“At this level in our program we’d prefer to type of tip our hat to the good Louis Armstrong with out whom we’d don’t know what we’d even be taking part in now.” That is how the late jazz pianist and educator Ellis Marsalis (1934–2020) launched Louis Armstrong’s traditional Struttin’ with Some Barbecue to a packed dwelling crowd on the event of his retirement from educating. The occasion passed off on August 4, 2001, at Lakefront Area in New Orleans, Louisiana, and introduced collectively Ellis’s kids Branford (sax), Wynton (trumpet), Delfeayo (trombone), and Jason (drums)—acclaimed musicians in their very own proper—for an unforgettable night of jazz.
This previous summer season I shared with my Holy Spirit class a biblical textual content Lutherans usually use to focus on the shortcoming of people after the autumn to know non secular issues other than the Holy Spirit’s work of their lives by the Phrase.
The pure particular person doesn’t settle for the issues of the Spirit of God, for they’re folly to him, and he’s not capable of perceive them as a result of they’re spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14 ESV).
The textual content exhibits up repeatedly within the E book of Harmony’s dialogue “In regards to the free will” in Article II of the System of Harmony (FC):
1. On this text it’s our educating, religion, and confession that human purpose and understanding are blind in non secular issues and perceive nothing on the premise of their personal powers, as it’s written, “Those that are pure don’t obtain the items of God’s Spirit, for they’re foolishness to them and they’re unable to know them” [1 Cor. 2:14*] when they’re requested about non secular issues (KW, FC, Epitome 2).
This textual content inhabits a broader repertoire of biblical voices, together with one other favourite of mine: “Let me ask you solely this: Did you obtain the Spirit by works of the regulation or by listening to with religion?” (Galatians 3:2). The fantastic thing about this textual content lies in its witness to what’s simply one of the vital foundational teachings in regards to the Holy Spirit, one which separates the biblical educating from rabbinic faculties of thought the apostle Paul would have been uncovered to in his research. In brief, the Holy Spirit will not be a reward for holiness however the supply of our holiness. Or because the apostle places it, we don’t obtain the Holy Spirit on the premise of our works however on the premise of religion in Christ alone once we hear the gospel and imagine.
Yet one more voice that sings the identical Spirit track is Martin Luther’s well-known rationalization to the third article of the Apostles’ Creed in his Small Catechism (SC):
I imagine that by my very own understanding or power I can not imagine in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, however as an alternative the Holy Spirit has known as me by the gospel, enlightened me along with his items, made me holy and stored me within the true religion . . . (KW, SC, 6)
Paraphrasing Ellis’s phrases about Armstrong, I instructed my college students, “Lutherans imagine that ‘with out the Holy Spirit, we wouldn’t even now what we’re doing right here!’” Which brings me again to the Marsalis household. In his introduction to the Louis Armstrong’s traditional, Ellis acknowledged in his personal approach the consensus of music students on the indeniable affect of Armstrong (affectionally generally known as “Pops”) within the growth of the language of jazz and the American songbook.
By way of affect in our lives, the Spirit is to the church what Louis Armstrong is to jazz, that’s, the one with out whom we’d not perceive or have the language to play, sing, reside, transfer, and have our being. To make this level, I shared with my college students a narrative usually instructed by Ellis’s son Wynton, simply one of many biggest trumpeters alive right this moment, wherein he talks about his days as a pupil at Julliard in New York, one of many prime music faculties on this planet. On the time, he was used to taking part in actually quick, technical trumpet solos like these of Freddie Hubbard. At some point his father Ellis despatched him a cassette tape with a Pops’ solo known as Jubilee for him to check. Cool Wynton thought Pops’ music gave the impression of among the corniest stuff he had ever heard. In an interview with Walter Isaacson for Amanpour and Firm, Wynton talks about that dialog along with his father:
He [Ellis] mentioned, “Hey man, verify this Louis Armstrong [album]” . . . I mentioned, “Let me simply be taught this solo.” I couldn’t, no approach on this planet I might play that solo . . . , it actually pressured some humility on me. I mentioned, properly, you recognize, I must determine [out], be taught, see what Pops was doing . . . I known as my father. I mentioned, “Man, I can’t make it by this Pops’ solo.” He began laughing. He mentioned, “I do know.”[i]
Upon listening to the story, college students admire that the Spirit is a bit like Pops, “with out whom we’d don’t know what we’d even be taking part in now.” With out the Spirit, we wouldn’t have the language, grammar, or vocabulary to worship the Father by the Son. With out the Spirit, we wouldn’t have the ability to confess, “Jesus is Lord.” We wouldn’t have the ability to cry out, “Abba, Father,” in prayer. Or to cite fourth-century church father St. Basil’s On the Holy Spirit, one other one in every of our class readings: “It’s not possible to worship the Son besides within the Holy Spirit; it’s not possible to name upon the Father besides within the Spirit of adoption” (27).
You may take a look at the Marsalis household’s rendition of Louis Armstrong’s Struttin’ with Some Barbecue at https://wyntonmarsalis.org/movies/view/struttin-with-some-barbecue If you hearken to this piece, bear in mind Ellis’s smart homage to Pops, “. . . with out whom we’d don’t know what we’d even be taking part in now.”
After which consider the apostle Paul’s homage to the Holy Spirit, the fount of all knowledge, with out whom we’d not know the issues of God that time us to religion and life in Jesus Christ:
For I made a decision to know nothing amongst you besides Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I used to be with you in weak point and in concern and far trembling, and my speech and my message weren’t in believable phrases of knowledge, however in demonstration of the Spirit and of energy, in order that your religion won’t relaxation within the knowledge of males however within the energy of God . . . For who is aware of an individual’s ideas besides the spirit of that particular person, which is in him? So additionally nobody comprehends the ideas of God besides the Spirit of God . . . The pure particular person doesn’t settle for the issues of the Spirit of God, for they’re folly to him, and he’s not capable of perceive them as a result of they’re spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:2–5, 11, 14).
Like Wynton’s appreciation for Pops, college students be taught humility earlier than the thriller of the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work of their lives. Like Ellis’s homage to Pops, additionally they be taught to honor the Holy Spirit “who with the Father and the Son collectively is worshipped and glorified.”
[i] You may hear Wynton inform the story, beginning round min. 9:27 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOIuzr-pvS4
