A Messy Hallelujah

As I Was Saying is a forum for a variety of perspectives to foster faith-related conversations among our readers with the goal of mutual learning, even in disagreement. Apart from articles written by editorial staff, these perspectives do not necessarily reflect the views of The Banner.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” —2 Cor. 12:9

In May 1970, Professor Galvin Bryars pinned a flier to a bulletin board at England’s Portsmouth School of Art. Scribbled on the paper was a call for students to join a spontaneous orchestra to compete in a spring talent show featuring a wide variety of acts. The flier said the orchestra was open to anyone—no skill or experience required. However, it stated two simple expectations: students had to show up for practice and they could not play badly on purpose.

Delighted by the 13 students who responded, Bryars entered the scratch orchestra into the talent competition and named it The Portsmouth Sinfonia.

When the Portsmouth Sinfonia took the stage, they focused on playing only the “familiar bits” of classical works. Throughout the performance, the orchestra managed to make music that was recognizable, but full of wrong notes, timing errors, and strange galloping tempos. In the end, although the cacophony of sound was quite awful (and funny), the students approached the music with such care and respect that it made for a very endearing flop on the face. Even though the Portsmouth Sinfonia lost the competition (first place went to an Elvis impersonator), there was an outpouring of enthusiasm for the strange art school experiment.

After the talent show, the orchestra continued to perform at various venues and draw curious students, swelling to almost 50 members by late 1970. Brian Eno, a young rising avant-garde musician at the time (who later produced David Bowie and U2) joined the Sinfonia and played the clarinet, an instrument he was completely unfamiliar with. Leaning on Eno’s credibility, the group signed a record deal in 1973 and a year later released a debut album—Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays the Popular Classics, featuring famous selections from the William Tell Overture, Beethoven’s Fifth, and the Nutcracker Suite.

Some months later, Rolling Stone Magazine gave the album a lowly 1 star and said it was perhaps “the worst record ever made.” A savvy promotional agent working with the group took advantage of the buzz created by the bad press, flipped the poor review on its head and proudly declared the Portsmouth Sinfonia the worst orchestra in the world.

In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church, he addresses a group of leaders enamored with appearance, and special abilities including visions. Distancing themselves from any hint of weakness, these leaders embraced an attractive Christian image that was persuasive, professional, and powerful. In chapter 11, Paul goes head-to-head with these spiritual elites and, against his better judgment, boasts about his own heavenly visions. But then Paul pivots, moves the conversation in a different direction and says something surprising: while his head was in the clouds, God gracefully tethered him to the ground by giving him a thorn in his flesh.

The nature of this “thorn” is never disclosed, but we know that God’s grace lesson caused Paul to double down on the confounding gospel truth of God’s preference for weakness rather than strength.

Earlier in the letter, Paul attempts to ground these leaders in the steady rhythm of this upside-down gospel when he highlights the universal human weakness described in Genesis 2:7, when God forms humanity from the dirt and breathes into them divine breath. Calling the leadership to remember their humble beginnings—“we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (4:7)—Paul guides them again to live every day with the vivid awareness of their fragile, clay-based existence with the promise of God’s sufficient grace (2 Cor 12:9).

With eyes clearly focused on God’s ultimate revelation of power made perfect in weakness—the crucified Christ—Paul concludes his correspondence by critiquing the self-referential, strength-based focus of their boasting and says, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9b-10).

This kind of boasting is counterintuitive. Naturally, we want to hide our weakness and showcase our strength. But Paul reminds the whole church (not just the leaders) that the good news resonates best when we are weak, needy, vulnerable, and unpolished. When we embrace our creaturely dependance and clay-based fragility, rather than pretending we’re self-made, strong, and competent, our collective witness begins to sound like a symphony of amazing grace notes soaring inside a Christ themed melody.

With increasing fame, the Portsmouth Sinfonia booked a performance at London’s prestigious Royal Albert Music Hall. A few days later, a well-respected music critic published a full-page article in a British newspaper decrying the event and smearing the performers. The article made a splash but had the opposite effect when thousands of curious people bought tickets to the concert. On May 28, 1974, the Portsmouth Sinfonia took to the stage and butchered familiar bits of beloved classical works to the best of their ability.

At the end of the concert, the night turned magical when audience members were invited to join their voices to accompany the orchestra in a messy but glorious rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.

Today, more than ever, the church is enamored with strength, efficiency, and mastery—smoothing over human frailty to appear more polished and powerful. Energized by the dynamic Spirit given at Pentecost, it’s easy to want and even expect the church to be a gathering marked by excellence and expertise—moving and breathing together like a finely tuned Sinfonia. But, because of sin and creaturely weakness, the church, even when striving for excellence, will always be plagued by plenty of wrong notes.

Frustrated by this perpetual flop on the face, many have become disillusioned and given up on the Christian gathering. But the story of the Portsmouth Sinfonia can help us reimagine what is happening when we gather as the body of Christ—offering us a fresh way to love the church and patiently endure the mess.

The church is not a gathering of professionals and experts. Nor is it a gathering of the strong, smart, or skilled. Like the Portsmouth Sinfonia, the church is a gathering of dearly loved amateurs, struggling with wayward rhythms while slowly learning to play the high heavenly score. When we approach the church as a clay-based community—marked by weakness and marred by sin—we can more easily accept and confess our wrongdoing while growing in trust that God is powerfully working his grace in and through our frailty and failures to accomplish his divine purpose.

After the performance at the Royal Albert Music Hall, the Portsmouth Sinfonia lost momentum. Many of the members eventually learned how to play their instruments, and the novelty of an amateur orchestra wore off. The church has existed for almost 2,000 years. Through the ages, the Christian gathering has sounded like an ensemble of clay instruments plagued by a cacophony of fractured melodies and misplaced chords.

But that’s not the whole story.

Lean in, tune your ear, and you’ll begin to hear something surprising in the mess—familiar bits of the Hallelujah Chorus as God’s grace gloriously crescendos in human weakness.