On January 12, 2007, just before 8 a.m., in the middle of the morning rush hour in a Washington, DC, metro station, the brilliant American violinist Joshua Bell took out his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin and began playing. Dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and a Washington Nationals baseball cap, Bell was supposed to be in disguise. He began the morning with J.S. Bach’s Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor, a 14-minute movement. For a grand total of 45 minutes, Bell played on and on as commuters rushed past on their way to work.
This was no concert performance; it was actually a social experiment concocted by Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten. Weingarten’s objective was to answer a question: would anyone stop and notice the incredible music being performed? Or would the commuters simply trudge ahead in the paved path of their daily routine?
Out of the 1,097 people who passed by Bell that January day in the L’Enfant metro station, twenty-seven people put money in his open violin case, and only seven people stopped to listen for a significant period of time. Bell made a grand total of $32.[1]
This particular experiment might reveal the lack of musical appreciation in American society. Or it could shed light on the obsessive grip of the workplace on Americans, who are increasingly tied to the clock and the almighty dollar. But whatever the case, the results of this experiment were sobering. Not even one of the greatest violinists in the world could manage to capture the attention of more than a handful of people. Most commuters didn’t even seem to notice what was happening as they hurried on their way to work. This violinist and his sublime music quite easily escaped notice.
But the opposite seemed to happen when Jesus was touring the region of Tyre and Sidon and the shores of the Sea of Galilee in the thick of his ministry. St. Mark tells us that Jesus could, in fact, not escape notice. He could not be hidden. Even when he didn’t want anyone to know he was in the area, people found him. They heard he was there and went to great lengths to seek him out. Crowds of people could not ignore the fact that Jesus was in their midst, and they brought all their needs, problems, and illnesses to him, because they knew he could and would help them.
On the one hand, this does not seem terribly surprising. By this point in his ministry, Jesus had already fed the 5,000, healed many people, and worked any number of miracles. His fame had spread in the region of Galilee, and as much as Jesus seemed to eschew the spotlight, people found him like insects drawn to a light. Jesus could not escape notice.
Such a magnetic appeal helps explain why this one man changed the world. The fact that Jesus, at one point in history, could not escape notice explains the fact that we are here today, worshipping our Risen Lord and preparing to feast on his Body offered to us. Only the transformative witness of the Word made Flesh could withstand over two thousand years of fumbling human attempts to follow him and to preach his good news to the ends of the world.
And yet two thousand years later, even while we identify with those who flocked towards Jesus to be healed and to be changed forever, if we zoomed out we might see a different picture. In this wider picture, it might seem as if Jesus is the lone violinist in a busy metro station, causing his violin to sing and sing with the most exquisite music, while person after person—thousands, even millions—pass by and do not notice. It might appear that two thousand years after Jesus could not escape notice, somehow, he has become hidden, and too many people fail to pay him any attention.
This is the picture we are handed by statistics and the news media. People are spiritual but not religious, they say. The number of religiously unaffiliated has risen consistently in the past ten years or so. On Sundays, the pews are less crowded and the sports fields are more so. While some choose to feast on the Sacrament on Sunday mornings, others are at their favorite local restaurant or enjoying the comfort of their cozy beds.
But it’s not as simple as this. It’s not as neat as a divide between the religious and the non-religious. If we were to survey the scene of Christianity, we would easily find that even many Christians, while professing faith with their lips, seem to hustle past Jesus in the crowded metro on their way to the next task because they have figured it all out. They have become so convinced that they know where they are going that they can’t stop and listen to the beautiful music that might take them by surprise, cut them to the heart, and change them.
We might wonder how the values that turned the world upside down two thousand years ago are now ignored as elevator music in spite of profound social inequity, glaring hatred, and systemic bigotry. How did we go from worshipping a Savior who died a violent death on a cross because he could not escape notice to worshipping an idol of our own desires who has become all too familiar and comfortable? Is this the Jesus represented by innocuous, pretty crosses on our living room walls?
Could it be that many have let Jesus escape their notice because they themselves feel unnoticed? Have they given up on being healed or transformed because they think they don’t matter or that Jesus can’t really do anything for them? Is this the case with us? When we come to Jesus with our unanswered questions and incurable illnesses, do we feel summarily dismissed like the Syrophoenician woman? When we can’t get to Jesus on our own, do we lack anyone to bring us to him, like the deaf man in need of healing? And if so, maybe we give up on begging to be healed or changed. Maybe we opt to rush on our way to our ordinary work, while passing by the amazing music offered to us.
But when we are tempted to imagine that we are an impediment to Jesus’ healing ministry, that, perhaps our problems are not worth his heeding or that we are not worthy of being healed, we would do well to look more closely at what Jesus did two thousand years ago when he was noticed. Look at the witness of the Syrophoenician woman, who countered Jesus’ harsh reply to her request by persistently pleading for him to do something for her. Look at the people who brought the deaf man to Jesus and begged him to heal. And take note of Jesus’ responses to all of them: he stopped and looked at them. And he noticed them.
In those days when Jesus could not escape notice, he himself stopped to notice those who were brought to him and who so often went unnoticed in their society. And in a day where we might feel as if Jesus does regularly escape notice, maybe we can summon the energy to seek him out and to let him notice us, for he is ready to do so.
Jesus is so unlike the crowds who tunneled through the DC metro station back in 2007, unwilling to pause and receive the gift being offered to them from one of the greatest living musicians. Even when we are tempted to hurry through our lives and ignore Jesus, he waits for us, playing his violin, offering his beautiful gift to us, ready to heal us.
Our Risen Lord plays on and on. The crowds rush by, and many do not heed his music. But he still plays, waiting for someone to notice. For there was a time when he could not escape notice, and perhaps that will happen again. And he plays on and on. . .
And finally, when someone notices, when we notice, that he is there and has always been there, he looks at us and stretches out his hand ready to do the work he was called to do and still does among us. He molds our hearts into the shape of his love. And he unstops our ears so that we can hear his beautiful music, and he lets us know that, even if we don’t always notice him, he always notices us.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 5, 2021
[1] Gene Weingarten, “Pearls before Breakfast” in The Washington Post, April 8, 2007 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/pearls-before-breakfast-can-one-of-the-nations-great-musicians-cut-through-the-fog-of-a-dc-rush-hour-lets-find-out/2014/09/23/8a6d46da-4331-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html)