Facing the Music: The Stuff of Relationships

On January 12, 2007 at 7:51 a.m., a young man began to play the violin in a Washington DC metro station. He put his case on the ground and played a number of pieces for almost an hour and a half as the commuters rushed by. At the end of the morning, he had $37.07 in the violin case.


This man’s name was Joshua Bell. Just three days prior, Bell played in Boston’s Symphony Hall. It was sold out. Tickets were at least $100 each. Joshua’s talent can bring in $1,000 per minute. He plays on a 3.5 million dollar Stradivarius. But this morning, only seven people stopped to listen out of over 1000 who passed by. And, of the seven who stopped, just one recognized him. Just one lone man.

Why did no one stop to listen? Why did no one hear the music? I believe part of it was that they simply did not expect beauty in such a mundane place. This was a workday. They were trying to get somewhere. There was no room and no time for music, so they passed him by.

Back in the days of Moses, the ideal relationship with God was one in which God passed you by. The Hebrew people feared God. Their main objective was simply to stay alive. So when God commanded that they slaughter a young lamb, they did so precisely as ordered. They spread the blood on the lintels of their doors, just as God commanded. They did all this to survive, for they knew God to be a God of terror and anger, who made the earth but who could just as easily unmake it. So they obeyed and their obedience and discipline protected them. God was pleased with their efforts and, on the greatest of Jewish holidays, God passed over. And Pharoah, who had tried to kill the Hebrew boys, he got his just desserts when God killed the Egyptian boys instead. It is a bloody tale of a people who are rescued from slavery because they do everything that God tells them to do.

Once the Hebrew people got out there in the desert, they found it hard to follow the details of God’s will. God got so specific, so very specific. They had to wash their hands this way and eat that way. And when people died, they assumed that God was punishing them for messing up the details. They became consumed with the law, trying to follow it so perfectly. They never seemed to get it right.

When Jesus celebrated the Passover with us, he changed its meaning forever. He told us that it is not what we eat or how we cook that is important to God. No, rather it is how we treat one another. Our relationships are important to God.

My friend Barbara found a perfect little church when she was in high school. Her parents never went to church, but there was something about it that drew her like a magnet. When she came to visit, the elderly women were so good to her. They took her to coffee hour and made sure that she had a home-made cookie. She felt welcomed, at home. So she came faithfully for two years.

In her junior year, Barbara decided to bring two boys to church with her. She could not believe that they agreed to come. They had long hair and played in a rock band. She knew that they did drugs sometimes, but they seemed really nice. She thought that they would love it.

When she got to church, Barbara sat in the back pew. She liked it there, she liked seeing everyone. Her friends sat beside her. At the peace, one of the sweet women turned around to hug Barbara and she came up short before the boys. She looked strange, angry somehow. Barbara could not believe it.

After the service, Barbara sat in the pew with her two friends and no one said hello. The women who she loved just walked on by. As if she did not exist. They walked on by.

Years later, when Barbara described this experience to me, I asked her if she had ever confronted those women. She had not. She just left the church. For two years, she did not attend anywhere. It took her two years just to get over it.



Yes, you might say, I know that I have to love my neighbor. But many of us fail to understand what that means. We think that Jesus meant that we are supposed to get along with everybody. We think that we are supposed to be always kind, always cheerful, never angry. “He is not a good Christian,” people will say of someone with a temper. But what in the world do they mean?

Jesus knew that we human beings are broken. He knew that we would not get along a lot of the time. He knew that we get in bad moods and get over judgmental, that we gossip and complain. He did not tell us to be nice all the time or never to get angry. Jesus himself got rip-roaring mad! No, instead he gives us a set of instructions for how to live in community. And these instructions are every bit as detailed and intricate as God’s instructions to the Hebrew people on the eve of the Passover, except they do not have anything to do with food. These instructions are all about relationships.

When someone in the church sins against you, go to that person and tell them what they have done to you. And if that person is sorry, you have regained that one. If the person does not recant, then bring a few witnesses, two or three to be exact, and state your grievance before them. If the person still does not say that they are sorry, tell it to the church. And if that doesn’t work, say goodbye, or as Jesus put it let that person be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

You are not supposed to avoid conflict, you are supposed to go to it. Go to it. If someone wrongs you, you are supposed to make that clear to them. And you have to try at least three times. Then, if they do not seem to be able to see where you are coming from, you must say goodbye. Let me repeat that. Jesus wants you to say goodbye. Trying to relate to someone who cannot or will not acknowledge their fault is fruitless and it must end.

When you and I are able to truly be together in church, to serve God and love each other, to communicate and share a common vision, there is nothing that God will not do for us. God will be there to grant us whatever we ask. That is the promise. Whatever we ask!

But instead, we decide that it is not worth it to talk to the person who upset us. It is just too much of a bother, just too hard, too disturbing. They are not really worth it anyway, or maybe we talk ourselves out of being upset. Maybe we try to pretend that everything is OK, meanwhile a tiny piece of our truth dies inside. And we pass them by.

Whenever we pass by someone who wrongs us and do not give them the opportunity, yes, opportunity to hear our grievance, we pass by the music of God just to get on with life as usual.

Can you believe how important our communication is to God? It is vital, for God comes to us in those brief and inexplicable moments when we are truly listening to one another. And when we avoid conflict, we avoid the possibility of God coming among us.

I myself hate conflict. I have to force myself to go to the person who has upset me. Sometimes I have to write it down, I feel things so strongly. But God wants us to go to our disagreements, not away from them.

I know that all of you have complained behind someone’s back. I know that I have. It is just so much easier! I get to let off some steam, talk to someone who agrees with me, feel justified. And then I just pretend that it didn’t even happen. I never speak to the person who upset me.

I am just beginning to realize that God sees those times as lost opportunities. Some of God’s greatest revealing work is done in conflict and in disagreement. We don’t have to boil the lamb just right, but, in some ways, we have to do something even harder. We have to learn not to run away from people that upset or disappoint us.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, Jesus says. These relationships of ours, they are somehow integrally part of our salvation. If we cannot communicate with someone, and we have to let that person go, that person is gone to us, even in the hereafter. This stuff is important. This is the music of the ages. It is time for us to wake up and listen.

The Christian is NOT someone who gets along with everybody. The Christian is the one who has the courage to NOT get along and to do something about it.

If we never disagree, then we cannot know the beauty that comes with true connection. If we cannot consider estrangement, then there is no real unity.

If two of you agree on earth about anything, it will be done for you. But we must listen to each other and allow ourselves to disagree if we are ever to truly agree about anything. We must stop, turn and listen. And God will make music with us.