Mid Week Reflection

Let us join now in a mid week prayer and reflection, this week from Rev Derek Akker who offers a wonderful link between jazz, music and the joyful melody of worship which is there for us all.

Sunday’s are not the same

The inspiration for this reflection came after a Sunday’s Morning Praise and hearing Barry Sugden, our church pianist, play Dawn by Duke Ellington at the end of our service. In the 1960’s I was fortunate to see and hear ‘The Duke’ live on a number of occasions at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. On one such occasion Duke Ellington was on the bill with the Oscar Peterson Trio and Ella Fitzgerald and I was on the stage and Ella Fitzgerald glided across the stage and her song was directed to me but that’s another story.

While I miss going church on Sunday mornings the online worship has its advantages. It is good to hear Barry playing at the beginning and end of the service and being able to both prepare for worship and at the end signal a restart to my Sunday routine. No chatter, just the melody ringing in your ears.

Hearing ‘The Duke’ music played reminded me that he was a talented musician and composer who had deep Christian roots. His Sunday’s would start with worship in a Prim Methodist Church with his mother and the evening in a very lively Baptist Church with his father. This must have left its mark.

Duke Ellington like all of us was flawed and had his failures. He knew and tasted the excesses of the ‘good life’ that went with his Jazz-centred lifestyle. Mingled in with his life style was the occasional pull to his spiritual past. He composed a large repertoire of spiritual jazz music. The result was a number of sacred jazz concerts and records.

Written in 1943 ‘Come Sunday’ is a Jazz classic and it could be seen as Duke Ellington’s musical portrait of what the Gospel meant to the African-American community.

Today ‘Come Sunday’ is available in an instrumental and a vocal version. The vocal has a deep earthy blues feel about it. It is a powerful and yet prayerful number, the words ‘Please look down and see my people through’ come through in a moving way and speak to us today with all that is going on.

In the last few months we have faced issues that have dominated and restricted our lives. Physically we may have worshipped apart but have come together in our prayers for strength to see ourselves through.

‘Come Sunday’ talks of it being ‘brighter by and by’, and of belief in a God who is ‘now, was then and always will be. With God’s blessing we can make it through eternity’. We have in Come Sunday a distinctive composition with the rich sounds of instruments and voices.

Jazz in worship sounds much like what was happening in Psalm 150

Praise him with the blast of the trumpet; praise him upon the harp and lyre.

Praise him with timbrel and dances; praise him upon the strings and pipe.

Praise him with ringing cymbals; praise him upon the clashing cymbals.

 

Let us hear ‘Come Sunday’

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoU8awG8erg

 

Ooh
Lord, dear Lord above,
God almighty,
God of love,
Please look down and see my people through.

I believe that God put sun and moon up in the sky.
I don’t mind the grey skies
’cause they’re just clouds passing by.
Heaven is a goodness time.
A brighter light on high.

Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
And have a brighter by and by.

Lord, dear Lord above, God almighty,
God of love,
Please look down and see my people through.
I believe God is now,
was then and always will be.
With God’s blessing we can make it through eternity.

Lord, dear Lord above, God almighty,
God of love,
Please look down and see my people through.

Amen.

Music, whatever its style be it Newton, Wesley, Handel, Kendrick or Ellington can draw us toward worship. While I would not use the words of the founder of the Salvation Army about the devil not having all the good tunes, music is music and the richness and diversity of music styles can inspire.

 

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Alleluia.      (Psalm 150.6)

 

We hear the Lord’s Prayer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foWzC2Kqz5Y

 

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Alleluia. I’ll sing to that!

 

Derek Akker