Close to the Father’s Heart
a sermon based on John 1:1-18
by Rev. Randy Quinn

Yohann Anderson is a musician I met several years ago at a worship workshop. He was trying to help churches create contemporary worship services, and since we had one at our church, we thought he might have some good ideas for us.

There were several things he shared with us that we were already doing – and lots of other things that I no longer remember. But what I do remember was some of his theory about congregational singing. I think I remember it because it was so different than what I had been taught and because it also made so much sense to me.

Yohann began by telling us how a tuning fork works. You tap on the tines of the fork, and they begin to vibrate. (I found one and will demonstrate.) The size of the tines determines how fast they vibrate, but what actually happens is that the air around them begins to pulsate at the same speed. That pulsating resonates with our ear drums and our brains interpret it as a sound.

Lots of things work the same way – sometimes at pitches so high and so low that we cannot hear them. It’s why the philosopher-scientists asked the theoretical question of whether or not a tree falling in the woods makes a sound if there is no one there to hear it. The sound itself is only pulsating air. Without an ear to interpret the pulses, there is no evidence of a sound.

A piano tuner uses a tuning fork to tune the strings in a piano. He or she tightens or loosens the strings until they vibrate at the same speed as the tuning fork.

That much I knew. And many of you do, too.

After telling us that, Yohann did something else that I’ve seen done before. First he tapped the tines of a tuning fork, then he set it down on a table and the table began to vibrate at the same pitch. It became like an amplifier making the sound more easily heard throughout the room. (Again, I demonstrate.)

What he said next, however, still resonates within me – if you don’t mind the pun. That table is not a musical instrument. But it began to sing. For those who have come to believe they can’t sing or who have actually been told they can’t sing, Yohann says the truth is that like the table every one of us sings when we are in the presence of music. Our bodies begin vibrating with the music – just like the table did.

And in particular, our vocal cords begin to vibrate at the same pitch that we hear. The pulsating air not only “tickles” our ear drums, it causes our vocal cords to vibrate, too. Singing is simply letting air go over those vocal cords to produce musical chords.

Yohann said that some people don’t sing because they are afraid of singing the wrong note rather than letting their vocal cords give voice to the music that they are already creating. They may not know how to control their vocal cords yet, but they know how to sing – it’s how God created us!

He went on to suggest that the best way to get people to sing out loud is to use words without music so there are no wrong notes. (In our traditional worship service, we assume people can read music and know how to control their vocal cords to create music. At our Café Chapel, we allow people to resonate with the music before putting voice to the sound already being created by their vocal cords.)

Not everyone agrees with his theory. But you don’t have to agree with his conclusions to recognize an important truth.

If a tuning fork can make a table sing by getting close enough to it, then certainly the light of God can be reflected in our lives when we allow ourselves to get close enough to God.


Several years ago, on a trip to Kansas in fact, I began reading the works of Robert Fulghum aloud. I found myself laughing at what I was reading, so I would read it to Ronda. We read through an entire book on that trip. I have four of his books, but one I turn to regularly when I meet with couples to talk about weddings. I read a delightfully funny story about a wedding gone awry and a marriage that lasted.

Deep within that same book is another story I’d like to read for you now – though in the interest of time I think I’ll begin near the end of this particular story rather than from the beginning of it.

Robert Fulghum begins the story rambling about a trip he made to Greece. On that trip he met Alexander Papaderos, a doctor of Philosophy, who worked for many years trying to bring peace between the bitterly divided countries of Europe after World War II. Near the end of this story, Fulghum tells how he asked professor Papaderos why he does what he does. Papaderos explained his motivation for doing so by telling a story from his childhood .
"When I was a small child," he said, "during the war we were poor and lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.

"I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was impossible, so I kept only the largest piece . . . By scratching it on a stone, I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine – in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.

“I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out at idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of the light. The light – truth, understanding, knowledge – is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.

"I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have, I can reflect light into the dark places of the world – into the black places in the hearts of men – and change some things in people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise.”

Fulghum then tells how professor Papaderos took the same mirror and caught the sun’s light and turned it toward Fulghum’s face and then onto his hands.


If you followed along while I read the scripture this morning, you may have noticed that I skipped a few verses. As I’ve studied this passage from John’s gospel, I’ve come to appreciate the sheer beauty of it as well as the profundity of it.

But the poetic beauty, it seems to me, is detracted by the verses I left out. I left out what appear to be parenthetical comments about John the Baptist so that you could hear the entire poem.

Here’s what I left out. (Read John 1:6-9, 15).

Why John inserted them into these majestic lines baffles me. And the only conclusion I have come to is that the followers of John the Baptist must have originally used this poem to speak about John. He was so close to God that they thought this was an “ode to John.” The gospel writer is trying to refute their claim as he points them toward the true Word of God who is Jesus.

As I remembered the story of professor Papaderos, I suddenly realized that the goal is to be so effective at reflecting God’s light that people see God in us – much as the followers of John the Baptist had apparently seen in his life.

For that to happen, we must find a way to be close to the Father’s heart. We must find ways to “resonate” with God’s love. We must find ways to see the world through God’s eyes so that the world will see God’s eyes in us.

There is a song written by Gary Chapman that has been a favorite of mine since I first heard Amy Grant sing it while I was in college. In the chorus, he says:

When people look inside my life, I want to hear them say:
She’s got her Father’s eyes, her Father’s eyes
Eyes that find the good in things when good is not around,
Eyes that find the source of help when help just can’t be found.
Eyes full of compassion, seeing ev’ry pain,
Knowin’ what you’re goin’ through and feelin’ it the same,
Just like my Father’s eyes .

My hope is that in this new year, people will look at each of us and see God’s eyes. My prayer is that people will look at our church and experience the love of God.

That can only happen if we will tune our hearts to the heart of God.

(I tap the tuning fork again and set it on a table.)  Amen.