“Who would have thought you a slacker,” said Lady,
imaginatively passing by my tables, “since I see you writing here all the time?
But where is the parable for last week? You know, the one about the king’s
son’s wedding? Though to preserve the Biblical flavor, perhaps we should eschew
the Saxon Genitive, and call it the wedding of the son of the king.”
“That does sound better,” I told her. “And really, inventing
this religion is much more of a bother than I could have imagined. I see now
why Jesus is so completely inadequate, when it comes to the miracles and the
parables. This week, for example, the readings are drawn from Ephesians and
from John. So I checked that out, and got the usual adjurations about putting
on the shield of God, since the devil…OK, let’s bring on the King Jame’s…”
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
“How prescient of the Bible to foresee the presidencies of
George W. Bush,” said Lady. “OK—got that message. Now then, moving on to John?”
“Well, the reading—John 4: 46-54, with
which I’m sure you’re intimately familiar….”
“I believe I was discussing the passage the other day with Elaine Pagels,” Lady
replied.
“Yeah? The Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at
Princeton?”
“Yes, she calls, once in a while, when a particularly knotty
problem presents itself….”
“Good of you to help out,” I said. “Anyway, you undoubtedly
remember that Jesus, fresh from turning water into wine—a really
superior miracle, by the way—now sets about healing the nobleman’s son. This he
does telepathically, since the son is some distance away. Anyway, the nobleman
returns home and finds his son was healed at the seventh hour of the previous
day, which was just when the nobleman was talking to Jesus. So bam! It’s
legit!”
“Good news indeed. So now you’re a parable and a
miracle behind. Get to work!”
“You know, I begin to despair, which is a grave sin indeed.
Because not only do I have to produce miracles and parables, I’ve also had to
listen to three of the darkest cantatas ever written. And here, courtesy of the
bachvespersnyc.org,
is just a teaser….”
By Jesus' grace alone will there be
comfort before us, and forgiveness,
for due to Satan's deceit and cunning
the entire life of humanity
is a sinful abomination before
God.
“Lovely,” said Lady. “Nothing like that old
time religion!”
“The problem is
that Bach is all over the place, emotionally. There are four cantatas for the
21st Sunday after Trinity, and two or three of them are musical
incitements to suicide. Cantata BWV 38
is particularly bad, being drawn—again!—from the psalm ‘out of the depths I cry
to you,’ though here it’s ‘out of deep agony I cry to you.’”
“Very nice,” said
Lady. “Throwing in the word ‘agony’ does lighten the picture, doesn’t it?”
“Then there’s BWV
109, which is just as bad. In fact, it takes its inspiration from Mark 9:24,
which, since you hobnob with the glitteriest of biblical scholars…”
“’I believe Lord;
help me in my disbelief,’” finishes Lady.
“Well, you as a
poet should understand that, and it may be that I do as well. But anyway, the
first three or four movements are all about spiritual crisis, doubt, and lack
of faith. And boy, is the music grim! Bach, when he wants to be, can be
completely nasty! But then the alto sails in, and sweeps that all away, saying
that God never fails anyone, no matter how dark that night of the soul is. Of
course, what he doesn’t say is precisely when he will step in and give
succor to the unbelieving. In my case, he’s waited for decades.”
“You have to
persevere,” said Lady. “And perhaps do some mortification of the flesh. You
know, you might fast for forty days and nights. Or have you considered self
flagellation?”
“I refuse to
consider it,” I told her. “Though I have contemplated doing a pilgrimage from
Arnstadt to Lübeck—walking it as Bach did, when he went to see Buxtehude.”
“Excellent idea,”
said Lady. “We could crowd-fund it—you can count on me for a generous
contribution. But how long would it take?”
“Maybe ten days,” I
told her. “Unless, of course, I choose to do it on my knees, which is getting a
bit extreme, don’t you think? But the real question is what I do when, at the
end of the journey, I arrive in Lübeck just as infidel as I started.”
“Very easy,” said
Lady, “Walk back to Arnstadt again!”
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