Take Five
(A five minute talk about Jesus for a Jazz night at Newcastle University – the aim of the talk is to start discussion, not answer every question. The talk should last the same time as the 1959 recording of Take Five – 5’ 20” – which should be playing in the background)
When the Dave Brubeck quartet released this classic, Take Five, in 1959 it was intended to be a piano and sax coat hanger for a drum solo. It quickly became a jazz standard.
Brubeck had grown up playing classical piano where you play the black dots on the page and nothing else - you do not add or take away back dots, just play what is there. Jazz changed all that; Brubeck became a brilliant improviser, ducking and weaving, rolling and tumbling around the melody line and beyond. Even the time signatures were weird – this is in 5/4 time. The old rules were out the window, people were making stuff up as they went along. It was electrifying!
Is it a coincidence that 1959 was the moment in western history when people took that idea into the way they lived their lives? The old rules were abandoned and people began to live life in a new kind of way – making their own set of rules up as they went along. Songs of the sixties promoted this new ethic; do what you like as long as you don’t hurt anyone.
A moment’s thought reveals this to be completely dumb. Even when it came to jazz there were rules, it was just that the rules were new ones. Music only works when there are rules of some kind, and life only works when we live it by the rules. We live in a moral universe.
One of the most important rules we live by is to respect one another and nurture the connections between us – when it comes right down to it your friends and family are of huge importance. One connection is more important that all the others, whatever happened to your connection with God?
Paul Gaugin painter, what the jazzmen would do with music, Gaugin did with paint. In the 1890’s he was inventing new rules and painting in a way no-one had ever painted before. But he was deeply disillusioned with the bourgeois society he grew up in and went to the paradise island of Tahiti to work. He ended up disappointed and more disillusioned. One of his paintings from that time is a mural of life in a Tahitian village. At first glance it is an idyllic piece, but look closer and there are signs of unease. In one corner of the canvas Gaugin wrote, “Who are we, where have we come from, where are we going?” He had lost his connection with his creator and his meaning – maybe you feel the same sometimes?
Here are three sentences from the New Testament:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
No one has ever seen God, but God the one and only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.
John 1:1-2 & 14 & 18
Briefly, Jesus (the Word) came to re-connect us to God. That is why he lived; when you see Jesus in action you are seeing what God is like. That is why he died; because a price had to be paid for our failure. That is why he rose from the dead; to show us that death is not the end.
A few weeks ago Chelsea faced Manchester United in the English FA cup final – the UK equivalent of the Superdome. Before the match the Chelsea manager, Jose Mourinho, briefed his team. “Do you want to enjoy the game, or do you want to enjoy yourselves after the game?”, he asked. Someone in the team answered, “We want to enjoy the celebrations afterwards”. “Then do exactly as I tell you”, Mourhino said. It was a boring game, but his team won by one goal to nil.
Do you want to enjoy this life or the celebrations afterwards?
Then do exactly as Jesus tells you!