All Saints Episcopal Church, Thomasville
Trinity 19, 2006

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.  And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53)

  This week author Joseph Epstein wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal titled "Ugly, Thorny Things."  It was a brief essay about the difference between facts and ideas -- and how we really don't like to deal with facts.  "As facts add up, ideas tend to go down.  Facts, bloody damn facts get in the way of conjecture, speculation, delightful mental footwork of all kinds.  Facts we say with a shrug, are facts.  Facts are ugly, thorny things.  Ideas are velvety and suave, and bring comfort by suggesting that our understanding of -- and hence control over the world -- is on the rise."

The human race, quite naturally but certainly as much now as ever before, is in love with ideas:  velvety and suave ideas.  It never ceases to amaze me how so many people would profess their hatred of Adolf Hitler, and almost in the same breath say that there is no such thing as evil.  We try to hide  and / or look away from bloody facts by conjecturing ideas -- ideas which will make us think that we've gotten a better hold upon our ever-changing world -- such as the idea that there really is no such thing as evil.

 In the musical world, perhaps the most famous attempt to disregard a fact in favor of an idea comes at the end of Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.  A recent book of essays titled The Don Giovanni Moment focuses on the penultimate scene in the opera, where the Don is dragged defiantly down into the flames of hell, all the while a chorus from another world is screaming:  "No fate is too horrible for you."  As one critic from The New Yorker has written, "When the Don finally goes down to Hell, you are not sure whether you are hearing the infernal legions celebrating his arrival, or the armies of Heaven rather too enthusiastically enjoying their capacity for destruction -- or perhaps some unholy concert of the two."

 Whatever it may be, the human mind cannot but picture that damnation as fact -- at least musically speaking.  Because no matter how we might want to think otherwise, that scene is one of the ugliest (by no means musically) and thorniest things ever imagined by the human mind.  The fact is, that it is so ugly, that Mozart (either of his own volition or from his audience), was prompted to write a brief sort of epitaph so the opera would not end with that horrible D-Minor chord and nothing but the smoke from hell's flames on stage. 

That is, Mozart had the remaining six characters come out and sing a little chorus about how sinners get their just reward.  But from the music, you’d never know that is what they are saying because the music is so light and bouncy -- a kind of tip-toe through the tulips sort of thing.  It's as if Mozart were forced to back away from the ugly thorny fact of a despicably unrepentant sinner's self-damnation and say to his musical audience, "I've got an idea.  I'm just not so sure about this."

 One essay in this new book states that Mozart's happy-go-lucky, bouncy joyous ending, whatever else it may do, forces us to imagine an idea, the idea of a life without awe.  It's as if with the damnation scene that we gaze into the beauty and holiness of Heaven as well into the blackest depths of hell -- taking a good long look at both -- and then turn aside as if we'd witnessed nothing.  Reality, truth, or whatever just couldn't be as terrible and awe-filled as that.  The final ending of the opera then, seeks to turn an ugly thorny fact into an idea, an idea that things couldn't possibly be that bad -- and idea to help us think that our understanding, and hence control of the world, is greater than it actually is. 

 If Mozart showed the world anything at all positive and helpful in the scene of the Don's damnation, it is the fact that we continue to live in a sinful and broken world, and that sin is a very real thing.  St. Paul devoted almost all of the first three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans to the subject of God's wrath -- and the fact (not the idea), that if the Gospel truly is the power of God for salvation to everyone one who has faith", then there must be something in this world which you and I must be saved from.  Of course that something is sin as well as it concomitant partner:  the wrath of God.

As with Mozart's opera, the human race has been so uncomfortable with this ugly thorny fact of human sin and God's wrath, that Church lectionaries (including our own and even well-before our current version) have omitted significant chunks of this opening section of Romans from the daily or yearly Rota of Scripture readings.  And this attempt to turn a fact into an idea (to soften up that message of sin and wrath) has done nothing but cause us to have a weaker grasp of the world we have always thought we were beginning to conquer -- not to mention having a weaker understanding of ourselves.

And yet, is it not ironic, that two of mankind's apparently most different and opposite creatures, the likes of St. Paul and Mozart, would seem to agree on this one thing.  Terrible and horrible evil continues to exist in this world, and that something equally powerful needs to be done about it.  Mozart may have shied away from this fact at the last, the music from the damnation scene is there telling us unmistakably where his mind really was.

 I've said from this pulpit more than many of you all have cared to hear, that for the Christian who wants to grow in his or her spiritual life, perhaps the most important tenant of our Lord is the first beatitude:  "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."  What that means in a nutshell, is that the sooner we recognize something of the relationship between human sin and God's wrath, and that such relationship is not idea but fact, then the more God's gift in Jesus is going to mean to us. 

Jesus is God's remedy for human sin and God's wrath -- and that is where St. Paul leaves Mozart in the dust.  Jesus will mean more to us when we recognize how desperate and hopeless our situation is without Him.  Such is the gist of what the author, traditionally understood to be St. Paul, writes for us in the Second Lesson today from the Epistle to the Hebrews.

 To me, the most fascinating thing to happen at the moment of Jesus' death and alluded to in the lesson, was that the Veil of the Temple (which represents equally our sin and God's wrath), came crashing down, symbolizing the fact that with Jesus' death, the pathway to God had been thrown open once again.  No more barriers would stand between God and his human creature.  Further, there was no longer a need for a high priest to offer his yearly sacrifices on behalf of the people -- something which had been a nice idea -- which would  be superseded by the fact that Jesus is now our great High Priest.

What this writer would have us understand, is that in addition to Jesus replacing the high priest, Jesus' life and death adds another dimension to our understanding the Person and work of our Lord.  That is, Jesus could not and would not be able to carry the sin of man to God, unless he fully understood the ugly thorny fact of sin -- and unless he coulc convey to God his understanding of just how horrible such sin truly is.  St. Paul writes:

"...let us hold fast our profession.  For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities (who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses); but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."  These few words attempt to convey with as much authority as any others in the New Testament, not just the sinlessness of Jesus, but also the enormity of the sin He confronted -- an enemy so dangerous and horrid that it would demand nothing less than the death of the Son of God in order to be vanquished.

This is so important.  There's a verse at the beginning of John's gospel where the evangelist writes that Jesus would not entrust himself to some people who had seen Him perform some miracles, "...because He knew all men and needed no one to bear witness of man; for He himself knew what was in man."  Remember, He Himself knew more than anyone something about the horror of sin as well as the wrath of God.  Otherwise He would never have been forced to cry:  "My God, why hast thou forsaken me."

 One of the most ridiculous and perverse ideas ever concocted by the human mind, one which we have used to trick ourselves into thinking we've gotten a better hold upon our world than before, is the idea that "I'm OK and you're OK."  That's what that bouncy little epitaph to Mozart's opera essentially -- at least through the music -- seems to say.  He approaches and confronts in totality, the the fact of a life filled with terror and awe and sin with no effort or will to repent in his setting of the Don's damnation, and then gets the idea to back away -- as if it really isn't all that bad.

It's left to St. Paul in the Bible -- and in the musical world left Handel in his oratorio Messiah -- to get things correct:  the fact of sin and wrath being confronted and destroyed, not by the idea that we're really not that bad, but by the fact of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Let us not forget Mr. Epstein's words:  "Ideas are velvety and suave and pretend to bring comfort.  Facts are ugly, thorny things.  Bloody damn facts tend to get in the way of conjecture, speculation, and delightful mental footwork of all kinds."

Lying dead center in arguably the greatest piece of music ever written, Handel sets in their entire awe and horror the pivotal words from the First Lesson:  "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way."  It's unspeakably brilliant.  These terrible words set to the most bouncy, frolicking chorus ever written apart from the very end of Don Giovanni. 

Handel is telling the human race that, at least in our own opinion, our idea of sin really isn't that big a deal.  I'm OK and you're OK.  A life without awe:  a sweet, velvety, and suave idea, full of conjecture and delightful mental footwork of all kinds."  Epstein's words are a perfect description of the music which conveys in no uncertain terms that as long as we continue to conjecture that sin isn't that serious a thing, that our eyes are in fact shut, and that we in fact continue to live a lie. 

Fortunately for us that sweet chorus comes to a screeching halt.  The major key turns to minor, with the final words (as Christians read them) of Jesus' death slowly dying away so that we could not possibly misunderstand.  That is, the sweet, suave, velvety idea of "I'm OK and you're OK, has given way to the ugly, thorny, but unspeakably wonderful and beautiful  fact:  "And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all."  Thanks be to God.