San Lorenzo Community Church United Church of Christ Sermon: “Music that Moves Us” Preached extemporaneously by Rev. Annette J. Cook

A reading from the Letter to the Colossians 3:15-17

15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. 16 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. 17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed or song, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God our Maker and Sustainer.

Sermon presented September 2, 2012 Page 1

San Lorenzo Community Church United Church of Christ Sermon: “Music that Moves Us” Preached extemporaneously by Rev. Annette J. Cook

Cheryl and I were talking about our month of Broadway musicals the other day. Evidently, back in June and July, I had a conversation with her about the plans to sing Broadway show tunes and I told her that I wanted to pick four musicals that were all about family. I don’t remember that conversation. In fact, I don’t think it happened. So she said, no, really, you said you wanted four musicals about family:

The Sound of Music is a show about a family of circumstance

The Fiddler on the Roof is about a family in transition

Annie is about a family of choice

And Godspell is about the family of God.

You see, she said, they are all about family!

That’s excellent, isn’t it? In fact, that’s a little bit of genius. Thing is, I never said it. Granted, it would have been cool if I had planned it that way . . . but I just don’t think I did.

Or, maybe, unconsciously I chose these musicals because of the family theme.

When I was a kid, my family went camping as our summer vacation – which meant long car rides. Technology and specifically entertainment technology was not what it is now. So these were long car rides without an iPod, without Nintendo, without games on the cell phone.

We would all climb in the station wagon. Mom and dad in the front. My sister Natalie had the spot behind Dad, while I sat behind Mom on the passenger side of the car, and Wayne jumped into the way back – I don’t know if there is a name for that part of the car. We always called it the “way back.” Each of us got to pack a few toys and a book to keep us occupied because, of course, my siblings and I fought. There were invisible lines in the car marking places where you couldn’t cross or even touch for fear of reprisal. I’m sure you get the picture.

So it is no surprise that my parents – both of whom were teachers – had more than one trick up their sleeves to engage us in something other than nitpicking and arguing. We played all of the usual car games – I Spy and counting blue cars. But more than that we had my Dad who knew and loved Mitch Miller and groups like Up with People and, of course, Broadway musicals. On many a long drive, my family would be singing our hearts out with Oklahoma, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Mary Poppins and more. My dad had the whole album memorized and, since he played them over and over, well, we knew the songs too. You know, once the My Favorite Things is in your bones, well, it just doesn’t leave.

“When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling sad, I simply remember my favorite things and then I don’t feel so bad.” These weren’t just fun songs to sing – though surely they were that. These were lessons to be learned, ideas and concepts about life, morals and values for living an

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San Lorenzo Community Church United Church of Christ Sermon: “Music that Moves Us” Preached extemporaneously by Rev. Annette J. Cook

honest life. They teach us about romance, surely, but also being in right relationship, doing the right thing, and having hope and making positive change.

So given the origins of why I love musicals so much, I suppose it’s no wonder that we would have a month of family-values musicals.

25 years ago Sarfraz Manzoor’s life changed forever. He was 16 years old, a bored and frustrated working-class Asian kid living in a small town in England. His family was a typical traditional Pakistanis – his dad was a first generation immigrant who worked in a car factory and his mum stayed at home making dresses and looking after four children.

Sarfraz was always a bit different from the others. He had a head full of crazy dreams. He wanted to get out of the small town, to do a job that was actually interesting and he wanted the chance to marry someone who wasn’t already his blood relative. Those dreams didn’t seem to have much chance to come true.

Yet here in September, Sarfraz is performing a one-man comedy show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival about how Bruce Springsteen saved his life. Now the curious thing is that Sarfraz is not a stand- up comedian. He has never done this before in his life. And, granted, his friends and family had a sharply divided reaction – those who feared he had gone mad and those who were no longer in doubt. You see, Sarfraz is a non-drinking, Springsteen-loving British Pakistani Muslim who recently turned 40, became a father of a mixed race and mixed faith baby and firmly believes that Bruce’s songs contain the secret to life, love and happiness.

As a teenager, Sarfraz was expected to get a solid but dull job and eventually have an arranged marriage to someone who was solid and perhaps also a little dull. Everything changed the day he walked into college and ran into a fellow Asian boy called Amolak. Amolak told Sarfraz the secret to a better life, one of fulfilment and true love was in the music of Bruce Springsteen.

What can you do but laugh? Bruce Springsteen? How on earth could rock music made by an American bloke in a plaid shirt have anything to do with Sarfraz growing up in small-town England?

Amolak handed him a cassette tape and Sarfraz promised he would give it a listen. That evening he went home, turned the lights out and put the cassette on. And suddenly it all made sense. Born to Run, Thunder Road and The River blasted into his ears.

These weren’t the pop songs he had heard before, they were songs that were about lives very much like his own. They featured characters stuck in dead-end towns but who wished for more, guys dreaming of escape and love and a life more exciting than the one they led. Guys like Sarfraz.

And so he was hooked. He got hold of all Springsteen albums and started studying the lyrics and discovered that his friend had been right – the answer to life’s questions really do lie in the words of the Boss. In fact, Sarfraz is so bold as to say there isn’t a problem in the world that cannot be solved by consulting the lyrics of Springsteen.

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San Lorenzo Community Church United Church of Christ Sermon: “Music that Moves Us” Preached extemporaneously by Rev. Annette J. Cook

For example, when he was a teenager he resented his dad for not letting him have the freedom his white friends did. Then he heard Independence Day which is basically a conversation between Bruce and his dad.

“They ain’t gonna do to me what I watched them do to you,” sings Springsteen and Sarfraz thought of his dad who had to endure racism in the 60s and ended up working in a car factory even though he was capable of so much more. That song made him realize what his Dad had gone through.

Later in life when Sarfraz was wrestling with whether to accept an arranged marriage or follow his heart, another Bruce song helped. In the song “Prove It All Night,” Bruce sings: “If dreams came true, well, wouldn’t that be nice. But this ain’t no dream we’re living through tonight, if you want it, you take it and you pay the price.” In other words, life is not a fairy tale – if Sarfraz wanted to follow his heart he needed the courage of his desires.

He used Springsteen as a map and a guide to another life. He got out of the small town, was the first in his family to go to university, worked as a journalist in London and is now married to a wonderful woman – who is neither Asian nor Muslim, with whom he has a gorgeous baby girl.

Throughout all that time Springsteen was a constant companion. Sarfraz writes, “I have seen him more than 100 times in concert and have even been lucky enough to meet him.” It was Springsteen’s music which inspired Sarfraz to leave the small town, his words to clung to when he was trying to find the courage to defy his family as they urged him to have an arranged marriage, and his music playing in the delivery room when his lovely daughter was born.

My favorite Springsteen song is, of course, “Born to Run.” Springsteen nails the existence of an entire generation in two electric lines:

“In the day we sweat it out on the street of a runaway American dream / At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines.”

It’s a dead-on depiction of frustrated youth afraid to stand still because they might never be able to start again. He’s trying to convince his girl, Wendy, to join him on an escape from “this town,” which he describes as if it were a living entity, a remorseless Terminator programmed to grind down hope and promise. Bruce sings, “We got to get out while we’re young/’Cause tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.”

Born to run from their problems. Born to run because it’s in their nature, an instinct. Born to run because inertia is tantamount to death. Born to run with all of the grace and beauty of a gazelle, and born to run in a desperate, messy gait to escape the past.

In the last verse, you realize these two might never get out of this town, the song grinds away into sorrow rather than the optimism of new promise.

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San Lorenzo Community Church United Church of Christ Sermon: “Music that Moves Us” Preached extemporaneously by Rev. Annette J. Cook

Together Wendy well live with the sadness / I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul / Someday girl, I don't know when, we’re gonna get to that place / Where we really want to go and we’ll walk in the sun / But till then tramps like us baby we were born to run

It leaves you feeling sad and charged up; and, of course, it leaves you singing the refrain over and over in your head.

Music is our lives so make a joyful noise. As the scriptures of old say, Lift up your voice in song.

A 9-year-old boy and his friends try to pick out a rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the piano. A retired music teacher assisting at a church’s after-school study program overhears the sad little attempt. The music teacher, Harriet Pennekamp, asks the boy, Dante Millet, if he would like to take piano lessons. With that, retirement ends, an after-school music program debuts and a boy’s musical journey begins.

Since 1997, Resurrection Lutheran Church in Oakland, Calif., has hosted the After-School Music Program, led by 79-year-old Harriet and inspired by Dante and friends. The program currently teaches music to 41 students whose $10 lessons lighten the load of parents who can’t afford private lessons.

Diversity is the commonality; the students represent four continents and 12 countries. As with most church programs, funding is catch as catch can. But what they do get helps to keep the waiting list short and also provides for instrument repairs and sheet music. Harriet invests her time to create opportunities for her students.

“Harriet has a servant heart, a teacher’s dedication, and a faith that takes seriously Jesus’ call to welcome the children,” says Rev. Lucy Kolin, Resurrection’s pastor. “(Harriet) sees in every child a person of value. She loves to introduce them to the world of music and to a future of hope and possibility: God’s dream for every child of Earth.”

Dante’s piano lessons led to cello lessons a year later when a cello was donated to the program. That’s when Dante really started to make music. In ninth grade, under Harriet’s guidance, he was accepted to the Oakland School for the Arts. His cello lessons with Harriet ended but only to make room for another opportunity. During his sophomore, junior and senior years, Dante also participated in the Young Musicians Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Young Musicians provides full scholarships to musically-gifted students who cannot afford the training needed.

Now 21, Dante majors in engineering and minors in music at California State University, East Bay, in Hayward. Dante credits Harriet with teaching him effective study habits, discipline and the value of hard work. “She was very patient and listened,” he says. “She’s very giving.”

That’s why Dante and his cello gave back by playing at one of the recent program fundraisers. “The (program) is a great opportunity. It teaches you to be successful,” he says. When asked what he loved about the After-School Music Program, Dante talks about being with other children and — by the way — the music.

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San Lorenzo Community Church United Church of Christ Sermon: “Music that Moves Us” Preached extemporaneously by Rev. Annette J. Cook

“I loved being with the kids, the teachers and the tutors,” he says. “We did our homework, then we had time for recreation, then we had our music lessons.”

“We make a community out of our group,” Harriet concurs. “The kids get to know each other. They’ll never forget being together.”

Or how the sound of music changes lives.

Make a joyful noise. Lift up your voice in song.

Music can affect all of us—calm us, animate us, comfort us, thrill us, or serve to organize and synchronize us at work or play.

For some of us the music lives in our head like a radio dial we can turn from classical to rock to country to pop and back again. For others of us, music lives in our bones – our feet start to tap, our hands want to clap and our bodies want to sway. And still for others, music is the sound and melody that come from our mouths, our instruments, our breath, our rhythm.

Music has this way of saving people’s lives. It doesn’t matter what you listen to; it can still save you. I know of many who have been saved by music and had their lives changed by music. I stand as an example of someone completed transformed by music. It could be the way it is sung and played. Maybe the emotion in a singer’s voice helps us understand and relate to the music better. Maybe the personal experience of a member of a band is something the band’s listeners can relate to. Maybe lyrics or rhythm or melody. Something makes this deep connection to our heart and mind. It captures our imagination and in the moment of the perfect chord all things are possible.

That’s a God-thing. That perfect chord. That melody you love to sing in your heart. That moment you roll down the windows in the car and sing your heart out even though you can’t carry a tune in a bucket. It’s a God-thing. The way the joy bubbles up inside of you and you have start singing.

Music is the guide. The comfort. The source. The conscience of our world. Music is the grounding of our souls, the coming together of us. It’s Kumbaya and it’s We shall overcome. It’s Amazing Grace How Sweet the Sound. And Springsteen’s Born to Run. It’s Tomorrow and If I Were a Rich Man and My Favorite Things and You Are the Light of the World. It’s hope and exhilaration.

Music saves us. And that’s a God-thing. So, go ahead, make a joyful noise. Lift your voice in song.

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