"Where the Light Comes In" | Marsha Ackerman, Warden | July 9, 2023

Our summer sermon series, “Tuned for Praise,” invites preachers to reflect on the relationship between faith and music, as well as the lectionary texts for the day.

Zechariah 9:9-12 | Psalm 145:8-15 | Romans 7:15-25a | Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.

I am very grateful to have the opportunity this morning to speak with you, not in the role of Warden, but as a musician and fellow parishioner. It was music that brought me to the Episcopal church many years ago. I was doing my Masters degree in opera in Boston at the New England Conservatory, and like many struggling graduate students, I needed part-time work. I was offered a job as the Alto section leader at Trinity Boston where I sang three rehearsals and four services every week. At this point in my life, I had not even been in a church for several years, and suddenly I was immersed in it. That church held an extraordinary community of people and musicians. There I experienced the deep soul soothing that can be found in liturgical music. My friends were there. Sam Lloyd, the rector, became a close friend and counselor and helped me find my permanent church home. I even met my husband Adam there in the tenor section. (I never dreamt a mezzo would marry a tenor! Forgive the nerdy musician joke) Perhaps most importantly, I returned to a spiritual practice after having abandoned church as a place to find God.   

To understand better what I wish to share with you today, I think it will be helpful for you to hear a little of my background. It is a bit intimidating to share this in such a public space, but I’m choosing to lean into my vulnerability. Writer and researcher Brené Brown says, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.” So, with that in mind, I’ll tell you a little about my family. My mother was an extremely talented pianist and organist. She received numerous accolades in her young career and could play anything she heard by ear. Many nights I fell asleep to the sound of her practicing. She was the one who introduced me to everything from Chopin to Johnny Cash. Sadly, she was also a mentally ill drug addict and alcoholic. She didn’t have the necessary emotional tools to cope with this life, and yet possessed a gift for music that I still stand in awe of to this day. I initially learned to sing out of necessity. She was the organist at our local Catholic church and would often forget to arrange for a cantor for the service. Desperate and drunk, she would wake me long after I was asleep on a Saturday night and teach me the cantoring parts to sing in order to cover her mistakes. When I would try to refuse, because I was a child, she would admonish me by telling me that “she could not believe that she had raised a child that had such a gift from God but was too selfish to share it in his house”. Children want to please their parents…I wanted to please her…and so I sang. Along with the complicated feelings I have for her also came some complicated feelings about the role of music in my life. At first, I wanted to rebel and deny the music I had inside me. I wanted to be a marine biologist and escape the problematic combination of knowing that music spoke to me in a way that nothing else could, but carried with it a great deal of pain and suffering that would need to be resolved.

Before I go further, I want to return for a moment to a part of the Gospel passage for this morning. In it Jesus says: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Twice Jesus uses the word rest in this passage. I think that repetition was intentional. It causes us to examine the word more closely. Rest can mean the freedom from activity or labor. It can mean sleep. It can mean peace of mind or spirit. Or in music, it can mean a specified period of silence before sound returns. As musicians we learn that the notated rests are not just a passive act. They are where we take breath in so that we will be able to continue our song. They are where tension lives as the listener awaits the next step on the musical journey. In this way rests are an action. In this space between the sounds, a whole world of renewal and refreshment takes place. They are a time to collect ourselves before moving on to whatever is next. For me, making music became the embodiment of this type of active rest and restoration. Despite the challenges of how I came to music, on some level deep down, I sensed it would also be the place that I would find healing, and although I didn’t know it then, where I would find God.  

Music speaks a language that does not require words or intellectual understanding. Of course the poetry of sung music is incredibly moving, but at the center of what music is, this is not a requirement. Music speaks to us whether or not we understand the language, or know the history of the composer. It deeply touches us individually, but also as a community. We come to church in our best Sunday dress and teach our children to use their best manners and behave appropriately, but music speaks to us in the places that run deeper than this. It can calm our deepest fears and celebrate our secret joys. It can reach us in the emotional places we have no words for. It can heal the wounds we cannot speak of. I think we value music in the church setting so much because it can say the vulnerable things we dare not say to each other. Through it, God grants us the space…the rest…to deal with all of the unspeakable difficulties of this world.

Leonard Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. In his work he commonly explored faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, social and political conflict, love, desire, regret, and loss. He wrote a song called Anthem which contains the following lyrics:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in. 

As I was thinking about music, and rests, my mind kept leading me to this song. It struck me that a rest is a sort of a crack where the deepest intentions of the music seep into our hearts and souls. Music allows the space for us to be filled with the love and rest of God. If we allow God’s rest to penetrate those vulnerable places of brokenness, the cracks we each have and wish we had the power to heal ourselves, we can find that renewal in God’s space. As painful as they are, our cracks and our need for rest is an invitation from God. 

This is where I will return for a moment to my story. It was an enormous temptation to run from my cracks, to deny my need for God’s rest. I will not pretend that I was wise enough to avoid the pitfalls of attempting to fill those cracks with the wrong relationships, wrong substances, wrong paths. But in the end, as it turns out, my mother was wrong about what God’s gift to me actually was. My gift, and I think God’s gift to us all, turns out to BE our cracks, our vulnerabilities, and our need for rest. Despite my best efforts at avoidance, they called to me. The aching emptiness I felt in my soul was God calling me back, and the tool God has used to heal me is music. Music seeped into me through my cracks and gave me rest. Like celestial super glue, the music crept in and breathed new life into me. It bound me back together and it connected me to a community where I could find others who would also offer me God’s sublime rest. 

Music is such a powerful way for us to experience God’s healing on an individual basis and communally at the same time and in the same space. We each experience it just a bit differently, yet as a community we heal and grow together. I pray that with the aid of music we can all become a little more comfortable with our individual places of vulnerability. I hope that if music can teach us to allow the light in through our cracks, we can also find a way to let down our protective barriers with each other and experience the healing and deeper sense of community that can come from loving each other's cracks in a way that is closer to God’s love for us. 

I would like to close with a poem by Rumi:

“I said: what about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.

I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.

I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?

I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

Amen.