May 5, 2003

MARCHING TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER

When I attended Hawthorne (NJ) High School, our football team was pathetic. They even managed to lose one game 110 to 0. I didn’t play football—couldn’t even make a team as poor as that. Instead, my thing was the band.

In those years, Hawthorne’s band was not much better than the football team. I remember one game at which we did a half-time show with only 17 band members. We had a few good musicians, but there just weren’t enough of us.

I was the only sousaphone player. The school had a second sousaphone, but there was no one to play it. As a big band competition was approaching, we were very anxious to give the band some visual balance by including that second sousaphone with its big bell at the end of the line opposite mine. So we conscripted Footsie.

I don’t remember Footsie’s real name, only his very appropriate nickname. He was a really nice guy, but he was musically illiterate, tone-deaf and with no sense of rhythm. We trained Footsie to carry the sousaphone, but told him that under no circumstances should he play it. He would gamely pretend to be blowing and occasionally would make an accidental sound. Someone was sure to yell the warning: “Footsie, we can hear you!”

Marching was another challenge. He could never get in step. Several of us would shout, “Left! Left!” Footsie would come down forcefully with his right foot. He thought if he lifted his foot higher and came down decisively, he’d be more likely to succeed. He was wrong, of course, but that’s how he earned his nickname.

Since then, I have learned some interesting lessons from out-of-step people. They never seem to be in rhythm or harmony with the rest of us, and yet, time has often proven them to be right and the rest of us wrong. They appeared to be ignoring the obvious rhythm of life, but they were just “marching to a different drummer.” They heard and responded to a different beat than did those around them.

Everyone who is seriously trying to follow Jesus as his disciple should be listening to and getting in step with a different drum beat than the dominant one. We are asked to close our ears to the world’s rhythm and adjust our lives to God’s rhythm.

Jesus commented on the fact that neither John the Baptist nor Jesus himself were respected by most of the people they met. John seemed too austere; Jesus seemed too liberal. Jesus described the rejecting crowd in this way:
“It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’”
(Matthew 11:16-17)
Their greatest criticism of both John and Jesus is that they were out of step with the accepted rhythm of life.

Of course, all those people who had the beat and were marching comfortably together were making great progress in the wrong direction. They were lost and becoming more lost all the time, on the road to destruction. John and Jesus were “marching to a different drummer,” and that Drummer was the Creator God!

If you are in sync with God’s beat, you will be out of step with the world’s rhythm. People around you will try to straighten you out: “Left! Left!” Resist the temptation to follow their beat, because if you do, you will lose the Lord’s beat. We serve a Different Drummer, and it is his rhythm that will lead us to truth, to righteousness, to eternity.

Footsie, wherever you are, I’m thinking about you. Maybe you weren’t as bad a musician as we thought. Maybe you were actually more sensitive and in touch with the true beat. Maybe . . . .

Nah!

–Pastor George Van Alstine