Paige Barnett presented “The Think System: Reprise” as the sermon on Laity Sunday, Novermber 21, 2004, at the United Church of Chapel Hill. Copyright, Paige Barnett, 2004, used with permission.
Reprise: noun. music. A repetition of a phrase or verse, a return to an original theme.
Some of you will remember the “original theme” of today's message, first offered in April of 1990.
Fourteen years ago I was chairing the Board of Deacons. Reluctant to badger any one else into it — I found myself faced with the assignment of developing the message for Laity Sunday.
The term “writer's block” can't begin to encompass the blind panic I knew as the day approached — for what I did not bring to the task was a background of Sunday School, confirmation class, familiarity with the texts — or even regular church attendance before I happened on UCCH, then on Cameron Avenue, in 1981.
Deep in a funk contemplating my impending exposure as a “bogus” deacon (!) and driven to distraction by three days of rain, three pre-school aged children and one too many repetitions of “sing a-long with Disney”, I stomped to the VCR and announced “It's time for Mommy's movie” and popped in Meredith Willson's The Music Man (just to be clear, the REAL one with Shirley Jones and Robert Preston — and Opie).
Fortuitous choice or divine direction?? In the next 2½ hours I came to see that my anxiety was unfounded… For instead of the book of Jeremiah, Colossians or Luke, I had been schooled from the Book of Willson since the age of ten.
I come from an extended family for whom music was the glue. The highlight of any holiday gathering was the evening “hootenanny” of folk songs and barbershop. At any time of year, some subset of us were involved in auditions, rehearsals, backstage prep and performance of a musical at the high school or nearby military fort or community theater.
Everyone in the family had a favorite show. Mine, since a night at Kansas City's Starlight Theater when Bert Parks led the finale parade of “76 Trombones” right past my aisle seat has been The Music Man. In one way or another, the lyrics, characters and plot have been with me since that evening. At first, I belted “76 Trombones” while roller skating in the driveway. In adolescence, fantasies of BEING the next Shirley Jones sustained me as I gathered props, painted scenery and sang in the chorus of show after show. I found “My White Knight” on our first date, when strolling through Coker Arboretum, I discovered that Bill could recite the entirety of “Ya Got Trouble” — and in character!!
But I had never really considered WHY I carried The Music Man so close to my heart until that rainy afternoon. It became clear that, just as I was beginning to witness and experience in my fledgling church life at UCCH, The Music Man is about risking a belief in the unseen… committing to regular practice the habits necessary to sustain the vision, with joy and generosity… spreading the experience of that vision… The Music Man is ALL about FAITH.
For those of you so unfortunate as to be uninitiated, The Music Man is the story of a spellbinder, Harold Hill, who makes a living selling Boys Bands. He lands in River City, Iowa one jump ahead of the law and discovers a town ripe for the picking. All that the neck-bowed Hawkeyes can do is bicker and gossip with or about one another. Harold incites a general panic about the presence of sin and corruption in the town in the form of a pool table, and offers to save the youth of the community by starting a Boys Band. The catch is, of course, that PROFESSOR HILL “don't know a brass bass from a pipe organ”.
Now the ordinary “two bit thimble rigger” would collect payment for a few instruments and uniforms and hot foot it out of town. But Harold can't do JUST that. Its really not the ease with which he can bilk a gullible parent out of a few bits that keeps Harold going — no, it's a vision of how life could be, that he just can't keep to himself. A vision of “lights and colors and the flashing cymbals and ta-ta-da”.
Apparently just distracting the credential demanding authorities, Harold draws all the citizens of River City into his vision — and we witness the transformation of the quarrelsome school board into a barbershop quartet, the gossiping matrons become devotees of the classical dance, the town delinquent into a model youth leader (and drum major), a withdrawn lisping boy into a gleeful coronet holding kid and a lonely judgmental piano teacher into a warm, vulnerable, generous woman.
God can't withhold a good vision either. The prophet Joel tells us that God intends that we shall receive and share this vision.
“I will poor out my Holy Spirit upon all mankind.
Your sons and your daughters shall prophecy and your
young shall see visions and the old, dreams.”
We delight in the transformation of Willson's characters because to catch a glimpse of the vision that God sends through Christ… to risk trying to be in relationship with God, with Christ… with one another… is just such a transforming experience.
Those first glimpses of the vision are heady. Missing the musical glue of my family, I started attending UCCH “just to sing in the choir ”(ONE choir, 11 members!) and just as Marion, the Librarian, spurns Harold's attempts to draw her into his vision, I hid out in the choir loft for two or three years. But it was impossible to shut out the “lights and colors” generated by the sojourners risking a belief — and I wanted to “be in the band”.
But that vision is ephemeral without the determination to practice the believing —
As Harold's recruits find out, even the glitter of a gold horn grows dull when your realize you don't even know how to hold the thing — with a good two weeks to fill after the instruments arrive, but before the uniforms are delivered, Harold schools his “band” in
When we discover we are not quite sure how to hold onto our vision — we too need a “Think System” to play our instrument.
You were thrilled that your kids loved Sunday School — until you found yourself in charge of a week of Vacation Bible School.
You are suddenly without a job.
You are betrayed in a close relationship and there is only cold numbness around your heart
You get the idea. Risking belief in that vision doesn't mean it's all “lights and colors”. That Minuet in G takes practice.
Peter writes that on our way to salvation we will be tested by trials to determine if our faith — our instrument — more precious than shiny gold, is strong and pure.
Ten years ago, the oldest of our four children was diagnosed with Friedreich's Ataxia, an inherited, progressively degenerative neuromuscular disease that has no treatment, no cure. No matter what else the future held, it meant our son would become wheelchair bound, as he has, and his life span shortened.
For the next four years my instrument got plenty tarnished. I could not form a prayer, I could not sit through a whole service, I could not sing — shoot, if I was alone in the car, I couldn't sit through a red light without sobbing. I raged that others could still pray, still tolerate an hour service, still sing.
But I couldn't let go… leave… either. Just as Harold Hill gets tripped up, I found “my foot caught in the door.”
Harold gets so caught up in the vision he spins for “River Citizians” that even though the uniforms arrive he forgets to get out of town.
Worse yet, Harold is confronted by a crushed, disillusioned 10 year old Winthrop who tells Harold “I wish you had never come to River City.” When Harold tries to assure the boy that he is a wonderful kid and that's why he wanted him in the band, Winthrop stops him cold with the question “What Band?”
Harold has spent a lifetime skipping town before anyone could ask that question. The vision of “lights and colors and cymbals” is too important to him to risk finding out it isn't true.This time, there is nowhere to run.
Which is how Harold finds himself on a podium, a pointer for a baton, an angry mob at his back and a rag tag array of small boys in too big uniforms in front of him, ready to PLAY.
In the furnace of my personal refiner's fire, I, too, bellowed “Where's the band?”
I had gleefully participated in the musicals directed by our former Adult Choir Director, Jeff Whicker, and tackled my own directorial debut with Carnival in 1999, desperate for the fellowship of the cast, the fun of condoned silliness and the pleasure of raising a few dollars for the music program.
As Bill and I cast about for a way to influence the medical future of our children, a letter writing campaign got married with “The Think System” and with the support of the Church Council… we have heard the band.
Productions of Anything Goes in 2001 and Fiddler on the Roof in 2003 have raised over $100,000 that has been directed to the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance.
Two weeks ago over 80 of us “who always think there is a band” started rehearsals for a production of The Music Man in February to benefit FARA. We rely on the rest of you and the wider community to make that band a reality.
The disciple Thomas demands of the other eleven “What Band?” Jesus comes to Thomas and tells him “have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”
To glimpse the vision is exhilarating, to share in the spinning of it, exciting. To sustain it, exhausting. Practicing “at least 30 minutes” becomes tedious and frustrating when there is no apparent improvement in the blats we individually produce.
For each of us there is a moment, a year, a decade, when we shout “Where's the Band?” Just as we are considering chucking the horn in the corner we are asked to serve on a site committee, man the shelter, be the moderator, commit three years to a board, make a casserole, dream up that theme for Vacation Bible School…
We share the same choice Harold must make — skip town and deny the vision… or show up. Because as Harold discovers… as I have experienced… “The Think System”… faith… only comes to fruition when you show up.
I am one up on Harold, because I have already heard THIS BAND. This band THINKS the MINUET in G and
Harold lifts his baton and PRAYS that his collection of little boys will
And when it sound comes, it isn't perfect, but it is unmistakenly (All together now)
AMEN