by Rob Caudillo
On November 18, 1995, the Israeli violinist Itzhak Perlman came out on stage at New York’s Lincoln Center. If you’ve ever seen Mr. Perlman perform, then you know that getting up on stage is no small matter for him. Stricken with polio as a child, Mr. Perlman wears braces on both legs and walks with two crutches. As he crosses the stage, he moves painfully, but with dignity, until he reaches his chair. He then sits down slowly, lays his crutches to one side, unfastens the clasps on his braces, tucks one foot back and stretches the other forward. He then reaches down and picks up his violin, tucks it under his chin, nods to the maestro and begins to play.
On this particular occasion, however, something went wrong. Just as Mr Perlman had finished the first stanza, a string broke on his violin. You could hear it snap, going off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant or what he had to do. People present that evening later said, “We thought that he would have to re-clasp his braces, pick-up his crutches, get up from his chair and limp off the stage…or else wait for someone to bring him another string or violin.”
But Mr. Perlman didn’t do either. Instead, he paused for a moment, closed his eyes, and then signaled the maestro to begin again. The orchestra commenced to play and he joined them where he’d left off. He played with the passion, power and purity like the audience had never heard before. Of course, the audience and fellow musicans knew it was impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. But that night, this artist refused to know that. “You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the pieces in his head”, someone would later say. “At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them – sounds they had never made before.”
When Mr. Perlman finished, there was an awesome silence in the hall. And then all of sudden, the audience exploded to its feet. They were cheering, clapping and shouting all in an effort to express how much everyone appreciated what Mr. Perlman had done. Mr. Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet the audience and then said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
Here at Marcus Whitman, we have been asked to enter into a covenant. It seems to me that central to our covenant season, is that each of us are asked to “find, share and use how much we each have left to give”. In other words, your and my tasks are to spend this season in using and sharing what time, what talents and what treasures you and I have with enthusiasm, passion, power and grace before the Lord, for Jesus Christ and with one another. It also seems to me, that as we do that, we discover and experience how much music you and I can still make for God’s kingdom work. May each of us have the gracious and awesome gift from knowing how much “music” you and I make on behalf of the Lord our God.
Peace,
Pastor Rob