Luminescence, Volume 2. C. K. Barrett

and of angels but have not love, I become sounding brass”—a term the BBC has borrowed for a series of programs by brass bands. Back in chapter 14, if the trumpet gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? And in chapter 15 there is the trumpet about which there will be no indistinctness. “We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet; for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.” And of course you will think of the Messiah or the unforgettable Brahm’s Requiem, at this weekend some years ago. There is so much brass in Paul that the Salvation Army might taken him as their patron saint; and he would probably be more at home with them than with most of us.

      After the brass, the percussion and we go back to chapter 13. “I may have all the tongues there are, but if I have no love, I am become sounding brass and clanging cymbal.” And at the bottom of the page, the strings. Here one must admit, Paul is above them for the Greeks had no bowed instruments. But they did have strings and they knew that the frequency of a string depended on its length, tension, and density. For they had harps and lyres, and Paul knew it. If the harp does not give distinct knows, who will know what is played? And in the midst of the same passage comes the vocal line; and that is where we get down to serious business. They sang in Church in those days, just as for centuries the Jews had been singing out of their hymnbook, the Psalms. And Paul knows how to do it—I will sing with the Spirit and I will sing with my mind too. Here is our first proper theme: and like the Greek oboe, it has two pipes.

      INSPIRATION AND INTELLECTUAL DISCIPLINE

      I have finished, nearly finished, with music for the present. The briefest allusion will do. You know that to write music, to perform it, you must have both. There must be the tunefulness that simply bubbles up, and there must be the sternest discipline that struggles to control the stubborn figures and vocal chords to get it on paper and out of the instrument. Even if you want to be a modern, like Honegger or Messiaen, or in his day Beethoven, and break the rules, you have to first learn how to keep them. Inspiration and iron discipline, there is no music without both.

      But was Paul? He was writing to a chaotic Church. I do not know if they had choir, but I am certain that if they did, one member said, “I am going to sing in the key of A, and the next said I am going to sing in B, and the next I’m going to sing in E sharp minor.” This is—was—serious. They were like that. And many of them were prepared to blame it on the Holy Spirit. “We must speak or sing as the Spirit moves us, and the Spirit will never be more plainly at work than if we do outrageous things and speak in unreal languages that no one can understand.” There are people still who, without going to Corinthian excess, will do the same sort of thing. What on this day of the Holy Spirit, has Paul to say about it?

      “I will pray and I will sing with the Spirit, and I will pray and I will sing with my mind too.” Both; inspiration and discipline. Paul had no wish to damp down enthusiasm. He wanted the Church’s worship to be an occasion when the Spirit’s work could be seen and heard. He would not have thought much of a service that was simply read out of a book. Inspiration yes; but inspiration schooled by discipline to make it rational and intelligible. How else will anyone else understand you? God no doubt understands when you babble, but no one else does; no one can say Amen to a prayer that means nothing to him. No one will be converted by words he does not understand. Both are needed in music; whether it is secular or liturgical. Both are needed in the Christian assembly.

      But there is more to say than that. Many of us are visible corporate Christians for one hour out of every 168. Even if you push it up to three hours with Sunday evening and once during the week, it is only 1.78 percent of your time, and being a Christian requires 100 percent. There is a lot more to being a Christian than what we do here. And this is Paul’s emphasis. You may do all the obvious and important religious things, speak with known and angelic eloquence; understand all mysteries of theology; work miracles and be a martyr. But all these wonderful spiritual activities are nothing if you do not love. And love is not an emotion; love is the strictest discipline there is. it may begin to look as if the Holy Spirit were coming out of this rather badly. But wait.

      WHAT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT?

      It is important to know. In another letter you may hear Paul saying, “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ”; he is not a Christian. This can be a very disturbing thought. If it means (and there are people who will say this) that if I do not speak with tongues, making uncontrollable and unintelligible noises, I do not have the Spirit—then I for one do not have the Spirit and on Paul’s definition I am not a Christian. If having the Spirit means a constant state of excitement, of religious emotion, then I do not have it and am not a Christian. And I dare say the same will apply to many of you.

      But is this what having the Spirit means? Let us be clear about this; there is nothing wrong, though there may be much that is inadequate, about these things. But listen to another epistle—“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.” Not much excitement there. Even self-control, self-discipline. Precisely not letting yourself go, keeping your emotions in check. And the first item in the list is what I described a few minutes ago as the severest, strictest discipline there is—love.

      I will repeat my question this day of Pentecost—What is the Holy Spirit? I am not silly enough to think that in five minutes I can tell you all there is to know about the third person of the Trinity. But I think I know where to begin. Over against the fruit of the Spirit, Paul gives a list of the works of the flesh—“sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and sorcery; enmities, strife, jealousies, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, party spirit, drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” Now it is clear at once that though sexual license comes into the list and will get no defense from me, these works of the flesh are not at all what we conventionally think about when we talk about “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” The flesh means I’m bound up in my own interests, concerns, desires. Of course this may mean plain lustful desire, Paul’s fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness. But there are special kinds of self-centeredness. What do I care what happens to the other person? I know what I want—let her, let him look after the consequences.

      It can lead to theft; it can lead to murder; it can lead to success in business; it can lead to the disruption of a Church; all because we insist on putting ourselves at the center of our own picture of life. I am what matters and everyone else look out. It is the opposite of love. “Use not your freedom as an occasion for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.”

      How do you do it? Turn your life inside out and establish your life on a new center? If you do turn your coat inside out, the odds are you will find the old man, the old woman inside it. Life needs a new center. God supplies it. And God’s readiness himself to form the center of human life, is near enough what Paul means by the Spirit. Jesus put part of it in the odd little story about a man who had an evil spirit cast out of him. A splendid beginning, but negative. Back comes the evil spirit, finds a nice empty residence in excellent decorative condition, and he settles down again, bringing with him seven other spirits more than himself. What was the need was a new tenant. This is what God supplies; what God is—a new center and new foundation on which life can be based. So we will come back to spirit and mind.

      SPIRIT AND MIND

      Inspiration and discipline. I will sing with the Spirit, I will sing with the mind also. Come back to music, we can make the most of the analogy today, remembering that many of the greatest Christian thinkers have been musicians—Luther for one, Karl Barth for another. It is quite true that there are two elements in making music. If there is no inspiration, creative or derivative, there is no music; but if there is no discipline of harmony, counterpoint, technique there is little to distinguish our music from the squeaking of cats in the garden at night.

      But how does a real musician work? Does he say—“we will now have five minutes of inspiration,” and then get out the textbook of harmony and work it out? Does he look at a piece of printed music and say, “Now I’ll put in some inspiration with the left hand and make sure I get the notes correct with the right?” Of course he doesn’t. And the better the musician the clearer it will be that he is one person and that the one person is producing out of