Editor’s note: This commentary is by Mark W. Heinrichs, of Barton, the pastor of Sutton Freewill Baptist Church.
[A]dvent means both return as well as coming. I remember an Advent celebration 45 years ago in a Christian church in Vermont as a teenager.
You have to understand — I was a stranger. I had no history there at that church. I was a teenager asked out of the blue to participate in the children’s celebration of Christmas. Probably because they could not find anyone else.
The idea was to present the Christmas story as a news story from Bethlehem. A “correspondent” was to interview with microphone the children dressed up in various outfits (shepherds, townsfolk, three kings from the Orient, and more) as to what was going on in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve 2,000 years ago. The costumes were great! The setting was excellent. Bales of hay, kids dressed up, something like stars shining brightly. The idea was to take everybody back to that moment.
My role with my friend was that we were to act like street musicians in downtown Bethlehem, as if we were really there, part of the background, to produce the sound of what is was really like there on that street in Bethlehem. Forget the fact that guitars didn’t exist back then. I had never done this. I went to the local guitar store and borrowed a beautiful 12 string acoustic guitar.
For my generation to be able to play guitar was almost a priestly calling. I had taken lessons since I was six years old. I had loved the Beach Boys and the Beatles in the ’60s. As soon as I was able (allowed) I grew a ponytail and beard, thinking that I could become some kind of a rock star. I loved music, I loved good guitar playing, but clearly there were plenty of musicians better than me.
For this night, however, my friend and I were to bring forth a sound that communicated some of the life of Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Jesus. Feeling some of the moment, in my preparations I dressed well for the night, not because I appreciated Christmas but because I understood somehow this was important.
The service began with the minister introducing everybody involved and setting the context for the drama about to unfold. You have to understand that the sound system at the church was lacking at best. My friend and I had two high-quality acoustic guitars, powerful in their own right, even with no amplification. But, we were cranked.
The program began and my friend and I started playing — beautifully I might add — and we were swept up in the moment. The acoustic guitars we were playing did well in the acoustic environment of the church. We played variations of Rodrigo that seemed to fit the setting well.
Then we heard it over the loudspeaker system: “Would the guitars players in the back please play quieter … we can’t hear the kids.” Oops! We were too loud. OK, quieter; step down a couple of decibels (remember this was all acoustic).
We began playing quieter, some Rodrigo, plus some other lovely things. The guitars sang together in their places, we could hear our music and the kids, it was sweet. Then there it was again, intrusively, loudly, over the loudspeaker at the front of the church
“Uh … could the street musicians kindly turn it down further.” Not a question, rather a command. Somehow we had violated some acoustic limit, but unawares. We had thought we were cool and quiet. Sadly, this was not the case. Finally we were quietly plinking our strings, trying to lightly underscore the comments of the children.
The end of the service came. All of a sudden it didn’t matter about my guitar playing. I was wowed by it all. The richness of the colors of the sanctuary, the sound of our guitars, the improvised comments by the children about Bethlehem 2,000 years before, the rapt attention of the families in the pews, the pastor caught between the beauty of the moment and the fact that it had been different from what he had planned. The lights dimmed and candles were handed all around. “Silent Night” was sung that night as if it were the first time it had ever been sung. There was a quietness and a loveliness and a grace I had never experienced before. The candles were extinguished and I grabbed my guitar and quietly left the church, changed, awed.
