Musical Medley

For this week's entry, some song selections from the acapella group, Straight No Chaser. Lisa and I enjoyed their concert last weekend. What is so wonderful about their music is their ability to work together to make one beautiful sound. Always looking for the sermon material in every day life, I am reminded of St. Paul's words to the Corinthians (this is from Eugene Peterson's transliteration, "The Message" - 1 Corinthians 12 - selected verses):

God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one by the one Spirit of God. He decides who gets what, and when.

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.)

Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.

I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.

But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

We are gifted with different skills, abilities and talents that, when used in collaboration with others in the body of Christ, beautiful things can happen!

The group Straight No Chaser is made up of 10 guys who met at Indiana University and started a group while on campus back in the mid 90's. In 2008, a video of one of their Christmas songs went "viral" and a recording company picked them up. Now they tour quite a bit, and have some great songs with incredible harmony. What was fun to see in person was how much they seem to love what they are doing. It shows through in their music.

Here are some of my favorites.