While on retreat this past week, I made my way through Madeleine L’Engle’s lovely book Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. L’Engle suggests that artists instinctively understand faith at a deep level because of the creative process of making art. True art isn’t perfunctory. It isn’t produced by formulas. It isn’t rendered solely for commissions or to gain approval. Real art is birthed when the artist responds to a creative gift from God.
Artists, we might say, are completely reliant on the grace of God. That’s what grace is: a gift from God, “unearned and undeserved,” as our prayer book catechism says.[1] Grace, like any true gift, can’t be controlled. Grace isn’t predictable. Grace is freely given, and hopefully, it’s freely received. Madeleine L’Engle believed that true artists, whether they purport to be Christian or not, whether they believe in God or not, and whether they know it or not, are responding to God’s grace. To create art, then, is an act of faith. The creative process requires faith that the work of art is worth creating, and it demands faith in a creative power greater than we are that allows us to create. For those of us who profess belief in God, we can clearly name the source of that power as God.
Now, journey with me for a minute to the organ console, where Matthew Glandorf sits for his penultimate Sunday here at Good Shepherd. You’ve already heard him improvise during this Mass, and there’s more to come. If creating art or music is an act of faith, then in Matt’s incredible gift for improvisation, we have a glimpse into what faith looks like on the ground. Improvisation, while it may or may not be explicitly Christian, helps us understand the relationship between law and grace. And this, I promise, has nothing to do with Matt taking a Lutheran church position in Germany.
Matt will be the first to tell you that while his knack for improvisation is a gift from God, to improvise well necessitates discipline. No one can improvise well without practicing scales, understanding harmony, and studying musical form. But no one can improvise well by attending only to scales, harmony, and form. And this is where grace comes in. This is also what Madeleine L’Engle would call the paradox of making art. True artists don’t wait for creative gifts to plop into their laps. True artists labor in the field of technique and daily practice so that they can eventually submit to God’s freeing gift of inspiration. This is how grace works. Grace happens in the moment where discipline, musical rules, and musical reasoning give way to inspiration.
Any novice improviser will tell you that venturing away from the written musical page is the most difficult aspect of improvising. Initially, it’s frightening to think of creating music that is not written out. It requires a leap of faith. It requires an ability to trust oneself in a vista that has opened out from beyond rules, technique, and form. It requires courage, risk, and an ability to let go of control. In theological terms, it’s so much like yielding to God’s grace.
And this brings us to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. In chapter six, where we find ourselves today, Paul makes an astonishing claim. All who have been baptized have been transferred from one jurisdiction to another. The baptized are moved from the realm of sin and death to the realm of grace and freedom because they now live in Christ. And this is where faith comes in. To have faith means to accept that at some point in the game, laws and rules must open into something unpredictable and uncontrollable, which is the surprising freedom of God’s grace.
For Paul, the Jewish law is certainly not bad, and it’s most definitely not to be equated with sin, as much as some have mistakenly made this claim. The law provides a framework for right relationship with God. It contains an essential discipline that allows for the reception of God’s grace. But ultimately, any religious law, whether Jewish or Christian, must allow for God’s gift of grace to break in and take over. If we are to truly yield ourselves to God, we need the courage to be part of a musical improvisation. We must move from a land of certainty to a land of uncertainty. We must travel from a place of security to a dangerous land. We must leave all our worldly idols behind and put our whole trust in God, the only One who can give us true freedom.
In Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle quotes the late Anglican theologian H.A. Williams who said that “the opposite of sin can only be faith, and never virtue.”[2] Why? Because faith means relinquishing control to receive God’s gift of grace. Sin doesn’t know how to let go; it only knows how to enslave. Sin knows nothing of trust. It only breeds doubt and fear. At the end of the day, faith means having enough trust in God to give ourselves completely to him, with nothing held back. And as L’Engle would offer, all true artists understand something of this. And like such artists, we must all learn to improvise and allow God to help us paint outside the lines. We must learn to make music away from the written page.
But Paul isn’t naïve either. On the one hand, he says that all the baptized have already been transferred into the realm of God’s grace. But we, like Paul, also find ourselves struggling with sin. The safety of doctrine and ethical rules can easily become an idol. We find ourselves wanting to play it safe to ensure our salvation. And at some point, we are tempted to believe that just because we practice our scales every day, we are entitled to a burst of inspiration. We try to earn what can only be a gift from God.
Here we see sin at its wiliest. It’s sin that tells us we can’t trust the grace of God. It’s sin that empowers the religious voices that promise to give you God’s truth in a neat little package. It’s sin that perpetuates legalism in the Church. It’s sin that forces us to stay away from God’s grace because we aren’t worthy enough to receive it. It’s sin that urges us to seek the immediate satisfaction of knowing exactly what God wants us to do at any given moment. It’s sin that scares us into thinking that no matter how much we love God, we can’t take the bold step of yielding our complete selves over to him. It’s sin that won’t allow us to let go because sin won’t let go of us.
This is why we still cling to our reputations, to our fear of God’s wrath, to our money, and to our tidy theology. It's sin that exhorts us never to give up control. It’s sin that still enslaves us and forces us to stick to music on the page, in terror of making any mistakes. All this when God wants us to improvise with him.
But the worst trick that sin plays with our minds is when it would have us believe that we need to earn God’s love and favor. Play it safe, color between the lines, and seek clear answers, sin says, because only then will you be privy to God’s love.
But though we live with one foot being yanked back into the realm of sin and fear, and while we try with all our might to stand firmly in the realm where there is true freedom and imagination, if we can trust God enough, just maybe we can stand with both feet in the land of freedom and grace. Maybe we can learn to improvise.
I, for one, am grateful for Matt and all artists who can help us understand something of what it means to yield to God’s grace, to improvise through life. Talk to any artist or musician, and they will tell you about a moment when they are “in the zone,” or perhaps even outside their bodies. They are so completely caught up in the creative act of making art or music, that they are utterly free.
Can you imagine, then, a spiritual life like that? Can you imagine trusting God so completely and utterly that you would give up your worst fears and worries just to make music with God? Can you imagine yielding your whole body, everything you have, and your entire soul to the One who created you in love? Such yielding isn’t only for artists and musicians. It isn’t only for saints. It’s for you and me. For to yield to God in such a way is to have faith. And faith is the opposite of sin. Faith is what it means to be absolutely free because we are living, breathing, and moving in a new kingdom. And in this kingdom, sin has no authority and no power. This kingdom can’t be bought or earned. All it takes to get there is a leap of faith.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
July 2, 2023
[1] p. 858.
[2] Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Bantam, 1980), 148.