Psalm 80:7-15; October 4, 2026; World Communion Sunday
In psalms we often find metaphors, poems, and meaning.
So let it be for us and our world today.
—
On July 31, 1868… which I don’t think any of us were around for … a young Finnish boy named Jean, age 3, lost his father to typhoid fever.
The only male influence in his life became that of his uncle, who was interested in music, especially the violin.
From an early age, Jean connected with the instrument, but also the world around him developing a deep love for nature; frequently he would take long walks around the countryside of Loviisa, a town which sits on the east coast of Finland, where his family took up residence in the summer months.
In his own words from a diary: “For me, Loviisa represented sun and happiness. Loviisa was freedom.”
And there, in sun and happiness, in freedom (and don’t we all feel free and happy in the sun?), little Jean grew into a young man; and along his way he earned quite a reputation for himself, for his musical acumen and virtuoso.
Soon he gained entry to prestigious universities in Europe and learned under select masters in Helsinki, Berlin, and Vienna.
And soon after those accomplishments followed another; his first Symphony (No. 1 in E minor) which premiered in 1899 to rousing applause in his homeland’s capital. In short, his career was made.
Jean Sibelius would go on to compose six additional symphonies, amongst other works, before ultimately abandoning his eighth, choosing a life of silence for 30 years where he composed nothing at all, before dying in his home at age 91.
But today, I want to focus on his Fifth Symphony. Indeed, the greatest piece of classical music I have ever heard. And Seth agrees. He saw it with me several years ago at the Kimmel; his little hands conducting The Philadelphia Orchestra from a booth hovering above.
The year was 1914… not when we heard it of course… but when the Fifth started taking shape. Remembering your history, you might recall that the first five months of 1914 were quite harsh on our world, marked by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the beginning of the Great War (World War I).
In late September of that year, Sibelius wrote a note to a friend saying: “I’m in a deep dell again. But I already begin to see dimly the mountain that I shall certainly ascend… for God opens his door for a moment and His orchestra is playing the Fifth Symphony.”
The Spring after, Sibelius wrote another letter reporting: “Today at ten to eleven I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time.”
And in a diary entry written later that April he added, “It’s as if God the Father had thrown down pieces of a mosaic from the floor of heaven and asked me to work out the pattern.”
Finally, in 1916, that pattern was almost complete and the first composition of the Fifth Symphony was thought to be done; in a word Sibelius called it “triumphal.”
But soon after, something went wrong.
It no longer sounded right to him.
Oh, he tried to revise the arrangement a second time, but ultimately, he tossed this one too, confessing in his diary: “The Fifth Symphony… been struggling with God.”
Like the Psalmist in our text today who you might recall at first praised God for “the mountains covered with shade; the mighty cedars with its branches; and its shoots reaching the River” (Psalm 80); Sibelius soon beseeched God looking for the same answers, asking in unison:
“Why have you broken down its walls?
The boar from the forest ravages it,
and all that move in the field feed on it.
Turn again, O God of hosts;
look down from heaven
and have regard for this vine,
the stock that your right hand has planted.”
But my friends, good news was soon delivered, for God indeed had regard for this vine, just as God has regard for this world.
For just as God has regard for the psalmist, God also had regard for Sibelius, and that of his majestic, triumphal, Fifth Symphony.
Setting down with it then for a third time, Sibelius finally saw and understood the pattern as it was originally disseminated from Heaven.
And in November 1919, five months after the Treaty of Versailles was signed, Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony premiered the way that God and His orchestra had intended it.
And the world began to heal.
Ben plays the first three minutes of movement three from it.
If you listen to the rest of that third movement, I believe your soul will be transported. Hopefully even more than it has today.
The ending perhaps is the most striking as the tonality rises, and the tension builds, culminating in a final thunderous slashing.
It can seem to some at first like all the beauty has been killed, like the swans have died, and that the boars have ravaged the piece and won.
But as it ends in silence and leaves you speechless, you’ll soon be wanting to listen again; and there upon repeated listens you’ll hear the parallels of life playing in rhythm, echoing the refrain:
That there is beauty and there is tragedy, but that which lasts is beauty.
For what is beautiful is eternal, especially in God’s mosaics we’ve yet to see or fully understand.
Or, as Mary Oliver worded it in “Don’t Hesitate” found in a collection of poems entitled Swan:
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.
There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.
And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left.
Perhaps this is its way of fighting back,
that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world.
It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.
Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.
Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
Amen.
