No one can remember it ever happening in a church service at Yorkminster Park, but on Sunday morning the great organ had a pipe that wouldn’t stop sounding its note. It is called a cipher and is often caused by a significant shift in temperature. Never having heard it before some wondered if it was a humm from one of the microphones. Someone else thought there was a vacuum cleaner on the go, or a truck outside backing up, but one look at William Maddox and I knew what it was, because I have seen and heard the same thing happen when he has been practicing during the week.
Like the Good Shepherd off went William in search of the droning pipe. Knowing that there are 5,731 pipes in our organ loft I might well have cynically said, “Good luck,” but I have seen him silence pipes in the past and he may well hold the Guinness record. The cipher started during the announcements and when I invited Alison to come and read the scripture it was still going and continued well into the pastoral prayer. It turns out that when he found the offending pipe, William stuck a pocketful of Kleenex into its mouth to shut it up and it worked.
I wonder if the one lost sheep that Jesus went out into the night to find hadn’t also been droning and bleating on about conditions in the sheepfold. Maybe the lost sheep was a chronic complainer and constantly out of tune. If so, it may have been silenced by the fear of the dark and the sudden change of temperatures, but the silent night would not stop the Good Shepherd from finding it and bringing it home. William’s determination and success couldn’t help but remind me of our Good Shepherd, but it also gave me pause to pray that a sudden change in temperature, physical and otherwise, wouldn’t cause me to bleat on like a droning cipher. I am sure the Bethlehem shepherds who witnessed the birth of Christ would challenge us to make Advent a time for silent tuning in preparation of lifting our voices with the angel chorus to celebrate the advent of the Good Shepherd.
