On January 24, 1975, Keith Jarrett went to Cologne to give a concert. He was in poor physical shape. Nevertheless, he wanted to give the concert. The 1300 people who had bought tickets were not to be disappointed.
In preparation for the concert, the world-renowned jazz pianist asked for a very special instrument. He wanted a Bösendorfer Model 290 Imperial. The biggest and best of the manufacturer’s grand pianos.
When he arrived on stage at the Cologne Opera House and saw the instrument standing there, his jaw dropped. There was indeed a Bösendorfer grand piano there, but it was a small practice grand piano the stagehands had wheeled out because of a misunderstanding.
The jazz virtuoso looked at the small instrument, which was obviously not in good condition. Very skeptically Jarrett sat down at the piano to feel how the instrument worked and hear how it sounded. The disappointment was enormous.
The piano was not properly tuned. The pedals didn’t work properly. The brightest notes were tinny, and the bass was light and thin. The baby grand piano really wasn’t an instrument to show what a pianist was capable of.
But there was far too little time to get another instrument in place, and a piano tuner would have needed several hours to get the piano in good shape.
Jarrett wanted to cancel the entire concert, but the 17-year-old concert organizer begged him to go ahead with the performance despite the miserable piano. After careful consideration, Jarrett agreed, both because his record company was going to make a live recording and the recording equipment was set up, and because he didn’t want to let the audience down.
From the very first note the audience knew they were in for a magical evening. Jarrett started with improvisations, and as he played, his playing evolved to undulate between simplicity and complexity. When the concert ended, a deafening applause broke out in the packed opera house. The album recorded that night became the best-selling jazz album by a single person. When referring to this event from January 24, 1975, it is simply called the “Cologne Concert.”
God and the Flawed Instrument
“Dream team” is the phrase used when we put together a team consisting of optimal players. In the dream team we find the perfect balance between the team members’ abilities and personality. Of course, we also want our churches to be the dream team.
The perfect church team, however, is a utopia.
The kingdom of God is a different kingdom. The power of the Holy Spirit is not primarily manifested in strength and power. The Spirit’s power is often seen as you scratch your head in bewilderment, not knowing what to do with the resources you have. It shows up in church members whose lives are flawed. People who can barely articulate their faith might turn out to be evangelists, and in a powerful way.
I marvel at the way God is playing the instrument we call church. An instrument that often turns out to have out-of-tune strings, unbalanced tonality, and a tinny sound.
God Uses Hopeless Situations for Something Great
In the book Challenges of Christian Leadership John Stott recounts an experience from 1958 during which he led an evangelistic campaign for university students in Sydney, Australia. The day before the last meeting of the series, Stott lost his voice. He still had to preach. Before he entered the stage, he had some students read the passage in 2 Corinthians 12 where Paul speaks about the “thorn in the flesh” and concludes like this:
“And [the Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor. 12:9).
Stott describes what happened: “We prayed that the thorn in the flesh might be taken away from me, and if I remember rightly they laid hands on me with prayer. But we went on to pray that if it pleased God to keep me in weakness, I would rejoice in my infirmities in order that the power of Christ might rest upon me, because when I am weak I am strong.”1
Stott continues: “I remember that I had to get within one inch of the microphone. I croaked the gospel. I was unable to use any inflections of voice, was unable to express personality. I was just a croak in a monotone, and all the time we were crying to God that His power would be demonstrated in human weakness.”2
Despite the physical challenges Stott was struggling with, the response to his appeal to accept Christ was greater than any of the preceding nights.
“Since 1958 I’ve been back to Australia about 10 times, and on every occasion somebody has come up to me and said, ‘Do you remember that night of preaching in the university hall when you’d lost your voice?’ and I’d say, ‘How could I ever forget it?’ And the person responded, ‘I was converted that night.’ ”3
We would have liked to be a Bösendorfer Model 290 Imperial. Instead, on the stage in front of us, there is a small and worn practice piano from a dusty basement. We see it throughout the Bible, and we see it in our own lives: God’s way of working isn’t quite what we expect. And while we wonder if this will work, the Pianist gets ready to play supernatural notes. Time for a concert.4
1 John Stott, Problems of Christian Leadership (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2014), pp. 24, 25.
2 Ibid., p. 25.
3 Ibid.
4 The original version of this story was published on the Norwegian Union Conference website.