Start:Stop - Ode to Joy (and Freedom)

From The Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt, 1902

Hello and welcome to this week’s Start:Stop reflection from St Stephen Walbrook, when we stop for ten minutes and start to reflect on a passage from scripture. You can hear an audio version of this reflection at this link. Today our text is taken from Luke’s Gospel, in which we hear the words Jesus spoke in the synagogue at the start of his ministry. 

Bible Reading – Luke 4.16-21

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

   because he has anointed me

     to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

   and recovery of sight to the blind,

     to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’


Reflection

In his Advent book “Freedom is Coming” the Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, explains that the prophets are not magicians or fortune-tellers but people who have learnt to see beyond the captivity of their current circumstances and past experiences - and they invite us to do the same. This is the freedom - the release from captivity and the new sight - which Isaiah prophesied. He reminds us that God’s freedom comes with obligation. The obligation to look at ourselves and the world anew; not through our own clouded lens but from a new perspective; through God’s eyes. 

 

The book of Isaiah was written over many years and during a time of great change. The text is generally understood as being comprised of three sections; the first warns the Israelites about the consequences of losing sight of God; and their way (and identity) as God’s people. In the central section, Isaiah addresses a people who had chosen not to heed his warnings, who had been exiled by a neighbouring empire. In the final section, the exile is over and the prophets words of promise seem to have come true; the Israelites are learning to see beyond the immediacy of today and to look on their freedom from a new and “critical perspective”. They are learning to see the world through God’s eyes; beyond “the pretended theologies of self fulfilment and self satisfaction.”

 

It is words from this third section of Isaiah that Jesus reads aloud in the synagogue in his home town at the start of his ministry. Words telling of God’s promise of freedom and joy which had been fulfilled through the Incarnation. While those present are initially awe-struck, they are ultimately unable to change the way they look at the world - they cannot break free from their prejudices about who Jesus is - and reject him as a quack; a son of a carpenter who has got above his station. They remain defined by their current circumstances and past experiences, unable to hear the message of freedom and joy that is his good news.  

 

 

This Advent we had hoped to offer the chance to hear four weeks of joyous music, with a series of concerts celebrating Beethoven’s 250th Anniversary which falls on the sixteenth of December. We have had to postpone the live concerts until next year, but will be broadcasting two concerts online starting with a unique performance of Symphony no. 9 (the Choral Symphony) arranged for four hands on one piano by Scharwenka, performed by my talented friends Ben Schoeman and Tessa Uys and accompanied by our Choral Scholars. Beethoven’s composition broke free from tradition and was the first time voices had been used in a symphony, making the piece a landmark in the history of Western music. Here’s a brief snippet from‘Ode to Joy’ – the fourth and final movement.

Ode to Joy was written by the poet Friedrich Schiller and a slightly re-worked text was set to music by Beethoven after Schiller’s death. 

 

In a footnote to the first scholarly biography of Beethoven, Alexander Thayer suggested that the original text which inspired the composer was Ode to ‘Freedom’ not Ode to ‘Joy’. Whilst musicologists have been busy debating the point, Beethoven’s music has been adopted as an anthem by people across the world who are seeking freedom or celebrating release from oppression, from protests against the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile to student protestors in Tiananmen Square. On Christmas Day 1989, Leonard Bernstein conducted an orchestra and choir made up of musicians from across Germany to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall in which the word ‘joy’ was replaced with ‘freedom’ throughout the fourth movement. “If ever there was a historic time to take an academic risk in the name of human joy, this is it, and I am sure we have Beethoven’s blessing,” he said.  

 

Writing for the Schiller Institute, the musicologist Fred Haight seems to echo the words of the prophet Isaiah when he suggests that for Beethoven and Schiller, the freedom they sought to inspire through their art, comes with obligations; being free doesn’t mean doing whatever we want, but freedom from our selfish concerns to do God’s will. He writes: 

“For Beethoven, as for Schiller, freedom is the freedom to develop one’s own cognitive powers, in order to carry out that necessary mission, on behalf of humanity as a whole, for which the Creator put us here in the first place.”

 

As Jesus reminds us when quoting words of the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue; that is the freedom to which we have been brought, and which has been fulfilled in and through Christ. Our obligation is to turn and follow him. 

Advent this year brings a glimmer of light that freedom from the lockdown is on the horizon, but the consequences of the pandemic will be long-lasting and our calling, as Christ's church, will be as important as ever. 

 

As we prepare to celebrate the coming of Christ let us renew our commitment to live our lives as an Ode to Joy - and Freedom. 


Prayer

 

God of hope, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free,

yet so often we choose to bind ourselves and others

to a yoke that is not yours.

Breathe your Spirit into us,

and give us eyes to see the invisible chains

which constrict and constrain your image in us and in others.

Give us ears to hear the silent cry

of those whose lives languish in the darkness of despair.

Give us hearts to feel the pain

of lives whose iron bars hide all horizon of hope and healing.

Lord Jesus, who bound the Strong Man,

who conquered the grave,

and who has freed all captives from the slavery of sin

in your powerful name:

we renounce our own self-destructive habits of hopelessness;

we denounce a world which coerces and compels with fear and false obedience;

and we pronounce the dawning of your kind and compassionate kingdom,

the hope of all who walk expectantly with you in your exodus

from the darkness of dependence into the light

of your new life.

In his name we pray

Amen

 

(A prayer written by Charlie Kerr) 

Thank you for listening to this Start:Stop reflection. Please do tune in via our website on Saturday 19th December at 7pm to hear a very special performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. A link to the concert will be posted on this page.

 

I hope you have a great week ahead and have a Happy Christmas. 

Links
Freedom is Coming : From Advent to Epiphany with the prophet Isaiah by Nick Baines is available from SPCK
A Prayer for Freedom – written for the Diocese of Oxford by Charlie Kerr
Image : The Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt