive Field, Chagrin Falls Park, the village triangle: all these are the places God’s life is played out. The City is God’s. And it too is teeming with blessing.
From the spheres to the earth itself to the cities, towns and villages we inhabit—there is grace. And it doesn’t stop there either. Into each of our hearts and minds, into each of our particular earthly lives, into the mix of heartbreak and elation and fear and failure and beauty that is your life and mine, comes the Holy One. Identity and The Ground are the places where God’s richness shows up for each of us. Like our lives, Gjeilo’s music has dissonance and discord. But like life in God’s realm, his music always resolves. Dissonance becomes consonance; discord becomes concord. Remember those sublime words that come from heaven when Jesus is baptized: “You are my Beloved Child; in you I take delight” (Luke 3:22)? Gjeilo’s music conveys the fullness and beauty of those words uttered to each and every one of us every single day. God’s love is grounded in your identity and in my identity and indeed in everyone’s identity. A grounded and particular and distinctive blessing abounds for all of us.
What’s in the fridge? What have we to eat? Blessing and hope and love to overcome all doubt. When the risen Christ appears to the disciples, the first words Jesus utters are, “Peace be with you” (Luke 24:36). And the very last word of Gjeilo’s mass is “peace.” So let us be reminded today of the richness of that peace of God, in the Spheres, in Sunrise, in the City, and maybe most wonderfully, in your identity and mine, as we take in the beauty of Gjeilo’s Sunrise Mass.