He played often, every day, so that the sound of jazz piano filled the home. The Times article went on to tell Boyd Lee Dunlop’s story. He grew up poor on the east side of Buffalo, the child of a single mother. One day he saw a dilapidated piano in neighbor’s back yard and said to himself, “I got to play you!”
He got some friends to help him push and pull the piano into his house. He taught himself some chords with a 25-cent lesson book; he took 5 piano lessons for 50 cents each, but quit when the teacher complained he was getting ahead of the lesson plans. By age 15, he was playing gospel hymns in church and jazz melodies in nightclubs, where prostitutes took up a collection to buy him a decent suit.
This was the beginning of a lifetime of playing the piano he loved. He grew up and went to work, and would come home from his shift at Bethlehem Steel, sit down and the piano and play, soot-blackened hands blackening the keys, until one day he said, “What am I doing here?”
He realized that he could do nothing else but his true calling, quit the steel industry and started traveling around the country for a lifetime of playing gigs in smoky bars. Until one day, four years ago, he came to the nursing home, with 50 cents in his pocket.
A photographer was at the nursing home one day, heard Boyd Lee Dunlop playing the old piano in the cafeteria, recorded the sounds on his cell phone, and sent the recording to a music producer friend. His friend agreed that the playing was remarkable, and signed Boyd Lee Dunlop to record his first CD, called Boyd’s Blues.
This is the story of a man who knew from the moment he saw his first piano, what he had been created to do and be.
Today’s scriptures tell us two of the most important things we will ever hear about God, and about ourselves. They address the question, what kind of god is God? And they address the question, who does God want us to be? Who is God? And who are we? These are the basic questions of Advent, and in fact, the basic questions of our lives as Christians.
To these questions, what kind of god is God? And who are we? Two prophets speak. Isaiah opens his mouth and begins to proclaim who he is and what God has called him to do, and as we hear the voice of that calling, we begin to understand more about God’s relationship with the world. Isaiah is a prophet: not a person who foretells the future, but a person who understands how God is working in the world and speaks God’s words. He speaks about his calling in our Old Testament reading today. “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,” says Isaiah, “because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.”
Those beautiful and famous words tell us who Isaiah is: he is the one who is called to speak words of good news, comfort, healing, freedom. Isaiah is speaking to a group of Israelites who are living in disappointment. They have returned from exile in Babylon, exuberant at going back home. But they have found Jerusalem in ruins, have rebuilt Temple but to nowhere near its former glory, they have met disappointment at every turn.
To a group of people living with disappointment, God speaks words of hope. And God’s words, spoken by Isaiah, tell us who God is: God is the God of the Exodus, the God who loves the poor and comforts those who mourn; God is the God of all who suffer and all who have lost all hope. God is the God who brings freedom and deliverance.
Five centuries after Isaiah, the last of the Hebrew prophets arises – John. (Just to be clear – John the Baptizer is the person the story is about; John the gospel writer, not the same John, is the writer of the story.) John the Gospel Writer has a different view of John the Baptizer than the other gospels – in fact he doesn’t call John the “Baptist.” Today’s reading calls John simply a “witness” – this is John the Witness.
And this John the Witness knows just as clearly as Isaiah who he is called to be – he knows he is NOT the Messiah, NOT Elijah or another Hebrew prophet. He is the one who is witness to the light – he sees the light of Christ coming into the world, and he helps open the eyes of others to see this light.
Which tells us something not only about who John is, but who God is. God is the one who sees darkness in our world, and shines light into the darkness. Christ is the light who comes into the world. We are the ones who stand with this light in our midst, and may never know it. We are the ones who need to open our eyes to see what God is doing .
All this tells us who the prophets Isaiah and John are, and they tell us something about who God is. But what about other question: Who does God want us to be?
A theme that runs through today’s scriptures is the theme of vocation – calling. Like Boyd Lee Dunlop the jazz piano player, who knew the moment he saw his first piano, “I got to play you!”, and made that a lifelong calling, these prophets know clearly their own calling, clearly and without doubt. And these prophets who have spoken God’s words and transformed the world, speak also to us in our lives. They speak to us of who God is, and they speak to us of who God calls us to be: people who live to transform the world in God’s name, people who yearn to shine God’s light into the darkness of this world.
There is a story about Basil the Great of Caesarea, a saint and bishop of the 4th century. When the Roman emperor Valens became displeased with Basil and sent a messenger, Modestus, to threaten him with exile, torture or death if he didn’t submit to the emperor’s will, Basil stood firm. When Modestus exclaimed that he had never known anyone to act that way before, Basil answered, “Perhaps you have never met a bishop before.”
What if you and I could make people exclaim with amazement at our determination to do God’s will and live God’s way? What if you and I could understand God’s calling in our lives so completely that others would say that they had never seen anyone act that way before? I have a dream that our church community could smile and say simply, “Perhaps you have never met a follower of Christ before.”
Make no mistake, it is sometimes difficult to understand God’s calling the way Basil did – so deeply and joyfully that no one can sway us from it. It is sometimes difficult to act in accordance with God’s will, even if we believe we know what it is. But I believe that God calls each of us to a vocation, a particular calling. So as Christ-followers, we help do the things Jesus, Isaiah and John did: humble the proud, exalt the lowly, feed the hungry, free those who are captives of sin and oppression, and shine God’s light into a world that too easily slips into darkness.
We may do these things through music, through prophecy, through teaching, through organization, through outreach, through hospitality – whatever the gift is that God has given us. And I think we begin to discover our calling as we think about what we love. As Boyd Lee Dunlop loved the piano, saw it and knew, “I got to play you!” each of us also has things that draw us – something we can’t NOT do. Wherever we go you can’t NOT – assume leadership of a group; speak the words of God; care for children; make things with your hands; etc.
Christian author Frederick Buechner said that each one of us is called to a vocation, and asked how we can identify that vocation, he said this: “Your vocation is that place where your deepest gladness and the world’s deepest hunger meet.”
Boyd Lee Dunlop has a vocation of playing the piano, bringing beauty and joy to the cleanser-scented halls of dilapidated nursing home. We all also have a calling that comes out of our unique gifts and talents and life experiences; And we each have passions, needs that the world has that God has brought to our attention in a very special way. And where those two things meet is our vocation – and that is the place where we can give God’s gift to the world.
As you are doing your Christmas shopping, think about one more gift. As Jesus brought the gift of himself to us on Christmas Day, pray, think, ask: what is the gift of yourself the world is waiting to receive?
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