Write and Left

'Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer

Thought it scarcely worth his while

To waste much time on the old violin,

But held it up with a smile.

"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,

"Who'll start the bidding for me?"

"A dollar, a dollar. Then two! Only two?

Two dollars, and who'll make it three?"

"Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;

Going for three..." But no,

From the room, far back, a grey-haired man

Came forward and picked up the bow;

Then wiping the dust from the old violin,

And tightening the loosened strings,

He played a melody pure and sweet,

As a caroling angel sings.

The music ceased, and the auctioneer,

With a voice that was quiet and low,

Said: "What am I bid for the old violin?"

And he held it up with the bow.

"A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two?

Two thousand! And who'll make it three?

Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice,

And going and gone," said he.

The people cheered, but some of them cried,

"We do not quite understand.

What changed its worth?" Swift came the reply:

"The touch of the Master's hand" (Welch).

I hope that poem about the rescue of an old violin can strike a note for us and get us in tune with love on this last Sunday before Christmas Day.

Love is our theme for this fourth Sunday in Advent. Even though the word “Love” does not appear in Matthew or Luke’s stories of the birth of Jesus, the feeling of Love is written all over those stories.

We hear God’s love for us in the song Mary sings. She sees herself as a lowly slave in God’s sight, but she rejoices in the gift God has given her, bringing her in tune with His purpose for her as she will become the mother of our Lord:

"My soul magnifies the Lord, [47] and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, [48] for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden” (Luke 1:46-48).

We see love in Joseph when the angel assures him that Mary’s pregnancy is from God and not from intimate relations with another man (Matthew 1:18-25). He pays the price as he accepts Mary in love as his wife and Jesus as his son (Luke 2).

We see love and joy in the hearts of the shepherds as they follow the instructions of the angels and go see for themselves how God’s love is manifest in that stable in Bethlehem (Luke 2)

We see love and peace and hope in the elderly man and woman in the Temple when Joseph and Mary go there for ritual purification of both mother and child. When God reveals to Old Simeon who this Child is, the old man says he is ready to die happy. Also, Anna is an elderly widow, a prophetess of God, there in the Temple. She, too, is keenly aware of this revelation of God’s love.

The Fourth Gospel doesn’t even mention the birth of Jesus, but the third chapter of John spells out the love that brought Jesus into the world:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him (3:16-17).

St. Paul puts great emphasis on love in his letters. He sees himself as being much like that old violin, “battered and scarred with sin.” In First Corinthians, he refers to himself disparagingly. He says he is no more fit to be called an apostle than for an abortion or miscarriage to be called a child (1 Corinthians 15:8).

So he has been saved from being cast aside, thrown on the garbage heap.

In our primary passage for today, Romans 5, Paul makes clear that every one of us is like that old violin, hardly worth putting on the auction block. Who would want us? He answers his own question: Christ died for us:

[6] While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. [7] Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man -- though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. [8] But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. [9] Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. [10] For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. [11] Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation.

In the auction analogy, Jesus paid the price. He offered Himself for us. He saw potential that nobody else saw. It took The Touch of the Master’s Hand to help us see ourselves as He sees us.

The auctioneer in the poem sees you and me as worth very little, But when it seems we are of little value, Jesus ups the ante a thousand times over.

That was the same violin. It almost went for three dollars, but Jesus sees infinite value in us. The violin did nothing to change its worth. For all the violin could do, it would have sold for three measly bucks. But The value increased exponentially by The Touch of the Master’s Hand.

Bert was a man who might be sold for three dollars. He was down on his luck. Out of work. Very little money. Life hardly seemed worth living. Almost down to his last dollar, Bert checked into a cheap hotel. An anonymous person. Alone in a big city. He had no idea what he would do tomorrow. He sat and stared at the four walls. Got up and paced the floor. Flopped down on the bed. Stared at the ceiling. Got up and walked around the room some more. He thought about going out and finding something to do. But that would cost money. And he was short of that.

He remembered the cigarette he had bummed from the guy on the next bar stool. Remembered smoke as it curled upward to become part of a cloud that hung from the ceiling. Could almost taste the beer gone stale as he tried to figure how to pay for one more glass. Smelled the loud perfume from the faded woman in a faded dress who kept edging closer.

Then, with a start, he was back in the present. He looked at the phone. But he didn’t know anybody to call. He sat on the side of the bed. Then he got up again and started looking through the dresser drawers and came across a Gideon Bible. He wasn’t much into church. Hadn’t read the Bible since he was a kid in Sunday school. But, for some reason, he started leafing through, stopping now and then to read a few verses. Maybe he read from the fiftieth psalm:

Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me (Psalm 50:15).

Or perhaps Romans 6:23:

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The more Bert read, the more he realized his life was out of tune with His maker. So there, in that lonely hotel room in a city where nobody knew him and he knew nobody, he opened himself to the loving, forgiving God who knew Bert’s true value. He felt the Touch of the Master’s Hand.

You’ve heard this kind of story before. It sounds like something from a book of sermon illustrations. But this story is different. I knew Bert. He and I both worked at the Georgia Baptist Convention office in Atlanta years ago. I heard this story directly from the man who had been in that hotel that night reading the Gideon Bible he had found in the dresser drawer. At the time I knew Bert, he was the associate editor of the Georgia Baptist paper. My office was just down the hall.

Romans, chapter 5, could be a picture of Bert:

A stanza from “Rescue the Perishing” might have described Bert:

Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore;
Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness,
Chords that were broken will vibrate once more (Crosby).

By the way, the author of “Rescue the Perishing” was the blind writer Fanny J. Crosby, who wrote as many as eight or nine thousand hymns and gospel songs. She told of how she felt led to write these words:

As I was addressing a large company of working men one hot August evening, the thought kept forcing itself upon my mind that some mother’s boy must be rescued that very night or perhaps not at all. So I requested that, if there was any boy present, who had wandered away from mother’s teaching, he would come to the platform at the conclusion of the service.

A musician friend, W. Howard Doane, had given Ms Crosby the topic, “Rescue the Perishing.” He wanted her to write words to a song, based on those words. So as she sat on the platform that night, praying for some young man to be rescued from his sins, she thought of the words, “Rescue the perish, care for the dying” which became the basis for the song.

But there in the auditorium that night when she prayed for some young man to be touched, something dramatic happened:

A young man of eighteen came forward and said, “Did you mean me? I have promised my mother to meet her in heaven; but as I am now living that will be impossible.” We prayed for him; he finally arose with a new light in his eyes; and exclaimed triumphantly, “Now, I can meet mother in heaven; for I have found her God” (Crosby).

As Paul describes people estranged from God, people in need of reconciliation, it could apply to this young man:

[10] For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. [11] Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation.

That young man left the building that night reconciled---made right with God.

But Ms Crosby tells more to this remarkable story:

In November, 1903, I went to Lynn, Massachusetts, to speak before the Young Men’s Christian Association. I told them the incident that led me to write “Rescue the Perishing," as I have just related it. After the meeting a large number of men shook hands with me, and among them was a man, who seemed to be deeply moved. You may imagine my surprise when he said, “Miss Crosby, I was the boy, who told you more than thirty-five years ago that I had wandered from my mother’s God.

The evening that you spoke at the mission I sought and found peace, and I have tried to live a consistent Christian life ever since. If we never meet again on earth, we will meet up yonder.” As he said this, he raised my hand to his lips and before I had recovered from my surprise he had gone; and remains to this day a nameless friend, who touched a deep chord of sympathy in my heart. It is these notes of sympathy that vibrate when a voice calls them forth from the dim memories of the past, and the music is celestial (Crosby).

Chords that were broken will vibrate once more (Crosby).

Earlier, we heard about a violin people didn’t think was worth much. Instead, the instrument proved to be quite valuable in the hands of a master violinist. That was a poem. But let me tell you a true story about something happening down in the South American country of Paraguay.

Some kids who live on the banks of a sewage-filled creek are playing in an orchestra. Their families spend their time at the landfill, hunting items other people thought were worthless. These folks sell what others consider trash. That’s how they scrape out a living.

And you should see the instruments these young musicians play in the orchestra. I’ve watched a short video over and over to get a better understanding of these young people and their instruments.

A boy makes beautiful music with his cello. And what a cello! The body of the cello is a

ten-gallon oil can. Another boy plays what once was just an old, battered aluminum salad bowl. Now, it’s a violin. A fifteen-year-old girl plays a flute made out of tin cans. Galvanized pipes and other pieces of scrap metal have been turned into flutes and clarinets and saxophones. They say bottle caps work perfectly well as the keys for the sax. A tall yellow metal barrel is now the body of a double bass violin. And on it goes.

This recycling project was the brainchild of a social worker and music teacher named Favio Chavez.

Senor Chavez said he learned clarinet and guitar as a child, and had started a small music school in another town in Paraguay before he got a job with an environmental organization teaching trash-pickers how to protect themselves. He even started a tiny music school at the landfill several years ago.

The violins and cellos and wind instruments the kids play don’t look like much. But their playing is anything but ragtag. They have caring teachers who know how to get music out of them, teachers who find ways to get them out of the garbage dump. The teachers have found money to take the kids to other countries for public performances. This calls attention to how you can do something worthwhile with things that seem worthless.

The man who had the initial vision, Favio Chavez, discovered the talents of one of the trash-pickers. The man had been a carpenter, so he knew how to build all sorts of things. Still another man had been repairing damaged trumpets in another town. Then Senor Chavez enlisted him to make instruments out of trash.

Many orchestras use the word philharmonic in their names. That word’s original meaning is love for music. So it makes sense to call an orchestra a philharmonic orchestra because its members love music. The orchestra for the kids from the landfill is called the Landfill Harmonic.

One repairman said making instruments from garbage is slow work that demands precision. But he finds it “very gratifying.” He said, “Chavez is turning these kids . . . into people with a lot of self-esteem, giving them a shield against the vices.”

The 14-year-old first violinist for the orchestra said this about her experience: “The orchestra has given a new meaning to my life, because in [our village], unfortunately, many young people don’t have opportunities to study, because they have to work or they’re addicted to alcohol and drugs.”

On the video, you could see a young fellow’s eyes light up as he played. He was so proud of the rich harmonic sounds he creates on his instrument made of recycled garbage.

Another teenage girl said this about the music she makes; “When I listen to the sound of a violin, I feel butterflies in my stomach. It’s a feeling that I don’t know how to explain.”

Still another young girl said, “My life would be . . .” Then her voice trailed off as she hunted for words to finish her thought. She shrugged her shoulders, then said “My life would be . . . worthless without music.”

Her words calls the song to mind:

What would I do without my music,

What would I do without my song,

What would I do without my music,

To make it right when everything seems wrong (Middlebrooks and Belland).

We noted earlier that Matthew and Luke never use the word love to describe what God did in sending Jesus into the world. But love is evident in what God did and in the lives of people who responded to God’s love.

As Christina Rossetti wrote:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign (Rossetti).

And my friend Bert found God’s love -- or God’s love found Bert -- in that Gideon Bible.

Love is never mentioned in that video about the Landfill Harmonic, but God’s love shows through in Senor Chavez and his friends as they find trash in the landfill and turn that seemingly worthless junk into musical instruments. And those musical instruments turn those kids from the landfill into young musicians with hope for the future.

One of the trash-pickers explained it this way:

We found the violin’s shell in this pile [of garbage] and that’s why we began to make

recycled instruments. I never imagined building instruments [out of trash, but] I feel

very happy when I see a kid playing a recycled violin.”

The video explains that Landfill Harmonic is “about people transforming trash into music; about love, courage, and creativity.”

In the video, one man said, “People around here realize we shouldn’t throw trash away carelessly.” But he added, “Well, we shouldn’t throw people away either.”

And that brings us full circle, back to poem we began with, about the seemingly worthless violin that almost sold for three dollars.